 |
Lessons From A Month of Fax Blasting - 1/2
|
Reprinted with permission
from Computer Telephony
February 1997
We used Microsoft's Word 7 for writing faxes to be
mail-merged. Two keys: The most annoying part of Word is the enormous
space it leaves after each paragraph. There is a solution: Go Format:Paragraph;Spacing
After. Change it from 0pt to +6pt. That actually will reduce your
paragraph spacing. Don't question the logic.
Second key: Don't use Paint (the one in Win95) as your
image editor for PCX files. It doesn't like them. Use Adobe Photoshop
or Corel Draw.
Many word processors, when they see less than 300 dots
per inch, think that it will be an old dot matrix printer at 75
or 100 dpi (dots per inch). This makes many images look very bad.
By running your graphics through Photoshop or Draw, you will get
a much better image.
Gerry thinks faxes that are not personalized -- i.e.,
"mail-merged" -- are trashed instantly. Harry thinks the
verdict is out on that one. Everyone agrees that The List is key.
It must be a list of people who are likely to want
what you are peddling. If you blast to strangers, you'll get a lot
of flack. One of them will do something mean -- like send you 500
"Get me off your damn list" notes one day.
Ed says "Don't blast to people you don't know."
Harry says, "They'll know me when I blast them." This
discussion could go on endlessly.
Have plenty of disk space. We started getting messages
from our Netware 3.12 server that we were out of disk space half
way through a tiny blast of only 4,500 faxes.
Our one-page document was 67K. It had one of Harry's
fancy graphical logos. Each time our mail-merge fax software sent
one, it created a new version of the document with the custom information.
We did two things to solve the problem. First, we got
a bigger disk for our server. We were all amazed. A 3.5 gig hard
disk costs less than $400.
Second, we altered our software (a simple procedure
with Copia's FaxFacts) to erase the files it creates if the
fax was successful. If the fax is not successful, we want the
files so that we can figure out the problem, fix it, and re-send
the fax without having to re-rasterize it again.
Use a fast workstation. Don't believe anyone who tells
you their computer telephony fax software will run on a 486 with
8 megs of RAM. Buy a fast Pentium and stuff it with at least 48
megs of RAM. Mail-merging faxes (i.e. creating a brand new fax for
every transmission) is very consuming of processing power and memory.
High-end fax blasters like the one we have use your
network. One machine does the creation of the mail-merged fax and
rasterizes it. Another machine -- the fax blaster server -- blasts
it. They have to talk over your network. If your network crashes,
they can' recover automatically and your fax blasting goes south.
We think it happened to us.
Freddie dialed into our network one Sunday evening
and discovered that something had gone wrong because only 2,000
faxes had been sent, not the 33,000 that we had scheduled on Friday
to run throughout the weekend. He came into the office and did a
cold reboot on the fax blaster server.
He could have done this from home if we had set up
RAS (Remote Access Server) on the Windows NT server on which the
fax blaster with the Brooktrout boards runs. This means sticking
a modem in it and attaching it to an extension off our PBX. We can
get to that extension through our auto attendant.
So here's another tip: Put a modem in your NT fax blaster
and a phone line. Dial into it regularly to check that it's working.
And reboot it, if it isn't. (You, of course, need to have all your
fax blasting software in your StartUp directory).
There's another potential problem here. And that is
that your NT server may have locked up for some reason. It didn't
happen to us. The fax software locked up but NT ran fine. If your
server locks up then you'll need one of those hardware gizmos (e.g.
from DataProbe -- 201-967-9300) that lets you turn on and off your
server's AC power remotely. That means another phone line or extension,
of course.
There is another technique: Get more than one fax server.
Put several fax boards in both servers. Larger systems that use
more than one computer can detect a failure at one or more machines
and can page and/or voice dial an operator to notify of a machine
failure. Load sharing makes troubleshooting easier, too.
Be prepared to grow. As soon as our Pennsylvania office
heard about our new FaxFacts system, they started sending us their
jobs, though they have their own fax blaster. We added another four-line
Brooktrout fax board, bringing our system to 12 phone lines and
the capacity to blast about 1,000 mail-merged faxes an hour. Luckily,
Copia's FaxFacts could handle the additional board with virtually
no alteration. All we did was add eight lines of text to a .CFG
file and we had the additional four lines ready to fax.
Boards make a real difference. Don't use the junk fax
modem boards you buy at your local computer stores. You need industrial
strength ones. Like GammaLink and Brooktrout. Our experience is
that these boards transmit four times as fast, disconnect faster,
connect more often to stranger machines, handle overseas calls 1000%
better, etc. Bottom line: cheaper phone bill, more successful faxes
and less agita.
You do need a list of really bad faxes -- people who
don't ever want to hear from you or they'll firebomb your offices.
You need to build a list. Every time you load a list, your fax software
should check this list and should not send any of your faxes. You
can also add bad fax numbers to this list -- including those you
can't get fixed. FaxFacts has a special list called DNS (Do Not
Send).
Always give your targets a way of getting off your
list. An 800 number is the best, with someone courteous at the other
end.
Sidebar - by Steve Hersee
First problem: your fax blaster slowed to a crawl
after several hours of hard work. Here's a solution: Load a 16-bit
Microsoft app (like Write) with your Copia FaxFacts. Leave the 16-bit
open, running and minimized. That will speed things up. I don't
know why. (Freddie did. It speeded things up. Freddie doesn't know
why, either. Nor care. All he cares is that he has Harry off his
back, for at least an hour.)
As of Monday February 10, I talked to Brooktrout. They
have seen "some" problems with the new Pentium Pro PC.
They strongly suggest installing the latest Service Pack 2 from
Microsoft, which you add to Windows NT 4.0. (Service Pack 1 is the
latest one for Win95). Service Packs are Microsoft euphemisms for
bug fixes.
If you wish to send faxes with the least amount of
hassle, I suggest you split your three Brooktrout boards between
two PCs -- your new fast Pentium Pro and your old Pentium slow.
This will allow us to zero in on the problem quickly,
and also give you "insurance" that if either machine were
to stop, the other would keep going. I think that we will see one
machine run well and the other keep crashing. If this is the case
we then can move all Brooktrout boards to the better machine (which
may well be the slower, older machine). If it crashes on both machines
then you get to nail Copia to the cross.
Another suggestion is to put a modem into the machine
with a copy of Symantec's PC Anywhere so that Fred, Aaron, or I
can call in and monitor the state of the machine through the night
and over weekends.
Please keep me up to date. I have nothing to do that
is more important than getting your system as solid as a rock ASAP.
Steve Hersee, President, Copia International
(Wheaton, IL -- 800-689-8898)
Editor's note: On weekends, Steve is a professional
clown with the circus. He also does teeder-totter. The weekend Harry
called him on cell phone he was coaching cheerleaders to do tumbling,
lifts, double stunts, pyramid building. Several of his coached cheerleaders
have won State championships.
|
Top