Mekashron is a powerful sales tool for your business and nowhere is this more apparent than in its facilities for automated campaigns.
In this chapter we will look specifically at using Fax Broadcasting campaigns. The topics we will cover are:
The purpose of the Fax Broadcasting function is to send automated faxes direct from your computer via your fax modem to any number of prospects or clients (Entities) as you wish with the minimum of effort.
One particularly powerful aspect of Fax Broadcasting that Mekashron offers you is the ability to customize your faxes with your prospects details. Instead of sending out anonymous faxes that are likely to be discarded without being read, when you use Mekashron your faxes will be personally addressed to each prospect something that will greatly increase the effectiveness of your campaign.
At this stage, we assume that you have completed the following tasks:
- Successfully Installed Mekashron
- Set up or imported your Entities
- Reviewed the information on the Mekashron Editor, which is used to create the faxes you will send in your campaigns.
You will need to be logged into your Mekashron system as an administrator in order to set up Fax Broadcasting campaigns.
1 - Fax Settings
To set up Mekashron for Fax Broadcasting:
From the main Mekashron menu, select Main -> Settings.
Figure 1.1 Accessing Settings from the Main Menu
In the resulting dialog box choose the Fax tab and within that the Outgoing Faxes tab.
Figure 1.2 The Outgoing Faxes Settings Tab
The Fax Devices shown in the list are the fax modems that are connected to your system. Select the appropriate one.
Note that if you have more than one fax modem connected to the PC, they will all show in this list and you can select multiple fax modems, which will enable Mekashron to transmit multiple faxes at the same time.
If you have already set up this modem for use for on the Telephone tab, then when you click on the Properties button you will see that Mekashron has retained the settings that you entered when you set up the modem for the telephone. Please see the information on the Modem Properties Form in the Telemarketing Settings chapter for more information.
The other settings on this tab are:
- Resolution You can choose between Normal Resolution or high resolution. For normal text-only faxes, normal resolution is usually sufficient. If you plan to include graphics or very small text in your fax broadcasts, you may wish to select the high resolution option.
Figure 1.3 The Resolution Settings
- Dial Attempts The number of times that the fax send operation will be attempted if there is no reply or the line is busy.
Figure 1.4 The Dial Attempts Setting
- Wait for Connections (sec) - The number of seconds that the fax system will wait for the receiving fax to accept the request before terminating.
Figure 1.5 The Wait For Connections Setting
- Retry Wait (sec) - How long to wait before trying again if the fax could not get through on the previous attempt.
Figure 1.6 The Retry Wait Setting
- Limit Calling Hours If you wish to prevent Mekashron from making calls during a certain period, such as during the night, select this checkbox. Then you can specify the valid period during which it is OK for outgoing calls to be made.
Note that if you have multiple fax devices attached to the PC, then each of them will show in the Fax Devices list, and if you wish you can select more than one for Mekashron to use. In this case, the outgoing faxes will be distributed across both fax devices. Normally you would not have more than two fax devices attached to a Windows PC due to potential problems with hardware conflicts.
If you plan to send large numbers of faxes, you may benefit from sending the faxes via multiple PCs. As explained earlier in this manual (Setup workstations over LAN or the Internet), you can have multiple client PCs installed with Mekashron and working with the same central database. If you configure fax devices on multiple PCs that are connected to the same database, then Mekashron will automatically split the faxes you transmit across these PCs and their fax devices. This may be advisable for large volumes of outgoing faxes.
2 - Create Fax Campaign
There are three main steps for fax campaigns:
- Select your entities
- Create your fax
- Send your fax
In the main Mekashron Entity List screen, select the entities to whom you wish to send this fax campaign:
Figure 2.1 Selecting Entities for a Fax Campaign
For tips on how to filter, find and select the list of entities that you wish to use, please refer to Search Entities in the Entities chapter.
Once you are happy with your prospect list, select Campaign -> Send Fax from the Main Menu:
Figure 2.2 Creating a Fax Campaign from the Main Menu
Alternatively, you can simply click on the Fax button:
Figure 2.3 The Fax Button
Either of these actions will bring up the Mekashron Editor for you to compose your fax in:
Figure 2.4 Mekashron Editor in Fax Mode
The functionality of the Mekashron Editor is fully documented in the Editor part of this chapter.
Please note that there are a couple of differences that you will see in the Mekashron Editor when you are using it in Fax Mode:
- There is a new button available, labeled Send Fax:
Figure 2.5 The Send Fax Button
- The Email menu option is not available when you are in Fax Mode in the Mekashron Editor.
From the Mekashron Editor you can open an existing fax that you have composed previously. To do this, select File -> Open:
Figure 2.6 Opening a Fax in the Mekashron Editor
This gives you the opportunity to browse to a location on your PC or your network and select an existing fax that you have already written.
