In your admin panel, there is a page called, 'Contacts' from the main navigation menu on the left of the page that allows the admin to send bulk emails to Users. This Contacts page is independent from the Users/Bidder List - deleting email addresses from within the cart do not delete the bidders or their email addresses from the Admin>Users page.
Overview of the Admin>Contacts page menu options
Search: Search the list of email addresses currently in the cart
Group Actions: Used for selecting specific email addresses already in your cart to either delete or email
Add: Manually add an email address to the email cart
Filter: Subscribed vs Unsubscribed Contacts
Export: Download the existing email cart into an Excel file
Delete All: Remove all emails from the cart / empty the cart
Email All: This is the recommended button to email all email addresses in the cart
Import: Import email addresses from your User list, from an Excel file, or from a specific auction
Admin>Configurations>Email Templates
Before you can send a bulk email, you will need to create an Email Template (if you do not already have one). To create an Email Template, navigate to the Admin>Configurations>Email Templates page.
From there, click on the ADD button to add a new email template, and give this new email a Category of 'Custom Emails' and save it. The subject line and body of this email template can be edited/changed prior to you actually sending the email itself.
Admin>Contacts - sending a Bulk Email
2.) Once the Custom Emails template has been created, navigate to the Admin>Contacts page. Click on the black colored, 'Import' button and import email addresses into the email cart with the following 3 options:
Import Contacts from Excel Sheet
In the pop-up window, click on the 'Sample Template' to download the excel sheet that has the required formats/columns. This allows you to manage your own Contacts list and import it before sending out a bulk email.
Import from User List
In the pop-up window, choose All Users, Bidders, or Consignors, and then decides if you want to import only Active Users or All Users.
Import Participating Bidders
This is a very handy feature. In the pop-up window, select the title of the auction and it will import only the participating users from that event - that means all bidders who placed a bid in the event, whether they are winning or not.
Now that the email addresses have been added into the cart, click on the dark blue colored, 'Email All' button.
The first box, the 'Select an Email Template' drop down menu, will list out all of your Custom Email templates for you to choose from.
Note: In the 'FROM' field, it's very important that you use your domain based email address that's been verified with our system to ensure your emails end up in your bidders inboxes.
Review your subject and body of the email, and when it's ready, click on then Send button to send the email. A summary report will be emailed to the admin shortly after all emails have been delivered to the recipients.
Admin>Contacts page>Group Actions:
The orange colored Group Actions drop down menu on the Contacts page allows the admin to select specific email addresses and then use the Group Actions to send emails only to those Users. This is different from the 'Email All' option - the Email All option will email ALL email addresses in the cart, and there may be multiple pages with 100's or 1,000's of email addresses. The Group Actions>Send Email will only send the bulk email to the specific email addresses that are check marked / selected.
The Group Actions>Email option will pull from the Category of 'Contacts and Marketing Emails' from the Admin>Configurations>Email Templates page.
Admin>Contacts>Unsubscribed List:
All bulk emails that the admin sends out have a footer added to the bottom of the email with an 'unsubscribe' hyperlink.
The unsubscribed list is a list of email addresses that have opt'd out of receiving marketing/bulk emails. The admin can click on the Add button and manually add email addresses to this unsubscribed list. Any bidder or email address that has clicked on the unsubscribe link will be auto-added to this page. Bidders can also go to their public Bidder Profile>Communications tab and unsubscribe to marketing emails as well.