Bug Fix on Send E-mail Page

A user last week reported a bug where the states of the "Do not send duplicates" and "Bounces go to JangoMail" checkboxes would not be preserved during an Editor switch. Instead, these checkboxes would always revert to the checked state after an Editor switch.

This has now been fixed.

New Group Scrub Option: Deleting unconfirmed email addresses

If your Group is a confirmed opt-in Group, you can now periodically delete unconfirmed e-mail addresses from your Group. You can do this by performing a "Scrub" on your Group. Along with the usual scrub types (removing unsubscribes, bounces, duplicates, etc.), you can now choose to scrub out unconfirmed Group members.

You can do this as a one-time or a scheduled scrub.

New Feature: Dynamically Inserting Subject into Message

At the request of a JangoMail client, we have developed a feature which allows for the insertion of an e-mail message's Subject into the message Body dynamically. This feature uses regular personalization syntax. To insert the Subject into the Body, use %%Subject%%.

For example, if the Subject of your e-mail message is "Hello %%FirstName%%, here is a special offer for you" and you wish for this same text to appear in the Body of your e-mail message, simply insert "%%Subject%%" into the Body of your message.

A couple notes:

• If the Subject contains its own personalization parameters, the personalization on the Subject will be done before the "%%Subject%%" in the message's Body is replaced.
• If "Subject" is already a field name in your Group or in your database table, then that Subject's value will take precedence over the e-mail message's Subject. So if the Group you are sending to has a field called "Subject", and then you use "%%Subject%%" in your message's Body to personalize, the Group field's value, and not the messages's Subject, will be used to replace occurences of "%%Subject%%".
  

"Set Plain Text Automatically" feature now converts HTML lists

We've improved the "Set Plain Text Automatically" feature, which automatically generates a plain text version of your email based on the HTML version of your email. Now, HTML lists, both bulleted and numbered, with "ul", "ol", and "li" tags will properly be converted to a plain-text list with each item beginning with an asterik (*).

For example, the following HTML list would be converted as follows.

HTML List:

• Embedded URL feature now supports personalization (read more)
• Autoresponder response times have been decreased for "immediate" autoresponders (read more)
• Our farm of distributed SMTP e-mail sending servers has expanded from 8 to over 30.
• Mass e-mail initiations, those email broadcasts triggered from your own e-mail client, are now processed much faster with a dedicated domain (@init.jangomail.com) for processing these e-mail messages. (read more)

After being converted to plain text:

* Embedded URL feature now supports personalization (read more)

* Autoresponder response times have been decreased for "immediate"
autoresponders (read more)

* Our farm of distributed SMTP e-mail sending servers has expanded from
8 to over 30.

* Mass e-mail initiations, those email broadcasts triggered from your
own e-mail client, are now processed much faster with a dedicated
domain (@init.jangomail.com) for processing these e-mail messages.
(read more)

How to stop signup form spam

Several clients have recently reported that they are getting a lot of fake information submitted to their JangoMail Group signup forms on their web sites. These automatic submissions are done by web form robots. For more information about this problem, Google "form spam".

We have come up with a solution that will eliminate most signup form spam. The FORM tag generated by the "Signup Form Generator" looks like:

<form
action = "http://www.jangomail.com/APPLICATION/PGSF2.asp" method = "POST"
name="J3998964" id="J3998964">

Modifying this to:

<form enctype="multipart/form-data"
action = "http://www.jangomail.com/APPLICATION/PGSF2ENC.asp" method = "POST"
name="J3998964" id="J3998964">

will fix the issue of form spam, because by setting the form's encoding method, this will cause most robotic spam form submissions to fail because they will submit the form with the WRONG encoding type. Note the differences:

1. The addition of enctype="multipart/form-data" to the FORM tag.
2. Changing PGSF2.asp to PGSF2ENC.asp

Only use this method if your existing form's ACTION tag is set to PGSF2.asp. If your form's ACTION tag uses a different file, then you must re-create the signup form using the "Signup Form Generator" under the "Groups and Email Addresses" section, and then apply this method.

