Email to customers

Rob, You have a number of options available to you.

You can use Microsoft Outlook/Word to do a mail merge using the RMS Customer table as your data source. If the steps needed are acceptable to the customer, then this is a good option.

RMS does not have built in functionality to make this happen, however you can use a Customer List report that has been modified to included email address, export it to a .csv file and again use the Work/Outlook Mail Merge functionality.

If you need something more streamlined, we do offer a tool that will allow you to use a HTML template and a customer list to send out mass emails. The process is a bit more stream-lined to an end user, but again if you have a tech-savvy user, the Outlook/Work process is just fine.

Sending mass emails using a standard email client will likely get your customer blacklisted by their ISP or their customers' ISPs. It only takes a few spam reports for this to happen.

The retailer should use a email broadcast service instead that includes an opt-out opton embedded in broadcast emails. This also provides them with promotional and newsletter templates and open/click-thru tracking. You can export emails in RMS using a customer report setup for this function.

If your customer wants more, our V.I.P. Zone add-in extracts email addresses in two clicks (all or selected by filter options) and generates a CSV file for use with these type of services. You can even force cashiers to ask for email address at POS and much more.

Watch the back-end tutorial for exporting lists at:

Or watch the front-end tutorial for capturing customers at: Digital Retail Solutions -- v1.x/2.x compliant add-ins from $49 Trial downloads -- Search this newsgroup --