Cleaner look for the "Send E-mail" page

We have made some slight design modifications to the "Send E-mail" page which gives it a cleaner look:

1. The form fields have all been pushed about 50 pixels to the right, making them more flush with the black vertical line that does down the right. This frees up more whitespace on the left side of the screen and makes the screen more pleasing to the eye.

2. The colored box above the Subject field that explains personalization now does so more clearly and contains a link to the JangoMail Personalization Tutorial. The box also no longer spans the width of the entire screen.

You can now save Group Filters

While using the Advanced Query Editor to segment and filter Group members, you can now save filters under a friendly name, which allows you to run the filters later without re-composing the filter criteria.

New Feature: Additional synchronization options for web databases

The second phase of our new "Behavioral Targeting" feature has been completed. Those customers that use JangoMail to pull data in real-time from their web site's databases can now have JangoMail write data back to their databases based on recipient's behaviors.

The following actions can be synchronized with a web database:

1. Unsubscribes
2. Bounces
3. Change of e-mail address requests
4. E-mail opens
5. E-mail clicks
6. Forward to friend requests
7. Web site activity

Each action can be associated with a custom SQL query which will be executed against the web database when the action occurs. By taking advantage of these synchronization options, you can send targeted mass e-mail campaigns to your e-mail database based on a recipient’s past behavior. For example, you can send to just those recipients that opened a particular e-mail campaign or clicked a particular link in a particular campaign.

To learn more about JangoMail's ability to communicate with a web database, see the updated tutorial.

New Feature / New Tutorial: Filtering Groups Based on Past Member Behavior

In preparation for our "Behavioral Targeting" feature which will be officially launched next week, we have published a new tutorial on filtering group members. The tutorial can be downloaded here.

You can now filter Group members based on the Group member's past behavior, such as clicking a link in a certain campaign, or opening an e-mail, or visiting a certain page on your web site.

This tutorial teaches you how to filter a Group to send to only members that match a certain criteria. Perhaps you only want to send to the Hotmail addresses in a Group. Perhaps you only want to send to those Group members whose “Age” is over 30. Perhaps you only want to send to those members of the Group that have joined the Group in the last 60 days. Perhaps you only want to send to those members of the Group who have clicked at least one link in a prior e-mail campaign. You can accomplish all of these by filtering your Group. You can filter your Group based on two kinds of criteria:

1. The information you have stored for each Group member in the Group’s fields, such as FirstName, LastName, Age, DOB, City

2. Information stored in your JangoMail account about the Group member’s past behavior, such as clicks and opens

For more information, see the tutorial.

Our "Private Label" customers will see a branded version of this tutorial within their application's "Help" tab.

New Tutorial on Unsubscribe and Bounce Management

Because JangoMail provides such sophisticated and robust unsubscribe and bounce management, we've published a comprehensive tutorial covering these subjects. The tutorial can be downloaded here.

The tutorial covers the following topics and more:

• How to add unsubscribe instructions to your e-mail


• How to customize what the recipient sees after clicking the unsubscribe link


• How to brand the unsubscribe link itself


• How to remove unsubscribed addresses from your Groups


• How to let recipients unsubscribe from a particular Group rather than your whole account


• How to add/remove unsubscribed addresses and domains


• How JangoMail takes feedback data from AOL, Outblaze, and other ISPs and automatically unsubscribes users that report your e-mailings as spam


• How to synchronize unsubsribed addresses with a web database


• How to customize bounce handling


• How to view bounced e-mail messages


• What counts as a "bounce" message and what does not

Our "Private Label" customers will see a branded version of this tutorial within their application's "Help" tab.

We've updated our "client testimonials" page

http://www.jangomail.com/ourclients_testimonials.asp

Find our what our customers have been saying about us...we've updated our testimonials page to include comments from customers from the last year and a half. Remember that JangoMail's testimonials are not fabricated quotes. They are real and unsolicited e-mail messages that we have received from our customers!

Subject line LENGTH validation on Send E-mail page

Some customers have been getting an error after clicking the "Send" button on the "Send E-mail" page if the Subject line is too long (greater than 200 characters).

We have now added a validation check so that you get a popup alert asking you to shorten your Subject line if JangoMail detects that the Subject line is too long when you hit the "Send" button.

mail.jangomail.com will now refuse connections from spammer IPs

As an extension to the JangoMail Spam Blocker, every day starting wtih today, IP addresses that send mail.jangomail.com (the incoming e-mail handler for @jangomail.com e-mail addresses) the highest amount of spam e-mail will be added to a blocklist that will prevent them from establishing a connection on port 25 to mail.jangomail.com.

This additional security measure will further reduce the amount of spam received as replies to mass e-mailings, and will conserve overall JangoMail network resources and bandwidth.

Multi-threading added to core sending process

The JangoMail engine processes mass e-mails in two steps. In the first step, a mass e-mail is pre-processed, where it is determined who the actual recipients are. The original recipient list is filtered for unsubscribes, bounces, duplicates, invalid e-mail addresses, and other measures. In the second step, JangoMail's network of distributed senders around the country actually send the indvidual e-mail messages.

It is the first pre-processing step that is now multi-threaded. Previously, this step operated in a linear fashion, pre-processing one mass e-mail job at a time. Occasionally, this would cause a delay in sending e-mails, when say, a customer sent out one mass e-mail to 2,000,000 recipients. All mass e-mail jobs submitted after the big job would have to wait while the big 2,000,000 recipient job was pre-processed. This wait has now been eliminated, because our new code can pre-process multiple mass e-mail jobs at a time.

This will result in greater overall e-mail sending speed across the entire JangoMail application!

