Friday, May 22, 2009

New JangoMail website design coming in next few days

Within the next seven days, we'll be launching a new website design. The login form that you're used to seeing in the upper-left will now be in the upper-right corner of the screen. Click the purple LOGIN button, and the login form will instantly appear. See the below image for a preview of the new website and the new LOGIN button.


We're excited about our new website design. It's the first re-design in our company's 8 year history. Additionally, after the new website is live, I'd love to hear your feedback.

Monday, May 11, 2009

New Feature: Determine Size of Email Before Sending

You can now determine the size of your email message using the Spam Check tool on the Send Email page.

Why would I care about the size of my email message?

JangoMail measures both number of emails sent and total data bytes sent from your account. Both are a factor in your account's pricing. Now, the Spam Check tool will include the exact size of your email message in bytes, taking into account the HTML/Plain Text parts, any attachments, and embedded images, if you choose to set your email marketing campaign that way.

Here's a live example from our customer, Popcorn Palace:


And here is the result of the Spam Check:

The size of this email at 191 KB is bigger than the average email marketing message, and that's because it's using the Embedded Images feature, which encodes the content of each image within the actual email content, rather than referencing the images off a web server.

If this email did not use the Embedded Images feature, the total size would be around 1,500 bytes, or 1.5 KB, for a size savings of over 99%!

Friday, May 08, 2009

New Feature: Pause/Resume an email marketing campaign in progress

Did you hit Send by mistake? Did you just notice that your Subject line is spelled wrong, but you already hit Send?

You can now Pause and Resume an email marketing campaign in progress.

Go to Reporting, find your campaign, and click the red PAUSE link. You may also click the status message to the left in parentheses to see the sending progress of your email campaign. Click the parenthetical status and the popup will show you many messages in your email campaign have been sent and how many remain to be sent.

Here is a live example from our client, Popcorn Palace:


Click the red PAUSE link to pause an email marketing campaign.


After clicking PAUSE, the email campaign is paused and the text changes to RESUME. If you made a mistake in the content of your email, you can go back to the Send Email tab, and make any necessary edits.
Click the RESUME link to continue the sending of the email campaign.

Click the (sending) or (paused) status to launch a popup displaying progress statistics of the email campaign, including how many emails have been sent and how many remain to be sent.

Email Notifications:

If you pause a campaign, JangoMail will email you daily email reminders alerting you that you have a paused email campaign, and that you have 7 days after the Pause date to Resume your email campaign. Here is a sample email notification:

Dear Michelle:

This is a reminder that you have a PAUSED email campaign in your account:

Subject: Mother's Day Popcorn Specials
Mass Email ID: 233288445
Total Recipients: 46781
Pause Date: May 9 2009 5:51PM

You have SEVEN DAYS after the Pause date to resume your email campaign, otherwise you will not be able to resume it. You can resume your campaign by finding your campaign in Reporting and clicking the green RESUME link.

Please direct any questions to https://www.jangomail.com/Support/.

Sincerely,

The JangoMail Administrator
https://www.jangomail.com/Support/
http://www.jangomail.com
1-888-709-4099 or 614-343-3864



API / Web Service Reference:

  • ResumeMassEmail
    Resumes a paused mass email campaign
  • PauseMassEmail
    Pauses a mass email campaign
  • Wednesday, May 06, 2009

    New Feature: Inbox Shadow

    Tonight we have released a new feature called the "Inbox Shadow", which allows you to filter out recipients from an email campaign that have received a previous email campaign from you in a designated number of past days.

    Sample Scenarios:

    1. You wish to send an email campaign, but make sure you do not send to anyone that has received a campaign in the last 30 days.

    2. You may want to schedule a daily recurring email campaign to go out to a Group, but upon each daily send, have those recipients that have received any email campaign in the last 7 days filtered out.

    To use this feature, simply set the proper field on the "Send Email" page:


    You can also set a recurring schedule for an email by filling out the Recurring Scheduling section:

    Tuesday, May 05, 2009

    New Feature: Email Deliverability Diagnostics Tool

    There are cases when a customer, using a desktop email package like Outlook, Thunderbird, or Windows Mail sends a test email message, only to find that the email message is automatically routed into the Junk Mail folder rather than the Inbox. Many times, there is something in the content of the email message that is triggering the Junk Mail filter, and often times it is hard to isolate the exact content issue due to the black box nature of desktop spam filters.

