In the past, we outlined a method to block sign-up form spam by changing the encoding type of your sign-up form. That method may be found here.
This method will not work, however, in cases where the spambot isn't coming through your web site's form but rather by avoiding a form alltogether and programatically doing a FORM POST to our form processor file, http://www.jangomail.com/APPLICATION/PGSF2.asp or http://www.jangomail.com/APPLICATION/PGSF2ENC.asp.
To defend against this new technique for propagating sign-up form spam, you can now specify an exclusive Referrer URL from where the signup form must originate. You can now assign a specific exclusive Referrer URL to a particular JangoMail Group. Then, if a form signup comes from a destination other than the exclusive Referrer URL you have designated, the signup will not be processed.
Currently there is no interface within JangoMail for you to be able to set an exclusive Referrer URL yourself for an e-mail Group. Currently, our support team must do this for you administratively should you wish to take advantage of this setting.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
New Feature: Generating a Plain Text Message Automatically at Run-Time
You can now have JangoMail automatically generate a Plain Text version of your e-mail message, based on your HTML version, at the time the email message is sent (run-time). To do this, set your Plain Text message to the word "auto-generate".
There has always been the "Set Plain Text Automatically" button underneath the Plain Text Message field on the Send Email page. This button examines your HTML message and generates a Plain Text Message for you right before your eyes. However, there may be situations where you don't want to generate the Plain Text message right away but rather have the Plain Text message generated at the time the email message is actually sent.
There are 3 scenarios where this feature will be advantageous.
Scenario 1 - Embedded URLs
If you are using Embedded URLs within your e-mail message, your HTML message might look like:
<html>
<p>
Hello there. Below you will find today's mutual fund prices:
</p>
[%%http://www.MutualFundCompany.com/Prices.aspx%%]
<p>
Thank you for investing in our mutual funds.
</p>
</html>
By setting the Plain Text Message field to "auto-generate", the following will take place at the time of e-mail sending:
- JangoMail will retrieve the HTML content from the specified URL.
- JangoMail will insert the HTML content into the HTML message.
- JangoMail will generate a Plain Text version of the e-mail message based on the complete HTML message.
In this scenario, if you do NOT set the Plain Text field to "auto-generate", but instead use the "Set Plain Text Automatically" button on the Send E-mail page, the following will take place:
- The Plain Text version will look like this:
Hello there. Below you will find today's mutual fund prices.
[%%http://www.MutualFundCompany.com/Prices.aspx%%]
Thank you for investing in our mutual funds.
- When JangoMail retrieves the HTML content from the URL, the Plain Text message will now contain HTML code, and we don't want that to happen!
Scenario 2 - Using the Web Service/API
When calling any of these methods:
SendMassEmail
SendMassEmailPrevious
SendMassEmailRaw
Setting the MessagePlain input parameter to "auto-generate" will allow JangoMail to generate a Plain Text version of your HTML e-mail for you automatically. The "Set Plain Text Automatically" button that is available in the JangoMail web interface is not available when using the API, so for any automatic conversion to take place, the MessagePlain input parameter must be set to "auto-generate". Otherwise, you would have to manually input a Plain Text version of your message.
Scenario 3 - Using Conditional Logic Statements
When using VBScript conditional logic statements in your e-mail message, the line spacing of plain text messages can be altered based on where you place your lines of code. These spacing issues can be avoided by setting the Plain Text field to "auto-generate" rather than placing actual conditional logic statements within the Plain Text field.
Feature Enhancement: Using wildcards when filtering a Group based on clicks
When filtering a Group by those that have clicked on a particular URL, you can now use wildcards in the URL.
For example, in the Advanced Filter Mode, the filter criteria based on a clicked URL would normally look like:
emailaddress in (##clicked-http://www.jangomail.com/pricing.asp##)
but now you can filter for anyone that has clicked on any URL that contains jangomail.com:
emailaddress in (##clicked-*jangomail.com*##)
This feature was added at the request of an evaluating customer.
For example, in the Advanced Filter Mode, the filter criteria based on a clicked URL would normally look like:
emailaddress in (##clicked-http://www.jangomail.com/pricing.asp##)
but now you can filter for anyone that has clicked on any URL that contains jangomail.com:
emailaddress in (##clicked-*jangomail.com*##)
This feature was added at the request of an evaluating customer.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Bug Fix: Sending a Campaign where Recipient Group has been DELETED
We have fixed a bug tonight that caused a campaign to completely fail if one of the recipient Groups had been deleted between the time of creating the campaign and the time of campaign sending.
NOW, if a campaign includes a Group that has been deleted, the campaign will still send to all other present Groups and will gracefully skip over the Group that has been deleted.
NOW, if a campaign includes a Group that has been deleted, the campaign will still send to all other present Groups and will gracefully skip over the Group that has been deleted.
New Feature: Large Text Fields in Groups
When managing fields in your Groups, you now have the ability to create a special type of field which allows for storage of a large amount of text data.
Previously:
Previously:
- Fields in Groups could store a maximum of 8,000 characters
- The total amount of personalization amongst all fields within any single e-mail campaign could not exceed 7,900 characters.
- A "large text" field in a Group can now store virtually an unlimited number of characters.
- There is no limit to the amount of personalization within an e-mail campaign.
- Within your Group, click on "Modify Fields in Group".
- You can add a new Group field that stores large text by choosing a name for the field and checking the box labeled "Will store large text data".
- You can convert an existing field by clicking the "Convert" button next to the existing field.
- If using the API, use the AddGroupField_Big method instead of the regular AddGroupField.
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