Mailing Lists/Labels/Merge

This mailing list instructions apply to the Masterpiece Manager Software solution for Artists, Art Galleries and Antique Shops. Click here for more information. www.masterpiecemanager.com

One of the most useful and powerful aspects of the Masterpiece Gallery Manager is its ability to track your contacts, and their areas of interest.

Please see How to see all Customer Credits for additional information on generating Mailing Lists and their multiple uses.

Printing a mailing list is a three step process.

Step 1 - Give the system a starting point - "All Names" or "No Names".
Step 2 - Add or Remove names to/from the list until you have identified those names that you want to output.
Step 3 - Generate the output from your search.

By specifying certain criteria, you are able to narrow your search down to very exact details.

There are several types of contacts - Artists, Vendors, Designers, and of course, Customers. All of these names are stored in ONE list of contacts. A single contact can be both a vendor and a customer. When you open the screen, the system will tell you how many client names are currently selected to be printed.

Perhaps some examples would serve as the best way to illustrate how this screen functions.

To get started ...

Go to Print, Contact, Mailing Lists.

In Step 1 click the button "No Names" this clears out the list generator, which you can check by looking at the grey box.

Currently in the grey box it shows that their is a total of 0 Selected.
Valid means how many have valid mailing addresses.
Emails means how many have valid email addresses.

Example: How to pull all Customers and create Mailing Labels

In Step 1 check the box for "Customers Only" and uncheck all the rest.
Skip down to Step 3 and check the box for "Lab" (Labels) and uncheck any others.
Click on the preview button.

The CONTACTLAB Labels are a standard mailing label size of 1" x 2 5/8".
They are typically on sheets of 10 rows and 3 columns.

You can print from within the report by clicking on the printer icon.

Or you can print by go back to the list generator window and click on the start button.

Example: How to generate a Mailing List to send a Mass Email

Let's pretend we want to send an announcement email to all the contacts we have, Artists, Vendors, Customers, etc.

Go to Print, Contact, Mailing Lists.
In Step 1 click the button "No Names" this clears out the list generator, which you can check by looking at the grey box.

To generate all contacts for the list, in Step 1 uncheck all the boxes and then click on the button for "All Names".

In the above example you can see there is a total of 833 contacts, 790 of them have mailing addresses, and 501 of them have email addresses.

Skip down to Step 3 and uncheck all boxes except for "eMail Merge" and then click on the "Start" button.

This will open a Save As window.

In the "Save In" choose where on the computer you want to save the list.
Note: The path you save in cannot have any spaces in it.
So the Desktop would be a bad place to save it in as it has spaces in it - C:\Documents and Settings\Jesse Beck\Desktop
A better place would be somewhere like here - C:\Masterpiece\EmailFiles

In the "Email File Name" field name the list.
In the "Save As Type" choose DBF (if you want to send via Masterpiece) OR choose TXT (if you want to send via Outlook or email program).
Click the Save button to save the list to a file.

It will then give you a message that it has created the file. Click on OK.

Now you can send the list either via Masterpiece or Outlook or some other 3rd party email program. Please keep in mind most if not all email providers nowadays have restrictions in place to reduce spam Spam refers to electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings. Some people define spam even more generally as any unsolicited e-mail. In addition to being a nuisance, spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth. Because the Internet is a public network, little can be done to prevent spam, just as it is impossible to prevent junk mail. However, the use of software filters in e-mail programs can be used to remove most spam sent through e-mail. and may restrict how many emails you can send per hour, etc. You will need to check with your email provider on their policy.

Instructions on Sending Email Via Masterpiece.
Instructions on sending Email Via Outlook.

Another Example

Suppose you wanted to create a mailing list for the following criteria:

How to produce the above example ...

  1. Begin by clicking the button that says No names, or press ALT-N on the keyboard.

The system will indicate that 0 names are selected.

You can start with no names and gradually add to the list, or you can start with all names and gradually take away from the list. Also, when you select the All Names option, you can limit the names to just Customers by checking the Customers Only box.

  1. Next, in the items section, enter WALTERS in the space next to "Check for Words" and press the ADD button.

The system will find (and mark) all the clients that have purchased a piece by the artist Walters.

You can enter any word that the system can associate with an item for printing. It can be a word in the Artist's name, Subject, Notes, or Medium of the piece. As soon as the system finds the piece, it looks to see if it is sold, than then finds the contact record for the customer.

  1. Next, enter $5000.00 in the Check Sales area and press the ADD button again.

(By default, the system will look for a single sale that is greater or equal [>=] to this amount.)

The system will find all of the clients that spent more than $5000 in a single sale and ADD THE NAMES TO THE PREVIOUS LIST.

