Integrating Research Tracker® II with Email
(Research Tracker® II Tech Topic; January, 2002) One of the best ways to cut recruiting time and costs is to send email invitations to potential focus group participants. By advising pre-qualified respondents of the date, time, subject matter, and incentive for the study, hours of recruiting time can be be eliminated. Recruiters can be used to screen only eligible and interested respondents. Research Tracker® II is designed to interface with various email programs. In order to send broadcast emails to a large number of respondents, you need something more sophisticated than MS Outlook Express or Hotmail. These programs aren't designed to send multiple messages. A wide variety of programs can be purchased for this purpose. MS Word 2000 may also be used for this purpose. Before investing in another application, you may want to try using Word. If you've used Word for mail merging letters or mailing labels, the process is nearly identical. We recommend testing this process with a couple of in-house email addresses before you send 500 emails to people in your database - just in case! Here's how to proceed.
1. In Research Tracker® II, create a list of respondents based on the requirements of the job.
Use the Job Data screen to input job details, then go to the Job Query screen to make selections according to demographics, past part, or other criteria needed for the study. To limit the names selected to those respondents who have an email address in the database, use the Yes/No button on the Job Query screen, then click Email. Click Output... Click Mail Merge as the desired output on the Query Output Options screen. The file created in this step will include each respondents name, address, phone, and email address. Note the location of the file (C:\RT2\querydat.doc is the default file name and location).
2. Close or minimize Research Tracker® II. Open MS Word 2000 (you must have Word 2000 or later, earlier versions do not have the same capabilities).
Create a new document that will be the body of the message to be sent to each potential participant. This would obviously include the date, time, subject matter, and incentive for the study. You will also want to add information about how to respond if interested and available, and that further screening will be necessary. You may chose to have interested respondents reply by email or phone. Begin the mail merge process by clicking Tools, Mail Merge. This will open the Mail Merge helper box and guide you through the process. Choose Create, Form Letters, Use Active Window for Step 1. For Step 2, click Get Data, Open Data Source, then use the browser to locate the file created in Research Tracker® II. You will be prompted to insert one or more Merge Fields into the document. Although the email message will contain the respondent's email address in the To: box, you may also want to insert the respondent's name after the words Dear ___ as a personal greeting. Click Merge, then select "Electronic Mail" instead of "New Document" on the next screen. Click Setup. Select the "email" field for the "Data field with mail/fax address" box, and enter a message for the subject line. You should probably avoid sending the message as an attachment because not everyone will be able to open a Word document. When you're ready to send the messages, click Merge. The result will be an separate email message sent to each respondent. Important: check the Sent Box in Outlook or Outlook Express to see copies of the messages. They don't appear in Word. If you click Merge again, you will send the same message to everyone again!
If you use AOL or another non-Microsoft email program, this process may not work until you install Outlook or Outlook Express and set it as the default email program. As always, we are available to help you with problems or questions.