Emailing panellists

Panel Manager allows the sending of emails to individuals or groups of panellists.  These are known as filter mailings.  Sending filter emails is very similar to sending sample emails, this article highlights the differences for filter mailings.

From Panel Manager, select one or more panellists to be emailed by executing a suitable filter and, if necessary, removing or adding panellists to the group.

Emailing panellists is a group action, please ensure that the group only contains the panellists you want to send the email to.

When you are happy with the selection, check that the In Group and NOT In Group counts show the expected numbers.  Page through the filter results to check you have selected the correct panellists (shown in blue) before clicking on New Mailing from the Group Action toolbar.  The New Filtering Mailing editor will be displayed.  This looks similar to the Sample Mailing editor but there are a few differences.

If the mailing is not sent straightaway, and instead is saved by clicking on the OK button, the mailing can be retrieved, reviewed and sent later using Mailing Manager from the Panel Management menu.  Filter mailings cannot be viewed later from within Panel Manager, and there is no way of reviewing the panellists selected until after the emails have been processed.

Merge fields

As for sample emails, filter emails may use merge fields embedded in the subject, email body or hyperlink, however these are restricted to the folders Profile Merge Fields and Community Merge Fields (if the installation uses Q_Community).

Community Merge Fields

The merge fields in the Community Merge Fields folder allow community website related information to be added to emails – including URLs directing panellists to the Community website and/or to the registration activation page.

• CommunityId – this merge field will add the ‘UserGUID’ value for the panellist to the email (as stored in the Kentico database CMS_User table).
• CommunityBaseURL - this merge field will add the base URL for the Community website to the email.

e.g. http://kenticocms.marsc.co.uk/panelname

• CommunityRegistrationConfirmationURL - this merge field will add the URL to send to new panellists to allow them to confirm (or activate) their registration, and will automatically contain the appropriate userguid property. 

e.g. http://kenticocms.marsc.co.uk/panelname/special-pages/activation.aspx?userguid=a491207b-89cd-4840-81e2-b9745d2a01ce

The values for the community merge field URLs must be set up using Setting Manager/Community settings.  Both values are required.

Note that the MARSC Activation web part is required for registration confirmation/activation and must be set up by the website administrator.

Send

An email event will be generated for each email sent, but you cannot specify an outcome code for filter emails.