I am not able to merge a letter to a group that I have created. The group consists of 4 organizations and one individual. The organizations are single person organizations. Do I have to enter them as individuals (contacts) to be able to use the merge feature. I have tried the "send email" option but this displays all the individual's email addresses in the "to" field which I do not want.

Can someone describe how this is done?

I am a new user and have found Daylite to be very user-friendly although I am really struggling on how people/organizations should be entered in the database. Should a solo 'owner/operator' be entered as a company or an individual? I have used a group to collate a small selection of both but now I do not seem to be able to use the 'merge' feature for the group. Any tips would be appreciated. BTW - a video on this kind of subject would be useful to newbies.

Hi

Whenever I've done a merge, it's been using Contacts rather than Orgs. If you select an Organisation, the merge function will create a letter/email to every linked contact. Fine if you've only got one, but probably not a good habit to adopt as of course you can link contacts to organisations with roles that do not denote an employed relationship (e.g. they may be an advisor, a sponsor, a shareholder etc -- all depends what you use the database for and what roles/relationships you define in it).

So, if it's going to be a merge based on Contacts, what happens if you don't have the name of anybody at the target Organisation? That subject has been discussed on the forums quite a bit -- it's probably worth doing a quick search for any suggestions that came up previously.

I tend to think that CRM is about establishing relationships with people, even where you don't have that first named individual at a company. So for the purposes of a general mail-out then yes, I would create a "general purpose" contact for an organisation if you don't know anyone there. Just make sure that your merge keys make sense. E.g., if you address the merged output Dear <firstname> then in your general purpose contact the <firstname> field must be filled out with something that is going to fit.

I tend to work on the basis that many solo owner/operator businesses will one day expand, so I make an entry for the business name in Orgs and a linked contact that is the real person. Bear in mind that people often do more than one thing, so when you view an individual in Contacts mode, you can see all the linked items, e.g. Joe Bloggs is owner/manager of "Smallco Decorating" but is also chairman of Localville Rotary club, on the working group of the Sustainable Decorators Products Forum etc. You can assign one of those roles as his default.

Of course, Daylite allows a high level of customisation both in terms of Categories/Roles/Relationships etc but also in the more general workflow. So ultimately, try a couple of things before you get too far down the road, and then establish a way that works well for you.

These are my personal suggestions -- I'm sure others are different and will chip in with theirs!

HTH

Nick

On the point about the e-mail addresses going into the "To" field, I'm assuming you've selected some contacts and then Actions > Write Email; this sends the same e-mail message as you've noticed to all contacts simultaneously. You can go to the mail message, click in the To box, Select All, and either cut/paste or drag/drop them all into the BCC field. If you want to send individual e-mails then instead of "Write Email", select Actions > Merge > Write Letter in Daylite then in the Action drop-down select "Open in Email Client". This creates individual e-mails for each recipient and allows the use of merge keys to customise the message. You will need to set up a Letter Template to use in Daylite before starting, but to see what happens try using the "Simple Letter". Make sure you don't select "Email Right Away" as the Action if you're just testing!

Nick