Tuesday, October 30, 2007

New API Methods to Retrieve Unsubscribes

We have three new API methods that allow you to pull the entire list of unsubscribed addresses and their dates, from an account:

  • Reports_GetUnsubscribesByCampaign_DataSet
    Retrieves list of unsubscribed addresses for a particular mass e-mail campaign. Returns a .NET DataSet.
  • Reports_GetUnsubscribesByCampaign_String
    Retrieves list of unsubscribed addresses for a particular mass e-mail campaign. Returns a string.
  • Reports_GetUnsubscribesByCampaign_XML
    Retrieves list of unsubscribed addresses for a particular mass e-mail campaign. Returns an XML document.
  • Monday, October 29, 2007

    Bug Fix: Activity Tracking Reports with Merged Groups

    Previously, when exporting an Activity Tracking report that was also merged with Group data, the report would fail to export to a CSV file, and the CSV file link would therefore fail to be sent via email.

    This issue has now been corrected.

    Wednesday, October 10, 2007

    Awesome Enhancements to JangoMail Groups

    Over the last few months, we have been busy architecting a brand new storage system to house JangoMail Groups. That project is now complete, and this week we're converting all JangoMail Groups over to our new system. To help you delineate which Groups have been converted and which haven't, we have temporarily placed an * symbol next to each Group that has been converted. You will see this when you click on the Groups and Email Addresses tab and view your Group listing.

    Additionally, all new Groups created going forward will be using the new architecture.

    The benefits of our new Groups architecture include:

    1. The ability to have up to 240 fields in a Group with no performance degradation. Previously, you were limted to around 40, before sending to and segmentation on Groups would underperform.

    2. Much faster segmentation of Groups when using the Filter and Send feature.

    3. The Delete All Members button will now work almost instantaneously. Previously, this could take several minutes with large Groups.

    4. The ability to search your Groups. You can search one specific Group or you can search all of your Groups at once. You can search on any field in a Group (such as E-mail Address, or First Name, or Company Name, for example), and you can search based on partially matching expressions. So if you want to find e-mail addresses across all Groups that contain "yahoo" in them, now you can!

    5. Much faster Group imports.

    Tuesday, October 09, 2007

    New API methods to edit a Group member

    We recently added the following two API methods, which some customers are already using to edit a Group member:

  • Groups_EditMember_ByAddress
    Updates a field for a group member. Returns a string
  • Groups_EditMember_ByID
    Updates a field for a Group member. Returns a string

  • As the two methods suggest, you can edit a Group member based on the member's e-mail address or the member's numeric ID.

    For more information on our API, please see http://api.jangomail.com.

    Monday, July 16, 2007

    New Feature for Group Sign-Up Forms

    You can now add a field to your Group named ReferrerURL, and if this field is present, when a new member joins your Group via a Web Site Signup Form, the URL of the page of the form will be captured and stored in this field.

    This can be useful if you have multiple Group Web Site Signup Forms on multiple pages of your web site, and you wish to track from what pages within your web site most people are signing up.

    Friday, July 13, 2007

    Scrub processing is now multi-threaded

    We have made Group scrubs multi-threaded, which means our system can now process up to ten Group scrubs at one time. This will greatly improve the speed at which Group scrubs are processed. We also have a built-in safety to ensure that no one single user can occupy more than three Scrub threads at the same time.

    Update: Email Campaigns will no longer wait on Scrub Jobs

    Previously, an outgoing e-mail campaign would be held up if the Group to which it was going had a pending Scrub job on it. We have now modified our code so that campaigns will go out, even if there is a pending Scrub on the E-mail Group to whom the campaign is going.

    Wednesday, July 11, 2007

    Bug Fix: Conditional Logic and the Enhanced HTML Editor

    When using "greater than" and "less than" symbols with the Enhanced HTML Editor, the symbols would be replaced with "gt;" and "lt;" notations, as is proper HTML. This would then prevent conditional logic/VBSsript within the Body of the e-mail campaign from running properly.

    We have fixed this bug by replacing the "gt;" and "lt;" notations with the proper "greater than" and "less than" symbols before the scripting engine processes the Body of the e-mail message.

