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Tutorial: Sending your first email to a group of customers

This tutorial will walk through the process of creating a group of customers and then sending an email to them.

Step 1: Search for customers that match your criteria.

On the Search Customers page in the store's administration area, located at: [Navigation Menu > Customers > Search Customers], use either the Basic or Advanced search tools to locate a selection of customers. The customers that match your search criteria will be displayed in the Search Results section of the page.

To compile a list of customers that match different searches, or are spread out among several pages of search results, select the checkbox for the desired customers and then click the Add to list of selected customers button. Clicking this button will add the selected customers to a temporary list. After those customers have been added to the list, more searches can be performed and the customers from those searches can be appended to the list of selected customers.

Step 2: Add the list of selected customers to a Customer Group.

If appending the selected customers to an existing Customer Group, use the options in section A in the image above. Select "Append to" from the first menu and the name of the Customer Group from the second menu. Click the Go button to add the list of customers to the Customer Group. Duplicates will be ignored.

To create a new Customer Group containing the list of customers, enter the name of the new Customer Group in the text field in section B in the image above and click the corresponding Go button.

The list of customers has now been added to the Customer Group. An email can now be sent to that group.

Step 3: Create an email template.

Next, create the template that the email will use. Use the Email Template Editor in the Modular Mailer module, located in the store's administration area at: [Navigation Menu > Modules > Modular Mailer].

In the Email Template Editor section of the module's home page, select Create a NEW email message template from the menu, and click the Go to Template Editor button. This will load the Template Editor screen.

In the Template Editor, enter the email message's information. This includes the From name and email address, and email addresses to be used for returns and error reporting. There is also a section for entering the email's Subject, and a Plain Text and/or HTML versions of the email message. Tracking and reporting options can also be selected. When all of these items have been completed, click the Save & Send an Email button to continue to the email delivery options.

Step 4: Select the Customer Groups to send the email to.

The email delivery section of the Template Editor will display several things. First is a copy of the email's Subject, addresses, Plain Text and HTML messages for review. If this content is correct, continue down the page to the next section, Select Recipients.

This section of the tool will display two menus. The menu on the left, titled Unselected Customer Groups, will display all of the available Customer Groups in red text. These are the Customer Groups that will not receive this email message. The menu on the right, titled Recipients, will display all of the selected Customer Groups in green text. These are the Customer Groups that will receive this email message.

To add Customer Groups to the Recipients list, follow these steps:

Select one or more Customer Groups from the Unselected Customer Groups menu. (Hold the CTRL button to select multiple Customer Groups from this menu.)
Click the ">>" button to move the selected Customer Groups from the Unselected Customer Groups menu to the Recipients menu.

Use the "<<" button to move Customer Groups from the Recipients menu back to the Unselected Customer Groups menu.

Step 5: Schedule the email delivery date and send it.

Now that the email message has been written and the groups of recipients have been selected, it's time to send the message! Below the Select Recipients options are the delivery options.

Option 1: Send a Test Email
To double-check the email message, enter an email address in the Send a Test Email field and click the Send Test Email button. A copy of the message addressed to the specified email will be added to the Email Delivery Queue, scheduled for immediate delivery. The test email should be generated within a matter of seconds. (Due to the nature of the Internet, it may take several minutes for the test email to arrive in your mailbox.)

Tip: The Send a Test Email tool can be a handy way to quickly send an email to someone, since it bypasses the need for selecting a Customer Group.

Option 2: Schedule Email Delivery
To send the email to all of the customers in the selected Customer Groups, use the Month, Day, Year, Hour and Minute menus to select the desired delivery date.

Tip: By default, these menus will be set to the current time when the page is loaded. Thus, it is not necessary to make any changes to these menus in order to send an email message immediately.

After the desired delivery date has been selected, click the Save & Send an Email button. This button will schedule an email instance in the Email Delivery Queue for each customer in the selected Customer Groups. Customers that are included in more than one Customer Group will not be added to the Queue more than once for this email instance.

Step 6: Email delivery continues automatically.

After the email instances have been added to the Email Delivery Queue, Modular Mailer will automatically start delivering the emails. The delivery software typically scans the Queue for due messages every 15 minutes, and delivers a batch of emails that are due for delivery. The number of emails delivered in each batch may vary; because servers often throttle the amount of resources given to email delivery, to keep the server running at its tip-top capacity.

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