Updated challenge-response filters

We have updated our incoming e-mail filter to categorize two more types of challenge-response e-mails:

1. Spam Sleuth challenge-responses
2. PeoplePC Spaminator challenge-responses

Previously, these types of challenges were being classified as User Reply e-mails. Now they will be appropriately classified as challenge-response e-mails.

How the spam blocker works

You may be wondering how JangoMail determines whether a response to a mass e-mailing is a valid reply or spam. The method JangoMail uses to decide is quite simple. Any response that doesn't fit into other categories, such as unsubscribes, bounces, out of office, etc., must be either spam or a valid reply from your recipient. The e-mail is assumed to be spam unless at least one of the following criteria are met, in which case the e-mail is a valid reply:

1. The Subject line of the e-mail is similar to the Subject line of a previously sent mass e-mail from your JangoMail account.

2. The From E-mail Address of the e-mail matches an address to which you've recently sent a mass e-mail.

3. The Body of the e-mail contains a special header that JangoMail includes on all outbound mass e-mails. This would indicate that the recipient replied to the e-mail, and left your original mass e-mail, with headers, at the bottom.

New Features: Spam blocker and better reply management

One of the complaints we frequently get from our higher volume and longer term customers is that they are frustrated with the amount of spam they receive at the address they use as their From Address in their mass e-mailings.

Why does this happen?

After a particular From Address has been used on large mass e-mailings, over time, the From Address becomes overexposed. Your From Address is obviously exposed to your recipients, and if your recipients have e-mail related viruses or spyware on their computers, your From Address can also be exposed to hackers and spammers.

We now have a spam blocker in place to combat this problem!

Our new spam blocker will filter out replies that are actually spam. Additionally:

1. You can decide whether or not they want to use the spam blocker.

2. If using the spam blocker, you can decide to have the e-mails classified as spam forwarded onto an e-mail address of your choice, or just sit in Reporting for viewing.

3. You can now decide what to prepend the subject line with in the cases of replies, challenge-responses, and spam messages. In the past, replies were always prepended with "USER REPLY: " and challenge response e-mails were always prepended with "CHALLENGE-RESPONSE: ". Now you can modify this text and add a prepend for spam e-mails as well, if you choose to have spam received by JangoMail sent to an e-mail address.

4. There is a new "Spam" category under Reporting --> Incoming Messages so that you can view spam that has been received by your account.

The default spam settings for all existing accounts and all new accounts are:

Spam blocker is on.
Spam is NOT e-mailed to any address.

All of these settings are under My Options --> Forward Replies To.

If in using our spam blocker feature, you notice false positives (e-mails being classified as spam that are legitimate replies), then please let us know so we can modify our spam-detection algorithm. You can let us know via https://www.jangomail.com/Support/.

Scrub reports will now contain an attachment

Details of a particular scrub report will no longer be contained within the body of the e-mail message. Rather, the particular details of the scrub report will now be in an attached text file to the e-mail message.

Change with how From Display Name is remembered

In the "Send E-mail" section, when you clicked the "Compose New Message" button, previously the From Display Name field would be pre-filled with the last From Display Name used on the specific computer.

NOW, the From Display Name that is remembered and pre-filled will be tied to the specific account that is logged in rather than the physical from which JangoMail is being accessed.

We are no longer checking help@us.jangomail.com

Requests for support sent to help@us.jangomail.com will no longer be read/answered. An autoresponse will be sent back to the sender requesting the sender to fill out the form at https://www.jangomail.com/Support/ instead.

New Way to Contact JangoMail Support

Since the beginning of JangoMail, we have used help@us.jangomail.com as our support e-mail address. We are phasing out help@us.jangomail.com and phasing in a new web-based support contact system, located at:

https://www.jangomail.com/Support/

This web-based support contact form has several advantages over using help@us.jangomail.com:

1. help@us.jangomail.com gets a lot of spam, and sometimes real support requests are confused with spam and vice versa.

2. It isn't always apparent to which account a particular support e-mail is referring, unless you, the user, are careful to include your username or contact information within your e-mail message to help@us.jangomail.com.

3. Our support personnel will now be able to look at your support history to refer back to an old case when necessary.

4. If you are logged IN to your account when accessing http://www.jangomail.com/Support/, then all of the contact information fields will already be filled out. All you have to do is type in a Subject and Message and hit the button.

We will continue to read and respond to e-mails sent to help@us.jangomail.com for now, but around mid-next week we will setup an autoresponder on the help@us.jangomail.com account that automatically kicks back an e-mail instructing you to submit your support request at https://www.jangomail.com/Support/ instead.

Bug Fix: Forward-to-friend and View-as-web-page links were preventing CAN-SPAM footer from being forced

Previously, if your account was set to force a CAN-SPAM footer, if you included a Forward-to-Friend link or a View-as-web-page link but NOT an unsubscribe link, then the CAN-SPAM footer was not forced, and it should have been forced since the unsubscribe link was not present.

This behavior has now been corrected.

New Tutorial on Adding/Importing Data Into Groups

Since one of the most frequent customer support requests involves help with importing data into Groups, we've written a step-by-step tutorial on this process.

The tutorial can be downloaded here.

If you pay-by-check, invoices will now be sent 30 days in advance

Previously, invoices for pay-by-check accounts were sent only 20 days in advance of renewal, therefore sometimes causing issues with accounts automatically expiring when checks did not arrive in time.

Now, these invoices will be sent 30 days in advance of the renewal.

Tutorial on Conditional Logic / Dynamic Messaging Updated

We have updated this tutorial to include information on the most common mistakes made by users when using this feature. This section of the document is entitled "Important Considerations" and includes information about:

1. Using straight quotes instead of curly quotes
2. Choosing VBScript compliant field names
3. Converting from strings to other types
4. Using the OutputString function to output a variable to the e-mail message

The revised tutorial can be downloaded here.