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COPIA'S FAXFACTS: A FANTASTIC FAX BLASTER IT DOES MAIL-MERGE
TO FAX! - 3/3
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THINGS WE LEARNED
(Side-bar) By Harry, Aaron and Rick
- Industrial strength fax cards -- like those you get from Brooktrout,
GammaLink and Dialogic -- are a 100% more reliable, more robust,
and work 1000% better than the standard $100 fax modem you buy
mail order.
- The fax software you buy better supports the boards you have
or are contemplating buying. Some do. Some don't. Check.
- You typically can't mix different fax boards in the same system.
They all use different drivers. When you install your software,
you'll install it for the make and model of the boards you're
using. You can change it later on, but you must stick with the
same boards.
- For mail-merge faxing, keep the mail-merging and rastering on
one machine and the physical faxing on another machine. You can
do all this on one system but it will bog you down needlessly.
Extra PCs are cheap. In short, dedicated fax servers with high
quality fax boards make enormous sense for speed and reliability.
Feed the servers with workstations, dedicated or not.
- The main keys to success of multiple faxing (either blasting
or mailmerging) are being able to resume sending at any point
in the cycle, for whatever reason. You want to do this because
you've enjoyed power failures or just plain stupid glitches. You
do not want to have to go back to the beginning and send all the
first ones, two, or three faxes before you finally finish sending
to everyone on your dumb list. This happened to Harry with a product
called NetMailer. Elegant Interludes are Harry's new fax concept.
- You also must be able to pick out one or two faxes out of the
list and re-send just those. You also must be able to pick failed
names out of the list, change their fax phone number and send
them an original fax (without re-rastering), or a changed fax
or a completely different fax (with rastering).
- You must be able to monitor what is going on in your system.
Anything that's going on, you'd better be able to check on from
one minute to another. You'd better know if your phone lines are
working, if your faxes are getting through, if your fax boards
are working, if your files are rasterizing, if your files are
mailmerging, if there are no glitches in your dumb database of
fax phone numbers. And you'd better have some way of the thing
calling you on your beeper if something does go awry. You don't
want to come in Monday, expecting that 10,000 of your precious
faxes went out over the weekend, only to find that something glitched
at 7:30 PM on Friday night and only three faxes went out!
- There is a real difference in rasterizing. Some software does
it much faster than others. A few seconds speed can make a huge
difference if you're sending 10,000 faxes.
- Always send yourself a fax. We routinely get fax blasted press
releases where the final page contains three words and the final
page contains four characters -- #### -- which means "The
End" in PR language. These faxes go straight to the trash
can. They do not pass an Editor. They do not collect $200. They
collect NOTHING.
- You have to be sensitive to how much and how many you send.
Harry and Gerry have a theory that no fax letter should ever be
more than one page. Harry believes that ALL faxed stuff ought
to be personalized, i.e. mailmerged. And therefore, it shouldn't
have a cover -- which is more wasted paper, etc.
- Your fax lists go out of date for one moment to another. To
maintain the integrity of a several thousand number list, you
need at least one person full-time calling to verify fax numbers.
This is not smoke-blowing or junk journalism. This is reality.
We do more faxing than anyone we know. Our lists are ALWAYS out
of date. Fax numbers seem to change more often than phone numbers,
phone numbers extensions, or email addresses. No one knows why.
They just change.
- Always give people a way off your fax list. Small type down
the bottom. "If we're sending to you in error, fax this back
with a big GET ME OFF YOUR LIST across the page."
- You can put a fax server behind your PBX and use the PBX's least
cost routing. This is handy. It will save you money on long distance
bills. But you'd better make sure your PBX will dial to all those
strange new area codes, like 630 and 972.
FAX BLASTS AS MARKETING TOOL
They work but only if:
- The list is right. You can't blast an offer on garden tools
to sailors.
- You write the faxes so they are good direct marketing. They
have benefits, real information, prices, and a response mechanism.
- You respect peoples' intelligence. The fax you blast doesn't
scream.
- You don't abuse your visiting privileges. People will go ballistic.
They have ways to get back at you. My favorite: Take four sheets
of your letterhead. Scrawl across each of them, "Get me off
your list." Tape the four sheets together to make one long
sheet. Wait till 6:00 PM. Dial the offender's fax number. Feed
the long sheet in. As it emerges from the other side, tape it
to the first sheet. This creates an endless loop. Go home. The
next morning, your offender will see your message on 500 sheets
of paper -- or maybe one 100ft roll on his floor. He'll get the
message.
In short, give them a way off your list. And get them
off your list when they ask.
--Harry Newton
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