Group Scrub Tool Expanded

JangoMail's Scrub Group Members feature has been expanded to better "clean" lists of bounced addresses and to allow you to see what a Scrub will do before actually permitting the Scrub to change your data.

Previously, the Scrub to remove previously bounced addresses would remove those addresses that had bounced X times (per your My Options, Bounce Handling settings) prior, with the default being 3.

Now, you also have the option to remove "definitive" bounces that have occurred only once.

Why? Whitelisting requirements with many ISPs now dictate that definitive bounces are removed after a single bounce. As a result, JangoMail has been removing them "on the fly" during sending, as you see in Sending Complete email results, but this has not been reflected in the Scrub Group Members function until now.

A definitive bounce is one where the receiving server responds with a message indicating that the particular address does not exist on that server. Typically, these are the "user unknown," "mailbox not found," etc. types of addresses.

Concerned that a Scrub might not do what you expect? Now, get a Scrub report without actually changing any data. Use the new option at the top of the Scrub Group Members page to elect a View Only scrub.

Your Email Manager will get the Scrub Job Complete report, showing data as "VIEW ONLY." The total number of Group Members won't change, but the report's detail will show you what data would have been affected had you really run the Scrub.

Then, you can safely go back in and run the real scrub to clean your data, if you choose.

The email notification will have (VIEW-ONLY) in the Subject line, and the report will look like:

Enhancements to Reporting: Click Tracking All Positions

JangoMail has expanded Super Reporting's Click Tracking data.

Previously, Click Tracking reports sorted by URL would show Click Tracking data separately for each position of a URL within a message. If your URL appeared 3 times in a message, the Click Tracking data would be split among the positions, so you could see which position achieved the best results.

Now, in addition to the data split by position, we have included additional columns for Total Clicks All Positions and Unique Clicks All Positions so that you can quickly gauge interest in a particular link, regardless of its page position as well.

Bug Fix: Plain Text Preview

When using Preview/Save on a message under composition, users have the ability to check a box from the pop up to also have a plain text version of the HTML message sent separately so that it can be checked for appearance as well.

We have made two adjustments to the processing of the plain text message for Preview. These issues were NOT affecting campaigns that were actually sent ("Send E-mail" button), but only the Previews.

1. The From Address will no longer show a 4 digit numeric extension. Ex: browniekitchen0042@jangomail.com will now show simply as browniekitchen@jangomail.com.
2. When Click Tracking is enabled for the campaign, but disabled for the plain text version of the message, the additional tracking code will no longer show in the Preview version either. A link in plain text of http://www.browniekitchen.com will remain unchanged.

New Administrative Watch Feature

The JangoMail Support Team has added to its array of administrative tools with a new Alert feature. Your Support Team can now set a watch on your account to be alerted directly by email when a campaign of a given size is being launched.

This allows us to watch over your messages as you explore new features or as we may be assisting you with troubleshooting any concerns with message processing as the message is actually going out. When your Support representative sets the Alert, he/she will be notified by email when a campaign that meets the Alert's settings has been sent. The JangoMail user will not notice any change in how he/she sends, and the Support team can watch the campaign move through each step of the sending process closely.

Group Merge Available in Exported Reports

JangoMail has now updated our Super Reporting pages to again allow for merging Group data with reports during export. To use this feature, you must export by email (the envelope icon). The direct download to CSV will not perform the merge.

If you have sent a campaign to a JangoMail Group, you will be able to select that Group during export to see the list of data in the report, along with the data that was originally stored along with the email address in your Group.

Let's do an example:

• A campaign is sent to a Group containing the following data:
  
  emailaddress, customerID, firstname
  jane@doe.com, 12345, Jane
  smith@yahoo.com, 12346, Bob
  


• The Unsubscribes report shows that Jane unsubscribed, and we export that report.
  


• With a standard export, the email address would be included in the report, along with the date and time the address unsubscribed (jane@doe.com, 06/13/2008 01:00:00 PM).
  


• If the export is Merged with the original Group that received the message, the report would include the email address, the date and time of the unsubscribe, the customerID, and the firstname (jane@doe.com, 06/13/2008 01:00:00 PM, 12345, Jane).

