Your monthly emailed newsletter and the tax due date reminder system are both functions of the email marketing system. The Email Marketing System is a powerful and flexible system that helps you keep in touch with your clients, converts web visitors into long-term clients, and automates many of your firm’s unbillable tasks.

Features of the Email Marketing System are:

1. Automatically welcome your clients and prospective clients to your website.

2. Automatically send your clients your monthly email newsletter.

3. Manage your contact list of clients.

4. Send custom email messages to your contact list.

5. Create campaigns of sequential e-mail messages to send to your contacts.

The first step will be logging in to Firm Portal. For instructions on how to do this please click here.

Once you are logged into the Portal, click the Email Marketing System button as pictured below:

This will bring you to the Email Marketing System main menu.

1. Once you’re logged into the Email Marketing System interface,  you’ll click on the “Messages” button at the top of the Dashboard page to see the list of messages in the system.

2.  Click on the message you want to edit (note- the subject line uses the ~mycompany~ variable to pull in your firm name.  When clients see the message it will show up as Your Company’s November Newsletter, for example)

3. You can use the WYSIWYG editor to change the formatting of the text, delete and/or add your own text to the newsletter.  !!IMPORTANT!!  If you are pasting copy into the editor from any external source (such as Microsoft Word or Outlook) you’ll need to use the Paste from Word feature.

4.  Once you have finished your edits, click the “Save Message” button below the editor.

Customizing the Emailed Newsletter’s Look

By default, your newsletter will pull in your company logo and a color template that matches the colors of your website.  If you want to modify the template so that it uses different colors than your website template, you can modify the template number.

1.  Click on the Templates link from the top navigation.

You will see the default template set for your newsletter.

3. To choose a different one, select from the “Select a New Template” number list.

This will give you a preview of what your new newsletter template will look like

4.  To save this template for further use, click the “Save Template” button

 

Scheduling a Message to Go Out/Customizing the Newsletter’s Time of Delivery

By default, your newsletter is set to go out on the 10^th business day of each month.  (Due to the high volume of newsletters the system sends, it may get put in the queue on the 10^th but not send until the 11^th or 12^th).  If you want to schedule the message to go out at a different date, follow these instructions:

1. Click on the “Scheduled Message” link in the dashboard navigation

2.  Click on the “Edit” button next to the message you want to change the send time for.

3.  On the next screen you’ll have several options.  Please see the corresponding numbers below the image for additional information:

1- If you want to change the message that is being sent out you may select a different message from the drop-down here
2-  To change the list of subscribers that the message is scheduled to send to, use this drop-down to choose a new group
3- To schedule a new send-time, click in the “Date to Send” field.  This will pop up with a calendar
4-  Click on the new date you want the message to send out on
5- If you want to select a specific time you can drag the “Hour” and “Minute” boxes to set a specific time
6- When you’ve adjusted the necessary information, click “Done.”

4.  Click on the “Save Scheduled Messages” button to save your changes

To create a new scheduled message, the process is very similar. 

1.  First, click on the link in the dashboard for “Add A New Scheduled Message”

2. On the next screen you’ll have several options.  Please see the corresponding numbers below the image for additional information:

When someone signs up to receive your newsletter from your website, they will get an automatic “Welcome” message sent to you from your Email Marketing System.  This section will go over how to edit that message.

1.  Click on the “Messages” button at the top of the Dashboard page.

2.  From the list of messages, choose the “Newsletter Welcome Message.”  (note- the subject line uses the ~mycompany~ variable to pull in your firm name.  When clients see the message it will show up as Welcome to Your Company’s  Newsletter, for example)

3. You can use the WYSIWYG editor to change the formatting of the text, delete and/or add your own text to the newsletter.  !!IMPORTANT!!  If you are pasting copy into the editor from any external source (such as Microsoft Word or Outlook) you’ll need to use the Paste from Word feature.

There are two ways that you can add new subscribers to different campaign lists.  You can add them individually, thus allowing you to enter additional information besides just an email address.  Or, you can bulk-import a list of just email addresses.

