Mail Merge is a method of communicating with many people at once, while minimising time spent actually setting-up and sending communications. For example, you may use Mail Merge to send an e-mail to all horse owners in your Ardex database to inform them of an event, such as a farm open day. Or you may use Mail Merge to create personalised cover letters for owner statement copies to be sent to clients with overdue accounts.
Template Creation
Open a new email message in Microsoft Outlook and create an e-mail which is exactly the same as the one you want your owners to receive. Insert graphics and modify formatting until everything is just as you want it to be.
Put your cursor anywhere in the message body and press Control-A (Ctrl and A) to Select All text and images in the message. Now press Control-C to copy the message contents.
Open a new MS Word Document and choose Edit > Paste or Control-V to paste the e-mail message contents to the blank document.
Without making any changes to the word document choose Save As from the file menu and save the document in Web Page - Filtered format to your desktop.
You will now have a document in HTML Format that looks just like your original e-mail message. This HTML document can be used as your mail merge template.
Loading Template to Mail Merge
Close the MS Word application then open the mail merge function in Ardex.
Click Select File on the top left corner of the mail merge screen and select the template you just created
Note: For a mail merge you may select a MS Word, HTML or Plain Text template. However, HTML templates produce the best and most consistent results, and also process much faster.
Sending Mail Merge
Enter in the Caption for emails box exactly what you want to appear as the e-mail subject. This will display in the mail browser of the person receiving the e-mail, before they open it. We recommend that you enter your own e-mail address in the BCC field so you receive a copy of all e-mails sent, for your own records.
Click Select Criteria to choose who to send the mail-out to
Select Roles then tick Owner and click Generate List to bring up the list of the recipients
Click Close at the bottom left
The contacts with the selected criteria will now appear on the bottom of the mail merge screen
Double click any owner on the list to see a preview of the mail-out
Tick Skip to skip clients from receiving the mail merge if necessary
You can now Send the mail merge
Note: An e-mail mail merge will only be sent to people who have Send communications by: Email selected on their owner record, and a valid e-mail address entered.