High Impact & Alpha Five: A Mail Merge Guide.

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1 High Impact & Alpha Five: A Mail Merge Guide. Performing a Mail Merge that utilizes your Alpha Five database takes just a few moments and allows you to easily send HTML messages to your contacts. To get started with High Impact s Mail Merge feature, click on Mail Merge on main screen To take advantage of the Mail Merge function, you ll first need to set up a mailing list. A mailing list is a list of contacts that your messages are sent from High Impact . It s very simple to import contacts from your Alpha Five database. Using High Impact 3.0 with your Alpha Five contacts. 1

2 After you ve clicked on Mail Merge and are on the Select An Option screen, select Manage Mailing Lists and click the Next button see screenshot below. This takes you to the Manage Mailing Lists screen. The mailing list options are shown in the screenshot below. These buttons can be found near the bottom of this screen (see image below.) Click the New List button to continue. Using High Impact 3.0 with your Alpha Five contacts. 2

3 You're now on the New Mailing List Information screen. Here, you'll enter information that will help you identify the list later. When creating a new mailing list, it's recommended that you be as specific as possible. Once you ve entered the data that will identify your new mailing list, click on the Next button to Select A Source from which you will import your mailing list information.. Using High Impact 3.0 with your Alpha Five contacts. 3

4 As you can see in this image, there are several options on the Select A Source screen. These vary depending on your system configuration. To import from your Alpha Five database, highlight Alpha Five and click Next. On the Select Alpha Five Database screen, you'll click on Open and navigate to the database from which you will pull your contacts for the mailing list. Using High Impact 3.0 with your Alpha Five contacts. 4

5 Once you ve located and selected the database, click Next to proceed. This takes you to the Field Mapping Screen (see the screenshot below.) Here, you may select which fields from your Alpha Five database will be carried into your mailing list as well as identifying the information for use in your later mail merges. Once you've mapped the selections, click Next. Using High Impact 3.0 with your Alpha Five contacts. 5

6 You re now on the Contact List screen, where you are able to select which contacts are included in the mailing list that you are creating. You can uncheck the rows manually by clicking on the box next to each record. When you have finished selecting the contacts you want to import into the new mailing list, click the Next button. The list will be created and ready for use. Using High Impact 3.0 with your Alpha Five contacts. 6

7 Once the list is created, you are ready to actually run the Mail Merge task and send out the s. To get started, click Mail Merge from the High Impact Main Screen. Select Mail Merge Create HTML s on the next screen see screenshot below: Select the template from the My High Impact s folder. In our example, we select the Ridge Valley January05 Newsletter. Highlight the mailing list on the following screen and click the Next button to continue. The template will be loaded into the familiar Template Editor see screenshot below. Using High Impact 3.0 with your Alpha Five contacts. 7

8 At this point, you could always make additional edits to the template. This is, after all, the Template Editor. But, if you already have the template production-ready, there are only a couple of things to be concerned with at this point. One, you will need to enter the subject of the in the Subject: field (lower red box in the previous screenshot). In our example, we ll use the subject line: Ridge Valley News: Redesigned 17 th Hole see next screenshot for view. Two, this step gives you the opportunity to insert Merge Fields into either the subject line or the body of the newsletter. The Insert Merge Field button (upper red box in the previous screenshot) can be used to select and enter Merge Fields such as FirstName or Company into the . Note: Merge Fields work with the data in the mailing list. For example, if contact1 in your mailing list has the FirstName John entered, the FirstName Merge Field will be replaced with John when you run the Mail Merge task. Let s show this at work. Add the following text after a monthly newsletter : delivered to. Leave your cursor blinking at the end of the line after the space. Then click on the Insert Merge Field button and click on the dropdown arrow just to the right of the button. This will expose the menu of available Merge Fields. Find FirstName on the list and click on it see screenshot below. Using High Impact 3.0 with your Alpha Five contacts. 8

9 Clicking on FirstName from the dropdown menu will insert the Merge Field into the newsletter where we left our cursor blinking. In this case, the Merge Field appears at the end of a monthly newsletter delivered to <<FirstName>> see screenshot below. The Merge Field shows up bracketed on either side by the chevrons (<<>>) in the Template Editor. However, that field will be replaced with the contact s FirstName from the mailing list. To see what the will look like after the Mail Merge task replaces the field with the data, click the Show Preview button on the toolbar. The Preview window is shown in the screenshot below. Using High Impact 3.0 with your Alpha Five contacts. 9

10 Note that the <<FirstName>> field has been replaced with an actual name in this case Luke. Also note the Browse Preview controls near the bottom of the screen (lower red box in the screenshot above). Using the Previous and Next buttons, you can browse each contact s to get a look at the final product. The Preview screen title bar (upper red box in the screenshot above) reports the total number of merge s. In this case, we are viewing number 3 out of 5. This is because the Mailing List selected for the Mail Merge task contained 5 contacts. Note: You must have data entered in the Mailing List in order to use the Merge Fields. For example, if you leave the field City blank in the Mailing List, you should not insert the City Merge Field. Click the Close button to shut down the Preview screen and return to the Template Editor screen. After you finish inserting Merge Fields and entering a Subject line, you are ready to send the Mail Merge s. Click the Send s button at the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Note: Microsoft Outlook must be running when you click the Send s button. A dialog will pop up asking you to confirm the Mail Merge task see screenshot below. Clicking the Yes button on the dialog shown above will create new messages for each contact in your Mailing List and push those s to the Outbox of your program. A message will pop up letting you know that the s have been sent to your program see screenshot below. Using High Impact 3.0 with your Alpha Five contacts. 10

11 The s created by the High Impact Mail Merge job will sit in your Outbox waiting to be sent. If you want to speed the process, click the Send/Receive button in your program and the s will stream out. The High Impact Mail Merge feature has been tested successfully while sending to several hundred contacts using Microsoft Outlook on a typical business PC setup. Configurations with more memory are likely to see improved performance with a greater number of contacts. Using High Impact 3.0 with your Alpha Five contacts. 11