What is FlowMail?

FlowMail is a web-based Internet Messing System for sending E-mails to large lists of recipients. The goal of FlowMail is to make it easy for you, as an organization, to send your subscribers newsletters, promotional messages, special offers, product updates or any other kind of periodical email contact.

FlowMail is designed to be simple for you to get started and still maintain very powerful features, some of which include:

• Capability to integrate with your website via email sign-up form
• Ability to import contacts from almost any email client you are currently using
• Advanced email tracking to determine who has viewed your email
• Advanced Message Templates with CSS support
• Message recipient queuing with interactive send interface

Getting Started with FlowMail

Create a Template

After you have signed-up for a FlowMail account, the first thing you need to do before you can send email is to create or upload a message template.

The easiest way to do this is to click on options from the menu bar above and go to 'HTML Templates'. From there, click 'Create New Template' and use the template designer to add text, styles, and images to the template. The most important thing to remember when creating a template is to use 'Place-Holders' for where you wish for the message subject and message body to appear later on. To do this, you simply place the key-words: $MessageSubject$ and $MessageBody$ (including the dollar-signs) anywhere in your template. These Place-Holders will be later replaced by the actual message subject and message body.

Other content Place-Holders you can use include:

• $FirstName$ = The first name of the recipient
• $LastName$ = The last name of the recipient
• $FullName$ = The full name of the recipient
• $EmailAddress$ = The email address of the recipient
• $ShortDate$ = The date the email is sent in the form 4/1/2008
• $LongDate$ = The date the email is sent in the form Tuesday, April 1, 2008
• $UnsubscribeLink$ = A link which will allow the recipient to unsubscribe from your mailing list (necessary to comply with ligitimate bulk maling policies)
• $Tracker$ = This will be replaced with an invisible tracking link that will allow for you to see who has viewed your email. You will not be able to track your email if you do not put this Place-Holder somewhere in your message

After you have created and saved at least one message template, you will need to create an email address list with the email addresses of your recipients. The easiest way to do this is to click on 'Address List(s)' from the menu bar above and use the form to create a new address list. Then you will need to click 'Edit' to add email addresses to that address list.

When you have created and saved your address list, you can click on 'Compose Message' to begin creating your first email message. When composing a message you can use any of the content Place-Holders listed above just as you did when creating your template. Remember that your message will appear INSIDE your template when you send it. After you have created and saved your message you can preview it to see what it will look like in the template you created.

When you have a message that you are ready to send, you can send it from the 'Send Mail' page, at which point you will choose an address list to which the message will be sent. This will take you to the sending page where you will see a list of all your recipients. Your message will not start sending unitl you press the Send button at the bottom.

When you have begun sending your message, you must stay on this page until sending is complete. However, you may pause the job and come back any time to complete the job. You come back to a partially sent job by clicking 'Jobs' from the menu bar above. Once the sending is complete it will be marked as such on the jobs page.

Further Help

If you have successfully followed the steps above, you have sent your first FlowMail message. There are, of course, many other features that were not covered in this getting started guide, so after you feel comfortable with creating templates, adding email address lists, and sending basic messages, feel free to explore the other help topics that go into matters of image uploading, message tracking and address list importing.