2008 Procedure 31 E-Mail Mail Merge

For cost effective customer communication, use Microsoft Word to produce a personalized e-mail message to reach all customers with an e-mail address in your database. This creates individual, personalized messages for each customer, much like the E-mail Marketing Tool in Fore! Reservations. Use E-mail Mail Merge if you need a more comprehensive query of customers than is possible through the E-mail Marketing Tool. While this tool is very powerful, it requires Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Outlook Express as your e-mail client.

The procedure to create an email letter using the Mail Merge feature follows:

1) Log into Fore! Reservations.

2) Open Microsoft Word by selecting the View | Marketing | Mail Merge menu item.

3) Microsoft Word loads the label template.

4) Select the Edit | Select All menu item and then press the delete key to clear the label template.

5) Select the Tools | Mail Merge to bring up the Mail Merge Helper.

6) On Step 1, click on the Create button. Select Form Letters from the pull-down menu.

7) Select Change Document Type when asked to create or change document type.

8) Click the Edit button and select Form Letter Document 1.

9) Type your e-mail message. Keep your message simple. There is no e-mail client standard and thus your e-mail may appear differently to people with different e-mail software. It is important that your recipients be able to read your e-mail. If they have difficulty, they will lose confidence and may not read future messages. Only include text in your message. Inserted graphics are not reliably displayed when received. For newsletters or flyers with graphics, display the newsletter on your web page and include a hyperlink in your e-mail message instead of including it in your e-mail.

10) To personalize your e-mail, use the database fields. For example, include the title, first name and last name as the salutation by using the Insert Merge Field button and selecting the fields respectively. For the merge to be successful, select at least one mail merge field.

11) If Field Names do not appear in your document, toggle the ABC button to change the form letter view.

12) Select Tools | Mail Merge.

13) Under Step 3 on the Mail Merge Helper, click Query Options.

14) If the Microsoft Query dialog box is displayed, click No.

15) In the third row, where you see Postal Code, click the pull-down menu and select (none) from the top of the list. The third row then disappears.

16) In the second row where you see Address, click the pull-down menu and select (none) from the top of the list. The second row disappears.

17) Click the OK button.

18) Under Step 3 on the Mail Merge Helper, click Merge. If the Merge button is dimmed, you have not included a mail merge field back in step 10) of this procedure.

19) Change the option in Merge to from New document to Electronic mail, then click the Setup button.

20) Under the Data field with Mail/Fax Address, click on the pull-down menu and select E-mail.

21) In the subject line, type in the text you would like to appear in the subject line of the e-mail. Make sure to include enough information so your recipients understand the topic of the e-mail and they recognize you as the sender. This distinguishes your message from "spam" messages.

22) Click the OK button.

23) At the Merge window, click the Merge button.

24) Microsoft Word sorts through the database and creates the personalized e-mail message for every customer with an e-mail address. If Outlook Express/Outlook is configured to send immediately, then the messages are sent immediately. Otherwise, click the Send/Receive button to send the messages. If a prompt appears suggesting that the e-mail address cannot be found in the address book, write down the e-mail address and click the cancel button to continue the merge. This indicates the e-mail address was not formatted properly and it was attempting to find this name in your address book. After the merge is done, identify and change this e-mail address in your Fore! Reservations database. You can identify the customer by running the EmailLst.xls spreadsheet. All the other messages appear in your e-mail software or if you have the Send Immediately option checked and you are connected to the Internet, the e-mail is immediately sent.

Microsoft Word XP Workaround

Microsoft Word XP (2002) replaces the Mail Merge Helper with the Mail Merge Wizard. Though the human interface is greatly improved, the performance is prohibitively slow. Fortunately, you can reinstall the Mail Merge Helper into Word XP. To do so:

1) Select Tools | Customize menu item in Word to bring up the Customize screen.

2) In the left window of the screen highlight All Commands.

3) On the right side scroll to find MailMergeHelper.

4) Click on it and hold the mouse down.

5) Drag it to Tools | Letters and Mailings and drop it above the Mail Merge Wizard menu item.

The Mail Merge Helper is now accessible from Tools | Letters and Mailings | Mail Merge... menu item just above Mail Merge Wizard.