A note about sending personalized attachments

Customers wishing to send mass personalized attachments to their recipients should now use the Add Attachment 6 field on the Send Email page as opposed to the primary Add Attachment 1 field. Only Add Attachment 6 supports the personalized attachments feature.

New Feature: Force Recipients for Quality Control

We have added a new feature which allows you to have all mass e-mail messages sent from your account to be also sent automatically to up to TEN pre-determined e-mail addresses. Large organizations that have many users using JangoMail can use this method as a quality control measure, since it will allow one to see all e-mail messages sent from an account.

This new feature can be configured under My Options --> Force Recipients.

A copy of all mass e-mails sent from the account will be sent to the designated e-mail addresses. However, e-mail messages that are previews, autoresponders, triggers will NOT be sent to the designated e-mail addresses.

Faster Autoresponder processing times

Autoresponders that are set to send email messages immediately after a member joins a Group will now operate much faster.

Previously, there was a delay of 2-3 minutes before an autoresponder email would be sent to a member that joined the Group. Now, the email message will be sent in about 30 seconds.

Feedback Loop Established with Road Runner

JangoMail has established a feedback loop with Road Runner. Now, anytime an email recipient with an rr.com e-mail address files a spam complaint against a JangoMail user, the recipient's e-mail address will automatically be placed on the account's unsubscribe list.

Improved header/footer management

You can now specify distinct headers/footers for plain text and HTML messages.

Previously, you could only specify one header and one footer, and you would have to decide whether this should apply to plain text or HTML or both types of messages.

You can now specify a header/footer set for plain text messages and a different header/footer set for HTML messages.

New e-mail address to send mass e-mail initiations

If you initiate mass e-mails from your desktop e-mail client by sending an e-mail message to username@jangomail.com, you should now send your e-mail message to username@init.jangomail.com instead. Sending to @init.jangomail.com rather than @jangomail.com will result in your mass e-mail initiation being processed almost immediately.

Recently, some customers have experienced delays when sending mass e-mail initiations to username@jangomail.com because the @jangomail.com also processes all bounces/unsubscribes/replies for customers' mass e-mailings, and this causes the @jangomail.com mail handler to experience backlogs occasionally.

By isolating where mass e-mail initiations are sent, we can ensure that your mass e-mail initiations are processed separately from unsubsribes/bounces/replies.

Embedded URL feature now supports personalization

The JangoMail "Embedded URL" feature allows you to embed URLs within the body of your e-mail message. When JangoMail sends the actual e-mail message, JangoMail will replace the URL with the actual content pulled from that web address. For example, if your e-mail message contained:

[##http://www.jangomail.com##]

then the content from JangoMail's home page would be sent in the e-mail message.

Now, you can use personalization syntax to customize the URL per e-mail recipient. For example, if you are sending to a JangoMail Group with the following fields:

emailaddress
FirstName
LastName
UserID

the body 0f your e-mail message can contain:

[##http://www.jangomail.com/?UserID=%%UserID%%##]

Previously, personalization syntax was not allowed in embedded URLs, but now personalization syntax is allowed.

Group sharing between Master/Sub Accounts

You now have the ability to use a Group from a agency master account in an agency sub-account. This provides for centralized Group administration - simply upload the Group to your master account, and then you can send to the Group from within any sub-account.

Group sharing between the master and sub-account can be turned on or off at the individual sub-account level. So you can set some of your sub-accounts to display Groups from the master account while other sub-accounts only display their own Groups.

If you would like to activate this feature for your master/sub-accounts, please contact JangoMail support.

"Set Plain Text Automatically" Feature Improved

The feature that allows you to automatically create a plain text message from an HTML message has been improved! Here are the improvements:

1. The "Set Plain Text Automatically" button now works with the Simple HTML Editor and the Enhanced HTML Editor. Previously it only worked with the Enhanced HTML Editor.

