Thursday, December 03, 2009

Email Merge

Use e-mail merge when you want to send a large number of messages that are mostly identical but each of which also includes some unique information. For example, you can use e-mail merge to create individually customized e-mail messages that contain personalized notes, content of a sales order, or varying content targeted at separate customer segments. You can also use e-mail merge to create a product announcement to send to your top 100 customers, in which most or all of the text of the publication is the same, but the e-mail address is different for each customer.

Better than the same feature in other products or services, PrimeObjects Email Merge feature allow send email to not only contact or system users but also many other predefined entities. There are five predefined entities can be used as email recipients including Contact, Company, System User, Lead, Opportunity, Sales Order and Service Request. Even better, for the Enterprise edition users, the recipient entities can be extended by following our system customization guide.

Most of the email merge product and systems in today's market only allow merge the content from the recipient's data. Typically, the profile of the contact or user like first name, last name or age. The PrimeObjects system support email template and email merge against any content from any record not matter a sales quote, sales order, a memo, a existing document, a meeting minutes or a service ticket. This gives our user unlimited capability to merge any content into an email on the fly or through a template.

Below are steps on how to create an email regarding a sales quote based on an email template.

1. Prepare a quote

   In the screenshot below, the fields we are going to fill in the email have been highlighted.

   

2. Create a content template

   The "Apply To" field will tell what entity this template designed for. We fill in Email as the value of the Apply To field in ths case.

3. Create a new email

   The recipient and regarding fields are those have be defined in the template and will be filled in the email merge. The "Content Merge When Send" tells the system whether the email merge will be done when the system is sending the email. We are going to merge the email content manually this time and therefore having "Content Merge When Send" truned off.

   

   NOTE:The system does not allow apply a content template to a new unsaved record, because it need the latest record data on witch the merge will reply in the system first. So we have to save the email first now before doing the content merge. If we try to apply content template to a new unsaved reocrd, a message box will be shown to tell you the content merge need to have record saved first. here is the screenshot of the warning.

4. Apply Template & Email Merge

   Now we are ready to compile the content of the email, here we select a template by clicking the "Select a template" button (1), chose the "Quote Email" content template (2) and then click select button (3).

   

   After we select the template, the content of the template will be filled into the edit area of the email content. Now we are going to click "Apply the selected template" button to do the email merge manually.

   NOTE: if you want the system to do the email merge for you automatically when sending the email, you can turn on "Content Merge When Send" and send it out as it is by having the content of the template as the content of the email.

   

   After we click "Apply the selected template" button, the placeholders we defined in the template will be replaced by the values from the data of the associated records.

   

   NOTE:You may notice that [EmailTo:PrimaryEmailName] is left without replacing by any value. This is because this special placeholder will be merged by the system when the email is sent. If there are [EmailTo:PrimaryEmail] and [EmailTo:PrimaryEmailName] placeholders in the content of the email, and there are more than one recipients in the "TO" recipients list of the email, the system will create multiple copy of the emails with only one recipient in each email and replace proper value to [EmailTo:PrimaryEmail] and [EmailTo:PrimaryEmailName] placeholders.

Appendix

1. More about [MailTo.PrimaryEmail] and [MailTo.PrimaryEmailName]

   There are two special placeholder for email templates. They are [MailTo.PrimaryEmail] and [MailTo.PrimaryEmailName]. The [MailTo.PrimaryEmail] will be replace by the email of the recipient and [MailTo.PrimaryEmailName] will be replaced by the name of recipient.

   Entity Name	PrimaryEmail Value	PrimaryEmailName Value
   Contact	Contact's primary email	Contact's first name + ' ' + Contact's last name
   Company	Company's primary email	Company's name
   System User	user's primary email	user's first name + ' ' + user's last name
   System User	user's primary email	user's first name + ' ' + user's last name
   Lead	The primary email of the contact of the lead	The full name of the contact of the lead
   Opportunity	The primary email of the customer (Company or Contact) of the opportunity	The full name of the "Contact" customer of the opportunity The name of the "Company" customer of the opportunity
   Quote	The primary email of the customer (Company or Contact) of the quote	The full name of the "Contact" customer of the quote The name of the "Company" customer of the quote
   Sales Order	The primary email of the customer (Company or Contact) of the sales order	The full name of the "Contact" customer of the sales order The name of the "Company" customer of the sales order
   Service Request	The primary email of the customer (Company or Contact) of the service request	The full name of the "Contact" customer of the service request The name of the "Company" customer of the service request