Old fashioned though it is, postal mail is around, still useful, and won't be disappearing any time soon. While e-mail is less expensive and faster than regular mail, many people still do not use it, do not respond as well to email-only communications, or simply prefer receiving something they can hold in their hand. Multi-channel campaigns including direct mail, telemarketing, and meet-ups continue to outperform e-mail-only campaigns. Chances are that somewhere in your CRM plan, someone will still need to print out a list of addresses.
You will typically choose one of the two methods for generating a mailing depending on the size of the mailing and general mailing requirements. One option is to generate a search for the recipients and export the required fields as a .csv file. This file can be used as a mail merge data source with MS Word, Open Office Writer, or other word processors, or may be sent to a mail house for large volume processing.
Your second option is to generate mailing labels directly from within CiviCRM. This is commonly used for small mailings, which you will be processing in-house.
CiviCRM makes mailing label generation easy:
- Find the contacts by using any of the search options outlined in Chapter 3, Installation, Configuration, and Maintenance. (Consider creating a smart group for contacts that are mailed regularly.)
- Select the contacts to be included in the print mailing labels action.
- Select Mailing Labels on the -actions- button.
- Click on the Go button, and then configure mailing label options as follows.
- Beside Select Label, choose the Avery label type that you will be printing on (typically indicated on the packaging). If you are not using an Avery product, look for an indication showing which Avery number the labels are compatible with, as many companies use the same dimensions. You can also look up the dimensions for the available labels on the Avery site for your country (for example, http://www.avery.com site does not list the A4-sized products that begin with L, and http://www.avery.fr does not list the North American 8.5 x 11 ones).
- Choose the mailing Location for each contact. Every contact must have one of its addresses marked as Primary.
- Choose whether you want to remove contacts with the "Do Not Mail" communication preference selected.
- Depending on how you have decided to enter and store your data in CiviCRM, you may want to reduce postage charges either by choosing to merge labels for contacts belonging to the same household, or by choosing to merge labels for all contacts with the same address (a common need for organizations that do not use Household contacts).
- Click on Make Mailing Labels and save the resulting PDF download file to your hard drive.
- Print the file. If you have a big printout, you might want to initially print only one page to check the alignment of the text with the labels.
Normally, when you print a list of mailing labels, you're about to communicate with those contacts. The process of generating mailing labels does not automatically record the fact that you will be using it for a mailing. As a best practice, we recommend creating an activity for your mailing recipients after generating mailing labels as an effective way to retain a history of communication. The default installation of CiviCRM does not include an activity type appropriate to postal mailings, so the first step is to create such a type. Here are the steps to record mailings at the same time mailing labels are printed:
- Create a Postal Mailing Activity:
- Click on Administer | Option Lists | Activity Types
- Click on Add Activity Type
- Enter a suitable Label, such as Postal Mailing
- Enter a suitable Description, such as Postal Mailing
- Select Contact as the Component
- Click on the Save button
- Record a Postal Mailing activity for each contact included:
- Find the contacts using exactly the same method and criteria as used to creating the mailing labels. If you have just run the mailing labels, you can click on the Cancel button or Search Results from the breadcrumbs to immediately return to your result list and perform a follow up action.
- Select the Record Activity for Contacts on the -actions- button.
- Select Postal Mailing as the Activity Type.
- Enter a name for the mailing in the Subject field, perhaps also a description in the Details field.
- Open the Attachments fieldset, and Browse to upload the file(s) you mailed, such as a Word document letter.
- If appropriate, open the Schedule Follow-up fieldset and enter a follow-up activity, like a phone call in 10 days.