This feature is most often used when exported data needs to be synchronized locally to other stored data. In the example above, we could then update Jane's information easily because we had her customerID -- and that is how our system tracks her.

User-Agent Identification Added

JangoMail will now identify itself with a User-Agent when making HTTP/HTTPS connections to your web server.

The JangoMail User-Agent will report as: JNHTTP

Customers examining their web logs will now be able to identify JangoMail's connections to their servers.

Technical Notes: Using the JangoMail API with Java

Robert Fischer is the creator of OffstageArts, an open source integrated arts management system (http://offstagearts.org). OffstageArts is written in Java and deployed via Java WebStart. Mr. Fischer has graciously provided notes on his solution for us to post so others can follow in his footsteps. Many thanks to Robert for sharing his work with us!

Using JangoMail with Java

The most convenient way to use JangoMail with Java is to use Java-based SOAP tools. Apache Axis (http://ws.apache.org/axis/) is available as a commponly used Java SOAP system. Although these tools can be intimidating at first, they make life much easier over the long run. Moreover, using them does not require much effort, just follow the steps below.

Axis is able to download the JangoMail WSDL web service description file and generate a set of JangoMail Java stub classes from it. You can then compile those classes and use them in your application. The JangoMail SOAP stub classes (generated by Axis) insulate you from the complexities of SOAP XML. An example of using these classes:

-------------------------------------------

// Make a service

JangoMail service = new JangoMailLocator();

// Now use the service to get a stub which implements the SDI.

String usr = "JangoMailUserName";
String pwd = "JangoMailPassword";
JangoMailSoap soap = service.getJangoMailSoap(new URL(https://api.jangomail.com/api.asmx));

soap.addGroup(usr, pwd, "TestGroup");
-----------------------------------------------

Doing It -- Automated

The easiest way to go through this process is to use the enclosed Netbeans/Maven project. For this, you will need NetBeans with the Maven Plug-in. If you do not have that, it can be obtained at: http://netbeans.org/ and then by following directions at: http://mevenide.codehaus.org/m2-site/mevenide2-netbeans/installation.html

With NetBeans+Maven, you are now ready to go:

1. Download and unzip the accompanying project from the following link, and open it in NetBeans: Download here.
2. Edit the file RunWsdl.java and make sure the variable "mavenProjectRoot" is set correctly for your project home directory.
3. Right-click on the project and select "Run." This should download the WSDL file and generate all the necessary Java classes in the project.
4. Right-click on the project and select "Clean and Build." This will compile the Java classes you just produced. Look at Test.java for a simple example on how these classes can be used.

This procedure has now produced a file "jangomail-1.0-LATEST.jar" that you can use in other projects. If your other projects are Maven- based, you can use the dependency:

groupId = com.jangomail
artifactId = jangomail
version = 1.0-LATEST

When the JangoMail API changes, you must re-run this procedure to make the updates available to your application.

Doing It -- Manual

If you do not have NetBeans + Maven, then you will need to download Axis and run it manually:

1. Download Apache Axis from http://ws.apache.org/axis/
2. Put all the jar files in Apache Axis on your CLASSPATH.
3. In a command shell, change directory to your source directory.
4. Run the command:
   java org.apache.axis.wsdl.WSDL2Java https://api.jangomail.com/api.asmx?WSDL
5. Compile the source code that results.

You can now use these classes in your own program, as given in the example above. You will have to include the Axis-supplied .jar files as well.

JangoMail for Salesforce official release

JangoMail for Salesforce has been certified by salesforce.com and is now officially on the AppExchange.

A press release will be sent to media outlets this morning, and and we'll be sending an email announcement to all of our clients later this week.

Visual Metrics Now in Click Tracking

JangoMail's latest enhancement to Super Reporting adds greater visibility to your Click Tracking metrics. With our new Visual Overlay Option, you can see your tracking results visually superimposed on top of your sent message.

(click to see full size image )


At a glance, you can now see your message and exactly how each link is performing!



How do you turn on the feature? When reviewing your Click Tracking detail report for a campaign, click the Visual Overlay button to bring up the new layout option.



Want to see detail on a particular link? Hover over the percentage to pop up its full metrics too.

Open and Click Tracking Now Capture IP

JangoMail has enhanced the raw data captured along with both Open and Click Tracking features. Effective 5/19/2008, your raw data reports will show the IP address from which the recipient opened or clicked his/her message.

