dotCal Mail Help
Printer-friendly version
Send to frienddotCal mail help
You can add special HTML characters to your emails using standard HTML codes. For this, use the following reference:
‘ => ‘ => left single quote
’ => ’ => right single quote
‚ => ‚ => single low-9 quote
“ => “ => left double quote
” => ” => right double quote
„ => „ => double low-9 quote
† => † => dagger
‡ => ‡ => double dagger
‰ => ‰ => per mill sign
‹ => ‹ => single left-pointing angle quote
› => › => single right-pointing angle quote
♠ => ♠ => black spade suit
♣ => ♣ => black club suit
♥ => ♥ => black heart suit
♦ => ♦ => black diamond suit
‾ => ‾ => overline, = spacing overscore
← => ← => leftward arrow
↑ => ↑ => upward arrow
→ => → => rightward arrow
↓ => ↓ => downward arrow
™ => ™ => trademark sign
" => " => double quotation mark
& => & => ampersand
< => < => less-than sign
> => > => greater-than sign
=> => nonbreaking space
¡ => ¡ => inverted exclamation
¿ => ¿ => inverted question mark
¢ => ¢ => cent sign
£ => £ => pound sterling
¤ => ¤ => general currency sign
¥ => ¥ => yen sign
¦ => ¦ => or &; => &brkbar; => broken vertical bar
§ => § => section sign
¨ => ¨ => or &; => ¨ => umlaut
© => © => copyright
ª => ª => feminine ordinal
« => « => left angle quote
» => » => right angle quote
¬ => ¬ => not sign
=> ­ => soft hyphen
® => ® => registered trademark
¯ => ¯ => or &; => &hibar; => macron accent
° => ° => degree sign
± => ± => plus or minus
¹ => ¹ => superscript one
² => ² => superscript two
³ => ³ => superscript three
´ => ´ => acute accent
µ => µ => micro sign
¶ => ¶ => paragraph sign
· => · => middle dot
¸ => ¸ => cedilla
º => º => masculine ordinal
¼ => ¼ => one-fourth
½ => ½ => one-half
¾ => ¾ => three-fourths
× => × => multiplication sign
÷ => ÷ => division sign
À => À => uppercase A, grave accent
Á => Á => uppercase A, acute accent
 =>  => uppercase A, circumflex accent
à => à => uppercase A, tilde
Ä => Ä => uppercase A, umlaut
Å => Å => uppercase A, ring
Æ => Æ => uppercase AE
Ç => Ç => uppercase C, cedilla
È => È => uppercase E, grave accent
É => É => uppercase E, acute accent
Ê => Ê => uppercase E, circumflex accent
Ë => Ë => uppercase E, umlaut
Ì => Ì => uppercase I, grave accent
Í => Í => uppercase I, acute accent
Î => Î => uppercase I, circumflex accent
Ï => Ï => uppercase I, umlaut
Ð => Ð => uppercase Eth, Icelandic
Ñ => Ñ => uppercase N, tilde
Ò => Ò => uppercase O, grave accent
Ó => Ó => uppercase O, acute accent
Ô => Ô => uppercase O, circumflex accent
Õ => Õ => uppercase O, tilde
Ö => Ö => uppercase O, umlaut
Ø => Ø => uppercase O, slash
Ù => Ù => uppercase U, grave accent
Ú => Ú => uppercase U, acute accent
Û => Û => uppercase U, circumflex accent
Ü => Ü => uppercase U, umlaut
Ý => Ý => uppercase Y, acute accent
Þ => Þ => uppercase THORN, Icelandic
ß => ß => lowercase sharps, German
à => à => lowercase a, grave accent
á => á => lowercase a, acute accent
â => â => lowercase a, circumflex accent
ã => ã => lowercase a, tilde
ä => ä => lowercase a, umlaut
å => å => lowercase a, ring
æ => æ => lowercase ae
ç => ç => lowercase c, cedilla
è => è => lowercase e, grave accent
é => é => lowercase e, acute accent
ê => ê => lowercase e, circumflex accent
ë => ë => lowercase e, umlaut
ì => ì => lowercase i, grave accent
í => í => lowercase i, acute accent
î => î => lowercase i, circumflex accent
ï => ï => lowercase i, umlaut
ð => ð => lowercase eth, Icelandic
ñ => ñ => lowercase n, tilde
ò => ò => lowercase o, grave accent
ó => ó => lowercase o, acute accent
ô => ô => lowercase o, circumflex accent
õ => õ => lowercase o, tilde
ö => ö => lowercase o, umlaut
ø => ø => lowercase o, slash
ù => ù => lowercase u, grave accent
ú => ú => lowercase u, acute accent
û => û => lowercase u, circumflex accent
ü => ü => lowercase u, umlaut
ý => ý => lowercase y, acute accent
þ => þ => lowercase thorn, Icelandic
ÿ => ÿ => lowercase y, umlaut
The checkboxes at the top of this area are available to all users with account that have the right to access them:
- The CRM functions are focused on providing you with more information about your relationship with your contacts
- Dynamic Data is an advanced mail merge feature. It allows you to set up rules that build the content for your message on the fly. Once this is activated, you will s ee a new section at the bottom of your Edition Editor screen.
