There are two options for mass emailing in Salesforce. You can mass email contacts which has a daily limit of 1,000 emails. And there is the option to mass email users which has no daily limit. However if you choose to mass email users and use merge fields, the fields have to be user fields - if you put contact fields in it will not work since it is pullling from the user object. Also in mass email users you're only able to filter the list you send to using user fields, not contact fields.

Another thing you should be aware of is that the preview email function really doesn't guarantee what your email will look like. The only way to really know how the email will appear when it is sent is to simulate the conditions under which it would be sent. You can create a list in mass email users that only included you and send it so you could see for sure how it would work.

The bottom line is that Salesforce is not built to be a blast email tool.We highly recommend you investigate some of the other blast email tools, many of which integrate with Salesforce. If budget is an issue, Vertical Response allows nonprofits to send 10,000 emails per month free.

One feature you really should have to follow the CAN-SPAM law is the ability for contacts to unsubscribe themselves if they don't wish to get extraneous emails beyond project confirmation, reminder and thank you emails from your organization. And by using the mass email user function you can't even access the Email Opt Out field built into Salesforce to make sure you're excluding those who have opted out.

A final note is that Salesforce doesn't put any resources into ensuring the deliverability of their emails because they're not in the email business. So you should know that emails you send through Salesforce are more likely to end up in people's spam folders.

Nonetheless -- for occasional use, here's how to use the mass emailing functionality in Salesforce. Let's consider a case where we want to send emails to all out active partner staff users.

Volunteers can upload files providing physical evidence and details of training and certifications that will be kept as part of your skills database.

Want an easy way to know what occurrences and opportunities are visible on the public site?

This report will show you exactly what's on your site, whether it requires an invitation code to see it, and how many connections are currently made for all your upcoming opportunities.

This is a good report to put in your partner folder as its useful not just for you, but for anyone who creates volunteer opportunities.

We often want to know how many connections a volunteer had in a given time period. And there is a stock report in HandsOn Connect that can answer that question for you:

You'll find it in the HOC Basic Reports Folder: "# of Connections per vol (Calendar Yr)

The easiest way to test the content and merge fields in your email templates is to simulate the conditions under which they are sent from the public site using a test account. That'll absolutely show you what happens.

Salesforce does provide a way to test from the email template interface -- but it can be a little tricky. Here's what you need to know.