How do I send bulk email messages?

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Summary

You can send an email message to multiple customers using the bulk messaging feature in Platinum.

More Information

You may send a single email message to many recipients easily by choosing to send it as a bulk message.

Sending a bulk email message

  • Click on Messages on the menu bar at the top of the screen.
  • Click on Email on the drop down menu.
Installation - If the Email option does not appear this means you are not set up yet to send Email messages on your system. Contact your Platinum dealer or our support team on 0116 230 1500 or by using our website support contact page to get this feature installed.
  • Tick the box labelled "Bulk".

You will then be required to select how you would like Platinum to find the email addresses to send the message to; there are three options. The number of email addresses found for each method is shown in the column "Message count".

Text file
This will send the message to email addresses found in a text file called 'email.txt' in your Platinum data folder (usually 'SXCo1'). You could create this file from the Report Generator, one email address per line, or it may appear after a previous incomplete bulk message job. Please ensure the output file does not contain quotes around the email addresses.
Marked accounts
This will send the message to customers who have an email address and have the 'Email' attribute set (except those who have the 'Email exclusion' or 'Message exclusion' attributes set).
All customers
This will send the message to all customers who have an email address (except those who have the 'Email exclusion' or 'Message exclusion' attributes set).
All prospects
This will send the message to all prospects who have an email address. This is available only if you have the Sales Prospecting module installed.

Bulk Options

By default the system will choose to only mail those who have 'Opted in' to marketing.

You may choose to contact those 'Not Excluded' from receiving messages. Please be aware of the new GDPR legislation if you choose this option.

What is the tidy up option?

You may choose to turn "Tidy" on and off when sending messages from the text file or from marked accounts.

Text file
If a tick is placed in this box, email addresses will be deleted from the text file as the message is sent to each address.
Marked accounts
If a tick is placed in this box, the 'Email' attribute will be removed from the customers as the message is sent to each address.

Sending the message

When you have typed your message and chosen your source of email addresses, click [Send]. Platinum will now send the message to each email address in turn.

You will need to check with your mail provide as they may impose a limit to the number of emails you can send out in a period of time. Below is a sample of the most popular web based email providers limit.
Hotmail
No more than 100* recipients per day.
Outgoing messages sent via Hotmail can not exceed 10Mb* per email (including attachments).
Yahoo
No more than 100* emails or recipients per hour.
Max 10Mb* per message for the free Yahoo Mail Service, or 20Mb* per message for Yahoo! Mail Plus.
Lycos
Max 25* recipients per message and max 250* emails per day.
AOL
No more than 100* recipients per message or 500* recipients per connection*.
Max 16mb* per message.
BT
This limit is 4,096* bytes or four kilobytes for the recipients in total.

If you go over their limit the emails may not get sent and you could be black listed by your provider.

* These figures were correct at time of writing the article, you will need to check with the relevant provider for their current limit prior to sending a bulk email.

See also


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Keywords AND Misspellings
bulk emails, bulk messages