Figure 2.7 The Windows Open File Dialog Box
As you can see, Mekashron will allow you to open a variety of file types in the Mekashron Editor. However, it is recommended to only open Text files or HTML files for creating your faxes. While you may open Word Documents, these will often not display correctly.
If you have a Word document or other file that you wish to fax, you can do this directly from Microsoft Word or another program. We will see how to do this in the section Sending Faxes from Word or other Programs further along in this chapter.
If you are going to compose your fax as a new document rather than opening an existing document, you can do so directly in the Editor, taking advantage of the formatting options:
Figure 2.8 Composing a Fax in the Editor
To customize the fax for your own clients and prospects, you can use the Macro function to insert personalized fields. We will show a short example of this below, however for detailed instructions please refer to the Editor part of this chapter.
In our example fax we wish to add three personalized fields, the client company, the fax number and the name we address the client by.
Well highlight the text we wish to personalize:
Figure 2.9 Highlighting the client Text
then we will click on the Macro button:
Figure 2.10 The Macro Button
and in the Entity Fields tab select to insert the Company field and click OK.
Figure 2.11 Inserting the Company Field
In a similar way we will insert the Fax and First Name fields in the appropriate places. After inserting all three fields, our customized fax looks like this:
Figure 2.12 A Customized Fax with Personalized Fields
Once you are happy with your fax, you can send it by clicking on the Send Fax button:
Figure 2.13 The Send Fax Button
You will be presented with the Options for sending a fax:
Figure 2.14 The Fax Sending Options Screen
The Campaign options in this screen are:
- Campaign Name - If you wish to save this fax as a campaign, enter a new campaign name here and select the box below, Save as Campaign
- Save as Campaign - If this option is selected then the Campaign Name field above is a required field. However, if you simply want to transmit this fax as a one-off event rather than a campaign, then you can de-select this option and leave the text box above empty.
- Apply only to new entities - When you later reuse the same fax campaign, if this option is NOT checked then you will be able to send the fax to ALL the entities you have selected in the Entity List. However, if you wish to ensure that you dont send a duplicate fax to prospects who have already received a copy, please check this box in order to and send the fax to additional entities with no risk of sending duplicates.
The other options, on the right of the screen, are:
- Schedule To: - Here you enter the date and time when you would like your faxes to start sending.
- Spooler Priority - In this drop down you can select a priority of Low, Normal or High. In this way you can create multiple fax campaigns to be sent during the same time frame, and control which are spooled with a higher priority to get sent out first.
Once you have set the options for sending your fax, click OK to transmit the fax campaign.
Once you have sent a campaign, you can view its progress and status in your outbox. For more information, please see the Campaigns Manage chapter.
3 - Add Entities to a Fax Campaign
Once you have set up one or more fax campaigns, you can easily add more clients or prospects (Entities) to the campaign in order to send the fax out to another batch of clients.
First, select the set of entities that you would like to add to the campaign in the Entities screen:
Figure 3.1 Selecting Additional Entities to Add to a Fax Campaign
Note that if you filter the entities to show all those you wish to add, you can simply right click and choose Select All to quickly select all of the entities currently shown in the list:
Figure 3.2 Selecting All Entities in the Filtered List
As you did when creating a fax campaign, now select Campaign -> Send Fax, or click on the Fax button.
When the Mekashron Editor opens in Fax mode, by default it opens with a new document (in other words a fresh, new campaign). To open an existing Campaign, click on Campaign and then select the existing campaign you would like to use.
Figure 3.3 Selecting an Existing Fax Campaign
this then opens up the campaign that we created earlier:
Figure 3.4 An Existing Fax in the Mekashron Editor
To add the entities that we selected to this campaign, we can now click the Send Fax button:
Figure 3.5 The Send Fax Button
In the Options screen, this time Mekashron has pre-filled the Campaign Name field for us as you can see below:
Figure 3.6 The Options Screen for an Existing Fax Campaign
The key option at this point is the Apply only to new entities checkbox. Ensure that this option checked if you simply want to send the campaign out to the new entities that you have added and ensure that no duplicates are sent out to entities that have already received this fax. However, if you wish to send out the fax to ALL of the entities that you have selected, even if some of them were in the original transmission list, then de-select this option.
4 - Sending Faxes from Word or Other Programs
In addition to the faxing facilities that we have seen within the application, Mekashron also makes it easy for you to send faxes to your Entities directly from another application, such as Microsoft Word or a picture editing program, via the Mekashron Call Center Software Printer.
Note that when you send a fax from another application via the Mekashron Call Center Software Printer you will have the ability to select a list of entities just as you can when sending a fax campaign from inside Mekashron. However, you will not have access to the Mekashron Macro functionality, so you will not have the ability to insert custom fields to be personalized for each entity.
