Do you have questions about fax marketing software? You've come to the right place. The advanced features of the software can be a bit tricky to navigate — read on to learn how to make the most of your fax campaigns.
Every week, we are going to put one of our all-in-one marketing features under the spotlight just to make sure you know about it. Don't worry, this is not 60 Minutes, so no undercover smear jobs. Just the straight up facts of what the feature is and what it will do to help you do marketing.
This week instead of a specific feature, we are going to answer a few questions that our front-line staff get asked a lot about fax scheduling.
Common Questions about Fax Scheduling
Let's talk about common questions we receive from people using our fax marketing application.
The most common question is:
"There are a lot of different options, how should I schedule my fax campaign?"
There are lot of different options that give you a lot of flexibility (more flexibility than in some of our other applications in fact), and there are a lot of powerful features you can use.
Ultimately, all you need to do to schedule a basic campaign is:
- Select your List(s)
- Choose a Send Date in the Schedule Section
- Use the Next button
- Review the Rate Summary
- Confirm the send on the Cross Check page
More questions about our advanced features"I'm just scheduling a fax to a small list, do I need to care about the advanced features?"
No, because most of the advanced features wouldn't have much to offer you (they are intended for large bulk senders). The only exception is the number of campaign retries. We recommend keeping this setting at "2" for best results.
"I'm scheduling a small fax for today, do I need to use the Time Restrictions and Days to Send in the Advanced Options?"
These features are intended for very large campaigns that could run over an entire day or past a certain time of day.
Only consider time restrictions if you believe your campaign could run a long time. You should look at the total number of faxes you want to send, and the number of retries. A common reason for using this feature is to prevent faxes from sending off-hours or in the middle of the night. I don't know about you, but if I had a home office fax machine I wouldn't want to get a fax at 3:00am.
The only time you should consider restricting days to send would be if you campaign is going to run over a few days and you want to prevent faxes from sending to specific days.
"My fax didn't send at the right time, what gives?"
The most common mistake people make is not paying attention to your time zone. When you click on the Send Date field that shows the date and time, you can select a time zone. The system uses your default time zone that is set up in your account settings. By default, this is GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). This is 5 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time (EST).
If you don't want to adjust the time zone every time you schedule a fax, click on your account number in the menu bar (it's located to the left of the logout button) and select Account Information. You can adjust your time zone setting on this page.
Note: Not all places use Daylight Savings Time. Our system will not automatically compensate for this at this time, so keep this in mind when you schedule your campaigns. If you are in the Eastern Time Zone (EST), there are entries for both EST and EDT (Eastern Daylight Time).
Not using SimplyCast for your bulk fax marketing? You can sign up for a free account and be started in minutes.
