IntelliMerge Quick Start / Documentation

IntelliMerge
Quick Start / Documentation
easy-to-use business communication for Mac OS X
Intelli Innovations, Inc.
www.intellisw.com/intellimerge
License & Copyright
All Software & Documentation © 2005 Intelli Innovations, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This is a legal agreement between you and Intelli Innovations, Inc., a North Carolina corporation located in the
United States of
America, covering your use of the enclosed software program and related materials (the "Software"). Be sure to
read the following agreement before using the Software. BY INSTALLING, COPYING, OR OTHERWISE USING THE
SOFTWARE (REGARDLESS IF YOU HAVE PURCHASED THE SOFTWARE OR NOT), YOU ARE AGREEING TO BE
BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. If YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT,
DO NOT USE THE SOFTWARE AND DESTROY ALL COPIES IN YOUR POSSESSION.
The Software is owned by Intelli Innovations and is protected by United States copyright laws and international
treaty provisions. Therefore, you must treat the Software like any other copyrighted material (e.g. a book or musical
recoding). Paying the license fee allows you the right to use one copy of the Software on a single computer. You
may not network the Software or otherwise use it or make it available for use on more than one computer at the
same time. Paying the Site License fee allows you the right to use the Software on an unlimited number of computers
owned by you or your agents within a 100-mile radius. You may not rent or lease the Software, nor may you
modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software. If you violate any part of this
agreement, your right to use this Software terminates automatically and you must then destroy all copies of the
Software in your possession.
The Software and its related documentation are provided "AS IS" and without warranty of any kind. Intelli
Innovations expressly disclaims all other warranties, expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied
warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, damages for loss of business profits, business
interruption, loss of business information, or any other pecuniary loss. Under no circumstances shall Intelli Innovations
be liable for any incidental, special, or consequential damages that result from the use or inability to use the
Software or related documentation, even if Intelli Innovations has been advised of the possibility of such damages.
In no event shall Intelli Innovations' liability exceed the license fee paid, if any.
This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina and the United States of America. If this
software is used elsewhere, local laws may apply. Any claims, legal proceeding or litigation arising in connection
with the Software will be brought solely in Wake County, North Carolina, and you consent to the jurisdiction of such
courts. If for any reason a court of the applied jurisdiction finds any provision of the Agreement, or portion thereof,
to be unenforceable, that provision of the Agreement shall be enforced to the maximum extent permissible so as to
affect the intent of the parties, and the remainder of this Agreement shall continue in full force and effect.
The Software and documentation is provided with RESTRICTED RIGHTS. Use, duplication, or disclosure by the
Government is subject to restrictions as set forth in subdivision (b)(3)(ii) of the Rights in Technical Data and
Computer Software clause as 252.227-7013.
Manufacturer is Intelli Innovations, Inc., 319 South Harrison Avenue, Cary, NC 27511, United States.
Unless otherwise specified by the program, users of any shareware/demo version of this software may use it
unregistered/unlicensed for a 30 day period. After this time, the software must either be registered/licensed, or
removed from the computer it resides on.
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Introduction
InetlliMerge makes personalized communication with customers, members, family and friends easier than ever
before. Featuring an integrated message editor, recipient database, and e-mail delivery program, it's all you need
to manage contacts and send personalized e-mail newsletters, letters, invoices, alerts, and more over the Internet.
Installing
Installing IntelliMerge is a breeze. Once you’ve downloaded IntelliMerge, simply copy the application to your
Applications folder
First Run
When you launch IntelliMerge for the first time you will be prompted to enter your name, e-mail address and SMTP
server address. Advanced SMTP Authentication options can be selected if needed. Check with your network
administrator or ISP if you are unsure about your SMTP setup.
Your Name
Your eMail
SMTP Server
Your name or Company name.
Your email address.
Your SMTP server address.
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Next, you will be prompted to enter your IntelliMerge licensing information. Enter your name and your activation
code. The activation code is case-sensitive so don’t forget to use capital letters.
Enter Code
Order Later
Order Online
Enter your Activation Code.
You can run in demo mode without having to enter an Activation Code. In demo mode, only the
first 12 recipients on your list will receive your message and every message will have a “sent
with IntelliMerge” note appended to the body.
Order your Activation Code online today!
Now you are ready to compose your message.
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Composing Messages
Message Editor
When you open IntelliMerge or create a new message, you’ll see the message editor window along with it’s
associated tags pallet. Just like your regular email client, the message editor is where you enter your subject line,
select your recipient list and compose the body of your message.
