Bulk Email -how to setup & send & embed image/video/map
From time to time every organization or business will face a need to send promotional or marketing materials to its customer base. Bulk Email is a very effective tool for this and in this blog, we will explain how to do that in RAASPI cloud environment.
Overview:
Step 1: using Add others menu, create a mailing group and its members.,members normally will be customers and can be imported to point to the existing customer records.
Step 2. Go to Mailing menu, select the group and type in or copy paste the text into the subject and the mailing content area. Unsubscribe should be checked, so that the recipient has the option of unsubscribing future bulk email. Send all as bcc should remain unchecked so that recipient wont see who else getting the email.
In some cases, you will attach some graphic material like a flyer and depending on the email client it will appear as part of the email content or show as attachment. However now a days, most of the email client support html content, so the following option of adding as inline image may be a better option and email looks nicer.
Since the email source uses html editor, it is possible to add inline images along with the text. This makes it possible to send emails with images and text positioned the way you want.
Step 3. Use the preview send count button to have a dry run and check the email content the sender (the user who was logged in) will receive. If the count came back ok and the content looks ok, then use mail send button. It may take some time (in minutes) and come back with a response. If no response then may need to reload the page and use the 'status' button to show last email send status.
Details:
Creating a group is very straight forward, simply give it a name, leave the closed/restricted flag as unchecked and Save it.
Once you create a group, you need to add members to it. Although members can be added by using Add Members, For bulk Email group, it is much easier and recommended to use the List Members import facility. Go to List Members, select the group. highligt the customers and them press the import button. Use the ctl button to highlight multiple entries. To prevent unwanted import, you need to confirm as Yes before import will work.
Once the members for a group is created, you should check the members before sending the bulk email. Members entity is like virtual ie it points to other entitities like group, customer/visitors,suppliers/vendors etc. The list members will only show the pointers, you need to run the members report to see details like name, emails etc.
The last step which can be repeated as needed is to send bulk emails for a group. Go to Mailing-Email-Customers to send bulk email. Below, we repeat the step 2 and 3 details .
Go to Mailing menu, select the group and type in or copy paste the text into the subject and the mailing content area. Unsubscribe should be checked, so that the recipient has the option of unsubscribing future bulk email. Show names should remail unchecked so that recipient wont see who else getting the email.
You may attach some graphic material like a flyer. To add a new attachment use the + (plus) button and upload the file from the local machine. As explained before, you may show this uploaded image or images as inline image in your email.
Inline images: position the cursor where you want the image and then click on the editor image icon and key in or copy/paste the image url. How do you get this image url ? Put the image on a cloud service like dropbox or google share and typically you will click on share or hover over/right click to see the link. The link will look like https://www.dropbox.com/s/bd7i39j7vfcpsxxx/20nn-05-29%2010.53.20.jpg?dl=0. In case of dropbox change dl=0 to raw=1 ie instead of download to display.
Normally you will use image url links from your own web site and the url needs to be a full url like https://www.yoursite.com/ImageServletCdi/?table=blobdata&seq=1&qlf=PIC&id=X30novflyer-1123021757&width=550. Short or relative url are used to show the same image within the website itself and looks like /ImageServletCdi/?table=blobdata&seq=1&qlf=PIC&id=X30novflyer-1123021757&width=550
To use images, open a new Tab and show any page with images on it. Click on + to show enlarged image and right click on it and 'copy image address' which has the url. You can also go to Setup/Binary Data menu to see all images. Clivk on + and it will show the url to be copied.
Use the preview send count button to have a dry run and check the email content the sender (the user who was logged in) will receive. If the count came back ok and the content looks ok, then use mail send button. It may take some time (in minutes) and come back with a response. If no response then may need to reload the page and use the 'status' button to show last email send status.
You can embed an image in email as well as in web pages. But the following involving IFRAME wont work for email content, use them for web page content only. You can copy the Map link in the email.
Embed video in web pages (can add link to web page in email body)
Position cursor on your web page and click where you want the video clip and then click on the editor iframe icon (looks like a globe) on the the top row of the editor toolbar to show the IFRAME properties or if an IFRAME already exists right click to show properties.
In partallel, you go to Utube, select and play the video and right click on it to see the embed code. In case of Vimeo you click on </> button, which will take you to another page with embed code button to show embed code.
In case of Utube it will be something like <iframe width="724" height="408" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T5QowsqOHnk" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
in case of Vimeo it will be something like <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/298593356" width="640" height="352" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
Copy and paste the embed code but delete everything including double quotes except the url part like https://www.youtube.com/embed/91iInpoxxxxNc
so IFRAME on your page will look like
Utube example
URL
https://www.youtube.com/embed/T5QowsqOHnk
To stop showing related videos make it
https://www.youtube.com/embed/T5QowsqOHnk?rel=0
Width Height
300 200
Vimeo Example
URL
https://player.vimeo.com/video/298593356
Width Height
500 400
Embed google map
The url will look like <iframe src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=xxxx...+Toronto%2C+ON+M4E+1E5!5e0!3m2!1sen!2sca!4v1520370032044" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0" style="border:0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>
To get map url: goto https://www.google.com/maps
search with an address
on the left side select share, embed the map, copy iframe src (not html , because you are inside html editor).
As an alternative, you may decide not to embed but copy / paste the the map link, which will work on web page and in email content.
it will look like https://goo.gl/maps/pPq83a3uRK42
If you embed, like image,
Position cursor on your web page, where you want the map and click on the editor iframe icon (looks like a globe).
Right click on the iframe icon and select properties. Copy and paste the embed code but delete everything including double quotes except the url part like
https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d2886.2077974363433!2d-79.3122106849489!3d43.66464797912089!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x89d4cbf30a188f47%3A0xb6ef4a8a368b548!2s27+Northern+Dancer+Blvd%2C+Toronto%2C+ON+M4L+3Z8!5e0!3m2!1sen!2sca!4v1537834755463" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0" style="border:0" allowfullscreen