    JangoMail has introduced a Deliverability Diagnostics Tool, which will send variations of your email campaign to a given email address, so that you can see which emails end up in the Inbox versus the Junk Mail folder. Based on this, a customer can easily determine what factor of the email message is resulting in it being perceived as Junk.

    What kinds of test email messages will the tool send?

    You have the option of sending variations of a generic system email, and/or variations of your own email campaign. Each test will be varied, with open and click tracking turned on versus off, with a different From Address, with a different Tracking Domain, and other variances.

    How do I use the Deliverability Diagnostics Tool?

    If you are a new customer prior to May 5, 2009, you must turn the feature on in your account. Customers after May 5, 2009 already have the feature turned on.


    Turning this feature ON will allow the "Delivery Test" button to appear on the Send Email page:


    When you click the "Delivery Test" button, a popup will be launched asking you for your email address and the type of test(s) you want to send:


    Checking the "custom" checkbox will send variances of the email campaign that you're currently working with. Checking the "generic" checkbox will send variances of a generic system message from "John Smith".

    After choosing your test options and clicking the button, the test emails will be sent. Seven total emails will be sent, each with different tracking, from address, and domain properties to help you isolate which tests are going into the Inbox versus the Junk Mail folder. The subject line of each test email message will be labeled accordingly.


    Summary:

    The Email Deliverability Diagnostics Tool is just one more tool in JangoMail's arsenal of email delivery solutions. To further optimize your email deliverability, be sure to apply for the Sender Score Certified program and sign your emails with DomainKeys/DKIM and run your email campaign through the Spam Score tool. Additionally, most JangoMail emails are sent through Habeas Safelisted senders.

    Monday, May 04, 2009

    API/Web Service Enhancement: Two choices for error messages

    Users of JangoMail's API / Web Service now have two choices for the format of error messages. Typically, errors thrown by the API result in a plain string, or a .Net exception for those programming on the .Net platform.

    As a result of a request of a current client, you can now choose to have XML formatted errors instead. Because we anticipate that this feature will be rarely used, we have not added a screen in the web interface to toggle between the two settings. However, if you do wish to change your API error formatting, just contact Support and we'll make the change to your account for you.

    Example of standard .Net-based exception:

    JangoMailNamespace.InvalidEmailAddressException: Web Service Exception InvalidEmailAddressException: E-mail address is invalid.
    at JangoMailNamespace.JangoMail.GetFailureMessage(Int32 UserID, String MethodName, Exception ex)
    at JangoMailNamespace.JangoMail.SendTransactionalEmail(String Username, String Password, String FromEmail, String FromName, String ToEmailAddress, String ToHeader, String ContentType, String Subject, String MessagePlain, String MessageHTML, String RawMessage, String Options)
    at JangoMailNamespace.JangoMail.SendTransactionalEmail(String Username, String Password, String FromEmail, String FromName, String ToEmailAddress, String Subject, String MessagePlain, String MessageHTML, String Options)


    Example of XML-based exception:



    Sunday, May 03, 2009

    Enhanced redundancy for transactional email marketing

    Those clients using the JangoMail transactional email platform can now send their transactional emails with greater confidence, because we've added a layer of redundancy to the sending process for these transactional emails.

    Previously, all clients were assigned a single email sender through which transactional emails were routed when calling the API method SendTransactionalEmail. Non Sender Score Certified clients would have their transactional emails routed through sender bombay.jangomail.com, while Sender Score Certified clients would have their transactional emails routed through castle.jangomail.com. But, if that single email sender was down, then calls to SendTransactionalEmail would result in an exception, due to the API being unable to transmit the email message to the designated sender.

    Now, all users are assigned two transactional email senders on two separate networks, and if the primary sender is down, the email is automatically routed through the backup email sender.

    This is another small step in our goal of building the most powerful, and easiest to use, transactional email messaging platform available. For more information on JangoMail's transactional email platform, see this web page.