Smart Send is a mass email program.  If you don't see Smart Send as an Installed Application on your InfiPlex dashboard, you will need to install it through the Admin Tools (wrench in the upper right corner) in order to send mass emails. You will need root access on your user login to be able to install programs. 

Smart Send can be used with user lists created in the CRM Application pulling user emails from Contacts in the CRM, User records, users from the Donation, Registration and/or Shop systems, and users that have made transactions through the Payment system.  You can also create a group of contacts by uploading a list or adding them manually one by one.

Creating a Group of Contacts

When you send a mass email, you will send it to a group of contacts. Select the Groups tab and then Group Add tab. Give the Group a name and save it.

Once the Group is created you may add emails to the Group either one by one via the Contact Add tab, or through an upload of a large list via the Contact Upload tab. When using the Contact Upload tool. Be sure to choose the correct file delimiter. The email field is the only required field. You can check the Preview (directly above the save button) to insure that the file will be uploaded correctly.

Sending an email

An email is sent through the Smart Send Add tab:

Active:     An email will not send unless it is set to active.
Date to Send:  The date and time to send the email. Chrome will force a timestamp format, Mozilla does not.
Group:  Select the Group of contacts that you want to send the email too.
CRM User List:  You can use a CRM user list if one was created.
Send Type:  Email.  You cannot send a txt message unless you have a third party SMS account.
Email From:  The email address that you want the email to come from. The email address does not neccessarily have to exist (ie noreply@yourdomainname.com) however if anyone tries to reply to the email it will bounce if it doesn't really exist.
Email Subject:  The subject line of the email.
Email Content:  Plain text or html.  You can use the variables below the window to fill in the receivers first and/or last names.  If you use the variables but your contact record does not contain those fields, they will appear as blanks.

Unsubscribe

In order to provide an unsubscribe link you will need to create a hyperlink by highlighting the text you want to link (i.e. Unsubscribe) and click on the hyperlink icon in the editor.  In the Link window that pops up, choose a protocol of other and put the variable %%UNSUBSCRIBE_LINK%% in the URL field. Smart Send will mange the unsubscribe for you, you will not need to edit your list.

In order to track clickthroughs you need to code the links that you want to track as [CLICKTHROUGH_LINK]http://example.com[/CLICKTHROUGH_LINK] - where example.com is the URL you want to link to. Do not hyperlink this link the [CLICKTHROUGH_LINK] will take care of that for you.

 

Sending the Email

Emails are sent via cron job that runs every few minutes checking for emails whose 'date to send' is due. If the date is past but the email does not show as having been sent it will send as long as the email is set to active. If this is the first time you are using Smart Send and the email is not being sent, you may have to turn on the cron job for Smart Send via the admin tools (wrench in upper right corner). Once the cron job runs, the queued emails will send.

Resending an Email

Once an email has been sent, it will not send again if you edit it - even if you change the Date to Send.  You will need to duplicate the original email by clicking on the duplicate icon next to the email title on the Smart Send dashboard.