- Compress Control Panel will convert your unarchived editions to a dropdown select field in the Control Panel. This is useful if you maintain many editions without ar chviving.
- Activate Search in Control Panel allows you to search your editions for keywords and only display those matches in your Control Panel.
- Auto Fill CRM with Subscriber Location works with the website signup form, automatically filling in the new subscriber's City, State, and Country fields in the CRM if this box is checked. This information is determined by the IP address of the new subscriber, correlated using a database that relates IP addresses to geographical location.
- Track Text Message Links by Default changes the links in the text only messages you send to trackable links. Note that this will change the appearance of the links, but wil l allow them to be tracked.
- Allow Introductory Message for Broadcasts will open a new field in the Send screen for you to add your own introductory message at the top of broadcasts being sent. This is similar to the text at the top of single-shot test messages that you can specify.
- Create RSS XML File when Sending to Specified Lists will create a new checkbox in your mailing lists' List Settings to create and append edition information to an RSS XML file.
- Allow Sharing of Specified Document Library Files turns on new functions in your Document Library that allow the files you choose to be shared. Once this box is checked, each file in your Document Library will have a small text box next to it where you can specify a comma-delimited list of usernames that will be able to see that file.
- Allow SMS Lists will allow you to turn on the SMS List function (a checkbox on the New List screen)
- The Default Rows numbers specify how many contacts you see on each page as you view them.
- Bounces to Hard Bounce is a setting that lets you determine how many times a recipient sends back an "undeliverable" message before it is permanently flagged as "Bounced" in your Master CRM. The default for this is 3, meaning that if you have failed to send to a recipient 3 times, we won't continue to try to deliver to that recipient. The complete report of which recipients have bounced for which reason is available in your Master CRM - Reports - Bounce Report section.
- Minimum Score to Make a Hot Prospect is a scoring system to filter out your most interested recipients. More information about hot prospects is available in the knowledge base or on the Track page for an edition.
The optional fields give you a way to further customize your system.
- Company Banner URL is a URL to a banner that we will use to place at the top of the dotCal mail interface while you're working.
- Do Not Email Domains are domains that you will prevent yourself from sending to. This is helpful if you wish to ensure that a competitor never receives any of your emails. To enter domains in, simply comma-separate the domains you want to prevent sending to. Example: abc.com,junk.com,competitor.com
- Post Profile Update via XML to URL allows you to post information to your database if a recipient updates his or her profile with the Profile Update link we provide you (this is handy for keeping databases in synch). Data will be sent in this format:
<Record Username="your dotCal mail username" Email="recipient's email">
<CRM Field>New Field Value</CRM Field>
</Record>
The CRM field in the example above corresponds to any field in your Master CRM (Firstname, Lastname, Company, User1, etc). - More optional fields include the Privacy/Anti-Spam Policy URL and the Subscription Form Domain. Your privacy/anti-spam policy is available to recipients of your emails that click the unsubscribe/profile update link. Making this available is helpful to recipients that are concerned about the privacy of their email addresses and that you are not sending them email unsolicited.
- Subscription Form Domain is an easy way to protect yourself from someone hijacking your subscription form and uploading bogus email addresses. While to this date, this has never happened to any dotCal mail client, it is a good way to protect your subscriber data from unwanted bogus new subscribers. Add your domain (e.g., "yoursite.com") to this field and it will prevent someone from signing up for your website from a form on a different website.
Update Account
This page, under the My Account tab, allows you to update information about you and how you would like to customize your dotCal mail interface.
The left column is information we use so that we can stay in touch with you, and provide you with updates to our software.
The right side of this page represents the options you control to manage your dotCal mail account.
Account Usage
This is where you can monitor your current account and the total number of emails you have sent. To change your subscription, contact our sales department.
About You
To better serve you, we would like to know a little bit about you. This will aid us in developing features to better match your industry and your needs.
General Email Marketing Tips
20 General Email Marketing Tips:
Take a few minutes to read these tips -- they may save you time and improve your campaign's effectiveness.
1. Make sure you have permission from your recipients to send them email. This crucial first step is key to having them recognize who you are, and read your message to them.
2. Keep your email lists and your contacts' data private. Do not resell your lists or share them with other companies. Your contacts will be very unhappy with you if they find out you're sharing data about them that they trust you with.