    New Feature for Master/Sub Accounts

    We have added a feature tonight which allows you to designate individual sub-accounts to filter against the master account's unsubscribe list when an e-mail campaign is sent from the sub account.

    Master account users can manage the unsubscribe settings for individual sub-accounts by going to the Account Info tab, then clicking the Manage Sub-Accounts button. From here, the master account user can toggle on and off the ability of sub-accounts to use the master account's unsubscribe list when sending e-mail campaigns.

    Thursday, July 05, 2007

    New Feature: Are you sick of being thanked?

    Often times, after sending an e-mail campaign, the sender receives an influx of "thank you" auto-replies from recipients. Tonight we have introduced a new Reply Management Feature that allows you to filter out "thank you" auto-replies from valid replies after you send an e-mail campaign.

    You can choose to have these "thank you" auto-replies sent to a designated e-mail address, and you can have the subject of the e-mail prepended with some text. For example, you can pre-pend the subject of these e-mails with "THANK YOU: " so that you can easily identify these "thank you" autoresponses from actual replies. You can also choose to have "thank you" auto-replies not e-mailed to you at all but simply stored in Reporting for you to view.

    By default, the "thank you" filter is off. To configure your "thank you" filter settings, go to My Options --> Reply Management.

    Wednesday, July 04, 2007

    Reply Filters Enhanced

    We have made enhancements to our reply handling mechanism - the mechanism that separates and categorizes messages like out-of-office auto-replies, challenge-response emails, and valid replies after you send an e-mail campaign.

    Specifically, reply messages that have the following text in the beginning of the Body will be treated as unsubscribes:

    • please remove me
    • dont send me
    • don't send me
    • please stop emailing
    • stop sending me
    • take me off
    • unlist
    Additionally, we have improved our Challenge-Response message filtering to include challenges from the following additional Challenge-Response vendors:

    • ZoneAlarm Challenge Response
    • Bsafe Online Challenge REsponse
    Lastly, we have improved the "out of office" autoreply filter to include more phrases that indicate that the recipient is temporarily away.

    All of these enhancements serve one unified purpose - they allow JangoMail clients to spend less time wading through replies that aren't really replies and more time responding to valid replies and generating revenue for their organizations.

    New Feature: Capturing the IP Address and Web Browser from your Web Site Subscription Form

    JangoMail allows you to create a Group, define fields for that Group, and then place a sign up form on your web site to add subscribers directly to your JangoMail Group. The process of creating the sign-up form for your web site begins with clicking the Sign Up Form for my Web Site button underneath your chosen Group in the Groups and E-mail Addresses main tab.

    It is now possible to capture the IP address and web browser of your visitors. Simply create two extra fields in your Group:
    1. IPAddress
    2. WebBrowser
    Adding these two fields to your Group will allow JangoMail to automatically capture your subscriber's IP address and web browser/operating system and will automatically add this data to each Group member's profile upon sign-up.

    Note that if you add these two fields to your Group, and then use the Sign Up Form for my Web Site tool, form fields for these two fields WILL NOT be included in the generated HTML code, since we don't want actual subscribers actually inputting anything for these fields.

    Saturday, June 30, 2007

    New Feature: Tracking when a Group Member was last modified

    Tonight we have added a new feature that saves the date/time a Group Member was last modified. A Group Member's record can be modified in one of three ways:

    1. You, the account administrator, edits the Group Member within the JangoMail interface.
    2. The Group Member modified his own profile via the Group Member self-modification form that you can link to from within your e-mail campaigns.
    3. Via the API
    When you display the Group Member's information, the "Last Modified" timestamp will show. Additionally, if you export Group data, a new column of data, "LastModified", will appear in the exported CSV file.

