Sending a Bulk Message

Open Bulk Messaging in BackOfficePro. A campaign is built in four parts - who it goes to, how it is sent, what it says, and when.

1. Audience

Choose the Tags that describe who should receive this. Match decides how several tags combine:

• Any selected tag - anyone carrying at least one. A wider audience.
• All selected tags - only patients carrying every one. Much narrower, and easy to reduce to nobody by accident.

The Recipients count updates as you choose. Read it before going further. It is the one number that tells you whether the audience is what you meant - a campaign intended for a dozen people showing four hundred recipients is a mistake you want to catch here rather than afterwards.

No deliverable recipients. means nobody in that audience has a usable address or number, so there is nothing to send.

2. Channels

Choose Email, SMS, or both. Sending both means a patient with an address and a mobile gets two messages, which is right for something important and irritating for anything routine.

Texting needs a provisioned SMS number - see Bulk Messaging and Your SMS Number.

3. What it says

Email Message takes a Subject and a Body, and Preview email shows it as the patient will receive it, in your practice branding. SMS Message is plain text and should be short - texts are read on a lock screen.

Merge fields personalise each message. {FirstName} is the common one, and the placeholder on screen shows the shape: Hi {FirstName}, .... A merge field spelled wrongly does not error - it goes out literally, to everyone. This is the single most common way a bulk message embarrasses a practice.

4. Test, then schedule

Send Test Email and Send Test SMS send one to you. Do this every time, even for a small change. It is the only step that catches a broken merge field, a subject line left as a placeholder, or a text that reads badly on a phone.

Then choose When to send, or Send now. Either way the campaign is queued and sent within your practice's send window - so "now" can mean "when the window next opens".

Watching it go

Recent Campaigns lists what you have sent, and Campaign Detail shows Progress as the queue drains. A campaign sitting at zero is usually waiting for the send window rather than failing.

Start Another begins a new campaign.

Habits worth having

• Check the recipient count before every send.
• Always send yourself a test.
• Write the text version separately rather than pasting the email into it.
• Send it once. There is no recall, and a duplicate campaign is worse than a late one.
• Leave out anyone who has opted out of marketing, whatever their tags say.