Which Blast Email Mailing Type Should I Use?

When using Blast Email, the Mailing Type plays a crucial role in the options available for creating the email and choosing who it's sent to. As such, it's helpful to have a clear understanding of what you would like to accomplish before choosing a Mailing Type. This guide may provide some pointers to help you get the best results.

 

For more information on any of the concepts presented below, refer to the articles Blast Email and Blast Email - Mailing Types.

 


 

I want to send a general information / non-plan email to many Contacts.

 

Use the All Contacts Mailing Type, and use filters to narrow down the results if desired.

 


 

I want to include Plan or Project data in my Blast Email, or use this data as a filter.

 

While a few Mailing Types have this ability, most are intended for use in special circumstances. Use the Plan Contacts Mailing Type in the majority of situations.

 


 

I want to send emails to Plan Contacts, but don't want a Contact to receive more than one email.

 

Unless very specific filtering is applied, a Contact who is associated with more than Plan will be pulled into the Recipients grid once for each Plan when using the Plan Contacts Mailing Type. This means that the Contact could be selected to receive multiple emails, one for each Plan.

 

To circumvent this, use the Plan Contacts - No Duplicates Mailing Type. A Contact will only be pulled into the Recipients grid once. Note that in order to accomplish this, PensionPro has to uncouple Plan Contacts from Plan data; that is to say, it's not possible to use Plan-related data within the email, or as filter criteria.

 


 

I want to do the same as the above, but I absolutely need to filter by Plan data.

 

There is no way to accomplish this organically using Blast Email. However, consider using a Communication List to facilitate this:

 

  1. Create a new Communication List (within Communications > Communication Lists).
  2. Open the Communications List Power Tool (Power Tools > Communication Lists).
  3. In Step 1 of the Power Tool, select Add Contact In List, then select the newly-created Communication List.
  4. In Step 2 of the Power Tool, add the filter criteria you would like to use to retrieve recipients.
  5. In Step 3, select the desired recipients (or select all). Do not be concerned if some recipients appear more than once.
  6. Execute the Power Tool. Selected Contacts will be added to the Communication List; if a Contact was selected multiple times, they will only be added once.
  7. Open or create a Blast Email Template; use the All Contacts Mailing Type.
  8. In Step 4, add the Contacts - Communication List filter. Set it equal to the new Communication List.
  9. The Recipients grid in Step 5 will only return the Communication List Contacts. Select All, then send the Blast Email.

 

Keep in mind that the Blast Email itself cannot use Merge Fields containing Plan data via this method. However, the Blast Email can be customized manually for whatever common criteria applies to the Contacts.

 


 

I have a Plan Contact associated with multiple Plans who I typically CC on Plan communications. This Blast Email is being sent to many Plans, and I do not want this Contact to be CC'd on each one.

 

In cases where a Contact (such as a financial advisor) is assigned to many Plans, it can be difficult to limit the number of emails they are CC'd on. Instead, it may be simpler overall to disable all CC options for the Blast Email, and then follow up directly with the Contact using a different Blast Email Template (or any other method) advising them of what was communicated.