Every email/document that is produced in Pearl uses a template, which means that you can add logos, change the layout and so on to make each contact with your customers and suppliers match your existing company image.

Templates

Click Documents->System templates from the main menu to see the templates that Pearl uses for regular operation.

You can edit these templates by clicking the edit icon ().

Demo:

1. Click Documents->System templates from the main menu
2. Edit the existing invoice template or click "create new"
3. There are a number of fields that can be replaced by the contacts' details (such as the name, address etc) when the template is used in a mail merge. Choose a field from the drop down menu next to 'insert field at cursor'.
4. Make sure you've set a return email address.
5. If you want to add images to your template, click the 'upload images' button, choose or create an image directory and upload an image file. Make sure the image file is of a sensible size for the template, for example when sending email templates a maximum width of 600 pixels is a good idea.
6. Click the image thumbnail to show its location in the URL box, and copy the URL.
7. To insert the image click the insert/edit image button .
8. Save the template
9. To make this template available in the CRM or mail merge pages, make sure you activate it by clicking the green tick icon . You cannot activate or de-activate system templates.

If you want to create your documents in another HTML editor such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage, you can do so, and copy the raw HTML in using the 'HTML' button on the editor in Pearl.
 

Mailmerges 

You can create an email/SMS/letter template and merge it with a list of contacts to send bulk, but personalised, messages by post, email or by text message if you have purchased text message credits. The template can contain images, logos and formatting just like every other template that Pearl uses.

Demo: Create a newsletter template at Documents -> Mailmerge template. Load a standard template from the drop down menu and edit as you did for the systems template above. Visit Contacts->Mail merge to see the screen that you would use to send a bulk mail merge.

Please don't send mail merges to a group unless you have created ALL the contacts in that group since others will also be using the demo system and probably won't appreciate the emails.

To send a test mail merge to your personal contact, find yourself using the contacts quick search box, tick the contact and use the mail merge tool at the left hand side of the CRM screen.

Once you've sent the mail merge, click Marketing->Mail merge stats to see a list of recent mail merges and some statistics.

Marketing Campaigns

You can set up marketing campaigns in Pearl (Marketing->Campaigns) to keep track of revenues and expenses associated with each campaign. You can see which contacts have been created from which campaigns, and also which sales relate to this campaign. You can allocate purchases and stock invoices to campaigns as well to give an accurate ROI report.

If you run a Pay Per Click campaign such as Google Adwords, create a campaign in Pearl and make sure that all your Adwords URLs include the campaign ID (see on screen help or the marketing user guide).

In the same way, you can create an email mail merge with links to certain products or areas of your website. Pearl will automatically re-write these links with a campaign ID and the mail merge ID so that you can track the effectiveness of each email.

For more information on mail merges and marketing please see the marketing user guide.