Overview of Creating Direct Mail
You create direct mail to distribute e-mail message ads to a targeted group of users. The objective is to achieve a high response rate from the mailings. You can send personalized e-mail messages from a Web page, or non-personalized messages from a flat text file. You can create direct mail messages that include attachments, such as pictures, discounts, or URLs. The Direct Mailer service is designed to send bulk personalized e-mail messages to millions of users.
To set up direct mail you use the Campaign Manager module in Business Desk. Direct mail is processed by the Direct Mailer service, a powerful engine that can send a large number of e-mails very quickly.
To create direct mail, you perform the following steps:
Create the message. To create personalized e-mail messages your site developer must first create ASP pages with the personalized text, and then add them to the Web server. The site developer must give you the URL for the location of the ASP pages. To create a non-personalized message, you can type the text in the flat text file, for example, by using Notepad.
Generate a list of recipients. You can generate a list of recipients for the direct mail campaign by using the powerful analysis tools in Commerce Server. For example, by using the Reports module in Business Desk, you can run a report against the data in the Data Warehouse to obtain a list of specific users. You can then export the resulting list to the List Manager. Or you can use the Predictor resource to generate a list of users in a population segment, and then export that list of users to the List Manager. After a list has been exported to the List Manager, it is available to the Direct Mailer.
You cannot use target groups to send direct mail directly to user e-mail addresses.
Create and schedule the direct mail campaign. Use the Campaign Manager module to specify the name of the campaign, the name of the list of recipients, the start time and date of the campaign item, and the URL (for personalized messages) or static file where Direct Mailer will receive the message body.
See Also
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