To take an example, let us see how to send a fax from Microsoft Word to a selection of our Mekashron Entities.
First, we prepare our fax in Word:
Figure 4.1 A Fax Ready to send from Word via Mekashron
Then we select File -> Print to get the Print dialog box, where we select Mekashron Call Center from the Printer Name drop down. (Note: The Mekashron application must be currently open on your PC when you perform this operation).
Figure 4.2 The Print Dialog Box with Mekashron Call Center Selected as the Printer
When you click OK to send the fax to the printer, you will see the Fax Toolbar appear at the bottom of your Entity List in Mekashron:
Figure 4.3 The Entity List Showing the Send Fax Toolbar
At this point you can filter your entities as required and select those to whom you wish to send this fax.
You have three buttons in the Send Fax Toolbar
- Cancel - Click cancel if you change your mind and do not want to send this fax.
Figure 4.4 The Cancel Button
- Preview - Click to view your fax in preview mode before sending.
Figure 4.5 The Preview Button
- Send Fax - Once you have selected all the Entities who should receive the fax and you are ready, click this button to transmit the faxes to all the selected entities via your fax modem.
Figure 4.6 The Send Fax Button
When you click on Send Fax, Mekashron takes you to the Options screen, where you can give this fax campaign a name before sending.
Figure 4.7 The Fax Campaign Options Screen
The options available in this Options screen as the same as we have seen in the section Create Fax Campaign earlier in this chapter.
When the fax transmits, which can be straight away or later, depending on the Schedule To time you chose and on what other faxes are queuing in the system, you will see the following Fax Status screen that shows you the details of the transmission and its progress:
Figure 4.8 The Fax Status Screen
5 - Fax Campaign Statistics
In this section we will look at the statistical information that Mekashron gives you with regard to your fax campaigns.
To access the statistics, from the Main Mekashron menu select Tools -> Statistics:
Figure 5.1 - Accessing Statistics from the Main Menu
Alternatively, you can click on the Statistics button:
Figure 5.2 - The Statistics Button
In the Statistics Type box on the left expand the &Campaign group and then select Fax:
Figure 5.3 - The Statistics Type Box
Here is an example of some fax campaign statistics:
Figure 5.4 - Fax Campaign Statistics
As you can see, the statistics are shown in graphical form on the right of the screen. The graph and data change dynamically depending on your selections:
- Date - The From and To date and time for the period you wish to view:
Figure 5.5 - The Date Control
- Campaigns - In this selection list you simply select the campaigns you wish to view information for:
Figure 5.6 - The Campaigns Selection List
Once you are happy with the statistics view, you can print or save your output:
Figure 5.7 - Printing or Saving Your Statistics
If you select the BMP option, then when you click the Print Statistics button you will be able to save the statistical view as an image on your PC or network.
If you select the Printer option, then Mekashron will send the output to your printer.
6 - Fax Campaign Reports
In this section we will look at the reporting facilities that Mekashron gives you with regard to your fax campaigns.
To access the reports, from the Main Mekashron menu select Tools -> Reports:
Figure 6.1 - Accessing Reports from the Main Menu
Alternatively, you can click on the Reports button:
Figure 6.2 - The Reports Button
In the Report Type pane, expand the &Campaign option and then select Fax:
Figure 6.3 - The Report Type Pane
You are now presented with all of the options in the right hand pane for filtering your fax report:
Figure 6.4 - The Fax Campaign Reporting Options
At the top right, select the business whose data you wish to report on:
Figure 6.5 - The Business Dropdown
Next, you can specify the date and time range of data you wish to include:
Figure 6.6 - The Date Control
In the Campaigns list, you can check all the campaigns you wish to include in this report:
Figure 6.7 - The Campaigns List
You can also filter your report by the status of the faxes, in the Status checklist:
Figure 6.8 - The Statuses List
Once you have chosen your filtering options, you can customize the fields that will be shown on your report:
Figure 6.9 - The Visible Fields Control
Select those fields that you wish to include, and if desired use the arrow buttons:
Figure 6.10 - The Control for Moving the Visible Fields
to move those fields into the order that you wish to have them displayed on the report.
When you are ready to create your report, select the output type you desire:
Figure 6.11 - Selecting the Output Type
and then choose the page setup you want your report to have:
Figure 6.12 - Choosing the Orientation of the Report
before clicking the Generate Report button:
Figure 6.13 - The Generate Report Button
Here is an example of a voice broadcasting report in Preview mode:
Figure 6.14 - A Fax Campaigns Report in Preview Mode
7 - Summary
In this section we have covered all the convenient faxing options that Mekashron gives you. Now you can send faxes to your prospects quickly and easily, both from within Mekashron Call Center Software and directly from other programs such as Microsoft Word.
In particular, you also have the simple yet powerful Macro functionality that enables you to personalize your faxes for each client or prospect.