Silent Auction Pro - Writing Letters and Emails

Writing Letters and Emails

Auction administrators can easily create correspondence using the built-in example templates as a starting point for creating customized templates. The Write Letters or Emails form provides optional fields (see table below) that pull data from a group's database to create personalized letters and emails.

Silent Auction Pro™ provides default donor and attendee templates as an example of how to use the optional fields. While these default templates cannote be edited or deleted, they are provided as a building block for creating customized templates by using the Save As... button.

Different field options can be combined to generate letters or emails to the following recipients:

Contacts
Donors
Attendees
Bid winners
Group members

To start a letter or email

Click the Auction Admin menu item to access the Auction Administrator page.
In the Marketing/Communications Resources section, click the Write Letters or Emails link to open the form.
From the Template drop-down box, select either Donor Template or Attendee Template as a starting point.
After selecting the starting template, click the Save As... button.
In the Template Name pop-up box, type your own template name and click Save As New. The new template name now appears in the Template drop-down list and is available for use and editing by the auction administrator at any time.
From the To drop-down box, select the recipient (i.e., Attendees, Contacts, etc.)
From the Label drop-down box, select a labeled contact (i.e., Potential Donor, Sponsor, etc.)
From the Event drop-down box, select the event to which the correspondence is associated.
Type a subject line for email correspondence.

To edit the body of a letter or email

Messages can be edited using the default text editor or HTML. Bracketed text denotes the optional fields that pull data from the database; these fields are shown in the table below. Do not type within the bracketed fields. Type outside of the bracketed fields to produce normal text. To avoid typing errors that would cause data not to transfer, use copy/paste to copy field options from the table to the letter form. For dollar amounts, add the dollar sign ($) before the bracket if that is how you would like dollar amounts to appear.

Click the Print Letter button to preview and print a letter or the Preview Email button to preview the email.
Use your browser's Print Preview button to preview how the letter will appear when printed. To change the appearance or content of the letter, use the browser Back button to return to the Write Letter Form.
If the letter is an email, scroll through the list of email recipients using the Previous and Next buttons on the email preview page.

Safari and Google Chrome browsers do not currently support the HTML Text Editor. You can still edit the raw HTML to create your letters in these browsers or use Netscape or IE for editing your letters if you are not familiar with HTML mark-up. IE and Netscape may render the results differently, so if you are having problems, try an alternate browser. For tips on producing cleanly printed material from the Silent Auction Pro software, see the Preparing Printed Material help topic.

Optional Fields

Letters and Emails Database Field Options
Field	Is replaced by...	For letters to...
[Logo]	Your group logo, if defined	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[Date]	Current date, such as November 4, 2011	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[GroupName]	Your group name	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[EventTitle]	Title of your current (or most recent) event	Donors and Attendees; For letters to Contacts or Group Members, the event title is populated with the title of the selected event
[EventDate]	Date of your current (or most recent) event	Donors and Attendees; For letters to Contacts or Group Members, the event date is populated with the date of the selected event
[FirstName]	Addressee's first name	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[LastName]	Addressee's last name	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[Company]	Addressee's company name, if defined	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[Address]	Addressee's address, if defined	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[Address2]	Addressee's PO Box, suite, or apartment number, if defined	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[City]	Addressee's city, if defined	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[State]	Addressee's state, if defined	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[Zip]	Addressee's Zip/postal code, if defined	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[AreaCode1]	Addressee's primary phone area code, if defined	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[PhoneNumber1]	Addressee's primary phone, if defined	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[AreaCode2]	Addressee's secondary phone area code, if defined	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[PhoneNumber2]	Addressee's secondary phone, if defined	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[Email]	Addressee's email address, if defined	Contacts, Donors, and Attendees
[AmtTicketsPaid]	Amount paid for event tickets	Attendees
[NumTicketsPaid]	Number of tickets purchased	Attendees
[DonationAmt]	Additional cash donation made at check-out	Attendees
[AuctionItemsStart]	Special tag that defines the start of the auction items fields	Attendees
[AuctionItemsEnd]	Special tag that defines the end of the auction items fields	Attendees
[AuctionItemId]	Auction item ID number	Attendees
[AuctionItemTitle]	Title of the auction item	Attendees
[AuctionType]	Assigned auction type, such as silent auction, live auction, etc.	Attendees
[DonationValue]	Value of the auction item	Attendees
[AuctionItemBid]	Final bid amount for the auction item	Attendees
[DonationStart]	Special tag that defines the start of the donation fields	Donors
[DonationEnd]	Special tag that defines the end of the donation fields	Donors
[DonationId]	Donation Id number	Donors
[DonationTitle]	Donation title	Donors
[DonationDescription]	Donation description	Donors
[DonationValue]	Declared dollar value of the donation	Donors

To edit a letter outside of Silent Auction Pro

To export a letter to another editing program, save the output of what Silent Auction Pro generates as an HTML file and then open it in a program such as Word. You can then edit the correspondence as desired.