Send Now
Send Later
Preview
Recipients
Name
eMail
Options…
Select Recipients List…
Plain Text
Subject
Attachments
Body
Send your message immediately.
Send your message at the time and date you specify.
Preview your message before you send it out.
Open Recipient Manager.
Your name or Company name.
Your e-mail address
Open Options window.
Open Recipient Manager.
Select format for body of message: Plain Text, Styled Text, Web Page and Custom
HTML.
Subject of your e-mail.
Attach any file type to your e-mail.
Body of your e-mail.
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Clicking on the “Options…” button in the “From” portion of your email will bring up the options window. If you
wish, you can change your sender information for your messages. Advanced options allow you to add custom
headers to your messages as well as set priority.
Full Name
From E-Mail
Reply To
Return-Path
Advanced Options
Your name or Company name.
Your e-mail address.
Specify a different address for replies to go to. If blank, replies go to the from e-mail
address.
This is where most bounces and server messages go. If blank, bounces go to the from email address.
Specify custom headers and message priority.
U sing Tags / Me rg e Field s
IntelliMerge comes with a standard set of fields to be used in your message:
Full Name
First Name
Last Name
Initials
eMail
Full name of your recipient
First name of your recipient (the first word in the full name field)
Last name of your recipient (the last word in the full name field)
Initials of the recipient’s full name (ex. Laura Reeds would be LR and Paul Robert Jones would be
PRJ)
e-mail address of the recipient
The impressive thing is that all you need to enter into IntelliMerge to activate these fields is the full name and e-mail
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address of the recipient. All other fields are created and updated for you.
In addition, date fields are available. These fields insert the exact date and time the message is sent to a specific
recipient as the message is being sent out to the target list.
The other 12 fields are customizable by you. By default, these fields are configured for you, but you can easily
customize them to suit your needs. IntelliMerge comes with a default setup as follows:
Use the Custom Fields tab in Preferences to set these fields to whatever you like.
The tags palette is where you’ll insert tags or merge fields into the subject and body of your message. When your
message is sent, these fields will be replaced with variables from each recipient on the attached recipient list. You
can simply click the name of the field you want, or you can drag it where you want it to appear in the subject line or
body of the message. The tags will appear like this in your message: <<Tag Name>>. It’s important this tag stays
like this so IntelliMerge knows where to insert variables when you send the message. When the message is sent, these
fields are replaced with information about each recipient.
For example, lets say your recipient list has two people on it:
1.
2.
Pamela Clark <[email protected]>, whose lives in Atlanta.
Jonathan Doe <[email protected]>, who lives in San Francisco.
If you were to drag First Name and City into your message like this:
Hello <<First Name>>! How’s the weather in <<City>>?
Pamela would receive this message:
Hello Pamela! How’s the weather in Atlanta?
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Jonathan would receive this message:
Hello Jonathan! How’s the weather in San Francisco?
Using a detailed recipient list (and a longer message, of course!), you can write messages to customers, friends, or
any group of people with ease.
You can also use the “Messages” option from the tool bar to insert tags, including a conditional statement tag that
can evaluate data in the other tag fields.
The Conditional Statement is very handy when you have recipients that may have missing information. For instance,
you are adding a greeting to your message that uses the recipient’s first name and there are recipients on your list
that are missing a value for full name, you can use the Conditional Statement to address them differently:
Dear <#if "Full Name" is "">Customer</#><<First Name>>,
If Pamela has a value for full name, her email will appear as:
Dear Pamela,
If Jonathan does not have a value for full name, his email would appear as:
Dear Customer,
Recipient Lists
Unlike a regular e-mail message, IntelliMerge can store much more than just the name and e-mail address of the
recipient. Using custom fields, you can store various information about the person - everything from their nickname,
address, birthday, favorite food, products they’ve ordered from your company in the past, membership status in a
club, names of their spouse or children, or any other text or number.
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Recipient lists are stored in a separate database file from the message. This makes it easier to send out multiple
mailings to the same group of people, so you only have to maintain one list of customers. These lists can hold an
unlimited number of recipients.
IntelliMerge’s Recipient Manager creates, modifies and deletes recipient databases. Recipient Manager can be
accessed a number of different ways: through the “Recipients” Menu option, by the “Recipients” button at the top of
the message window and by clicking on “Select Recipient List…” in the “To” section of the message window.
New List
Cancel
Select
Create a new recipient list.
Cancel and return to message window.
Select highlighted recipient list.
IntelliMerge comes with a Tutorial Database you can use for testing. It has two e-mail addresses from
mactoolkit.com, our testing domain name. If you send a message to the Tutorial Database, our server’s
autoresponder will automatically send you back a single message verifying the message was delivered correctly.