(**Please note that all contacts added to the system will each get an email notification asking them to verify that they want to receive your email messages.  The contact will not be actively receiving messages until they’ve clicked that verification link.)

Add individual clients
1.  To add individual contacts, click on the “Add A New Contact” drop down under the “Contacts” menu at the top of the Dashboard page.

2.  Fill out as much information as you wish for the client on the left-hand side.  On the right-hand side you can select which of your campaign lists you want to add this user to, then save the contact.

3.  You’ll then be taken to a screen that shows the status of the client.  As long as they’re checked off as “active,” the system will attempt to send a newsletter to the client.

Importing a list of clients

You can import a list of contacts to your Email Marketing System , instead of adding them individually.

1.  First, click on the “Import List of Contact” drop-down link under the “Contacts” menu in the Dashboard.

2.  Here, you will need to paste in a list of addresses, one per line.  Most email clients allow you to export a list of contacts to an Excel spreadsheet or .CSV file.  You can simply copy the column of email addresses from those documents and paste them into the box in the Email Marketing System, select which campaign lists to subscribe them to, then click the Import Contacts button.

You’ll then be brought to a screen that shows that the contacts were uploaded.

The Email Marketing System will send an auto-message to each contact that was uploaded in the bulk import.  Once they have verified that they want to receive the email they will become an “active” contact, listed in your contact list.

1.  To delete contacts from your contact lists, you’ll click on the “Contacts” link at the top of the Email Marketing System Dashboard.

2.  To show more than the default 10 contacts per page, use the drop-down menu to show more contacts.

3.  Click on the “X” to the right of the contact(s) that you want to delete from the system.

You can create your own messages in the Email Marketing System and set them up to go out to your newsletter contacts, or other contact lists you’ve set up.

1.  From the Dashboard, click on the “Add A New Message” drop-down link from the “Messages” menu.

2.  Fill out the Title (this is what shows up in the Email Marketing System as the title of the message), Subject (this is what will show up as the subject line of the email when it’s sent to your clients) and the message body by using the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor.

3. Save the message by clicking the “Save Message” button

4.  If you’d like to send yourself a test message to see how it looks, click on the message in the Messages screen.

5.  If you plan to send this message using the newsletter template (link to section about templates) click on the “yes” button next to Use Template at the bottom of the screen.  Fill in your email address and then click “Send Test Message.”

You can create a new list of campaign subscribers from your contact list, or you can upload a list of subscribers to a particular campaign list.

1. The first step is to set up a new list.

2. On the next screen you’ll have several options  The only one you need to fill out is the “Title” field (1) and you’ll need to click the check box next to “Active” (2).

You’ll no tice the * next to From Name, From Address and Reply To Address.  These fields do not need to be filled out.   If they aren’t, they will automatically use the information listed in the Firm Info. section of the Email Marketing System (located in the navigation at the top of the screen).  If you want the information to be specific to the campaign, and not reflect what is used for the other messages, you can add in a new From Name, From Address and Reply To Address that will be used just for this campaign.

Please also note that the Subscribe Redirect and Unsubscribe Redirect also do not need to be filled out.  These are used when someone subscribes to the campaign (via your website) or unsubscribes from the campaign (by opting out after the message is sent).  If you fill in either field, the user will be directed to the indicated website after subscribing or unsubscribing.  The redirect’s must be a complete URL such as http://www.cpasitesolutions.com

Finally, click on the “Save List” button (3).

3.  To add new users to this new campaign, you have two options.  You can either import a list of contacts and choosing the new campaign as the campaign to subscribe them to (see Adding Newsletter Subscribers) or, you can choose individuals from your main contact list to subscribe.  In this option, you’ll click on the “Contacts” link in the top navigation.

4.  Click on the contact that you want to subscribe to the new campaign.

5.  Check off the box for the new campaign to add the subscriber to the list and save the contact.

6.  The final step after adding your contacts to the campaign is to schedule it to go out as a scheduled message.