Manage targeted email marketing campaigns from the Inform Marketing Manager. Select customers based on product purchases, sales history, salesperson, or hundreds of other options. Create richly formatted emails, personalize them with contact mail-merge fields, and even add attachments. Inform now has the ability to integrate with mass email providers like Mailgun to execute professionally formatted mass emails and track important analytics such as open rate, bounces, and unsubscribes. Mailgun enables users to comply with CAN-SPAM laws and provides custom unsubscribe capabilities. To learn more about integrating a mass email service with Inform's Marketing Manager, please view this linked article which discusses how to Link mass SMTP email service to Inform with Inform.
Preliminary setup for Inform Marketing Manager
Before using the Inform Marketing Manager, you must check company and customer configuration:
- Company Setup: Sending Inform Marketing Manager emails requires an SMTP Server configuration, which can be obtained from your email service provider. See Set up your company for the Marketing Manager.
Important: Not all SMTP providers support the Marketing Manager. Some providers limit or block the number of emails that can be sent in bulk. If no emails are sent, or the number of emails seem to be capped. then contact your SMTP provider to update your settings and/or upgrade your service.
- Customer Setup: Customer contacts must have a valid email address set up in Inform in order to receive marketing emails. See Set up your customers for the Marketing Manager.
Review Federal Trade Commission regulations
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has established regulations for commercial messages. If you are new to email marketing, be sure to review these regulations before you send your first email. In compliance with FTC rules, all emails sent from Inform Marketing Manager include the following information at the bottom:
- Company Name
- Company Address (Street, City, State, Zip)
- Company Web Address
- A notification: "To unsubscribe from these emails, please contact us at <Company Email Address>."
The company name, address, and web address are pulled from the Company Master (Company Information tab). You can edit these fields through the Company Master, but they may not be removed from the email.
Create the marketing campaign
- Go to CRM > Inform Marketing Manager.
- On the Customer Selection Criteria screen, use the selection criteria boxes to choose the types of customers that your email will target. To learn how to select criteria, see Selecting data
For example, you can select customers who are in a specific state, assigned to a specific salesman, or only those in good credit standing. Note that fields such as Customer Name and State are case-sensitive. Customers must meet all selected criteria to be included. The more criteria options you select, the more focused your mailing will be.
Tip: Create source codes to group customers for different mailing occasions, such as sending holiday cards or reaching out to prospects from a trade show. After a source code is assigned to a customer, you can select that code in the Customer Selection Criteria screen of the Inform Marketing Manager.
- After you have selected your customers, click OK. The Inform Marketing Manager window opens. At the top, you will see the options chosen in the Customer Selection Criteria screen.. To revise your selections at any time prior to sending your email, click the Customer Selection Criteria button.
- Make additional selections in this screen, such as:
- History - Allows you to focus your email based on customer sales history.
For example, if you are introducing a new accessory to your stock, you may want to notify all customers who have purchased the product relevant to that accessory. If you mark this box, also select a Branch, Start Date, and End Date for product history. Then click the Product Selection Criteria button to choose product options, similar to how you chose customer options.
The sample to the right shows that this mass mailing will include customers who have ordered products from the 100-01 product line from Branch 228 during the time period 1/1/2015 to 12/31/2015. Click the fields in the sample shown to the right for more information.
- Export to XLS - Allows you to export the selected list of customers to an Excel spreadsheet.
Use this spreadsheet to verify information for each contact (First Name, Last Name, and Email Address), and identify contacts who should not receive mass mailings. If you mark this box and click OK in the Inform Marketing Manager screen, the system will prompt you to save the spreadsheet so that it is available for viewing and editing.
If you find any contacts who should not receive any mass emails, open that contact's record in the Customer Master (Contacts tab), and mark the Exclude Mass Mail box.
Note: Remember to clear the Export to XLS box when you are ready to send your email.
- Click OK. A Contact Selection window pops up so that you can review and confirm the list of contacts who will receive the email. Only contacts with an email address are included. In the left hand column, unmark the boxes for any contacts who should not receive this particular mass email. To remove a contact from all mass email campaigns, open the contact's record in the Customer Master (Contacts tab), and mark the Exclude Mass Mail box.
- After you have selected contacts, click OK.
- On the Send Document screen, review the Send From and Send To information, and then compose your message in HTML or plain text. If you write your message in HTML, you can save a draft to send at a later time, create template emails, include images, and attach files. See Set up email for your marketing campaign.
- When you are finished writing your email, click Send Test at the bottom of the screen. This will send a copy of the email to the test customer that you have set up. For more information, see Set up your customers for the Marketing Manager. Based on the test, edit the content and appearance as needed.
- After you are satisfied with the test email, click Send to send it to customers.
See also