In a business I'm working with which is selling merchandise to small retail stores, the first stage of the lead generation system typically addresses material simply to "Buyer". There are thousands of addresses to send postcards and letters to, but no contacts.

The problem is the form letter system in Daylite won't seem to come up if I select an opportunity with no contacts. I can:

1. Select the organization or opportunity
2. Select Action->Merge->Write Letter

But then nothing happens. Unfortunately these addresses have been collected over months and are quite extensive, so its impractical to go and have to create an individual contact called "Buyer" for each one!

How can I get around this limitation? I'd hate to go back to the president of the company, who purchased Daylite on my recommendation and tell her they've got to export addresses out of Daylite just to print a letter!

Thanks,

Hi Michael,

Thank you for your post. The answer to your question regarding the limitation of letters to Organizations, is a fundamental one.

When designing our Letter writer, it was done in such a way that it is designed to be sent to a human, and not an inanimiate object such as an organization. It requires a recipient, so in your case, we do suggest creating a "dummy" contact if you will; so that you are able to use this handy tool i.e "To whom this may concern".

Not the answer you were looking for, I know, however these are the fundamentals of Daylite with regards to Letter Writing.

Sincerely,

Aprile Evans

Thanks for the quick response!

I tried creating a single dummy contact, and was able to link that to all of the organizations, but it would only print one letter. :-(

How can I create thousands of individual dummy contacts and associate those with individual companies without having to do it all by hand, which would take days, or weeks?

Thanks,

Hi Michael,

Did you have all of the Opportunities highlighted for the number of letters you wished to send?

Aprile

Yes. The merge system will only print one letter for a contact, even if that contact shows up in multiple opportunities or organizations, all with different addresses.

Ah, ok I see. Well typically as this is a very unusual instance and not Daylite's recommended "Best Practices", the last thing I can suggest to you is to re-import all of this information in with the Company Name mapped to the First Name Field under Contacts...not Organizations.

Are the letters being prepared for emailing or snail mail?

As a Contact Management System, Daylite is not designed to work in this manner.

HTH,

Aprile