Carrying out a Mailing

Prior to creating a mailing, it is useful to think about the recipients. If you have not already done so, you might create a contact person collection to specify who is going to receive your e-mails.

To create a mailing, click the New button above the list of existing mailings. The following form for specifying the properties of the mailing is displayed:

The fields have the following meaning:

Field	Meaning
Title	The title of the mailing; select a title as expressive as possible, e.g. "Announcement of new internet services, October 2009" instead of "Internet Services 01"
Event	Optionally, every mailing can be assigned to an event. It will then appear on the Mailings tab of the event.
Expected Release	This is the planned "official" release date of the mailing.
From	The sender address of the e-mails
Reply-To	The e-mail address to which replies to your e-mails will be sent
Subject	The subject line of the e-Mails
Body	Der Inhalt des Newsletters im Nur-Text-Format
HTML Body	Der Inhalt des Newsletters im HTML-Format

In the body (text) part of the mailings you can, analogously to form letters, use variables (placeholders) to insert the values of contact person fields into the generated e-mails. For this, and other programmable content, the templating language Liquid is available. Here is an example:

{{contact.salutation}},

in our first mailing we would like to explain to you the website
functions we recently developed to make your visit at www.example.org
even more pleasurable.
...

Yours sincerely,
John McWorthy

-- 
Trusted Ltd. | Main St. 121 | London SXW 342
Phone: 099 99 99 99 | Fax: 099 99 99 98
E-mail: info@example.org | Homepage: www.example.org

In the e-mail body, you can use all the contact person fields known to the OMC Liquid processor. Furthermore, you can create coded links that are recognizable by the OMC.

After having entered the mailing data including the text, click Create. The e-mails will be sent later on after explicitly issuing the corresponding command. This means that you can still modify the mailing details after the mailing has been created.

The mailing details are then displayed:

After the mailing has been released, statistical information regarding the e-mails and the use of the links they contain can be seen on this details view. However, you need to add the recipients first.

Adding Recipients

You can add individual contact persons as well as person lists from other sources to the recipient list of your mailing.

Click Edit on the Recipients tab. The following page for editing will be displayed:

Adding contact persons to the recipient list works just like defining a contact person collection. Therefore, please refer to the corresponding section in this manual.

Click Cancel or the context navigation link of your mailing if you are finished. Cancel does not undo the most recent changes to the recipient list.

The Prepared Mailing

The number of selected recipients should now be displayed on the details page of your mailing:

When mailings are prepared or released, a diary entry is automatically generated for each contact person on the recipient list.

By means of the Text E-Mail and HTML E-Mail tabs you can view the respective contents of the e-mail, modify it, have a preview displayed, or send a test e-mail.

Releasing and Closing a Mailing

From the button bar, select Release/Send/Close if the mailing is complete regarding its contents, the sender address, and the recipients. The page then displayed includes several buttons for controlling e-mail dispatch and for closing and reopening the mailing.

• Release Contents: Click this button if you want to dispatch the e-mails. After releasing a mailing, its contents cannot be changed anymore. However, you can still add contact persons to the recipient list or remove persons from it. E-Mails meant to be sent are called prepared e-mails, independently of the release.

• Send Prepared E-Mails: After the release, this schedules the e-mails of the recipients for dispatch. It is still possible to remove persons from the recipient list, unless their e-mails have already been sent out. If persons are put on the recipient list, click this button again to send their e-mails out as well.

• Close / Reopen: As long as a mailing has not been closed, you can add contact persons to the recipient list. Also, you can remove recipients if their e-mails have not been sent yet. After a mailing was closed, its recipient list can no longer be modified. Click Reopen to subsequently add recipients to it.

While the OMC sends out the e-mails (and afterwards, too), you can check the dispatch status at any time by opening the mailing details page again or by reloading it.