The main part of the window is the list of recipients - their name, e-mail address, and status. You can move the scroll
bar at the bottom of the window to see the rest of the values for the recipients. The status indicates if the person has
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been sent a message, is a duplicate of another recipient on the list (two entries with the same e-mail address), or has
an invalid e-mail address. You can easily set the status of all recipients using the “Set All” popup. You can delete all
recipients of a certain status using the “Delete All” popup. This makes it easy to remove duplicates or invalid
addresses in one step.
To find and change the status of duplicate e-mails and invalid addresses, press those buttons on the left of the
window. The status of found entries will change, and they’ll be highlighted in yellow so they’re easier to find. You
can also click on the column headers such as Full Name, eMail Address and Status to sort recipients by that
particular column, making it easy to group duplicate addresses together for review.
You can search for specific names and eMail addresses in your recipient list by using the search field at the top of
the recipient database window. It is an active search that automatically adjusts the results as you type.
Editing Recipients
From the Recipient Editor, you can modify individualized information and save it to the database. Back in your
message, you can use the data from these fields to create customized form letters.
Importing and Exporting Data
You can use IntelliMerge’s recipient editor to manage a list of people without the need for any other application.
However, you may also want to use existing data from a third-party database solution such as Microsoft Excel and
FileMaker Pro, to create a recipient list in IntelliMerge.
IntelliMerge includes an import feature, which can import tab and comma-delimited data from a text file. Most
database software can export to one or both of these formats. Additionally, IntelliMerge can import data from
LetterRip Pro, Mac OS X Address Book, Microsoft Entourage, Now Contact, Outlook Express as well as vCard files.
To pull data into IntelliMerge, use the Import Data… button in the your recipient list.
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Match the IntelliMerge fields on the right by dragging them to match the data on the left. If needed, you can define
the custom fields before you import. Press Import, and the data will be pulled into the recipient list.
Recipient data can also be exported to tab-delimited or comma-delimited format. Press the Export Data… button,
then select a location to save the file.
Records
Columns
Format
Line Breaks
All records or records by status
All Columns
Full Name only
eMail only
Name, eMail, Status
Tab-Delimited / Excel
Comma Separated Values
Macintosh (CR)
Windows (CRLF)
Unix (LF)
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Sending your message
Once you have completed the subject and body of your email and selected a recipient list, your message is ready
to send. You can easily preview your message at any time by clicking on the Preview icon at the top of the message
window. Preview will allow you to see your message exactly as it will go out and scroll through your recipients to
verify their information is appearing in the merge fields properly.
Before you send your message, you can run a check for Spam Keywords that may cause your message to be
blocked. Simply click on Messages from the Menu Bar and select Check for Spam Keywords… IntelliMerge will
check your message for keywords that may get your message blocked.
If you are ready to send your message immediately, simply click the Send icon at the top of the message window
and away it goes.
If you want to send your message at a later date, simply click the Send Later icon at the top of the message window
and you will be prompted for a time and date on which you want your message to be sent.
Whether you send your message now or later, your message can be saved and opened at a later date. From the
menu bar, select File and Save As… All the information in your message including the Recipient list and the status of
the recipients are saved.
Preferences
IntelliMerge can be customized in various ways using the Preferences option. Preferences can be opened by
selecting “IntelliMerge” from the menu bar then selecting Preferences.
IntelliMerge sends messages just like your e-mail client via Simple Mail Transmission Protocol (SMTP). Your ISP or
company should provide one. Contact your ISP or administrator if you need help finding yours. In addition, you can
also use two or three servers so IntelliMerge will even the mail load. This is handy if you have a larger recipient list.
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Messages can be sent directly to target hosts. If your ISP/network allows it, you can send messages directly to their
target mail servers, instead of using an SMTP server. In some cases, this results in automatic bounce handling. Intelli
Innovations recommends using SMTP mailing unless you are familiar with advanced e-mail deployment.
Connection
Custom Fields
Interface
Modify delivery options.
Define custom fields.
Modify interface settings.
Custom Fields can be defined through the Custom Fields tab in the Preference window.
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You can set the default sender name and e-mail address for new messages through the Interface tab in the Preference
window.
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Bounce Checker and other mail features
Bounce Checker scans email on your POP3 server and marks bounced messages as such in your recipient list. By
selecting the Delete Bounces After Processing option, you will remove bounce notifications from your POP3 server
and mark the recipients in your list as bounced. These messages are permanently removed from your mail server.