This is how Opens will look in Reporting:



This is how Clicks will appear in Reporting:

Historical Tracking Now Available for Group Members

Want to know what you've sent to a particular recipient recently? Have they opened or clicked links in your messages?

With our new Historical Tracking feature, you can now see your activity history for an individual address stored in a JangoMail Group.

To pull up the history go to Groups and E-mail Addresses and select your Group. Within the Group, select the desired address to display that subscriber's details in the right hand panel. At the top of the details screen, click to View historical tracking information for this person.

The detailed report will display to show you the 30 day history. You can use the dropdown to go back 60 and even 90 days for the recipient.

API enhancement allows sending email campaign with on-the-fly personalization data

We have enhanced the "Send" API methods to allow you to pass in on-the-fly personalization data, along with email addresses. Therefore you can now send a personalized email campaign in one single method call without sending to a JangoMail Group.

Traditionally, when using the API to send a personalized email campaign, you would have to first create a Group with AddGroup, then add or import members to the Group with AddGroupMember or ImportGroupMembersFromData, and then send to the Group with SendMassEmail. You can still do this if you prefer, but now there's an easier way as well. The following methods are affected:

SendMassEmail
Sends a mass e-mail with a plain text and/or HTML e-mail. Returns a string.

SendMassEmailPrevious2
New method. Sends a previously saved mass e-mail to a new set of recipients. Returns a string.

SendMassEmailRaw
Sends a mass e-mail, given a raw message including MIME parts and a MIME boundary. Returns a string.

To pass in personalization data, use the ToOther input parameter to pass in the actual set of data. The set of data can be in comma-separated form or in any other row and column delimited format that you choose. You may use whatever row and comma delimiter you like for the data in ToOther. The ToOther parameter should only contain the data, and not the field names for the data.

Use the Options input parameter to specify the field names and the row and column delimiters for the data in ToOther. The Options parameter is a comma-delimited list of attribute/value pairs. The attributes relevant to this feature are:

ToOtherRowDelimiter
ToOtherColDelimiter
ToOtherFieldNames

You can use these character codes for their corresponding delimiters:

"c" represents a comma
"s" represents a space
"n" represents a newline, or a hard break
"t" represents a tab

The ToOtherFieldNames attribute must be a pipe (|) delimited list of field names corresponding to the data in ToOther.

Let's do an example!

I want to send a personalized email campaign to 3 people, and I want to use First Name and Last Name as additional personalization data.

ToOther=
John,Smith,john@smith.com|David,Gary,david@gary.com|Sheila,
Panther,sheila@panther.com

Options=
ToOtherRowDelimiter=|,ToOtherColDelimiter=c,
ToOtherFieldNames=FirstName|LastName|EmailAddress

Subject=
Hello %%FirstName%%

MessagePlain=
Hello %%FirstName%% %%LastName%% -- your email address is %%EmailAddress%%

JangoMail's Integration with Salesforce® is here!

Our long-awaited integration with Salesforce® is complete.

If you have a JangoMail account and want to install it into your Salesforce® account, you can Get It Now.

This is a private link because we're not officially listed on the Salesforce® AppExchange® yet, but we will be in 2-3 weeks after they review and certify us.

If you don't yet have a JangoMail account, you can create one for free once you install "JangoMail for Salesforce®" into your Salesforce® account.

For now, this will only work if you have the Enterprise or Unlimited editions of Salesforce®. After we become officially listed on the AppExchange®, even Professional edition users can use our integration.

What can you do with JangoMail for Salesforce®?

• Create, send, and track targeted email campaigns to your Contacts, Leads, and Campaigns. Send one-off emails to just a single Contact or Lead, send to selected Contacts or Leads based on criteria that you define, send to all of your Contacts or Leads, or send to a pre-defined Salesforce® Campaign. And you can do all of this from with custom JangoMail buttons within your Contacts, Leads, and Campaigns tabs.
• Unparalleled real-time Reporting capabilities, allowing you to track opens/clicks/bounces/unsubscribes/forwards and activity through your web site
• Rendering: See exactly what your email looks like in Yahoo, GMail, AOL, and other email clients before sending
• Historical tracking by recipient. Click on a Contact or Lead and see exactly what email campaigns have been sent to them, and actions (opened/clicked/etc.) that Contact or Lead took.

