Book Image

Using CiviCRM - Second Edition

By : Hommel, Murray, P Shaughnessy
Book Image

Using CiviCRM - Second Edition

By: Hommel, Murray, P Shaughnessy

Overview of this book

CiviCRM provides a powerful toolbox of resources to help organizations manage relationships with constituents. It is free, open source, web-based, and geared specifically to meet the constituent relationship management needs of the not-for-profit sector. Beginning with broader questions about how your organization is structured, which existing workflows are critical to your operations, and the overarching purpose of a centralized CRM, the book proceeds step by step through configuring CiviCRM, understanding the choices when setting up the system, importing data, and exploring the breadth of tools available throughout the system. You will see how to best use this software to handle event registrations, accept and track contributions, manage paid and free memberships and subscriptions, segment contacts, send bulk e-mails with open and click-through tracking, manage outreach campaigns, and set up case management workflows that match your organization’s roles and rules. With specific emphasis on helping implementers ask the right questions, consider key principals when setting up the system, and understand usage through case studies and examples, the book comprehensively reviews the functionality of CiviCRM and the opportunities it provides. With this book, you can help your organization better achieve its mission as a charity, industry association, professional society, political advocacy group, community group, government agency, or other similar organization and position yourself to become a power user who efficiently and effectively navigates the system.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
15
Index

Sending bulk e-mails and SMS


Now that we have set up a group to send mass e-mails to and provided ways for site visitors to subscribe to our newsletter and other bulk e-mail subscriptions, it's time to send a bulk e-mail with CiviMail to all the group members who have subscribed to it.

Note

Quite a few organizations using CiviCRM also use MailChimp for their bulk mails. There are a few CiviCRM extensions that enable the synchronization of CiviCRM and MailChimp. If you do want to continue using MailChimp, we recommend you check the extensions page on the CiviCRM website and/or ask on the CiviCRM Stack Exchange site.

The construction of a bulk e-mail message involves a two-step wizard in which you name the mailing, select the recipients, and mailing options, develop content, preview/test, and schedule the mailing. Before we work through those steps, let's look at a few additional tools and options you may want to review and configure first.

Note

If you are using a version of CiviCRM prior to v4...