These recipients are not removed from your recipient list, though you can easily remove them by clicking on “Delete
all…” and selecting “Bounced”.
Contact your ISP or administrator if you need help finding your POP3 address, username and password.
It is important that you close your regular email client before your use either the Bounce Checker feature or POP3
mail browser. Otherwise, your client will pick up messages from your mail server before either of these utilities can
clean it up first.
POP3 Server
Username
Password
Use APOP
Delete bounces after processing
Your POP3 server address.
Your username
Your Password
APOP encrypts your password before sending over the internet. Check
with your ISP or administrator to see if your server supports APOP.
Automatically deletes bounce notifications on the server after they are
parsed and recorded by the Bounce Checker. This deletion is permanent.
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POP3 mail browser acts as a simple email client to allow you to intercept your mail at your server so you can cleanup bounce back messages before pulling them down to your regular email client. You can read and delete
messages through the POP3 mail browser. If you delete a message through the POP3 mail browser, it is permanently
deleted from your mail server.
POP3 Server
Username
Password
Use APOP
Your POP3 server address.
Your username
Your Password
APOP encrypts your password before sending over the internet. Check
with your ISP or administrator to see if your server supports APOP.
Read Message
Read selected message with the POP3 Mail Browser.
Delete Message
Delete selected message. If you delete a message through the POP3 mail
browser, it is permanently deleted from your mail server.
Contact your ISP or administrator if you need help finding your POP3 address, username and password.
It is important that you close your regular email client before your use either the Bounce Checker feature or POP3
mail browser. Otherwise, your client will pick up messages from your mail server before either of these utilities can
clean it up first.
Using Images in HTML
Images can be used in Custom HTML mode -- you can use them as attachments, or refer to remotely hosted ones.
If you attach an image called, for example, "intelli.jpg", you would then put this in your HTML to make it appear in
the message body (anywhere, including the signature).
<img src="intelli.jpg">
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You can also use images from your web server:
<img src="http://www.domain.com/image.jpg">
We recommend the web server method. By placing a reference to that image in your HTML, the user's e-mail client
will automatically download and display the image when they open your message. If you specify the full HTTP path
to the image, you should see it when the message is sent, as long as your e-mail client is set to view messages.
Troubleshooting Errors
IntelliMerge uses the SMTP server of your choosing (generally, the one your ISP or web hosting company provides
for you) to deliver messages. Due to the way many mail servers are configured, you may experience errors while
sending your first few larger campaigns, even if you successfully sent smaller campaigns in the past.
If some or all of your messages are not being delivered, try these steps to resolve the issue:
1) In the Preferences window, make sure you're sending messages via an SMTP server. Sending messages via direct
mailing is not a supported feature.
2) Verify that your SMTP server address is correct. For example, "aol.com" and "earthlink.net" are not valid SMTP
server addresses. Ask your ISP or system administrator if you're not sure what to enter. You can also check to see
how your existing mail server is configured.
3) Make sure your SMTP authentication options are correct. The mail server might give you a strange error, such as
Protocol Error, if this information is incorrect or otherwise needed (or not needed). This username/password may not
be the same as the one you use to check your mail, and many servers don't require a login at all. Ask your ISP or
system administrator if you're not sure what to enter.
4) Set the simultaneous connection rate (in the Mailing tab of Preferences) to 1 connection. Many SMTP servers are
picky about the number of messages you send at the same time, and throw back confusing messages if they feel
overwhelmed by the message volume from your computer.
5) Some ISPs, such as Comcast, limit the number of messages you can send per hour -- after that, you may start
getting protocol errors. This isn't something IntelliMerge can work around. In these cases, we'd recommend using
another SMTP server. You can also ask your ISP to lift the restrictions for you.
6) Some ISPs, such as Comcast, Optimum Online, Cablevision, and EarthLink employ Port 25 Blocking. This means
that you can only use their SMTP server to send messages -- all other SMTP servers will be blocked off to you. You'll
have to use your ISP's SMTP server, or an SMTP server that's not running on port 25. We recommend contacting
your ISP and having this restriction of your Internet connection lifted.
7) Some service provider ISPs, especially those who provide "temporary access" at locations such as hotels or
airports, force you to use their SMTP server by actually redirecting your attempt to use the SMTP server you've
specified to the ISP's own server, without telling you or IntelliMerge that this is happening. You can find out if this is
happening by sending yourself an e-mail, then checking the headers to see what SMTP server was used to deliver it
to you -- if it's not what you expected, it's probably the hotel or airport ISP's server that took it over. This can cause
unexpected results, since you don't know how the new SMTP server will work in relation to the way you're sending
messages.
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