Feature focus - Bulk Send

This feature focus is on ‘Bulk Send’, one of the most powerful features on the Legalesign Platform. With a few clicks Bulk Send will send out hundreds or thousands of contracts for e-signature; essential software for customers who are currently re-issuing contracts for GDPR.

Bulk Send is a late addition to the Legalesign e-signature platform and pulls together the best of the platform. While Bulk Send can save many hours, supporting features such as PDF form fields, automated reminders, and live document tracking make it such a practical and useful feature.

The two key components that make Bulk Send itself successful are the CSV/XLSX files upload and the mail merge facility.

The CSV/XLSX file is a simple way for you to compile your signer data. At its simplest, it must contain a person’s email, first name and last name.

Once a PDF contract is uploaded to the platform, and the drag & drop fields tells the system where the signature should go, all Bulk Send requires is the CSV file with a list of signers and the press of a button to create and send them all.

Usually contracts require variation for each person, a name, address or price for example. This is where the mail merge facility comes into play. After you upload your contract, a simple drag and drop system lets you place mail-merge fields (or sender fields as they are called on Legalesign) that you can customise upon sending.

These fields each get a label which are placed in row 1 of the CSV/XLSX. This is how the system ties together your CSV/XLSX file data with your contract variations. Fill down your mail merge values alongside the signer name and email. If you want form fields for your signatories, you can do that too.

Legalesign includes a simple Bulk Send CSV generator that you can use to get a ready-made CSV for any uploaded document. This will auto-generate the CSV with pre-populated headings; these will tell you where to fill down your signer details and any mail merge values.

Once your CSV is ready use the reminder scheduler to prepare a set of reminder emails. For example an email every other day, skipping weekends. You can quickly define that rule in the scheduler, or if you want more control you can set out your emails day by day. Now you are ready to go. The Bulk Send uploader checks through your CSV for any anomalies and alerts you to any issues. Otherwise you select your contract, reminder schedule, and press the Send button.

You will be redirected back to the Dashboard, which will start to populate with your new contracts. Because of the high volume real-time updates on sending are disabled. But everything else, including visits and signings, remain live-tracked.

At this point the Bulk Send system has done its work. But the real strength of the Legalesign platform comes to play. You get real-time tracking of your contracts, powerful search and filter features so you can see signer progression, and helpful features such as excel reporting and field editing. You can opt to receive emails when a signer visits your contracts too; a good signal to get in touch with your signer if they do not immediately sign. The final task is to download your contracts. The most common preference is to have all the contracts emailed to a central inbox. Alternatively, you might want them sent to a specific place such as Sharepoint folder, or another cloud storage solution, in which case contact Legalesign support to get that set up.

We recommend using a naming convention for your document titles so you have a system to easily identify contracts in your own inbox, or cloud storage folder. You will need to consider this before sending out your contract and you can use the reserved label ‘document title’ in your CSV file.

Bulk Send saves untold hours to send out many contracts or approvals. We find Bulk Send often used either for seasonal contracts, where a customer’s clients may need to renew an annual contract, or for specific one-offs, such as a regulatory or compliance change that forces volume signing.

To get started, get a free trial or contact support at support@legalesign.com, or call us on 01223628950.