Outlook® 2007 Business Contact Manager For Dummies®

Chapter 14. Merging BCM with Word

In This Chapter

• Starting your merged document

• Choosing contacts

• Inserting field codes

• Finishing the merging and sending your letters on their way

The idea of using BCM to send marketing e-mails, letters, or postcards is one of the key concepts of customer relationship management. Staying in touch with your prospects and customers on a regular basis can keep your business at the tops of their minds.

In this chapter, we show you how to use the mail merge feature to create personalized letters — as well as mailing labels and envelopes — from the data in your account or business contact records. In Chapter 15, we show you how to create marketing campaigns with letters you create.

Note

The terms mail merge and mass mailings are used interchangeably in BCM and Office 2007, even though mass can be just two or three people. They both denotemerging some of the data in BCM into documents (e-mails, letters, postcards, labels, flyers, newsletters, andanything else you can format).

Merging BCM data into documents and e-mails is a dance between Word and BCM. Word leads the way, and BCMsupplies the oomph to make the final outcome exciting. The basic data coming from BCM, such as First Name, is easy — Dear <<FirstName>>. But because you can add fields of data to BCM, you can construct sentences such as You know, <<FirstName>>, since we met at <<Last Trade Show Attended>>, we've improved the value proposition on our <<Product Interested In>> to the point where you can't ...