Creating+and+Sending+Bulk+Email

Bulk emails such as Newsletters can be created and sent using the CiviMail option: Mailings / New Mailing

Bulk emails must be done with the knowledge of the state leader.

IMPORTANT: Scheduling for immediate submission in the final stage will NOT trigger the sending or emails - you must contact the CiviCRM database administrator who will do a final quality check then initiate the manual send process from the administration panel.

Tips
Design Process >> Select Public Pages for the Mailing Visibility option if it would be useful for the email to also be a webpage you can send someone to or link to the website (recommended)
 * Overview of the 5 steps; log into civi.bethechange.org.au, select CiviCRM and select Mailings / New Mailing
 * Step 1 - Give your mailing a name that describes the mailing (internal mailing name - the email subject gets set later). Select the groups to send to (set up a test Contact group with just a few people if you want to practice the whole process - the last stage of the process also has the option to send a test email to an address you choose)
 * Step 2 - Select the track opens and click through options but NOT the track replies option (not set up to handle replies which would add the reply as an activity record to the contact who replied)
 * Step 3 - Select the template to use (BTC Standard generally), add the email subject and set the from address from the options (it is possible to add more from addresses to the list - contact the CiviCRM administrator to discuss). Add content to the HTML section and when complete, copy the content to the Plain Text section (see below for details).
 * Step 4 - send a test email
 * Step 5 - send the email either immediately or at a schedule time
 * More help: []

You can upload and add images using the green tree icon from the editing tool bar. If the image exists somewhere already on the internet you can just enter the image URL (try Right Clik on the image and Copy URL, paste into the Image URL box) OR Click the 'Browse' icon to the right of the Image URL entry box to display the image finder popup - click upload to find the image on your computer then double click the image uploaded to display the Insert/Edit image window (its has 3 tabs: General, Appearance, Advanced)
 * Adding images**

Add a description and Title (optional) then use the Appearance Tab to control where the image will align (e.g. Right align to place right of text) and the display dimensions (keep the Constrain Portions box ticked and just set the first width dimension to something like 150 - the other dimension will scale automatically). Adjust size as needed here - there are no image 'handles' to resize images directly.

Setting the vertical and horizontal space to 5 or 10 in the Appearance tab will ensure adequate space is maintained around the image.

Click the Attachments heading bar to open up the section to add attachments
 * Attachments **

IMPORTANT - care must be taken with the size of any files attached or the number of files. A file size of a few 100 kb is ok but sending a PDF poster that is 5 or 10mb is going to be slow and unwelcome for some recipients still on low usage plans or dial up. A better option for large files is to upload the file to the main BTC site then add a link to the file from the email being sent out, That way it is only downloaded if someone selects the link - conatct the CivioCRM administrator for assistance

The plain text section is a text only version of the HTML content for people who set their email clients to only get text (no images or hyperlinks), Get the HTML section completed then copy to the plain text section and make sure links have the full web address so it can be cut and pasted by the recipient to their browser. Recommended that you do this - we don't really know how many people have this setting.
 * Plain Text Section**

>
 * Mailing process**
 * There is background job (called a 'cron' job) that does the bulk email sending. It is scheduled to run every 15 minutes so if you set a bulk email to send immediately it may still take up to 15 minutes before the background job automatically runs and broadcasts the emails.
 * The background job can be started manually if you have administrator access: Administer -> System Settings -> Scheduled Jobs -> go down to **Send Scheduled Mailings **-> Click on more -> click on execute now.