40. WHAT IS CIVIMAIL T he CiviMail component extends CiviCRM's core email functionality with sophisticated tools for handling mass email campaigns. It can reliably deliver a high volume of email and provide detailed reports on the results and effectiveness of those emails. CiviMail is often used to complement other CiviCRM components, for example to send emails to non members to encourage them to become members or to send emails to people that are yet to register for an event. CiviCRM's mail features, including CiviMail, interact with your mail server software. Configuring the mail server and CiviMail are system administrator tasks, which may require professional assistance. You will also need to verify with your web hosting provider whether they meet the configuration requirements, and verify that they don't put limits you might exceed on the number of emails you can send per day.
SCENARIO: PEACE CENTRE St Egeltina's Centre for Peace and Reconciliation use CiviEvent to run a yearly event programme on a number of different themes. T hey have set up a mailing list page where people can sign up to be informed of all events only events that interest them. T hey then use CiviMail to send out emails to those people based on those events. When someone unsubscribes from an event theme mailing list, CiviCRM keeps a record of the fact that they have unsubscribed. St Egeltina's also automatically subscribe anyone who has been to an event on a specific theme to receive emails about that theme. T hey don't have to worry about spamming people that have unsubscribed from a thematic event mailing list, as CiviCRM will remember that they have unsubscribed and not re-subscribe them. From time to time, St. Egeltina's send out other emails to a mailing list that includes nearly all contacts on their database with personal messages from the centre director highlighting particular issues. Often two similar versions of the same email are sent to different groups in their database to test which message formats are more effective. T hey can do this by sending the email to half the contacts in a particular group and then sending another email which excludes contacts that have already received the first email.
SCENARIO: MOBILISING WITH EMAIL T he T ownsville Organisation For T enants (T OFT ) held a survey and petition to gather data and support for the campaign Demand Affordable Public Housing. T he survey was undertaken by volunteers visiting selected constituents in their homes while the petition was widely promoted to the public who could sign and answer questions online. In the early stages of the campaign, the T OFT volunteer coordinator searched for contacts in the group Volunteers and used the Send email action to send a general email asking for volunteers to help with the survey. From those who responded that they were available, a small group were trained to carry out the home visits and record survey responses. Once the online petition had been created using tools in CiviCampaign, the T OFT communications officer created an email including text, images and links to promote the campaign and encourage people to click through to the site and complete the online petition. T his email was then sent out to the entire database using CiviMail, including a forwarding link so that recipients could easily distribute the email widely through their own networks. CiviMail enabled T OFT to track responses to this mass emailing; reports were generated showing that 89% of recipients clicked through to sign the petition, and 7 5% forwarded it on to others. T his data was then compared with previous offline petition and survey efforts to demonstrate the increased reach of the campaign through using CiviCRM.
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