recording a series of letters sent? [ Edited ]

[judd]

I would like to send my contacts a series of letters, every couple of weeks. Every mailing will be different. The first letter will be an intro letter, the second a follow up, etc. Right now I do about a 100 per week and it works great as I can see the "letter sent" date and can lookup by that date and sort, then start calling them.

Now I want to see 1st letter sent, 2nd letter sent, 3rd letter sent date, etc. I imagine I would have to create a new custom field which I have done for some other data. But when recording the history can I choose which field the info/date goes to?

I would like it to be done when doing the mail merge but as I have 1600+ and growing contacts, I work with a 100 at a time by lookup based on other data (revenue, size etc). Is there a way to record history to a lookup to a specific field?

[jnpurdy]

Hello Judd.

If you have no problem in looking up those who received the first letter, I wouldn't start creating a new field for a specific campaign.  That will grow into a new field everytime you create a new campaign.  The key is to record with a unique name for each mailing that also identifies the specific template used.  If you want to attach a copy of each letter to each contact that just takes iup db space.  

What I do is to keep the template in a location for reference.  I personally use Microsoft Office and Mail Merge b/c I seem to have fewer problem in the way the eMails are received than with using ACT.  

When I am finished the mailing, and in my case the eMailing, I then do a lookup on the group that received the 1st, 2nd ... nth letter and do a history entry using the contact option as current lookup.  There you have the freedom to enter the name of the letter that was sent and only the 1 line history is added to the contact.  

Hope this made sense and good luck moving forward.

[judd]

So you do the mailing, then record history that you mailed xx letter. How do you come back next week and know who received xx letter? Is there a way to lookup and sort by history?

I would really like a way I can easily sort and lookup who received which letter, and record which letter they received. I do my sorts and lookups in list view. Since I have so many contacts, and the list grows daily, I need to easily sort and lookup based on letter date.

Thanks