The mailing centre is a tool which will enable you to communicate effectively with the members of your organisation using telephone, post and email.

Many organisations resort to sending information to all their members by post because it is the lowest common denominator – not everyone has email and using the telephone is not always appropriate.  The mailing centre can radically change this approach - and reduce your costs in the process.

• Each member can update their own profile in the area of the site 'My Profile'. This means that it's more likely you are sending information to a current address as well as saving hours of admin time keeping your address book up to date.
• Each member can select how they would like to receive information from your organisation.  Insight automatically selects an appropriate default setting (based on a number of parameters) to ensure that your communications costs are kept to a minimum.  Using email where appropriate can drastically reduce postage and photocopying costs and in many cases is more likely to be read than information sent by post.
• The Web Office personal records contain mail history information – so at any time you can see exactly which emails, post and telephone calls have been sent to an individual.

This article explains how to create a mailing (including using email templates) and how to recall and use previous mailings.

Accessing the Mail Centre

• If you haven’t logged into the web site already, do so now.  Click the Login link at the top of the home page and enter the login name and password as supplied.
• Once you have successfully logged in click the web office link at the top of the home page.  The Web Office will be displayed shortly afterwards.
• Click on the Mailing link in the top right-hand corner of the Web Office; the mailing centre will be displayed in the work area below.
   

Creating your Mailing Stationery

Before you begin sending emails you may wish to create a template with your organisation logo and contact details to give your emails a professional look.  To create a new template:

• Click the Edit templates option in the navigation pane on the left-hand side of the mailing centre; the work pane will be updated with a list of your current templates.
• Click the Create a new mail template task link.
• Select one of the following two types of template:

	HTML Template   The HTML template allows you to use text formatting (such as fonts and colours), images and columns of information.  Most recipients can read HTML format emails, but some older text-based email systems do not support this feature.
	Plain Text Template   Messages will be sent as “text only” – with no formatting or images. All email systems support this format.

• If you are creating a plain text template enter text in the space provided.
• If you are creating an HTML template use the tools provided to add images, text and tables to your template.  For more information on using the editor see articles guide.
  
  Note: Remember the template should only contain content that will be used again. Each one-off message you write should be added at a later stage.
• Once the template is complete enter a template name in the space provided.
• Select an appropriate available to group.  Any administrator who has the mail security permission for the selected group will have access to this template.
• Click the save button to store your template.  The list of available templates will be updated shortly afterwards.

Creating a Mailing

• Step 1 – select the group – check the box next to the groups you would like to send your mailing to.  Use the   and   buttons if necessary to show or hide any sub-groups.

  On the right-hand side are additional options to restrict who will receive the mailing – send the mailing only to the adults in the group, send the mailing only to the leaders of the group, and filter the group by membership status.

  Once you have selected the appropriate groups and any of these additional filter options click continue to move to step 2.

• Step 2 – select the correspondence method – the people who will receive this mailing (based on your selection in the previous screen) will be displayed in a list.  For each person one of the following three options will be selected:
  
  
  • Send email – send the mailing via email using the email address supplied in my profile.
  • Export address label – send the mailing via post; the mailing wizard will automatically produce an address label (or raw data which can be used in another application) based on the address information supplied in my profile.
  • Telephone - the mailing wizard will produce a list of people to contact along with home, mobile and work phone numbers from the information supplied in my mailing preferences area of the site.

  The option selected for each person depends on the correspondence method setting they have chosen in the my mailing preferences area.  You can override these settings if necessary or remove the person completely using the  button.
  
  Click the continue button to move to step 3.

• Step 3 – compose email
  
  • Enter a Subject for the message in the space provided.
  • If you have any attachments you wish to include click the Attach Files button.  A new window will open allowing you to locate the files on your computer.  Once you have finished selecting attachments click the OK button to close the window and add the attachments to your message.  Attached files must not be greater than 2MB in size.
  • Select from one of the templates available to you using the template selector, then compose an email using the editor provided (see creating a template above for more information).  Enter text in the space provided to compose your message.
    Note: If you are using a HTML template and have added links to content on your web site you can record how many people have followed these links through a feature called click tracking. 
  • The mail merge option changes the behaviour of your emails' address header.
    When the mail merge option is enabled each person will receive an email addressed solely to them.  If you wish you may also use the mailmerge fields to include appropriate information (such as receipient name, sender name and web site address) within the text of the email.
    When the mail merge option is disabled – every recipient of the email will be listed in the “To” section of the email;  this enables any member of the group to respond to the entire group using “Reply to All”.
    Note: this feature will not be available if there are more than 20 people receiving the message by email.
  • Click continue to send the email to the appropriate people. Once the emails have been sent you will receive confirmation of the number sent successfully and the number which have failed.

  • Click continue to move onto step 4.

• Step 4 – export addresses and telephone numbers

  The list of people to contact via telephone can be displayed as a web page, as an Adobe PDF document (you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to display this file), or as a comma separated file for use in other applications.  Click the appropriate link to display a list of people to contact alongside their home, mobile, and work telephone numbers.

  
  To export the address labels, first select whether you would like to create one label per family, or one label per person, then download the addresses in one of the following two formats:

  •  As an Adobe PDF– this option provides a ready-to-print document which can be printed directly onto one of the pre-defined Avery label sheets.  You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to be able to view this document.
  •  As a comma separated file(.csv) – this option provides the address information in a raw data format for use in other applications (for example the “Mail Merge” facility in Microsoft® Word).

  Once you have exported the addresses in the desired format click continue to move to step 5.

• Step 5 – save the mailing – you can keep this mailing for future reference in one of the following two locations:
  
  • Save this mailing in your personal Sent Items folder – by storing the mailing in your Sent Items folder only you will be able to display the contents of that mailing and use the message or recipients as a basis for future mailings.
  • Save this mailing in a group’s Sent Items folder – mailings may be stored in the Sent Items folder for any group on which you have the mailings permission. The item will also be stored in your personal Sent Items folder also. 

If you wish to retain this mailing for future reference enter a subject and description to help you identify it in the mailing centre at a later date.

 

Finally, click next to return to the mailing centre.