Serialmailer Manual

1 SerialMailer Manual For SerialMailer 7.2 Copyright © 2010-2011 Falko Axmann. All rights reserved. 2 Contents 1 Getting Started 4 1.1 Configuring SerialMailer 4 1.2 Your First Serial Mail 7 1.2.1 Database 8 1.2.2 E-Mail Message 9 1.2.3 Attachments and the Preview 10 1.2.4 Getting the Mails Out 11 2 Database 13 2.1 Elements of the Database Tab 13 2.2 Additional Database Commands 14 2.2.1 Database Segmentation 15 2.2.2 Import/Export 16 2.2.2.1 Address Book Import 16 2.2.2.2 CSV Import 17 2.2.3 Multiple Recipients 18 3 Message Editor 19 3.1 Personalization 19 3.2 Formatting Options 21 3.3 Importing HTML 23 4 Attachments 25 5 Sending the Mails 27 6 Database Manager 29 3 7 Preferences 30 7.1 Account Settings 30 7.1.1 SMTP Account 30 7.1.2 Apple Mail Account 31 7.1.3 Local Server 32 7.2 SerialMailer Settings 32 7.3 Templates 33 7.4 Blacklist 33 8 Templates 35 4 1 Getting Started This chapter is devided into two subsections. In the first, we will be configuring SerialMailer to work with a normal mail account. The second part will then focus on how to add addresses to our mailing as well as creating a personalized message text. Let's start by opening SerialMailer via a double click on its icon in your Applications folder. 1.1 Configuring SerialMailer The program will automatically create a new document when it is launched. For now, you can just ignore that window and head straight to the “Se- rialMailer” menu at the top left of the screen. 5 Choose “Preferences” to open the preferences window and edit the account settings. Since we haven't set up any accounts so far, the window looks quite empty. SerialMailer supports several different account types. We will create the standard SMTP account which is the most versatile one and which makes SerialMailer act similar to an ordinary e-mail client. If you are using Apple Mail, you can import your smtp account, otherwise choose SMTP-Account (default) from the + menu in the lower left. 6 This will create a new account. Let's have a look at the various fields and their meaning. Account Type The account type determines the way in which Serial- Mailer sends the mails, SMTP Client is the default. Name The account name will be used internally by SerialMailer to identify the account. Sender Address This is the address that will be visible for the recipient of your mails. You can either enter a plain e-mail address such as sup- [email protected] or a combination of name and e-mail address such as Falkon-Ware <[email protected]>. 7 SMTP Host The internet address of the mail server. Port The port number of the mail server. This is usually 25. Se- rialMailer will try to guess the correct value when you click the Verify Settings button. Encryption If it is supported by your mail account, SerialMailer can use an encrypted connection to increase security. Again, clicking the Verify Settings button will validate and correct this option. Authentication Choose Password if you have a username and password for your account. SMTP Login / SMTP Password Your username and password. You can verify the settings with a click on the Verify Settings button. This is also a good idea if you imported the account from Apple Mail to make sure that everything was imported correctly. With the account beeing configured, we can now build our first serial mail. 1.2 Your First Serial Mail Let's start by creating a new document (if SerialMailer hasn't opened one already). Choose New from the File menu. 8 The document is structured into multiple tabs (Database, E-Mail, ...). Each one allows you to edit one aspect of the serial mail. 1.2.1 Database The Database tab contains the list of recipients. Click the Add button to add a new address to the list. You can also import addresses from the system wide AddressBook using the Import menu in the lower right. 9 Recipients can be enabled and disabled using the checkbox at the beginning of each row. No mails will be sent to unchecked addresses. The Last Sent column will list the date/time of the last successful mail delivery. The contents of each column can later be inserted into your mail message. We will use this function to create a personalized text for each of the recipients. One of the columns has to be marked as the E-Mail Column, so that SerialMailer knows where to take the mail addresses from. The title of the current E-Mail Column is surrounded by brackets (e.g. [ e-mail ]). 1.2.2 E-Mail Message Now that we have a list of recipients (and some database columns that we can insert into our message), it is time to compose the e-mail text. 10 You can place fields (columns) from the database in the message or the subject line using the Insert Field pop up menu in the lower left of the screen. Once the mails are sent, the first line in the screenshot above will be converted to contain the actual names as they are stored in the database. 1.2.3 Attachments and the Preview Attachments can be added in the Attachment tab, but let's skip this for our first mail. The Preview tab shows you the mail message as it would be sent to each address. As you can see in the first line, the database fields have been replaced by the first and last name of the recipient. 11 1.2.4 Getting the Mails Out 12 Now all that's left to do is to have SerialMailer send the mails to everyone in our database. In the Send tab, you can select the account that is to be used (see section 1.1 on how to configure the account). Once you click the Send button, SerialMailer will start sending the mails. 13 2 Database 2.1 Elements of the Database Tab All the basic functions for editing the database can be found in the database tab. With the buttons at the top, you can add and remove addresses as well as edit the names of the database fields. The title of the active E-Mail Column is surrounded by brackets. You can change the column containing the e-mail addresses by selecting a column (clicking on its title) and then clicking the Set E-Mail Column button. The list can be sorted by double clicking on one of the column headers. 14 You can enable and disable entries using the checkboxes at the beginning of each row. Your mail will not be sent to disabled addresses. You can enable/disable multiple addresses at once using the commands in the Database menu (more on this in section 2.2). The Last Sent column contains the time and date at which a mail was successfully delivered to that address. Using commands described in section 2.2, it is possible to enable/disable addresses based on when (or if) they received your last mailing. Addresses can be imported and exported using the respective pop up menus in the lower right corner of the window. 2.2 Additional Database Commands Additional commands are available in the Database menu. 15 You can toggle the state of multiple database entries at once using the Enable Entries and Disable Entries commands. They are described in section 2.2.1. The Verify E-Mail Addresses menu contains tools for improving the consistency of your database. Check Syntax tests whether there are any obvious typos in the e-mail addresses (e.g. missing "@", invalid characters, etc.) and tries to fix them if possible, otherwise the addresses are disabled. Disable Duplicates disables all addresses that are listed more than once. You can then easily find the affected addresses by sorting the database by the checkbox column (i.e. double clicking into its header bar). 2.2.1 Database Segmentation Let's say you have a database containing addresses of people from your university, but you only want to send a mail to colleagues in your department. This is where the Disable Entries and Enable Entries commands come into play. You could first disable all addresses using Disable En- tries > All and then enable the ones of your colleagues using Enable Entries > By Field Contents. This will open a window where you can specify a condition such as Field "department" is "your department", where "department" is the name of one of the columns in your database. Here is what the other filters do: By Selection Changes the state of all the rows that are currently selected in the database By Last Date Sent Filters the addresses depending on the last time/date on which a mail was sent to that address. Entries to which no mail has been delivered are considered to have a date which lies in the future (i.e. after the current date). 16 By Field Contents Enables/Disables rows based on the contents of one of the columns. On Blacklist You can specify a blacklist in SerialMailer's preferences. No mails will ever be sent to an address listed there. You can check whether this is the case for any of the addresses in your database by choosing Disable Entries > On Blacklist and then sorting your database by the checkbox column.

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