Sending Emails
You can send emails to contacts in your database.
- Send individual emails or to a selection of contacts
- Merge fields from the table containing the contact details, and related tables
- Add attachments
- Automatically create a Memo for each email that's sent
Email Account
To send emails, you must first set up an email account.
- At the main window, choose Email Accounts ... from the Communications menu
- Click on Create a New Record in the Search Dialogue Window
- Complete the new Email Account information:
- The POP Server, User name, and Password fields are not required for sending emails;; they are required if you are going to use this account for receiving emails.
- Save the email account record
Now you are ready to create and send emails.
- Create a list of the contacts that you want to send an email to (click on the Find Data button on the main window, select the appropriate table, and find the records).
- Make sure that they all have an email address! If you need to create a new field for email addresses, choose Table and Field Setup from the Admin menu and add a new field to the table.
- Click on the Emails button at the top of the window
- An Email dialogue opens. Click on the New button. A new Email record opens:
Notice the Data Merge floating palette off to the right of the Email window:
This enables you to merge data from the selected table (e.g., your contacts) and from related tables.
Name
Enter a descriptive name for this email.
Send
Select Single Email to send one email to one specific email address, or Bulk email on address field to send an email to all the contacts in the list. If you have chosen the Bulk email option, select the field that contains the email addresses from the popup menu.
Send Via
Choose the email account that you want to send this email from.
Format message as HTML
By default, emails are sent as plain text. However if you want to send them formatted with HTML, select this check box, and then include HTML tags in the body of the email.
Subject
This is what will appear in the Subject line of the emails.
Attachments
If you want to include one or more attachments, click on the little arrow to expand the Attachments area. You will then be able to add your attachments by clicking on the + button.
Message Body Area
Enter the text of your email into the message body area. You can merge fields from the database:
- Make sure that the cursor is in the message body area, and that it's at the place where you want to insert a field.
- In the Data Merge palette, double-click on the field you wish to insert. A special tag will be inserted. For example:
Dear <!--First Name-->,
Now every email will be personalised with the contact's first name.
Check Spelling
If this check box is selected, the spelling checker will be invoked when you move out of the message body area.
Followup
You can choose to have a Memo automatically created for each email that is sent out. To do this, click on the Followup tab and select the Create a Memo after each email is sent check box. Here's what the Folllowup page looks like:
Followup Date
If you want to set a followup reminder date, enter it here, or leave if as 00/00/00 if you don't want a followup date. Or select the n days after email is sent option to set the followup date for a specified number of days in advance - this is useful if you're going to send this email more than once.
Brief Summary
This is what will appear in the Memo summary field which can be searched on - it's required.
Comment
Enter a brief description of the email here.
Followup Action
Optionally choose a followup action from the popup list that appears when you click in this area.
Public/Private
CatBase keeps track of who created each Memo. If it is Private, only that person will see it; if it's Public, anybody will be able to see it.
When you're happy with your email, click Send Now to send it.