Newsletters via E-Mail
Increased postage costs, time consuming to customise generally time consuming to produce - newsletters - they are an ideal marketing tool but they can tie up a member of staff and resources for a while.
You have the ability in Premvet to capture the Client's E-Mail address, you can even capture existing clients with pop-up's is the address is missing - see FAQ Updating E-Mail Address.
Many (most) of the Premvet reporting tools have the ability to export the E-Mail address - why not use E-Mail to target mail-shots?
You can run a DataMajor report to extract all your active clients and fire off the newsletter - say to all clients that have been in for a booster in the last 12 months but not purchased either a flea product or wormer - send them a special offer - could take 10 mins from start to finish. The next day do one for all geriatric dogs owners - again customised - again about 10 mins - following day - missed feline boosters and so on.
E-Mail is quick to prepare and quick to send, it's 'green' as you are not going through reams of paper and as long as it is relevant clients will not mind it.
Have a look at FAQ: Generating a Mailing List to get your list of addresses to send to - now all you have to do is send them the message.
We are going to use a 3rd party web site to show you how it can be done.
- Step 1 We logged into MailChimp and created a free account for testing. If you are sending less than 12,000 messages a month (to no more that 2000 clients) then the service is free - if you find you are exceeding those figures there will be a charge - see MailChimp web site for details.
- Step 2 Setup New list - Bottom of screen 'import' - use the 'Browse Button' and click the text folder on the Premvet share and select 'save.csv' (or whatever name you save the csv file as).
- Step 3 Using the options that come with MailChimp match up the columns e.g. E-mail to E-Mail address, Surname to Last Name etc. - you need to match any of the columns you may want to use in mailshot message. MailChimp will upload your list - it may take it a few minutes - you can use the statistics page to see how many records you have uploaded.
- Step 4
Select the list we just uploaded and select 'Send to entire list'
(there are options that allow you to filter and send to segments
- best look at the excellent help videos on the sites).
- Name it - this should relate to the list uploaded e.g. Wormer reminder.
- Subject that will appear on the top of the mail the client receives.
- Adjust the other options to suit your needs. (From, ReplyTo etc.)
- On MailChimp anyway, this screen can also be used to track who has opened the message, link it to facebook etc. You should look at the documentation that is on-line regarding these options.
- Step 5 Design what message you want to send using the pop-up templates they provide. These also fill in all the anti-Spam features, opt-out messages etc.
- Step 6 Click Send it.
That's it you have sent your first E-Mail newsletter, assuming you have included yourself on the list you should receive a copy - check over it - see what you may want to change for the next time.
Sending E-mail using a 3rd party web site is out-with the scope of our support service we can provide so we will not be able to answer queries on the operation of it. We can help with generating the CSV file as to actually using the external site we cannot help.