New Features for Mass Email Initiations

Tonight we have added a slew of enhancements to our Mass Email Initiation feature. This is the feature that allows you to send an email campaign to one or more Groups by composing and sending your email message from an outside email program, like Outlook, GMail, or even a Blackberry.

New enhancements to this feature allow you to:

1. Have a word or phrase automatically pre-pended to the Subject of the email campaign.
2. Have JangoMail authenticate the email by the From Address rather than by looking for [password-send] in the Subject line.
3. Encompass the message as received within a pre-defined template. For example, if you wish to send a simple text message from your Blackberry, and have that text message inserted into a more aesthetically pleasing template before the email message is sent to Group members, you can now do that.

Below is a screenshot of the new Mass Email Initiation settings page under My Options --> Mass Email Initiations:

New Super Reporting Features

On Friday, we launched a few Super Reporting enhancements. They include:

1. Numbers now have commas in them, when greater than 3 digits.

2. The Filter box at the top of each report will now clearly indicate when a Filter is in effect. This will eliminate confusion when only certain rows of the Report are displayed due to a previously-set filter.

3. The Campaign Details page now shows all of the individual properties of the e-mail campaign. Here's an example:



4. Under the Recipients section, the Actions report now has a "Bounced" column:



5. Under the Recipients section, there is a new "By Domain / Actions" report:

Salesforce.com Integration, Phase I

We have released the first part of our Salesforce.com integration, a section within JangoMail that allows you to pull in your Leads/Contacts in real-time from your Salesforce.com account, and then send an email campaign to your Leads/Contacts, or a subset of Leads/Contacts.

To use this feature, your Salesforce.com account must allow API access. Salesforce.com Enterprise and Unlimited edition accounts have API access turned on by default, but API access is also available for Professional edition a la carte.

From JangoMail, click the Extract from My Database tab, and then click on the Connect to Salesforce.com button.

Below is a screenshot:

Feature Enhancement: Web database connections now support HTTPS

When configuring JangoMail to connect to a web site's database, the connection to the customer's web server can now be done over the secure HTTPS protocol rather than the HTTP protocol. Previously, only the HTTP protocol was supported, and to ensure security, a private key encrypted database information passed to the customer's web server, and that same private key decrypted the database information on the customer's web server. Now, the HTTPS protocol will itself ensure the encryption and decryption of database credentials. In time, we will deprecate the JangoMail custom private key encryption mechanism and encourage all customers to use this feature over HTTPS.

The form where you specify the URL for the special script file now contain a drop-down where you can specify http:// or https://.

See the below screenshots:

New Feature: Click Tracking Enhancement

Tonight, we have enhanced the Click Tracking feature. Click Tracking now allows you to pass campaign and recipient-personalization variables through to your destination URL.

You can choose to append personalization variables to the destinatinon URL by going to My Options --> Click Tracking.

Below is a screenshot:



Here's an example. If your e-mail campaign links to http://www.browniekitchen.com/WelcomeVisitor.html, then the e-mail recipient's browser will go to the following when the link is clicked:

If box is unchecked:

http://www.browniekitchen.com/WelcomeVisitor.html

If box is checked:

http://www.browniekitchen.com/WelcomeVisitor.html?
MassEmailID=24343243&email_id=98434&emailaddress
=john@doe.com&FirstName=John&LastName=Smith&
submission_date=1/1/08&confirmed=True

Therefore, checking the box allows you to program your web page to display a personalized message to the recipient based on the variables in the URL.

Open Tracking Bug Fix

We have modified the 1-pixel open-tracking GIF image so that it is transparent instead of white. A customer using a colored-background HTML e-mail campaign informed us that he could see the white 1-pixel "dot" used to track opens at the bottom of his email campaign.

Therefore, we have modified the 1-pixel "dot" to be a transparent GIF rather than a white GIF.

New Feature: Set your own notification preferences

You can now control which JangoMail email notifications you receive, setting individual preferences for:

• Sending Complete notifications
• Import Complete notifications
• Scrub Complete notifications

To set your notification preferences, go to My Options --> Notifications.

Below is a screenshot: