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Watch this video to find out about the Ant Text feature Ant XL. Ant XL is a tool included in the Ant Text application.
Watch this video to find out how to use the Ant XL feature for sending Christmas cards or any other campaigns
What is Ant XL?
Ant XL is a tool included in Ant Text which you can use to send news and/or event emails to your clients, from your own email address. This is also known as sending bulk emails or campaigns.
With Ant XL you can send personalized emails to your clients, based on data in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, from your own email account.
This guide assumes that you are familiar with Ant Text, and that you have mastered the art of creating your own Ant Text templates. Check out this section and check out the video “Create Email Templates”.
How do I set up my Microsoft Excel data sheet?
Before you can use Ant XL with your Ant Text Template, you will need to have a Microsoft Excel sheet (*.xlsx) which contains the email addresses that you wish to send to. It also contains additional data that you might want to include in your personalized emails. You can, for example, export data from your CRM, ERP, HR, LinkedIn, Facebook etc. with your right target group.
For example, you can have your email addresses in column B and the corresponding names in column C.
Save this worksheet (for example, “Test.xlsx”) somewhere on your device, where you can find it again.
Now you’re ready for the next step – creating your newsletter that you wish to send to all the email addresses in your Microsoft Excel sheet.
How do I turn an Ant Text template into an Ant XL newsletter?
Start by creating a new email 
, and insert an Ant Text Template 
.
With the template inserted, select “Ant XL – Event & Newsletters” from the “Home” menu in Ant Text.
Note that the text in the template as: “Dear [#EXCEL-COL:C#]“, is a merge field, which will be inserted into your email, from your Microsoft Excel data sheet (replaces the letter “C” with the column containing the contact names).
In the Ant Text pane to the right, select “Create a new event/newsletter email”, and click the button “Next >”.
How do I send my Ant XL newsletter?
Once you’ve created your Newsletter, enter a name, which is for internal/your use only. (eg. “Christmas 20xx”)
Next, specify the column in your Excel spreadsheet that contains your email addresses, for example B.
Then, select the Excel spreadsheet containing your data, by clicking the “Browse…” button and select your file.
Click the button “Next >”, where you can preview your emails before they are sent to each contact.
You will notice that the field “[#EXCEL-COL:C#]” is now replaced with the value in “C” column of your Excel spreadsheet. (or the column your contacts are in)
Once you have previewed some of the emails to send, click the button “Next >”.
In the next pane, you have to “Select delay”, which means the delay between each email you send. The reason is that most email servers will automatically block you from sending many emails in a short time span.
A delay of 1-2 minutes should be considered safe to begin with. However, you can decrease the delay after you have sent a few newsletters. Your mail server should adjust to you sending more emails from your email address.
You can also select whether you want to “Save copy to sent items”, which means that a copy of each individual email will be saved in your “Sent Items” folder.
The option “Add unsubscribe link” will, automatically add an unsubscribe link to the bottom of your email. You could check this box for newsletters, for example.
When you now click “Next >” your event or newsletters will be sent to a queue for delivery.
You can now turn off your device, Ant Text will send your emails for you, even if you’re not online.
How can I follow an existing newsletter's progress and status?
While Ant Text is sending your newsletters in the background, you can follow the progress, by creating a new email, launch Ant Text – and then select “Ant XL – Event & Newsletters”.
In this case you select “Follow existing event/newsletter email” and click “Next >”.
Then you can select which newsletter to follow, and even download statistics in a Microsoft Excel data sheet. The report contains information about whom you have sent to, which recipients that has read your mail, etc.
