New Feature - Campaign Send Approval

Question: Are you the manager of the email marketing department at your company?

• Do you employ other talented individuals to write marketing emails for you?
• Do you want those authors to have access to create emails on JangoMail on their own terms?
• Do you want to be in control of the emails that actually get sent to your end customers?

Seems impossible to have all of these features at once? We think not. That's why we developed a feature for JangoMail that makes this level of engagement and control available to those "heads of marketing" out there.

Grant Your Approval to Send Campaigns...

Typically when you share a JangoMail account with different members in your organization, you create what are called Other Logins under your Account Settings. Other Logins are separate usernames and passwords that can have different restrictions to access different parts of the JangoMail service.

We added a new restriction option you can place on one of these Other Logins that allows you to restrict the ability for the account to send a message. Already an account could be blocked from accessing messages all together, if you select to restrict them from the "Messages" page. But now you have the fine grain control to allow a user to access the "Messages" page and create messages while you remain in control of actually initiating the sending of campaigns.

An account with this sending restriction applied can still create emails, preview, and save them.  When the author is content with an email design, instead of a "Send" button, they are presented with a button to "Submit for Approval".
 

Upon sending for approval, the account master (you) will receive an email with the summary of the email campaign. From here you are provided with a link to login to JangoMail and approve the campaign for sending. We added a convenient section to the top of the dashboard to display these campaigns awaiting approval.

 

In 2 clicks, you can review and then initiate sending of a mass email campaign to your audience. Need to make modifications? No problem. One click brings you to the editor where you can make changes before sending. If you need to disapprove or remove a campaign, simply delete it from the messages page.

That was easy.

And we like it that way. If you have any questions, comments, or other features you'd like us to build, please don't hesitate to ask.

Serving Up Outside Ads in Your Email Campaigns

Imagine, if you will, you're 'Joe's Pie Shop'.

It's almost swimsuit season, so business could be better. Time to amp up your marketing outreach and remind customers why your pies are worth the thighs. What do you do? You turn to a targeted email campaign.

You want to reach out to customers to elicit a reaction - a click to product, information, or a customized traffic lane on your website.

After devising an extremely clever and meaningful subject line that grabs their attention, recipients open, determined to dig deeper into what this communication's all about. Then, they're greeted by ...

SERVE IT UP RIGHT! Check out fancy, forever servewear on perfectpietools.com. 

Customer: "What? You have pie AND you're offering a value-add to enhance my pie eating experience? You're the best, Joe."

Well, at least that's the preferred reaction. But the flip side is that your customers' spammy senses could start tingling - damaging your reputation and the overall effectiveness of your email campaigns. Even if you're benefiting from a financial or product trade with this partner, that short-term benefit can get old, very fast, with potential, long-term customer relationships.

The good news is that if you present outside advertisements or endorsements in the right light, mutual success (for you, your partner and above-all your customer) is easy to achieve.

Here are some common sense tips:

1. Be relevant. You're a pie shop. So, skip the ads for gas stations. Unless, of course, you're empathizing with customers about tough economic times. Notifying them of a pie sale - and sharing an ad to the cheapest gas in town (to get to your place) is thoughful. Even better: Presenting an ad for $.50 off vanilla ice cream for Joe's Pie a la mode.

2. Be honest. Why the ad, Joe? If there's any confusion about why there are ads in your emails, address it with customers head-on. "We're including these ads to help keep our pie costs low" or "We provide ads for our community partners as a service to you". However you spin or explain it, your customers will appreciate your honesty. Here's an example from the web that still holds relevance for email: Pandora.com is a successful, live music streaming website - and they're not afraid to share with customers why they need to include ads.

3. Protect your reputation. Congrats - you're hitched to your advertiser in reputation. Now that your brand is tied to another's, beware. If that partner isn't as attentive to retaining ethical marketing as you are, what they do can hurt your business.

4. Exercise moderation. Don't overdo it. Consider there are times your customer simply wants some alone time. That means one-on-one communications between you and them. Email campaigns that includes outside ties or advertisements can be perceived as anything but personal, especially when it happens frequently. Customers may even feel 'sold out'.

5. Go full circle. Cross-branding like this is also an easy way to upsell back to your own products or services. If a tool makes it easy to serve up your pie, why not offer a discount on pie plates to complete the "set"? In this way, all products on the table present a relevant, cohesive offer that makes sense to a recipient. The information evolves from pure ad form to one of a trusted adviser who offers insight based on what you know your customers want or need. How well-thought out of you, Joe!

Have a question or comment about this blog? Looking for more insight to make your email marketing the best it can be? Contact us any time. We'd love to hear from you.

Until then, have a great rest of the week!

Your Emails Will Get to The INBOX (and other lies)

Any email marketing partner who promises 100% of your emails will hit the recipient's inbox aren't just misinformed - they're lying. The truth is, there's simply no guarantee of a foolproof method to dodge every spam filter or customized filter established by every potential recipient.

That said, there are some ways to improve the chances your emails hit those hard-sought targets.

8 ways JangoMail

gets your emails to the inbox

1. Separate yourself from the pack.
Use a branded "From" address rather than your complimentary username@jangomail.com "From" address. Ex.s: john.smith@company.com or john.smith@newsletters.company.com. Using your own domain, or creating a subdomain of your own carries your branding consistently throughout the message. Also, a key benefit is that each address can have its own SPF and DKIM records. These are "reverse lookups" that tell the receiving server that we have permission to send on behalf of your domain(s). There's also a SMTP level benefit, in that a branded sub-domain allows the SMTP MAIL FROM command during the SMTP transaction between our sender and the recipient server to show your sub-domain rathern than jangomail.com. Details

2. Keep track of yourself.
By default, every JangoMail account is assigned a system tracking domain that's shared among multiple clients (ex. x.jango5.com). By setting up a branded tracking domain based upon your organization's domain name, you can isolate yourself from the activities of other clients. To set this up, just go to Settings > Tracking > Tracking Domain. Details

3. "Up" your trustworthiness.
Setup DKIM for the domain use in your "From Address".
Yahoo! Mail and Gmail look for DKIM signatures in the headers of incoming email messages, considering them confirmation that the email was sent by who was purported to send it. In other words, consider it a sign of trust. Details

4. Clear the path for complaints.
After creating a DKIM record, click the link in the confirmation email from Yahoo to postmaster@yourdomain. Here's some background: When you create a DKIM record, Yahoo sends this confirmation email that includes the link to activate a "Feedback Loop". That loop is where Yahoo processes any complaints, and communicates those back to JangoMail. If you don't click the link to activate, complaints won't be properly reported and delivery to Yahoo will be negatively impacted - specifically folks looking for your unsubscribe list.

5. Stay master of your domain.
Setup SPF records on your domain, and then set your email campaigns to use your own "From Address" as the SMTP-level MAIL-FROM address. Details

6. Send backup - plain and simple.
If you're sending HTML email, always include a corresponding plain text message. Spam filters can still get hung up on heavily-coded emails, even though they've proven more effective in communicating a customized message to and eliciting ROI from email recipients. To ensure greater delivery success, simply set your plain text messages to "auto-generate", which triggers plain text to be generated (base don your HTML message) at the time of email sending. Details

7. Get certified in success.
Enroll in the Return Path Safe List program if you have a complaint rate of 0-0.1%. Once enrolled, your emails are sent from safe-listed IP addresses. Yahoo, as a primary example, prioritizes emails sent from listed IPs. Details

8. Anchor yourself in phrases only.
If you use click-tracking, you'll want to submit anchor text in phrases - not URLs. Spam filters can consider URL anchors as fraudulent and indicative of a phishing scam.

Good click-tracked link:
<a href="http://www.browniekitchen.com/">Visit our web site.</a>

Bad click-tracked link:
<a href="http://www.browniekitchen.com/">http://www.browniekitchen.com</a>


Here's what success looks like
Successful email campaign open rates are in the range of 15-35%. Take into consideration that some of your opens may not register if recipients have to 'view images'. But, if your rate is even higher than this, it's definitely reason to celebrate.

And if you're seeing lots of response to your behavioral goals (i.e. "click on this to get this deal/offer/information") then you also get a seat in the VIP section at Club Jango.

Already a rock star?
If you've had some amazing results from email campaigns and want to share them, tell us. We love to hear and share new tips to enhance email communications. Who knows? What you tell us today could be the next, new JangoMail feature we unleash tomorrow.

As always, give us a shout with any questions or comments. Until then, we leave you with a blast from the past commercial. We hope you've never met ANYONE like this:

When Good Emails Render Bad

Houston, you have a wingdings problem

Your email newsletter may have been conceived in love and raised under a watchful eye, but now it's talking in wingdings and ignoring every golden layout rule in Yahoo, Outlook and Gmail.

So, how do you teach it to play nice?


Exhale: HTML is still your baby
HTML email campaigns are not only more visually cohesive and polished than Plain Text, but historically also produce more clicks, consumer interest and traceable sales. It's obviously more appealing to show product pictures to your customers or include live links to relevant information. In addition, the DOS-reminiscent presentation of Plain Text is never a match for the brand-reflective power of HTML.

But if you're not following some simple Web Standards, your well-intentioned email campaigns can look like more of a maniacal bomb threat than a customized handshake.

5 tough love solutions for your HTML emails:

1. Avoid background images.
To efficiently separate content and design elements, images should be displayed inline. The CSS property, background-image is often not supported.

<background image: supported>

<background image: unsupported>

2. Keep FLOAT and CLEAR in proper balance.
FLOAT is the glue to your layout, while CLEAR ensures your FLOAT doesn't mask any images. If in doubt, avoid using FLOAT all together. Read more details here.

3. Be careful with your use of MARGIN and PADDING.
MARGIN alignment is the key to avoiding all-out text chaos in a bad render. PADDING is similarly critical, especially when used in conjunction with BACKGROUND-COLOR, LIST-STYLE-IMAGE and BORDER. Render test your emails first and find some fixes here.


4. Consider a different code to denote LINE SPACING.
To create a new line space, try using <br/> (shift+enter) instead of <p> (enter). Some readers push together new paragraphs, making your text look like this:

5. Don't ignore the importance of WIDTH and HEIGHT.
WIDTH directly impacts FLOAT and TEXT-ALIGN, so it's crucial to the overall look and tightness of your email. HEIGHT also lends a firm hand to overall readibility.


Phew - your HTMLs just avoided military school. But if they ever get out of line again - or you just want to learn more ways to enhance your email marketing - contact our JangoMail Support. We'd love to hear from you.

Have an idea for a future JangoMail blog? Talk to us

Improved Spam Detection for Response Emails

When we receive a response back on one of your email campaigns, we process and forward those on to you, based on a number of rules in your account Settings. We have just updated the spam detection for response emails we receive so we can prevent forwarding spam responses to you as much as we possibly can. How? We implemented a Spam Assassin filter to clean out the spam. Emails that are most obviously spam will now be rejected. Thus you'll be happy not to be receiving such email in your inbox anymore.

Note: You can manage your reply settings under Settings —> Reply Management —> Reply Handling

This message opened by ... Anonymous

We had a prospective customer recently come to us with an interesting request with regard to the privacy of their campaign recipients. They wanted the campaign actions of users to be anonymized in such a way that it in no way would it be possible for anyone to determine which specific email addresses on the list opened, clicked, unsubscribed, or experienced a bounce for a given email.

The prospective customer had a real concern for the privacy of their recipients but still desired the aggregate campaign reporting metrics that make things like measuring the effectiveness of a campaign possible. Total clicks? Great. Who clicked on which link? Gone.

We were happy to custom-develop this feature for the customer. And since we developed the software to do it for them, we can make it available to you — upon request.

The feature ensures that the specifics on email addresses for campaign actions are overwritten in the database and removed from the SMTP logs after receipt, ensuring they cannot be retrieved or compromised by anyone. 

This feature is a good example of how we're willing to go lengths to fulfill the needs of a customer who knows what they want. While this may seem obscure, if you'd like this feature added to your account, or have another custom feature in mind, please don't hesitate to ask.

Getting The Full Benefit of vBulletin?

The first step to maximizing the effectiveness of using popular forum software packages, like vBulletin, is to enhance them through configuration with JangoMail or JangoSMTP.

In case you're unfamiliar with vBulletin, it's a helpful forum software package that facilitates online community discussions on the topic your website is focused on. The system also sends a variety of emails: new registration confirmations, topic reply notifications, PM notifications, mass email newsletters and more.

So what's the JangoMail connection?
It's about more than expansive reporting features you won't find in vBulletin's baseline. JangoMail's pinpoint and reliable email deliverability ensures that your signup confirmation emails will go through the first time. It's a common issue with forum software - if a user doesn't receive their confirmation email, they can't use your forum. The result is that users need to contact your forum administrator to activate their accounts manually. This may seem like a minute hassle, but considering the size of most forums, the potential problem can cause some big issues down the lines in terms of boosting your user list size - and saving the sanity of your administrator.

Here's how to set it up:
1. Log into your vBulletin Admin CP
2. Go to Settings - Options - Email Options - Edit Settings
3. Scroll down to choose the following settings:

• SMTP Email: Yes
• SMTP Host: relay.jangosmtp.net
• SMTP Port: either 25, 2525, 587 or 465 for SSL/TLS connections
• SMTP Username: use your JangoMail username
• SMTP Password: user your JangoMail password
• SMTP Secure Connection (can be enabled if port 465 is used)

vBulletin can also be used to send mass email newsletters to your users, to keep them engaged. To do so, go to Users - Send Email to Users within your Admin CP.

As always, if you have any questions or need extra help configuring your vBulletin account with JangoMail, contact our Support team at any time.

Have a great rest of the week, everybody!

Quick Account Usage Info at Your Fingertips

At  your request, we have now added a quick go-to menu, accessible at the top of every JangoMail page that shares some of your account's vital statistics at a glance.

(account info displayed on mouse-over)

When you are logged into your paid account, you will now see a link at the top of every page identifying how many days are left in your usage cycle. Mousing over the link produces a dialogue with some useful stats—among them:

• # of Messages used
• # of Messages remaining
• Volume of Data used
• Volume of Data remaining
• Messages and Data Available in the next cycle

Currently these quick usage stats are restricted to standalone accounts, and not agency accounts with combined volume usage. Further support for these agency customers may be available in the future.

Stay On The Hunt For Engaged Customers

"Anybody out there?"
Let's help you find out. In fact, there's a quick and easy way to check the attention span of your existing customers, while rustling up some loyalty from new ones. And in the spirit of Easter, let's break it down in a familiar scenario:

The Egg Hunt:
"Quick Hit" email campaigns dangle a carrot of information (an offer, timely content or a social "must share") to engage your email list. Then, based on whose interested enough to hunt for the prize, you can determine what behaviors are saying about your current marketing outreach - and fix it fast, if need be.

The Carrot:
Think gaming. How many of us have played a video game for hours to unlock a secret code, power or sword of truth (just us?)? Uncovering a mystery or 'working' toward a hidden reward is not only engaging but also fun. If you're a retail organization, take the cue from companies like "Kohl's". Their famous "Save 10, 20 or 30%" email campaigns masterfully lure their customers to stores and online to "uncover" their personal deal. It's like a scratch ticket - but the odds are definitely more favorable of both sides winning in the end (for customers: discounts; for the retailer: highly traceable click results within a targeted revenue trigger).

The Spoils:
Using this Easter egg hunt system, you'll immediately gauge recipient interest to your thoughtfully placed and relevant treasure. The next step is to use JangoMail's key reporting tools to see results in real time. So, you can follow-up as quickly as the responses come in. Then, based upon the report showing those interested enough to "click", those follow-ups can evolve into more customized email outreach based upon the specific needs or interests of any recipient. Your email lists will be tighter, stronger, and lead to more specialized sales or overall engagement. Not to mention, your customers or followers will be pleasantly surprised at the level of personal attention within your communications.

Let's put our minds together
We'd be happy to walk you through. If you have any questions, reach out to our JangoMail support.

Have a great week, everyone!

Make The Most Of The 'Madness' this Month

Last year, Twitter users sent over two million Tweets about March college basketball tourneys.

While the 'madness' may not be the highlight of everyone's month, there are times you need to send updates and alerts to large, specialized groups before the buzzer.

Here are some hypotheticals:

• You're a coach, and team parents would love to see a video of that miracle play from the big championship game
• You're a restauranteur, and you need to get the word out that there will be half-priced mudslides during the Padres' home opener
• You're the bracket-master, and lunch is on Glenn in Accounting since he just pulled ahead in points

Forget bulletin boards. JangoMail's email distribution list feature (listserv) is an easy way to get everyone on the same page about brackets, club news, special events and more.

Here's how it works:

• Create a master email list, grouping recipients by interest (eg. college basketball fans, mudslide lovers, the Spanish club)
• Send one email to your group's master email list (one email to one, all-inclusive email address)
• Spark a live, ongoing email discussion. When someone replies, they can reply back to your entire list at once (eg. "This place's mudslides are epic. You should go!")

More good news:

JangoMail lets you track (opens, clicks, responses) to your email campaign in real-time to evaluate the effectiveness of your emails and re-customize, as needed. Bounce-backs and removal-requests are handled automatically. And you can add Facebook and Twitter social share links for even greater reach and viral opportunity.

Don't forget... We do surveys too!

Tie in a quick survey with your regular email campaigns. This is a great way to bring in seasonal events and unite them with your business campaigns.  For this time of year, you could throw in things like:

• Tell us how many hours of the workday you think your organization's employees or volunteers spend creating and tracking March brackets?
• Do you think March bracket office-play increases overall morale?
• What is your favorite basketball-watching appetizer?

A little levity, a little fun, and a reason to do a follow up email campaign to keep your brand in front of the customers with your results ... or perhaps have them return to your web site to get the final tally!

Questions?

Did we spring some ideas loose for you? We're here to help. Reach Support for assistance in getting these (or any) features set up!

Collecting Metric Gold Is A Piece Of Cake

Around St. Patrick’s Day, everyone throws around the leprechaun allegories and imagery. While it's tempting to join in, we're going to shy away from that nightmarish green sprite as we look for our email gold amid this festival of green.

Here's how we're mixing it up:
We're reiterating that, with the right tools, it's easy to plan and achieve email marketing success. In fact, you could say it's a piece of cake ... made of metrics and 'rainbows'. (Yeah, we went there.)

So what's the connection between metrics and rainbows?
Consider your rainbow the journey of planning that's involved in any well-thought out, email marketing campaign. You take a considerable amount of time to conceptualize and design your message, build your rock solid list, and finally - with a triumphant 'woot' - you blast it to its intended audience with the highest of hopes.

Then the real work begins.
Here's where that gold at the end of your rainbow comes in. Bottom line, you have to know if you're getting results or need to change course. Quickly. The good news is that JangoMail's email reporting tools are the easy way to find out.

We help you compare email campaigns to see what's working best. In fact, we can show you reports of every open and click, as well as historical and geo tracking down to the level of each and every email newsletter recipient. The best part is that it's all in real-time, so you can react and enhance on the tightest of deadlines.

For even more granular, visual reporting, JangoMail also has a highly advanced integration with Google Analytics. Clicks, specific page views, time on page and points of entry/exit will help you further illuminate your customers' behaviors.

Enter the big payoff
Knowing the results of your past and present email marketing campaigns is worth its weight in gold, in terms of future customization and planning that will lead to higher rates of conversion. The key takeaway here is that it's definitely worth the time to at least explore all the tools available to you.

See? You can have that rainbow cake reward - and the creepy little green man can stay where he belongs. If your guess (like ours) is "under the bed", you can feel free to look first.


Happy St. Patrick's Day, folks! In the spirit of the holiday, here's something from the web:

(Hey, Jennifer Aniston's in this clip (guys), with her 90's hair (ladies) ... so it's worth looking for laughs.)
  

A New Dashboard

We have a quick update for our JangoMailers – You might have noticed we launched a new dashboard for your login screen to help you navigate the site more quickly!

 
This dashboard is the first thing you'll see when you log in. We like it because you can easily jump to these popular destinations, with quick icons rather than the old text links.

Hover over any of the icons to see a short description of what the feature contains. You'll see some new links to places you might not have explored previously:

Quickly access your list of email database connections, such as MySQL/SQL, Salesforce, Magento, and more.

Jump to the tutorials section of JangoMail where you'd find access to tons of walk-throughs and guides to using features on the site.

Access the full Developer API Documentation for the JangoMail API. Get the in-depth details on all of our methods.






 
Go to the Developer API Playground. Read quick information on all of the JangoMail API Methods and run test calls (that work!) and show you the response text.





We hope that you enjoy the new Dashboard and that it enhances your experience with JangoMail. We've got some very exciting new features on the way that we should be announcing shortly, so stay tuned!

Ditch “The Crawl” & get social with school parents

There’s nothing quite like the anger of a baffled parent who shows up to school with their child – only to find it was actually cancelled, delayed, or there's a special event happening that day.

And we’re not just talking snow or hurricanes. Sometimes it’s those sneaky half-day conferences, holidays and teacher workshops that can wreak havoc on the airtight schedules of busy parents. Or what about those special, last-minute "everyone wear school colors" days? It's not easy for parents - and obviously kids - when they're left out of the loop.

(Don't think you can depend on the "backpack express" to get the word out, especially when the unexpected can happen - a.k.a. Fido or worse.)

There are also events that catch even you, as a school principal or administrator, off-guard. It happens – and you need to act quickly to update the masses.


Many of us at JangoMail are parents, so we feel the pain of miscommunication. (Surprise! It’s bring your kid to work day!) But, we also see the flip side for school officials …

So … the big question: What’s the most efficient way to get the word out to the greatest number of busy parents at the same time, instantly?

The answer: JangoMail’s email integration with Facebook and Twitter will help you do it all effortlessly.

Here’s how: Most parents are plugged in – email, calendar alerts, Facebook & Twitter. And connecting to where your parents are is as easy as offering them a few choices in the places they’re most apt to stay in touch with your school.

The choices:

1. Add an Email List Signup Form to your school’s website.
Most parents prefer email, and it’s a highly effective way to communicate daily updates, weekly newsletters and time-sensitive alerts. You can determine what information you want to collect (name, telephone #s, address, etc.) on JangoMail’s customizable, email signup forms to create distribution lists for specific grade levels, neighborhoods, volunteer rosters, etc.

2. Share the announcement via Social Media.
For parents who are less likely to open emails after work hours, but are plugged into social updates on their mobile devices, Facebook and Twitter are great ways to keep them in the loop last minute. Create a View as Webpage link in your email and share it on your Facebook and Twitter profiles. It's a handy way to guide parents back to your email communications. If you know there’s a lot of chatter on your Facebook and Twitter profiles – or that of your PTO/PTA, take a few minutes to share your announcement on those pages.

Have questions or need some more suggestions? 

We can’t make snow days go away, but we’re pretty good with school announcement emails. Hit us up – we’re here to help!

Here are some memories from around the web that might inspire you to beef up your communications strategies in anticipation of next winter:

• http://www.accuweather.com/en/features/winter-break/factors-for-the-2012-atlantic-hurricane-season/64296
• http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/midatlantic-snowstorm-potentia/7088979
• http://www.boston.com/news/education/2013/01/31/school-damaged-burst-pipe-closed-for-week/6CIm0DzZJbHN1lYv3bnG6K/story.html

The Hotmail to Outlook Shift Means Minimal Pain for Email Marketers

The boards are buzzing (and some Hotmail users are groaning) about the automatic move to Outlook.com.  But for email marketers, is it hip or hassle?

Think of this Microsoft move as more of an overdue upgrade than a blocker. And we have some info and tips to help ensure the continued success of your email marketing as some of your customers potentially transition to Outlook.com.

Here’s a couple things to be aware of …

New: Multiple, alternate email addresses
Outlook.com allows your customers to create alternate email addresses without signing up for additional accounts (five a year, or up to 15 at any one time) like Google requires.

• What it means:

This can lead to some confusion about unsubscribed addresses. If a customer opts into your email communications with one address (for instance, "me1@outlook.com") and then creates another address linked to that account (for instance, "me2@outlook.com"), they’ll receive your emails at both addresses. Customers can also redirect merchant emails to specific folders (for instance, spamlike@outlook.com), where your messages may not get the exposure you’re hoping for.

• What to do:

Re-check all of your active campaigns for a spam score. You should be doing this anyway, so it’s not something beyond the norm.  Note: Even though Microsoft doesn't list any changes to spam filtering, the Bayesian databases from Hotmail may be merged with the rest of the Outlook cloud's databases.


New: Filters for better focus
Outlook.com has special filters for viewing certain types of messages.

• What it means:

For instance, your customers can now select “Shipping updates” for quick access to emails with UPS, FedEx and other tracking numbers for products they’re expecting from you. This will definitely be a bonus for your transactional emails.


New: More time to rethink deleted emails
Deleted messages (emptied from trash) will still be available for an unspecified time, which can help with finding an accidentally deleted email.

• What it means:

Whether it’s by accident or intended, your customers will have more time to rethink shifting your messages to the Trash bin. And before they make a final scan of its contents, your meaningful, targeted subject line could make the difference in their taking another look.


New: Larger file views
Outlook.com links with Microsoft’s online storage service, SkyDrive, to handle large files.

• What it means:

This now makes it seamless for your recipients in Outlook.com to get really big attachment files without having to go to an in-between web page to click a download link. This is sort of akin to how Gmail users can view embedded YouTube videos in their messages. JangoMail allows you to send large email attachments, but it is much more expensive, so we still recommend using a link in your email rather than a large attachment.


Some deliverability tips ...

• If your email has instructions on how to whitelist your email, you'll need to update this to include the new Outlook.com. An Outlook.com user can click the "Add to Contacts" link to add you as a trusted sender or click the "Wait, it's safe!" link in the Junk folder. 
• You’ll also need to test your emails for all existing campaigns to ensure that the formatting appears the same in Outlook.com as it did in Hotmail.

Other things to be aware of …

• Outlook.com could potentially mean better email deliverability, since address books will be shared automatically across Microsoft products.
• For transactional relay only users: If you have any rules running in your database to correct malformed email addresses, you'll want to add rules for Outlook.com.
• Like Gmail, Outlook.com will have "conversation" mode. So, if your marketing emails have the same subject line, newer emails will eclipse previous versions.
• Anticipate a tighter integration with Facebook – and potential for redundancy. If a sender address matches a friend’s on Facebook, then the latest posts or other information may appear in your recipient’s Outlook.com sidebar.
• Like the Outlook desktop app, Outlook.com has a preview pane. This feature won’t be enabled by default, but be aware it could be activated. This may potentially lead to very negligible, lower open rates, as it removes a step between arrival and open, which in turn discourages users from clicking on the "show images" button (since, in most cases, they can see all the pertinent content already).

As always, the JangoMail team is here to answer any questions you may have about this or any other topic. Hit us up – we’re here to help!


For more info from around the web, try these:
Beta News: Get Ready to Move from Hotmail to Outlook
NBC News: Microsoft's New Outlook Mail is a Welcome Hotmail Replacement
CNN: Goodbye Hotmail, Hello Outlook

12 Cool New Features You Should Know About

Fun fact: A Jangolope is a special breed of Jackalope known for its strength, speed, dexterity, reliability, brains, and fortunately for you— email deliverability.

In fact, the good fortune continues because we have a whole bunch of awesome features to announce this week. This is the biggest list of updates we've published in a single post in JangoMail's history. What have we been doing?

1. Clear Your Bounced Addresses

Bounces occur when you try to send an email to an email address and it doesn't go through. Bounces can happen for many reasons, including:

• The recipient email server could be permanently down
• The recipient email server could be temporarily down
• The recipient email server could be in a transitional state
• The recipient's email address could be temporarily locked (mailbox full, temporarily suspended etc.)
• The recipients email address could be unavailable (user's email doesn't exist, permanently suspended, etc.)

A "hard" bounce means the receiving server told us the address doesn't exist. JangoMail will stop sending after a single hard bounce to an address.

However, many of the potential reasons for a bounce are temporary. For these "soft" bounces, we stop sending email to an address after three different messages bounce by default (modifiable under your account Settings). This is sufficient for most users; but if you want to maximize your potential reach, it may make sense to clear some or all of your bounced addresses periodically.

To clear your bounced addresses, go to "Settings-->List Management-->Clear Bounce Addresses" make your selections and click "Save."

Choose a list (or all lists), choose a time frame, and click "Save" to clear your bounce addresses and reattempt sending to those addresses in future campaigns.

2. Save a Database Extraction to a JangoMail List

At JangoMail you can send campaigns to members with two basic methods.

1. The first is to build and store a list within your JangoMail account. You can do this manually (member by member), with an opt-in form, by importing members from a file, or via our API.
2. The second is with a "Database List." We support many types of databases you can connect to: Local databases, SQL databases, MySQL databases, Magento, Salesforce, and others. When you choose to send to these members, we connect to your database live and pull the email addresses and data to use straight in your campaign. These are pulled "fresh" each time you query your database to get recipients who meet your sending criteria at that moment in time.

Now we've added a hybrid of these two: a way to save the data from your database extraction straight into a normal JangoMail list— so you can use it for any of the features normally restricted to stored lists— such as list-based API requests, List Scrubs, AutoResponders, and more.

 

3. Sync JangoMail List Data From a Database*

To make the above feature (#2) even more useful, we added an option to keep the data in your JangoMail List in sync with your website database. When you save your database extraction to a list on JangoMail, you can also elect to "keep this data synced."

Keeping your list synced with your database will cause the list members to be replenished every day, with a successful extraction from your database, ensuring the list of members is always the latest and freshest available.

Note: If you enable list syncing, any manual edits you make to the list (editing members, deleting members, adding members, list scrubs, etc) won't be saved as they will be overwritten daily. Make those changes on the source (your database) if you wish for them to reciprocate onto your JangoMail List. Again, we pull fresh data from your database every day with a new extraction. This does not "push" data back to your database. Check out our documentation here for options to synchronize campaign result data back to your database as well.

You may also change this sync setting for database lists via List Settings
 

*This feature is not available for local databases.

4. Reporting Actions by List

We created a new "Actions by List" tab on the campaign reporting page that lets you view reporting statistics (recipients, opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes) broken down by each list in your campaign. This tab only appears for campaigns with multiple lists. Use it to compare the performance of your lists.

View list performance data in a sortable chart or via graph–with one graph generated per list in your campaign

5. Reporting List Performance

We created a "List Performance" tab on the campaign reporting page that lets you compare the performance metrics of each of your lists in the campaign–scaled by the number of recipients. This is extremely useful if you want to compare which of your lists in a campaign are performing better–not just by how many opens or clicks (because these numbers are biased by the number of list recipients) but by the ratio of list-opens to list-recipients for example. You can now determine which of your lists and sources are performing best, which form of lead acquisition you should focus more or which you should drop.

Compare list performance in a sortable chart or via generated charts for each of the major stats: recipients, opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes.

Look forward to more of these awesome reporting stastics, as we have a few more in the queue. You can help make them appear faster on special request.

6. List Columns -- Hide with Right Click

Have a List with several fields? Right-click on a column header to hide the column temporarily and make it a bit easier to navigate.

Don't worry, the data didn't go anywhere. To reload your full list again, simply refresh the page.  Look forward to a more comprehensive solution and more nifty additions like this to make their way to the user interface soon, as we strive to make your experience as smooth as possible.

7. Resume a Campaign From Messages

Pause a campaign so you could make changes? Edit and save your changes, then resume the campaign with finesse, from the the message page itself by clicking the "Un-pause this campaign" link at the bottom of the page. You no longer need to jump to reporting to select Resume (Note: Make sure to save your changes before resuming.).

8. Spam Check Details

Have you made use of the Delivery Tests tool on the Messages page to test your campaign across different spam detection software? Now we are revealing extra information that is available from the spam tests–should any be available–simply click the "yellow warning sign" on the test screen when one appears.

 

9. List Filtering Updates

Filter your lists much?  We've added some extra comparison operators to make building a custom query to filter through your lists much more simple. Use the "Simple Query Editor," select a field, an operator and a date and run your query to grab your lists.

10. Filter Member History

If you're browsing a member's campaign history, you can now filter by a specific time-frame. Choose from as little as a week or 5 other intervals up to 1 year.

11. Delivery Tests and Mail Client Previews

Our Delivery Test and Mail Client Preview Tools allow you to test delivery and preview what your email will look like in different mail clients such as Outlook, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, and more. Because there are a lot of tests on many platforms, it can take some time to process across all of the different clients.

Now we've added timers that give you an estimate of approximately how much time is remaining to render the delivery check or preview. A finished test shows the green "checkbox icon" that you can click to see the preview. If there are problems with your test, you'll know about it as well with a red icon and details of what went wrong with that client.

12. Campaign Identifiers on the Messages Screen

Campaign Identifiers are optional fields for messages that allow you to uniquely name your campaigns. We've added this field to the Messages page so now you can browse, sort, and search your campaigns by the Campaign Identifier field.

Until next time.

We hope you enjoy these new features, the new look of JangoMail, our mascot Jack the Jangolope, and the way we continue to evolve as we bring you a truly original email marketing experience. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions, requests or desires, please reach out to us.