Everyday Tasks

This chapter contains some step-by-step instructions for performing important everyday tasks with email.

Send an email to one person

You can use CiviCRM to send an email to individuals. Using CiviCRM for this purpose is useful if you want other people at your organisation to see the email or if you want to send an email based on a pre-defined template.

1. Find the person you wish to email. There are two common ways to do this:
   • Use the Quick Search box on the top left. Click inside the box and begin typing a part of the person's name or email address. Choose the person from the choices that are presented.
   • Navigate to Search > Find Contact.  Enter part of the person's name or email address. Click Search and click on the person's name when it shows up on the search results screen.
2. From the contact summary page, click Actions > New Activity > "Send an email".
3. If you have templates defined, you can choose one to use for this email. Selecting a template populates the text content and HTML content fields with the message content from the particular template you have chosen. You can then edit that content. You can also update the template, either changing the original template or saving it as a new template.
4. Enter a subject line for your email, or modify the subject from the selected template as necessary.
   
5. If you just wish to send a text version of your email, ignore the HTML section and click on the Text section. Enter your message in the box.
6. Click Send to send your message.

To see the activity that was just recorded of the email sent, click the Activities tab of the contact. 

Sending a quick email to less than 50 contacts

In the results from a search, CiviCRM makes "Send an email" available from the actions dropdown menu. This allows you to send an email to more than one contact at a time. Sending an email this way is relatively quick but provides no options for tracking email and doesn't give contacts the option to opt out.  It is bad practice to use this method for mass mailings, which is why it is limited to 50 contacts.  For mass mailings, use CiviMail.

1. Click Search > Find Contacts > Advanced Search > "Choose your search criteria" and click Search (or use any other search to find the contacts that you wish to email).
   
2. From the search results screen, choose some or all of the contacts and click Actions > "Send an email".
3. Enter a subject line for your email.
4. If you have templates defined, you can choose one to use for this email. Selecting a template populates the text content and HTML content fields with the message content from the particular template you have chosen. You can then edit that content. You can also update the template, either changing the original template or saving it as a new template.
5. As you write your content, remember that every email will be sent individually. CiviCRM offers the ability to personalize each email using tokens. See "Using tokens in emails" later in this chapter.
   
6. If you just wish to send a text version of your email, ignore the HTML section and click on the Text section. Enter your message in the box. You can also use tokens in the text version of the message. There is also a token link at the top right of the Text box.
7. Click Send to send your message.
8. You can, if you wish, look at the different contacts' activities to see that each one has an activity recorded for the sending of this email.

To see the activity that was just recorded of the email sent, click the Activities tab of the different contacts. 

Because the recipients don't see who else received the email, you might want to mention whom you are sending it to in the text of your mail (for instance: "TO: Members of the board, staff")

Sending a mass email through CiviMail

Using CiviMail offers many benefits over  the "Send an email" action, allowing you to track respondents to your mailing, process bounces and allow people to unsubscribe to your mailings.

There are two ways to select the recipients for your mailing.

• If you are sending mail to an existing group, go to Mailings > New Mailing. From this screen you can choose the groups you want to send the mailing to. You can also choose to exclude contacts who are members of another group or who have received previous mailings.
  
• Carry out a search (for example, using the advanced search) and then choose "schedule/send a mass mailing" from the actions drop down. You will be redirected to the New Mailing screen (step 1), where you can choose a "base group" for your mailing.  You need to choose a base group for your mailing because you need to give people the option of unsubscribing from your mailing.

The  process for sending the email then proceeds as follows:

1. Enter a title for this mailing. Select a title that will allow you and others in your organization to clearly identify the purpose of this mailing (e.g. "August 2010 monthly newsletter"). This title is for internal use only and will not be shown to recipients. Then click next.
   
2. This step of the process offers options for Tracking and Responding.  Tracking collects information about what your contacts do with this email. CiviCRM can store whether a contact opens this email (open rates) and/or what links in the email are clicked.  Responding offers options concerning what to do when a contact replies to the message you are sending. By default, the reply is sent to the sender, but you might want to redirect the replies to a special address (the same one used to collect the bounce). This is a very specific and advanced usage and you probably don't want to use it unless you have specific tracking requirement in your organisations. Make your selections and click next.
3. Enter the content for your mailing.  If you have templates defined, you can choose one to use for this email. Selecting a template populates the text content and HTML content fields with the message content from the particular template you have chosen. You can then edit that content. You can also update the template, either changing the original template or saving it as a new template.
4. As you write your content, remember that every email will be sent individually. CiviCRM offers the ability to personalize each email using tokens. See "Using tokens in emails" later in this chapter.
5. If you just wish to send a text version of your email, ignore the HTML section and click on the Text section. Enter your message in the box. You can also use tokens in the text version of the message. There is also a token link at the top right of the Text box.
6. Choose a Mailing Header and Mailing Footer. Click Next to continue.
7. Test your email by sending it your yourself and viewing it in your email client to make sure it looks as you expect. If you are sending a mail with a complex layout, send it to your test group and verify it from various mail clients. It is preferable to have more than one person receive your test email and give you feedback. Once you are satisfied with your email, click the Preview button for one last look. If you are ready to send the message, click Next.
8. Either send the email immediately or schedule a day and time for it to be sent. By default, CiviMail checks every 15 minutes whether an email is ready to be sent, so there can be a delay of up to 15 minutes after you request the email to be sent.

To see the activity that was just recorded of the email sent, click the Activities tab of the different contacts.  As people receive your email, information about open rates and clickthroughs becomes available on the report page. To see these statistics, click on Mailings > Scheduled and Sent Mailings, find your mailing, and click on Report.

Using tokens in emails

You can use tokens to insert personalised text, such as a person's name, into a mailing sent with CiviCRM.  Tokens are replaced by the appropriate value at the time the email is sent out.

For instance, if you want each email to address the person after "Dear " you would type the space and then click on the Token link at the top left of the HTML box. The popup that appears enables you to find the appropriate token. Start typing "First name" in the box and choose the token that corresponds. Click Close and you will see that your message now reads "Dear {firstname}". When the email is sent the appropriate first name will be inserted into each message.

To view the list of available contact tokens, click on the Token link. Tokens for the display name and email greeting are particularly useful.

Only contact fields and actions can be inserted in your email as tokens. Related records, such as the name of the event for which the contacts have pending enrollments, cannot be included. However, you could provide a link to the person's contact dashboard so that they can review their registration details for themselves (once logged in). You can also use a checksum token that generates a unique URL for each contact so they can modify their information without having to login.

View a Mailing Report

As people receive your email, information about the number who opened the email (open rates) can be available, as well as information about the links they are clicking on.

1. Choose Mailings > Scheduled and Sent Mailings and find the row your mailing is in.
   
2. Click on Report and examine the results (illustrated in the following screenshot):
   • Intended Recipients: counts how many email messages were sent by this mailing.
   • Successful Deliveries: shows how many messages reached their intended recipients
   • Tracked Opens: shows how many messagess were verified as opened. Since many email clients do not show images by default, this number is not particularly accurate. The number is more useful to compare mailings.
   • Click throughs: tracks how many times a link on any message was clicked. This is useful to gauge what items your recipients were most interested in.
3. You can also see statistics for Forwards, Replies, Bounces and Unsubscribed Requests.

Managing bounces and contacts with invalid emails

If your server is set up to process bounces, contacts will be marked as on hold when their email bounces. Further messages to those addresses will be suppressed.  You can search for emails that are on hold either from the Bounces report or with an advanced search, and then investigate why the emails are bouncing.