Exporting email addresses from Business to file

[Redspan]

Hello,

Is there a way of exporting all the customer email addresses (excluding those who have ticked "keep detail private) to a simple text file for importing to a mail program or address book?

TIA
Ben

[Jan]

Hi Ben,

There is a solution for this in the free Mole End plugin library, we also have a product (One Stop Email Marketing : http://www.mole-end.biz/acatalog/One...Marketing.html) that does this.

The released version of One Stop Email Marketing doesn't check the 'Keep contact private' settings but we have an version in developement that does that I could send to you if you wanted to take a look at it.

Regards,

[Jim Riley]

Jan - cold you look at that amendment to One Stop to allow it to select orders based on a different unique field other than emil address. That would be really useful for a business like ours which occasionally needs to use snail mail marketing as well as email?

Jim

Originally posted by Jan
Hi Ben,

There is a solution for this in the free Mole End plugin library, we also have a product (One Stop Email Marketing : http://www.mole-end.biz/acatalog/One...Marketing.html) that does this.

The released version of One Stop Email Marketing doesn't check the 'Keep contact private' settings but we have an version in developement that does that I could send to you if you wanted to take a look at it.

Regards,

[Redspan]

Thanks Jan. I would like to see your product that includes the KDP option because as it stands; all the addresses are exported so ethically speaking it would be wrong to add them to a mailing list - do you agree?

Regards,
Ben

[Jan]

Jim : which fields were you thinking of?

Ben : I do agree, you should have peoples permission before emailing them. Apart from the legal issues people are not likely to be interested in emails that they haven't asked for so in many cases you are wasting your time. You can do this with product that is out there at the moment, the new version just makes it easier.

A lot of people do want to email their customers though and in some cases a lot of customers want to be emailed. A lot of the spam I get comes from big companies as well - to me spam from one of the big retailers is no differrent to the dozens that arrive trying to sell wonder pills.

If you install the current version I can send you a link to the new version if you would like to try that out.

Regards,

[Jim Riley]

I guess the order reference would work fine - since they are all unique.

The problem we face is that many of our school customers are not allowed to order online - so they send in paper order forms. Often they do not include an email address. So we use a generic email address (e/g/ sales@ tutor2u.net) to force the order through actinic.

However, it IS very important for us to be able to interrogate Actinic and identify which schools have bought which products. we can then send them targeted mailings (sometimes email, but often direct mailshots) when new versions existing resources, or new resources directly relevant to their exam specifications, are published.

By using unique email address as the selector, One Stop doesnt quite do what we need. However, it is a very powerful way to interrogate the Actinic database.

Jim

Originally posted by Jan
Jim : which fields were you thinking of?

Ben : I do agree, you should have peoples permission before emailing them. Apart from the legal issues people are not likely to be interested in emails that they haven't asked for so in many cases you are wasting your time. You can do this with product that is out there at the moment, the new version just makes it easier.

A lot of people do want to email their customers though and in some cases a lot of customers want to be emailed. A lot of the spam I get comes from big companies as well - to me spam from one of the big retailers is no differrent to the dozens that arrive trying to sell wonder pills.

If you install the current version I can send you a link to the new version if you would like to try that out.

Regards,

[Jan]

By order reference do you mean order number? If so you would get an entry printed for every order you have on the database.

To get a list of unique schools I think you could use Company name or Invoice Name as the unique field (sorry can't remember which one you collect school name in). What might be nice would be to be able to say, if the email address is xxx (or NULL or blank) then filter on x instead of email address.

Regards,

[Jim Riley]

The beauty of ONE STOP is that it allows us to filter the orders based on key search criteria such as product bought, when ordered etc.

For example, we have a digital magazine product called Business Cafe where 370 schools have subscribed for 2003/04. Many did not provide an email address (or valid one); but never mind, since we send them the login/subscription details/invoice by mail too. What I'll need to do in the next few weeks is to interrogate Actinic to extract a list of all the Business Cafe orders that we received for the 2003/04 academic year. I can check this against our subscription database (a usual process) and then we'll create a direct marketing piece inviting them to re-cubscribe for 2004/05.

