Mailshots

From time to time you may wish to send e-mails to past guests, perhaps to advise them of upcoming offers or closure periods. B&B Manager provides a straightforward facility for creating and sending mailshots. To create a new mailshot, select Guest > View Mailshots from the top menu, then click on the Add button. Enter a title for the mailshot and add any file that you wish to attach to the mailshot. Finally, create the mailshot message using the text editor provided. You can use this editor to make text bold, italic or underlined, and alter fonts, sizes and colours. When creating the message, the text string [Guest] can be used to denote the guest name. This will be replaced with the actual name of each guest to whom the mailshot is sent.

Note: It is advisable to restrict the file size of attachments, especially when bulk e-mailing large numbers of guests. Try to keep your attachments below 100kB if possible.

E-Mail Settings

Before you can send mailshots, you must configure your e-mail settings within B&B Manager. To do this, select Guest > View Mailshots from the top menu then click on the E-Mail Settings button. Enter your e-mail address, SMTP Server address and username and password for your SMTP server in the boxes provided. These values will have been provided by the ISP (e.g. BT Yahoo, MSN) responsible for your e-mail. Alternatively, if you run Microsoft Outlook you can look them up from the account settings there. Once you have entered the settings, click the Send Test E-Mail button to send a test e-mail to the specified e-mail address using the account settings. Once you have successfully received this e-mail, you are ready to send your mailshot.

Sending a Mailshot

To send a mailshot, return to the Mailshots screen, then click on the required Mailshot to highlight it and click the Send button. This displays the Send Mailshot screen, from where you can select the guests to whom the mailshot can be sent. The list at the top right shows those guests for whom you have stored valid e-mail addresses and who have not yet been sent the current mailshot. The list at the bottom right shows guests who have already been sent the mailshot. It is advisable not to continually send the same mailshot to the same guests, as this may give a negative impression of you Guest House. You can add guests from either list to the list of mailshot recipients by clicking to select them then clicking on the Add button. To remove a guest or guests from the recipient list, select the required guest(s) and click on the Remove button. The selected guests are then returned to the appropriate list on the right hand side. When you are happy with your recipient list, click on the Send button and confirm the notification message to begin sending the mailshots. The progress message will notify you as each recipient is e-mailed, then each recipient will be returned to the list of guests who have already received the e-mail.

Bulk E-Mailing

Many ISP's place restrictions on the number of e-mails that can be sent from a specified address in a given period. Such restrictions are intended to reduce incidences of "spamming" or unsolicited e-mailing by unscrupulous individuals or companies. To ensure that you do not infringe these restrictions, B&B Manager limits the number of mailshots you can send to 200 per day. The message at the bottom of the recipient list shows you how many mailshots you have remaining, and turns red if you select more recipients than this. If you then try to send the mailshot, only the number of e-mails up to your daily limit will be sent.