2. The "Set Plain Text Automatically" button now works even if you are composing HTML in the plain text editor rather than the HTML editor. Previously it only worked when you were working with the HTML editor.

3. There have been improvements to the algorithm which more accurately predicts line spacings when generating the plain text message.

4. Links in the HTML message will now show up in the plain text message when the link text is not a URL. For example, this HTML code:

Click <a href="http://www.jangomail.com">here</a> to go to our web site.

will be converted to:

Click here <http://www.jangomail.com> to go to our web site.

New Feature: Smart Templates

Today we have officially launched our "Smart Templates" feature, which allows customers to design e-mails based on professionally designed templates that match their organization's logo and color schemes.

Read the full feature announcement here.

New "Mark as Template" Feature

On the Send E-mail page, there is now a checkbox underneath the Advanced Options section that allows you to mark any e-mail you send as a template. The checkbox is labeled "Mark as Template". Any e-mail marked as a template:

1. Will show up at the top of the "Re-send Old Message" and "Edit Old Message" dropdown menus.

2. Will be labeled "TEMPLATE" in the two dropdown menus.

3. Will never be deleted from your account by our automated data purges

This feature is the first stage in our overall template feature rollout which will occur over the next two weeks.

Bug Fix: Group Exports

We have corrected an issue where Exported Group CSV files would not display properly in Excel if a particular field value included double quotes (") or commas(,) as the very first character.

This issue is now fixed and all Exported Group CSV files should now display correctly in Excel.

API Method "ImportGroupMembersFromData" Improved

Previously, the maximum string size for the ImportData input parameter of the ImportGroupMembersFromData method was approximately 4 MB. This limit has been increased to 32 MB, which will allow for larger data sets to be imported at one time with this method.

How to do A/B split testing in JangoMail

It is very easy to conduct an A/B split test in JangoMail.

Using JangoMail Groups

If you are storing your e-mail lists in JangoMail Groups, you simply need to send one e-mail to one half of your Group and the second e-mail to the second half of your Group. You can easily split your Group in half using the "Filter and Send" feature.

1. Click the "Filter and Send" button.

2. Switch to the "Advanced Query Editor".

3. In the yellow "Tips" area, click link for "A/B split testing". This will populate the SQL SELECT and WHERE clauses.

4. Click the "Filter Members Now" button.

Now, JangoMail is prepared to send to half of your JangoMail Group.

After you send this e-mail, you may want to send a varying version to part "B" fo your Group. This step is very simple. This time you will NOT start in the "Filter and Send" section. Just go to the "Send E-mail" section, elect to send the e-mail to the entire Group in the Group selection box, but then down below, under "Don't send to recipients of these past e-mailings:", choose the e-mailing that you previously sent to part "A" of your Group.

This will filter out everyone that received e-mailing "A", thereby sending to only the second half of your Group.

Using an External Database Connection

If you are using JangoMail to pull in e-mail recipient data in real-time from an external database, then you need only write the appropriate SQL query to pull in only half of your records. For example, if your e-mail recipient data is stored in the table "Contacts", the SQL query would be:

SELECT TOP 50 PERCENT * FROM Contacts

If your database does not support the "percent" designation with the TOP keyword, then you can manually specify the half-count of your table. If your table has 5,000 records in it, you could use:

SELECT TOP 2500 * FROM Contacts

Bug Fix: Large Group Email Lists Display Faster Now

In the past, customers having a large number of e-mail addresses in a Group (over 1 million) may have experienced long delays when in the "Groups and E-mail Addresses" section, after having selected the Group and waiting for the list of e-mail addresses to display in the blue area.

The list of e-mail addresses will now display much faster. Additionally, sorting through the list 200 at a time with the <> links will now operate much faster. And lastly, using the Search box to find an e-mail address or a range of addresses will operate much faster as well.