We are pleased to announce the release of two important features in your favorite Merchant Services CRM! The first feature enables users to send out Mass Lead Email and SMS Messages to leads selected on the My Leads or the Calendar page.
The second one is an updated email template editor, which now makes it much easier to insert and manage template placeholders.
Let’s jump right in and take a look at how you can begin using these features today.
Sending Mass Emails & SMS Messages
The My Leads page in the CRM now comes with two new buttons that you can use to send mass emails and SMS messages to selected leads:
To send mass emails, simply select the leads to send the email to, and click on the Send Mass Email button.
A new email will be launched where you can select an email template or write a new email from scratch.
Once you’re done editing your email, click the “View Recipients” button to select and confirm the recipients for your mail blast:
The Email Recipients popup is now shown where you can select the recipient email field to be used for the mail blast:
After you’ve selected the email field, your CRM will automatically validate all the emails in that field for the selected leads.
You can now review the valid and invalid emails using the provided links:
Use the eye icon to the right of a recipient to get a live preview of the email, and the thrash icon to exclude a recipient from the mail blast:
Once you’ve verified that your email list is accurate simply send your email.
Note: The email will be sent to both valid and invalid emails.
If you do not wish to send your email to invalid email addresses, then simply exclude such emails from your list using the thrash icon.
After your emails are sent a confirmation message will be shown in the top right corner:
Sending Mass SMS
Sending mass SMS messages works in a similar way as sending emails. Start by selecting your leads, and hit the Send Mass SMS button:
In the popup which appears, select the phone number field to use:
Next, select the number to send your SMS message from (in case you’ve enabled multiple phone numbers) and select the SMS template to use (or type a new message):
When you’re done, click Send SMS and your messages will be sent.
Mass Actions On The Calendar Page
The Mass Email & SMS actions are also available in the List View on your Calendar page.
To use the actions, select your leads and click on the Mass Email or Mass SMS button:
Improved Email Template Placeholders
Let’s also take a quick look at the improvements in your CRM email template editor.
Email Placeholders are a valuable tool enabling you to automatically pull information from your lead (such as contact name, phone, etc.) and insert it into your emails.
In addition to the lead information, IRIS CRM also enables you to pull data from merchant or system fields, and incorporate it into your emails.
Previously, the email placeholders were shown as numerical codes enclosed in curly braces in the email templates.
With the new update, the placeholders are now displayed visually as placeholder boxes which are easier to use.
Additionally, the new placeholders can now also be set with a fallback value which is displayed in the email in case the placeholder is an empty field.
Editing Email Templates
To edit an email template navigate to Manage > Administration > Email & SMS > Email Templates and open a template you wish to edit.
To insert a placeholder into the template, click on the spot in the email where the placeholder will be shown, click Insert Field, and select the desired field from the popup which appears.
The selected placeholder is now shown in the template:
Here is a screenshot of the field selection popup:
Alternatively, you can save time by simply typing the ‘@’ symbol followed by a few letters of the placeholder name you’d like to use.
A dropdown list is then shown automatically which allows you to select the desired field.
Once the field is selected, you can also click on it to add a fallback value if needed.
Here is a quick demo showing how to insert the Contact Name placeholder into the template and set its fallback value:
Once an email is sent, the Contact Name placeholder will show the name pulled from the lead Contact Name field if the name was filled in.
If the field was not filled in, then the placeholder will show the fallback value instead so that the opening text in the above example will read “Hi there”.
You can also use the ‘@’ symbol to insert placeholders into the email subject and preview lines.
Here is another quick demo:
Your email templates also come with several other powerful features including:
- Tracking email opens in the lead notes
- Sending alerts to agents when the email is opened
- Tracking recipient’s visits to your website pages
View a complete guide on managing your email templates in our knowledge base article on Email Templates.
And there you go. We hope you enjoy using the new features!
Stay tuned for more new updates and cool features coming soon.
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