So ONE STOP allows me to filter only those orders received where the order included a subscription for Business Cafe 2003/04. But I need all of them, not just the subscriptions with a valid/unique email address.

I guess by using the order reference as the unique identifier, I am then relying on using the search criteria as the way to get the information I need?

As a tool, though, you can see how ONE STOP is so powerful.

Jim

Originally posted by Jan
By order reference do you mean order number? If so you would get an entry printed for every order you have on the database.

To get a list of unique schools I think you could use Company name or Invoice Name as the unique field (sorry can't remember which one you collect school name in). What might be nice would be to be able to say, if the email address is xxx (or NULL or blank) then filter on x instead of email address.

Regards,

[Redspan]

Jan,

I've downloaded and installed the trial version. Just to clarify then: you're saying that all the email addresses exported are by default those have not requested that their details remain private?

Regards,
Ben

[Jan]

I see now - I will look into adding it then. I'll probably add a couple of the other options as well. I can see that it would also be useful for mail shots when a newer version of a particular product comes out. A lot of shops take orders online and by telephone so many will be in your situation.

Great idea Jim, thank you very much.

Regards,

[Jan]

Hello Ben,

All emails will be exported, but the 'keep contact private' field is also exported so the idea is that you filter on this field when you load the addresses into your email marketing tool, this thread on my forum explains this in more detail :

http://www.mole-end.biz/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=52

I will load the new verison onto the website though and send you details by email.

Regards,

[Jim Riley]

Thats spot on Jan - explained in a few words whilst I took dozens.

Our situation may be similar to many Actinic shops. Its great to be able to quickly extract details of who has bought a product and let them know about:

(1) Upgrades & updates
(2) Similar, new products that are likely to be relevant (e.g. schools that use a particular exam board are likely to be interested in other products for that board)
(3) Errors and problems! For example we sent out a batch of CDs by mistake with a missing file; within 10 minutes we were able to use ONE STOP to quickly extract a file of names and addresses and send out an updated disk (although we were lucky that only 5-10 schools were affected).

If you could upgrade ONE STOP in that direction Jan, it would be even better.

The other thought I have is whether ONE STOP (or something like it) could be the basis for much better sales reporting from Actinic. The current sales reports are, frankly, awful. There isnt even an option to export report data to Excel/CSV? So we end up printing to PDF and then exporting from there.

I'd love to be able to specify sales reports by specific product/time period - for example to be able to calculate author commission more efficiently.

Jim

Originally posted by Jan
I see now - I will look into adding it then. I'll probably add a couple of the other options as well. I can see that it would also be useful for mail shots when a newer version of a particular product comes out. A lot of shops take orders online and by telephone so many will be in your situation.

Great idea Jim, thank you very much.

Regards,

[Jim Riley]

Jan - any thoughts on how/when you could upgrade One Stop to incorporate the functionality discussed on this thread. I only ask for purely selfish reasons - I need to do some direct marketing in June to schools who have bought certain products in this academic year!

Jim

[Jan]

Hi Jim,

I've written this actually, I will be sending you an email with the location of a beta version (and also to you Ben) some time today if the final inhouse testing is completed.

The unique field selection features (and snail mail campaign feature) are in the advanced version - which you have.

The keep contact private features will be in the basic version.

I expect that we will be able to put this out on general release in a few weeks time.

Many thanks,

[Jim Riley]

..."snail mail campaign feature" LOL (welcome to the digital revolution, tutor2u)

Great news Jan

Thanks

Jim

Originally posted by Jan
Hi Jim,

I've written this actually, I will be sending you an email with the location of a beta version (and also to you Ben) some time today if the final inhouse testing is completed.

The unique field selection features (and snail mail campaign feature) are in the advanced version - which you have.

The keep contact private features will be in the basic version.

I expect that we will be able to put this out on general release in a few weeks time.

Many thanks,