Mass Emailing via List Views

You have just posted 500 Service Agreements to the Dispatch Board.  Now you need to contact those 500 customers to get them scheduled for maintenance.  You...

1. Call all 500 customers, one at a time.
2. Print 500 letters and envelopes.
3. Print 500 labels for your "Call us!" postcards.
4. Send one email.

There really is no wrong answer, but one of those options is definitely more time and cost efficient than the others.  Unlike printing invoices, envelopes and labels, there is no cost for sending an email.  And it's a lot faster and more time efficient to send an email once, than to make 500 phone calls.  Makes sense, right?  So let's take a look at how we can make that happen.

Emailing from Lists

ESC provides the ability to send group emails to your customers through various Lists.  You can email batches of invoices from the Invoice List or contact all active customers right from the Customer Center.

Let's start off simple by sending a Welcome letter to all new customers.  

1. Click on the Customer Center icon on ESC's icon bar.  
   
   
   
   
2. Select Recently Added from the Views panel on the left side of the screen.  This will produce a list of all Active customers that have been added to ESC within the past 7 days.  If you wish to expand this date range, you can do so under the Refine Filters tab at the top-right of your screen.
   
   
   
   
3. If you are satisfied with the customers now showing in the list, head to the Activities menu on the toolbar and select either Print/Email All Selected Customer Locations or Print/Email All Selected Customer Billing Addresses.  
   
   
   
   
4. The next screen will provide you with a variety of options.  The panel on the left will allow you to print a report for the customers in the list, print labels for them, or export them to a tab-delimited text file that could be exported into Excel.  The first three options you'll see will be...
• Mail Merge using a Template - allows you to print out letters from ESC with each customer's information filled in.
• Email using a Template - allows you to email letters from ESC to customers with their information filled in.
• Email All Customers with an Email Address, and Print Remaining - allows you to email letters to all customers with an email address and will print out a letter for each customer who lacks an email address.
  
  
  
  
5. If you do not already have a Template built, you can do so by clicking on the Manage Word Processor Templates option at the top of this screen.  This will provide you with a word processor that allows you to build a letter or document to be sent to your customers.  If you already have your Template setup, you can skip this step. For more about building Word Processor Templates, click here.
6. To send your email select either Email using a Template or Email All Customers with an Email Address, and Print Remaining. Then click the Begin button.
7. In the next screen, you'll be asked to select the Template you wish to email to your customers from a drop-down menu.  Once you select a template, the Document Name field will automatically fill in with the name of the template, followed by today's date.  If you select the Attach sent documents to customer locations option, the Document Name is how the file will be named when it is attached.  You'll also have the ability to send emails in batches, rather than all at once.  Many email providers will limit the number of outgoing emails that can be sent in a day.  So you can use the First record and Last record fields to select the range of emails to be sent.
   
   
   
   
8. Click the Send button to view the message you are about to send in the Email screen.  Here, you will need to enter a Subject and a From (reply) address.  If you're ready to send this message on its way, click the Send All button to send this email to all customers in your list.  Note: If you click the Send button instead, only the current message will be sent and the next one in the list will be opened for editing.
   
   
   
   

Now that you have the basics down, you can use this same method to send a follow-up message to all customers in the Recently Completed Dispatch list, or send a Renewal reminder to all customers in the Expires Next Month Agreement List.  The possibilities are endless!