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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

New Feature: Preview just the Plain Text version

Tonight, we've added a new feature that allows you to send just the Plain Text version of your e-mail message to yourself, in addition to the full version containing both HTML and Plain Text (where most e-mail clients will then display the HTML version).

When you click the Preview/Save button in the Send E-mail section, if your e-mail campaign has both HTML and Plain Text message parts, you will see a checkbox in the popup window underneath the e-mail address box. Check the box if you wish for an additional Plain Text version of your e-mail message to be sent to you.

Press Coverage of JangoMail

We have a new section on our web site, entitled "In the News..." that lists recent press coverage received by JangoMail.

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

New Foreign Language Features

Several enhancements have been made to even further support foreign languages:

1. Foreign characters are now supported in the From Display Name. Previously they were not supported.

2. Foreign characters will now display properly in the "General Job Statistics" report in the "Reporting" section. Previously foreign characters would display has question marks.

JangoMail now supports DomainKeys and DKIM

JangoMail is one of the first e-mail marketing companies to launch support for both DomainKeys and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). The official announcement and press release will be issued on Monday, but emails that you send with a @jangomail.com From Address are already being cryptographically signed with DomainKeys and DKIM!

This will help with deliverability to receivers that validate based on these technologies, like Yahoo! Mail and GMail.

For more information JangoMail's implementation of DomainKeys/DKIM and for instructions on how to set up your own From Address domain to take advantage of these technologies, see the document:

DomainKeys and DKIM in JangoMail

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.