Latest revision as of 12:28, 10 August 2016

1 Overview

The Communications Center facilitates email, mail merge or SMS communication with any section of your database whilst emails and texts sent via the system.

2 Communications Types

The modules's sections separate the different types of communications.

2.1 SMS

Simple Messaging System, these are often referred to text messages which are delivered predominantly to mobile phones. Each text message has a cost which is agree in your contract with bxp. SMS messages have a maximum length of 160 characters, which is one SMS message. However up to 460 characters can be sent via text message, these are split into 3 messages and reassembled on the clients device into a single message.

2.2 Email

The world's email systems run on very simple text only. As people used more and more email the world want to be able to include pictures and fonts in their emails. They used HTML in plain text emails to make their emails looked prettier and could do things web pages could do. Unfortunately the bad people who use the Internet started to abuse emails and spam was born. HTML spam means that a lot of damage can be done via email, such as taking your passwords or tricking you into giving over your bank details. So the world now is very paranoid about HTML emails. Though your email should be pretty, it could be doing some evil. Large email servers now make judgement calls on emails using very broad rules to decide should your email be delivered on. For this reason a Plain Text Email is far more likely to be delivered than a HTML email. bxp allows you to make the choice for yourself.

• Plain Text Email sends a plain text email
• Rich Text Email allows you to put HTML into your email

If you are planning to do a marketing campaign for sales or marketing purposes then we strongly recommend you read our scenario to give you a step by step guide. Scenario_-_Email_marketing_campaigns_through_bxp

Some interesting follow up articles that are worth looking over are:

• Writing HTML Emails Writing_HTML_Emails
• Improving email delivery rates Email_-_Improving_Delivery_Rates
• Mass Email Sending Mass_Email_Sending
• Sending attachments in Emails Sending_attachments_in_Emails
• For all aspects of email in and out of bxp Email_-_Start_Here
• Emailing to a spreadsheet of addresses Email_to_Spreadsheet

2.3 Mail Merge

There are still many good reasons why paper is a good option to send to customers, especially for legal or marketing "experience" reasons. For this there is

• Mail Merge: Allows single or grouped documents to be prepared for physical printing and sending.

Follow up articles worth reviewing:

• Images and Printing Images_and_Printing

3 Supporting Functions

There are two other sections in the module

3.1 Communications Reporting

SMS and Email are not guaranteed to be delivered. For the same reason that Post is not a guaranteed delivery method, there are many things that can happen in the transmission and delivery of the message. For this reason bxp keeps a log of the "attempt to send". So all the messages and the body of the messages from anywhere in the system are logged so that the Communications Reporting section can report on them.

Communications Reporting is for outbound communications from bxp to the world. It doesn't report in Inbound communications coming into bxp.

For a more indepth review of the Communications Centre reporting capabilities please read Communications_Centre_reporting

3.2 Templates

To speed up the generation of HTML email, templates can be created and stored on the system. These templates like your Outlook, allow you to have quick emails where most of the heavy lifting is done for you.

These templates do use HTML though, so it takes a bit of practice to get them right. All n One are able to help you realise your designs into emails but the true masters of this craft are dedicated email houses that will take the following elements into consideration.

1. Make the email match the branding of the organisation
2. Make the email as accessible to everyone considering visual difficulties of the end users
3. Make sure the email will pass through as many spam server tests as possible without getting stuck / flagged as spam
4. Make sure that the presentation of the email will be consistent on the 10s of thousands of different types of email programs in the world. Does an email on your iPhone look the same as the email on your desktop?

Templates are also very useful for generating PDFs for printing. This is usually done on a form which is discussed below.

Further articles

• Communications Centre - Templates Communications_Centre_-_Templates

4 Types of Send

Collating lists of receipients can take a lot of effort. The Communications Centre was not designed to replace simple sending but rather to provide mechanisms to facilitate group communication. Within each of the sections the sends are broken down into different areas where groups of recipients can come from.

• Simple. This is an easy to use tool to let you practice a send before your group send.
• Customer. This is linked to the Relationship Management module.
• System User. This is for users have an account on the bxp system. This also includes placeholders.
• HR. Standing for Human Resources, allows the HR module to be used for group sending.
• Campaign. This is for sending to groups of users in any form.

So if you have a form with a list of users, you can easily send a group message to all of them.

Here are the relevant step by step guides

• Customer: Group_Customer_Sending
• System User : Group_System_User_Sending
• HR: Group_HR_Sending
• Campaign: Group_Form_Sending

5 Useful features

5.1 Field Replacement

As part of those sends you may wish to include extra information. For example you might want your email to begin "Dear John," instead of "Dear member," or something equally generic. bxp facilitates field replacement using the -- notation. This engine allows you to put any grouped information directly into your SMS or Email or Mail Merge.

• The -- field notation The_--_field_notation
• Special -- notation fields Special_--_notation_fields
• Replacement Fields Campaign_Replacement_Fields

5.2 Clickthru tracking

Modern email marketing engines provide facilities for tracking and more specifically enable tracking of people who have clicked content in the emails. This tracking capability is also in bxp. We call it Clickthru. For full details on Clickthru please read our article here. Communications_-_Email_Clickthru

6 Further reading

For all the articles in this wixi about the Communications Centre module Category:Module_Specific:Communications_Centre