Sending personalized mass emails with Filmchief Mailroom

Overview

Mailroom lets you send personalized emails to groups of participants, filmmakers, organizations and other contacts in Filmchief. Each recipient receives an individual email that can include information and personal links from their Filmchief record.

Audience

Mailroom is available to festivals with a Premium Filmchief license.

By default, you need at least one of the following Roles to use Mailroom: Administrator, Programmer or Guest service.

Getting started

Mailroom uses Lists to determine who or what should be included in a mail job. If you are not familiar with Lists yet, first read Working with Lists.

Before creating a mail job, you will normally need:

A Style template, which controls the general appearance of the email. You can use the standard Festival template or create your own on the Style templates tab in Mailroom.
A Recipient list containing the accreditations, films, organizations or people you want to contact. You may also select this list after creating the mail job.
Optionally, a Message template containing a reusable subject and message. You can also write a custom message directly in the mail job.

Creating a mail job

Open the Mail jobs tab and click New. The dialog contains the following fields:

Name	Enter a recognizable internal name, such as Selected filmmakers 2026.
Description	Optionally, describe the purpose of the mail job and who is responsible for it. This description is for internal use.
Style template	Select the style template that should determine the appearance of the email.
Recipients and message based on	Select Accreditations, Films, Organizations or People, depending on what the email is about. This choice determines which message templates, recipient lists and merge fields are available for the mail job.
Recipient type	This field is only shown when Films is selected. Choose which people connected to the films should receive the email: Primary contact, Director, Producer, Original submitter, or a combination of these. The recipient list itself remains a list of films. Mailroom finds the selected contacts for each film.
Message template	Optionally, select a message template. You can leave this blank to write a custom message. The subject and message can still be edited later.
Recipient list	Select the List that the mail job should use. Only lists that match Recipients and message based on are available. For example, when you select Films, the recipient list must be a list of films. You may leave this field blank and select a list later.
Sender	Select who the email should be sent on behalf of. By default, only your festival’s primary email address is available. Contact support@filmchief.com if you need additional senders.
Subject	Enter the subject of the email. You can use merge fields here to personalize it.
Email content	Write the message. Use the icon in the toolbar to insert merge fields.

Duplicate emails are prevented: Mailroom makes sure that the same email is not sent twice within a mail job. This also applies when a film contact matches more than one selected recipient type.

After creating the mail job, click Open to go to its details page.

Merge fields

Merge fields let you personalize the subject and message for each recipient. Click the icon in the editor toolbar and select the field you want to insert.

The available merge fields depend on what you selected under Recipients and message based on. They include two main types:

Personal information, such as the recipient’s first name, badge type or film title.
Personal links, such as a link to an accreditation form, RSVP form, film verification form, Personal Timeline or Ticket Shop page.

Some mail jobs may also offer other relevant fields, such as an account activation link for recipients who have not activated their account yet.

Personal links are unique to the recipient. Ask recipients not to forward an email containing such a link to someone else.

Managing your mail job

The mail job details page has two panels: Mail job details and Recipients.

Mail job details

Here you can edit the mail job settings, subject and message.

To see how the email will look, click Send preview to .... Filmchief will send a preview to the email address connected to your Filmchief account.

Recipients

This panel shows the current status of the mail job. The pie chart shows how many emails are queued, sent, bounced or skipped. Click a section of the chart to filter the recipients table below it.

Tip: Before clicking Send all queued emails, use several Preview links in the recipients table to check the personalized message for different recipients.

The Info column in the recipients table offers actions appropriate to the current status:

Confirm: Send one queued email. This is only available when auto-send is disabled.
Preview: Preview the personalized version of a queued email.
Exclude: Exclude this recipient from the mail job.
View sent email: View the personalized email that was sent.
Try again: Retry an email that bounced. First verify and, if necessary, correct the recipient’s email address.

Example use cases

Mailroom can support many workflows. The following examples explain some common uses.

Requesting external film verification

You can ask contacts for selected films to check, correct and complete their film information before you publish it.

Create a list of the films whose information needs to be verified.
Create a mail job and select Films under Recipients and message based on.
Select the appropriate Recipient type, usually Primary contact, and choose your film list.
Add the personal film verification link to your message using the corresponding merge field.

See External film verification for more information about this process.

Requesting video uploads

You can ask filmmakers to upload their video through Filmchief directly to your connected Vimeo or Kinescope account:

Create a list of the films for which you want to request a video upload.
Add the VOD upload status column to the list, select all records and set the status to Requested.
Create a mail job, select Films under Recipients and message based on, and choose the film list you created.
Under Recipient type, select the people who should receive the request. This will usually be the Primary contact.
Insert the VOD upload link (external) merge field into your message. This personal link takes the recipient to the video upload page for the relevant film.
After the upload has been processed, the film’s VOD upload status is automatically changed to Available. The VOD URL then points to the uploaded video.

Automatically sending emails

Enable Auto-send on the Mail job details panel to send the email automatically to current and future recipients in the selected list.

This is useful when you want Filmchief to contact people as soon as they meet the filters used by a dynamic recipient list.

To use auto-send:

Create the mail job and select its recipient list as usual.
Preview the personalized email for several recipients and check that everything is correct.
Enable Auto-send.

New recipients are sent the email when they are added to the list. Each recipient receives it only once. Auto-send works with both dynamic lists, which are based on filters, and static lists, which you update manually. See Working with Lists for more information.

Mailing directly from your festival domain

By default, Filmchief sends emails from noreply@filmchief.com. The Reply-to field ensures that replies are sent to the address you selected as the sender.

You can also authorize Filmchief to send email from your festival’s own domain. For example, the message could come from info@your-festival.org instead.

This requires changes to your festival’s DNS records. Ask the person who manages your domain to contact support@filmchief.com.

Disclaimer

Please use Mailroom with care. By using Mailroom, you accept responsibility for the emails you send to your contacts. Filmchief is not liable for indirect, punitive, special or consequential damages resulting from emails sent in error.

Filmchief Manual