Send personalized marketing mail shots from ACT!
Using this tutorial you will be shown how to modify an ACT! template that can be used to send a multi-page mail merged document to multiple ACT! contacts by email as personalized PDF files.
Included within ACT! are some example templates used for direct marketing purposes. This tutorial will use the "Initial communication – Direct Marketing Letter" template supplied with ACT! 2005 and 2006.
To modify your direct marketing template, please follow the instructions below:
Step 1: Open the ACT! application.
Step 2: Select Write | Edit Template from ACT! Menu bar.
Step 3: Select a template to edit. In this example, we will open the template called ‘Initial communication – Direct Marketing Letter.adt’ from the list. Doing so will launch the Template within Word.
Step 4: At the very top of the Template insert the following commands:
%%[startdocument]
%%[subject: «Company»] - take advantage of this free needs analysis]
%%[email:«E-mail»]
The Zetadocs commands can be inserted simply using the Word add in which is visible in the toolbar as shown in the screenshot below.
Step 5: The «Company» and «E-mail» fields are the ACT! fields that correspond to the company name and email address of the recipient. To insert these fields, open the ACT! Mail Merge Fields dialogue box, by selecting Show Field List from the ‘ACT!’ menu. Select Company from the list and click Insert. Repeat the same process for inserting the Email address field. Without these fields, it would be necessary to manually enter the company name and email address for each recipient. Your document should look similar to the document shown in the screen below.
Step 6: Open Zetadocs PDF and open the accessories Window by selecting View | Accessories Window. Select Stationery from the Type drop down box as in the diagram below, and choose the stationery you wish to merge this document to.
Step 7: With the stationery you wish to use highlighted, right-click and select Copy Automation Command as in the screen below. A dialog will appear confirming that the automation command has been copied to the Windows clipboard.
Step 8: Return to Microsoft Word processor, and select Paste from the Edit menu to paste the command into the document adjacent to the other commands. You can repeat this process with other accessories, for example if you wanted to add attachments such as a product brochure or price list to your email or use a pre-defined document template, you can copy and paste the command to the Quotation document.
Step 9: When you have added all of the accessories you wish to add to your document, highlight the Zetadocs fields i.e. all fields beginning ‘%%[‘and select Format from the menu bar. Select Font and from the Font Color drop down list and select the color white. This will make the fields invisible in the final document.
Step 10: Once the Embedded Addressing commands have been inserted, save the document.
Zetadocs PDF Embedded Addressing offers much greater functionality than described above, such as customizable text in the body of the email.
How to send a personalized marketing email shot from within ACT! as a PDF by email:
Follow these instructions to create and send a personalized email shot to multiple recipients as a PDF file direct from ACT!
Step 1: Select Write | Mail Merge from the ACT! toolbar.
Step 2: Select Word Processor from the Select Output dialog (stage 2 of the Wizard).
Step 3: Select the Template you created from the available list e.g. ‘Initial communication – Direct Marketing Letter.adt’
Step 4: From the Select Contact dialog select the recipients you wish to send the document to – either current lookup, current contact, all contacts, selected group or selected company.
Step 5: Click Finish. The special offer letter will be merged with the customer contact information for your selected contacts and presented in a single document. This lets you preview the documents before sending them. The Zetadocs PDF embedded commands will be included in the document, although they will be invisible as they are white.
Step 6: Print the Word document to the Zetadocs PDF printer. If you have selected Preview document before sending in the Tools | Options dialog, Zetadocs PDF will preview all of the documents before releasing them to be sent.
Step 7: Choose Send All from the Zetadocs PDF toolbar to distribute your documents via Outlook.
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