At this point, you have one list that has both sets of clients. Since we are using one list of names, a contact will not be market (or printed) twice.

  1. Next, enter the appropriate dates in the "Check Sales" date fields and press the ADD button a third time.

You now have a list that include any contact that matched any of the three criteria.

  1. Next, enter TX in the state field and press the REMOVE button in the mailing section.

Those clients from Texas are removed from the list and will not be printed.

  1. Generating the labels and merge file are discussed below...

You can also enter a range of zip/postal codes to print. For example, if you were to enter 80-89999, including the dash, it would print all clients that were in a zip/postal code between the two codes entered (80 gets translated to 80000 automatically)

When you enter more than one set of criteria before pressing the ADD key, the system uses what we call an AND connection.

Suppose you wanted to find only those clients that spent more than 5000 on a piece AND ALSO lived in Colorado.

  1. Start with No Names

  2. Enter 5000 in the item price area AND ALSO enter CO in the State/Province field.

  3. When you click the Add button, only the contacts that match BOTH criteria are selected.

OUTPUT

Once you have selected your names, generating output for either of the examples show above is really easy.

Use the check boxes to select what type of output you would like. Output can be:

You can select more than one output option at a time.

If you select the "Labels" option, you can also specify how many labels to skip on the first page of output.

Masterpiece DOES NOT print a label if either the Zip/Postal code or the Address Line 1 is empty.

You can set the ORDER of the output to:

To Preview the Listing or Label option, click the Preview Button.

When you select the Merge File option or the Email option, the system will ask you to specify the file name.  

For email, the file type must be TXT.

Valid file name extensions for a text merge file are:  TXT XLS DBF SDF WK1 CSV DEL

See the Print Preview File help topic for additional details regarding file types.

When merging to a TXT file, the system will output the selected contacts as a "comma delimited ascii file" with the following format:

'"SALUTATION","FIRSTNAME","LASTNAME","COMPANY","LINE1","LINE2","CITY","STATE","ZIP","PHONE"'

A Text file is the most common file type for exporting to other programs. Use this option to send data to your mailing house or printer. It is also good to use for merging into a word processor to generate letters or invitations.

A DBF file is useful for some applications, like to import into a spreadsheet (note that the system can generate Excel spreadsheets directly) or contact manager such as ACT!

Once you have selected the type of output you want, click the Start button.

Masterpiece DOES NOT export a name to a TXT file if either the Zip/Postal code or the Address Line 1 is empty.

If you want to merge ALL names (i.e. even if zip is empty) you should use one of the other export file types.

 

Export contacts to Outlook

Masterpiece has the functionality to email directly from the program. However, you may prefer Outlook. To export your contact list into Outlook using Excel, you must first generate a mailing list by checking the merge file box and save as an XSL (Excel) format.

Then to import into Outlook you have two phases....

The Excel phase

Start in Excel. Make sure your worksheet is open, and then select all the names (along with their supporting information). Then, name the selection, as shown here

As you can see in the figure, you can give the selection a name, which you type in the box in the upper-left corner of the window. Being the highly creative folks we are, we named it "OutlookNames".

Hit return (to make sure the naming sticks), and then save your Excel file. Finally, quit Excel. This step is important because Outlook can't open the file to import the names if Excel already has the file open.

The Outlook phase

The rest of the work is done in Outlook, and all you've got left, is a series of dialog boxes to travel through. First, under the File menu, select Import and Export->Outlook.

 

Next, you'll want to tell Outlook that you're importing from another program or file.

Hitting Next brings you to the dialog shown in Figure D. Here, you'll want to tell Outlook to import from an Excel file.

Hit Next again, and this time specify the file you want to import by clicking the Browse button.

Now, you'll want to select the destination folder where you want your contacts imported. Outlook doesn't automatically select the Contacts folder, so make sure you do..

Make sure you choose Contacts and click Next.

Mapping your data

In the final two steps, you're going to be mapping your data. This is where you may need to fiddle back and forth until you get your mappings just right.

Here's where you specify your named range of cells. In our example, there's only one named range, "OutlookNames". In a production spreadsheet, there could be a bunch. Check the box next to the named range you intend to import.

Now, instead of hitting Next, click Map Custom Fields.

As you can see, you'll want to select fields from the left (which are in your spreadsheet) and map them to Outlook's fields, on the right. Double check your work.

When you're ready, click OK, then Next and your data will import into Outlook.

Of course, it's always a good idea to backup your .PST file before doing this, just in case everything goes wrong. Don't laugh. Sometimes software doesn't work exactly like you'd want. Yep, it's true.