Reviewing the Contact List

Once you have selected the customers to be included in the mailing, you need to review the list of included contacts to verify that each contact should receive the email. This can be done from the Contact Selection window that pops up, or by exporting the names and email addresses of the contacts to a spreadsheet.

The Contact Selection window (shown below) lists all of the contacts that will be included in the mailing, organized by customer. It gives you the opportunity to remove any contacts from the mailing by unchecking the box to the left of their name. You can also use this window to identify any contact entries that have poorly formatted names or incorrect email addresses; these issues can be corrected by exiting the window and editing the contact's information through the Contacts tabs in the Customer Master or Customer Ledger screens.

Once you have unchecked any contacts that you do not want to include and corrected any poorly formatted contacts, click the OK button to continue creating your email. See the Composing, Saving, and Sending the Email page to continue.

1.After you have entered all of your selection criteria, check the Export to CSV box. This will allow you to create and save a spreadsheet file of the customer information.

2.Click the OK button in the bottom toolbar. A window will pop up asking you to name the file and choose a location to save it. Since we are just using this file to verify the information, we can save it to the Desktop. Once all of the information has been finalized, you may want to save it to a shared drive on the server to keep track of the customers that you have sent marketing emails to.

3.Once you click the Save button, the document should open as a spreadsheet. This will display the first and last names of each contact, as well as their mailing address, phone and fax numbers, and email address. Now you can go down the list to verify that each contact has an email address entered, and a correct first and last name. If you need to make changes, you will need to do this through Inform - do NOT make changes to the spreadsheet, as they will have no effect on the information in Inform.

To make changes to a contact - Go back to Inform, and click on the Calendar button (this will minimize the Inform Marketing Manager window, but not close it). In the Contact field on the left, type in the name of the contact you need to change and press Tab. In the search window, select the correct contact. In the Customer Contact window, click the Edit button in the bottom toolbar. Make any necessary changes, then click the Save button in the bottom toolbar to save the changes.

To exclude a contact from the mailing - If a contact meets all of the necessary selection criteria, but you do not want to include them in mass mailings, you can check the Don't Send Mass Mail box found in their Customer Contact window. Open their Customer Contact window using the instructions above, then check this box (shown to the right) to exclude the contact from receiving marketing emails. Click Save when you have finished your changes. The next time you export the customer names, this customer will not be included.

4.Once you have finished making changes to your customer information, open the Inform Marketing Manager window that you minimized earlier (Windows > Inform Marketing Manager), and click the OK button again to export the revised list of customer information. In the export window, you can select the same file name that you use previously and overwrite that file, since it is no longer relevant. Double-check the list again to be sure that your information is now correct.