    Lastly, all API methods that retrieve Group member data will also pull the "LastModified" timestamp. These methods include:

  • Groups_GetMember_ByAddress_DataSet
    Retrieves a Group member by the member's e-mail address. Returns a .NET DataSet.
  • Groups_GetMember_ByAddress_XML
    Retrieves a Group member by the member's e-mail address. Returns an XML document.
  • Groups_GetMember_ByID_DataSet
    Retrieves a Group member by the member's numeric ID. Returns a .NET DataSet.
  • Groups_GetMember_ByID_XML
    Retrieves a Group member by the member's numeric ID. Returns an XML document.
  • Groups_GetMembers_DataSet
    Retrieves members of a group Returns a .NET DataSet.
  • Groups_GetMembers_String
    Retrieves members of a group Returns a string
  • Groups_GetMembers_XML
    Retrieves members of a group Returns a string
  • Deleting files from remote image server

    We fixed an issue today involving the deletion of files from the Image Manager. Previously, if you deleted an image from your account's Image Manager, the file would be removed from our local server but would not be removed from our remote image server, img.jangomail.com. Therefore, even if you deleted a file, it still would have been accessible if previously included in an e-mail campaign.

    Now, when an image file is deleted, it is deleted from both places, our local server, and our remote image server, img.jangomail.com.

    Friday, June 29, 2007

    Group Signup Forms for Web Sites -- No Longer Processing on Inactive Accounts

    Up until now, the Group Signup Form for customers' web sites worked even if a JangoMail account was inactive. We have now modified so this mechanism so that subscriber signups from web site forms will no longer be added to a JangoMail Group if the corresponding JangoMail account is inactive.

    Wednesday, June 27, 2007

    API/Web Service Enhancement

    We have deployed a new version of our web service tonight (http://api.jangomail.com) that provides for better logging of successes and failures of method calls to our internal support staff. This new detailed logging mechanism will allow us to more easily and more efficiently determine the causes of issues that customers may experience with method calls, such as when programmatic exceptions are thrown due to invalid input parameters.

    Tuesday, June 26, 2007

    We're hiring!

    JangoMail is looking for a Senior Email Deliverability Analyst to join our deliverability team. The successful candidate will have a thorough understanding of email deliverability issues, the SMTP protocol, excellent communication skills, and 2-5 years of experience working in the field of email deliverability.

    Do you or someone you know fit the bill? This is a position where you can work virtually from anywhere in the world, such as a home office. For a more detailed job description, please see this LinkedIn job posting:

    http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=325828

    Monday, June 25, 2007

    New Feature in Beta: High Speed Imports of Recipient Lists via FTP

    We are beta-testing a new high speed recipient list import mechanism with several customers. This feature allows you to FTP a flat text file containing recipient data to JangoMail. JangoMail then performs a high-speed import of your recipient data into a JangoMail Group-like structure, allowing you to send to your file as you would a JangoMail Group. The difference is you can import hundreds of thousands of records this way in mere seconds!

    However, the limitation with this method of importing data is that you cannot take advantage of regular Group features, such as:
    • Autoresponders
    • Giving a link to allow a subscriber to modify his Group profile
    • Giving a link to allow a subscriber to delete his Group profile
    • Segmenting data based on field criteria
    • Segmenting data based on recipient behavior
    • Merging report data with field data from the recipient file
    This "quick and dirty" method of importing data is meant for those users where import time is of the essence, and the other advanced JangoMail Group features aren't necessary.


    Friday, June 15, 2007

    New API Methods to Retrieve Group Members

    We have added 3 new API methods:

    Groups_GetMembers_XML
    Groups_GetMembers_DataSet
    Groups_GetMembers_String

    These methods can be called to export a Group's data in any of the three formats: XML, .Net DataSet, or String.

    For a complete listing of methods, see http://api.jangomail.com

    Thursday, June 14, 2007

    Upgraded HTML Editor and Windows Vista Issues Fixed

    Tonight we upgraded the Enhanced HTML Editor to version 6 of Ephox's EditLive editor, and this upgrade will fix all Windows Vista compatibility issues that existed before. Several Windows Vista users had reported that the Enhanced HTML Editor would not load -- this problem is now corrected.

    Additionally, some Windows Vista users had reported not being able to access the JangoMail web site at all -- this issue was corrected about a month ago. This issue was due to the fact that Windows Vista implements TCP/IP completely differently than past versions of Windows, and the new implementation was incompatible with our core firewall. This has now been corrected.