{"id":132,"date":"2013-09-06T15:43:43","date_gmt":"2013-09-06T15:43:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/?p=132"},"modified":"2015-07-03T15:09:28","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T15:09:28","slug":"mail-merge-text-messaging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/mail-merge-text-messaging\/","title":{"rendered":"Mail Merge Text Messaging."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Text-Connect<\/strong> make it easy to create personalised text messages using mail merge.\u00a0 This simplifies bulk text messaging and gives you the option of including unique information in each recipients message.<\/p>\n<p>The first step is to create and upload your list.\u00a0 Your list contains your contact&#8217;s mobile number, name, email address plus up to 5 optional mail merge data fields. A typical row of contact data would look like this:<br \/>\n447777777777,Name,Email,Merge 1,Merge 2,Merge 3<\/p>\n<p>You can use your favourite spreadsheet software to build and edit your list and save it as a .csv or .txt file. <strong><a title=\"Importing contacts into Text-Connect\" href=\"https:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/importing-contacts-into-text-connect\/\">Click here for more information on uploading contact lists.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Once you have your list uploaded you are ready to set up your text shot and mail merge.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a0Click<strong> &#8216;Send&#8217;<\/strong> using the left side menu.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The first step<\/strong> is to tell the system who you want to send your text message to.\u00a0 In the case of a bulk, personalised text shot:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Click the &#8216;<strong>Distribution List<\/strong>&#8216; radio button and <strong>choose your list<\/strong> from the drop down selection.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Next<\/strong> you define your <strong>&#8216;from&#8217;<\/strong> detail which will tell your recipient where the message originated from. You have a couple of options:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Use the text box to specify a name. Eg.\u00a0 &#8216;Your Name&#8217;.\u00a0 In this case your recipient will not be able to directly reply.<\/li>\n<li>To enable your recipients to reply, select your &#8216;Text-Number&#8217; from the Number drop down selector.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The final step is to draft your message using in the Body section box.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Draft your message.<\/li>\n<li>Mail merge fields should be surrounded with the # character.<\/li>\n<li>Example:\u00a0 <i>Dear #Name#, your policy number #PolicyNumber# is due for renewal.<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Note that #Name# and #Email# are standard mail merge fields that exist for all lists.<\/li>\n<li>Note also that the\u00a0 <i>PolicyNumber<\/i> field would be defined when you uploaded your List.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You are now ready to send.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Top Tip !\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>To test your test message shot and check everything is as it should be, schedule your messages to go out in 1 hours time.\u00a0\u00a0 <strong><a title=\"Sending Pre Scheduled text messages\" href=\"https:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/sending-pre-scheduled-text-messages\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pre Scheduled<\/a><\/strong> text messages are sent to the <strong>Outbox<\/strong> where you can view them and confirm all is OK.\u00a0 If they are not OK, delete them from the Outbox before they are sent and you can then try again. Your message credits will be refunded.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Text-Connect<\/strong> gives you a fully featured <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.text-connect.co.uk\/options_long_text_messages.php\">computer text messaging system<\/a><\/strong> for sending messages from your computer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Text-Connect make it easy to create personalised text messages using mail merge.\u00a0 This simplifies bulk text messaging and gives you the option of including unique information in each recipients message. The first step is to create and upload your list.\u00a0 &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/mail-merge-text-messaging\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[24,57,9,56,10,6,27,8,18,11,30],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152,"href":"https:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/text-connect.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}