How do I use Email Broadcast?

Email Broadcast

Overview

Email Broadcast is designed to send an email to your customers or carriers.  It is suitable for sending your customers notices, such as change of address, or holiday greetings.  Send your carriers Request for Proposals.  Carriers may be filtered by geographic zones and/or available equipment types.

Setup

Email Profile - The email must be sent using an email account.  Each FreightWare user can have their own email account parameters set up in their User Security Profile under the Setup menu.  (NOTE: If you don't see a Setup menu or the Security Profile option under Setup, see your system administrator).  Define the email parameters in the Email tab and click Send Test Message to verify they work.

Template - A template holds the content of the email body.  Each email sent is rendered for each individual recipient so it contains their own information.  The recipient will be more likely to trust the email when their own name, company name, etc. in the content.  Valid placeholders must be enclosed in double braces and include:

{{ContactName}}
{{CompanyName}}
{{CompanyAddress}}
{{CompanyState}}
{{CompanyZip}}
{{OurName}}
{{OurAddress}}
{{OurSuite}}
{{OurCityStateZip}}
{{OurPhone}}
{{OurFax}}
{{OurFedTaxID}}

An email body may be either defined as text or HTML.  For example,

A text template may look as follows:

Hello {{ContactName}}.  Thank you for your business!  Sincerely {{OurName}}

An HTML template might look like this:

<p>Hello {{ContactName}}.</p><strong>Thank you for your business!</strong<br/><p>Sincerely {{OurName}}</p>

There are several HTML editors available online, some for free.  Save your template file to the default folder C:Program FilesArtronixTemplates, although you may store your templates in any folder path as long as it begins with a drive letter (i.e. C: or E:, etc.). The extension on the filename does not matter, although it is good practice to use .htm or .html for HTML files, and .txt for text files to easily identify them.

Attachments - An email broadcast may include one or more attachments with the email.  Attachments can be of any type such as Excel files (.xls), or PDF (.pdf).  The size of the attachment is a consideration.  Nobody likes getting large attachments to bloat their email program, and some email servers have size limits on attachments and may not send them.  Keep your attachments as small as possible. 

Save or move your attachments into the default folder C:Program FilesArtronixAttachments, although you may use any folder path as long as it begins with a drive letter.

Usage

Now you are ready to send your email broadcast.  Select Email Broadcast from your Utilities menu.  (NOTE: If you do not have the Utilities menu or see the Email Broadcast option, see your system administrator to allow permissions)

Customers - When you first open the screen, the default selection of Customers will appear as well as all customer contacts with a valid email address. You may sort on any of the columns containing the contacts.

You may click the UnSelectAll button to uncheck all contacts, or select / deselect them individually. 

In the upper right corner, verify / change the path of where your templates are located.  The default path is C:Program FilesArtronixTemplates.  Click on the template you wish to use for the email.  Click the IsHTML checkbox if the template is in HTML format.  Click the Refresh List button to see the current contents in the Templates Path folder.  You must select a template to send an email.

Also, verify / change the Attachments path of where your attachments are located.  The default path is C:Program FilesArtronixAttachments.  Including an attachment with your email is optional.  If you wish to include one or more attachments, click once on each attachment file name to include them.  Click the Refresh List button to see the current contents in the Attachments Path folder.

Carriers - Click the Carriers button in the upper left corner to send emails to your carriers.  You will see 2 additional boxes containing your available zones and equipment types.  These are filters that allow you to select only carriers with these zones or equipment types.  If nothing is selected in a box, the it will not filter on that criteria. 

Click the Clear List button on either box to clear your selections in that box. 

Subject Line - Enter any subject line for your email.  Subject lines are typically evaluated by email servers to determine if they are to be considered spam or not.  You may need to consult with the Google for more information.

User Email Profile - This is the user name of the email profile we set up in the Setup portion above.  This should be a working email profile.  Note that some email servers (i.e. Godaddy), limit the number of "relays", or emails that may be sent in a day.  Consult with your system administrator on this subject.

Preview - After all of your selections are made, you will probably want to avoid any embarrassment and verify what you are sending to your customers and carriers.  Click the Preview button and enter your own email address to send a sample email to your own account. 

Email - Click Email and off they go.  Any email that cannot be delivered will have a "bounce-back" delivered to the From address in your User Email Profile. 

Disclaimer.  Sending bulk email can be a sensitive procedure. Target email servers will "blacklist" your sending email server if they believe you are sending spam.  Artronix is not responsible for any issues that may arise from the use of this feature.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003 for more information.