3. Actively build your email lists. Capture email addresses from your website (we have a form that will do that for you). Whenever you talk to a client, or a prospect, get his or her email address (after you ask them if it's ok to send them email). Examples of opportunities to contact your clients and prospects are networking meetings, in-person/by-mail/by-email inquiry forms, change- or upgrade-of-service requests, business reply cards, or return of payment forms.
4. Ask yourself who you are trying to reach and why your recipients will respond to your email. Make sure you know how your email campaigns will tie in with the rest of your marketing/communication efforts. Be aware of how often you are contacting your clients and prospects -- too much is annoying, too little and they'll forget who you are.
5. Direct your audience somewhere. Make sure your recipients know why they are receiving this information. If you want them to do something (like visit a website), make sure you make it clear how to do that.
6. Personalize your email. Use our mail merge/placeholder system to embed information about each contact into a personalized email.
7. Make your website match your email. Be consistent in your company's overall branding. If you are directing your recipients to your website, make sure they are going to a page that is relevant to the email you are sending out.
8. Review your links. Make sure they are all valid. Make sure the "From" email address works, along with any mailto: links in the body of the email.
9. Use your stats. dotCal mail provides detailed tracking data on your clients. Create new lists based behavior, especially click-thru behavior. Send targeted follow-up emails to people that click on specific links.
10. Carefully choose your subject line. Your subject line should make it clear to the recipient why they should open your email. Avoid using spam-ish terms (on the Preview page, we help you with this). A subject line should be short, never more than 30 characters, and cannot contain any HTML coding.
11. Don't oversell yourself. Everyone gets tons of spam every day. People no longer respond to "great deals" and "free opportunities". Stay away from using terms that make your email sound too good to be true -- everyone has read enough spam to be wise to those gimmicks.
12. Be concise. Don't write really long articles. People don't like to read, and unless you are an outstanding writer with an enthusiastic audience, they really don't like to read long emails. Better to create links to more information. Make sure you put lots of pictures in your text if you're going to write a lot of it. Put the most important information first.
13. Send yourself a test message before you broadcast. Make sure it looks good in your Inbox. Get a web-mail account and a POP email account that you can test with Outlook (the most common email program) FIRST before you send your message out to the masses.
14. Pay attention to your Text Only Message. A good 20-30% of users out there only receive text emails. Be sure that those users have something worth reading. Read the Text part of the preview screen.
15. Consider investing in a rich media piece. Flash and streaming video will be received by almost anyone that can receive HTML email.
16. Send when your audience will be most receptive. The best days to send email are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. If you are targeting corporate recipients, you will get the best response on a weekday afternoon.
17. Pay attention to the "From" line (the Contact Name in the Template Manager). Your recipients should recognize who you are, and it should be your name or your company's name.
18. Double check before you send. Make sure you have chosen the right edition and the right delivery time before you click the Send Now button.
19. Test your broadcast on small groups. If you have an important message to be sent to a large group, you can test its effectiveness by sending to small subsets of your list. Use the "Send to x Random Recipients" feature if you have the time to spend on ensuring your message is as good as it can be.
20. Keep a positive attitude. Email marketing is your most cost-effective means of communication. Learn from your recipients what works, what they like, and what they don't like. The more communication you have with your clients, the stronger your relationship with them (just be careful not to overwhelm them).
We hope you found these tips helpful. If you have more tips, or have feedback for us, please let us know at mailto:
|
How the Tracking Page Works
|
||||
To simplify the management of large dynamic rule sets, on the Add or Modify Dynamic Data management page, you may choose to import your rules through a pipe delimited, flat file database.
The file format is:
Rule Number|Field|Operator|Test|Result
The order of case comparison is dictated by the order of the file. An example file might look like:
1|Email|=|myemailaddress@domain.com|This is me! 1|Email|=|youremailaddress@domain.com|This is you! 2|Email|=|myemailaddress@domain.com|myimage.gif 2|Email|=|youremailaddress@domain.com|yourimage.gif
This file would be turned into a ruleset that acts like:
If Email is equal to "myemailaddress@domain.com," then replace Dynamic001_Placeholder with, "This is me!" Otherwise, if Email is equal to "youremailaddress@domain.com," then replace Dynamic001_Placeholder with, "This is you!"
If Email is equal to "myemailaddress@domain.com," then replace Dynamic002_Placeholder with, "myimage.gif." Otherwise, if Email is equal to "youremailaddress@domain.com," then replace Dynamic001_Placeholder with, "yourimage.gif."
The file content must be valid and certain fields have data restrictions. The Rule Number column must contain integers only, and must be 1-999. Please see below for valid Field and Operator values. Test and Result data may be anything you like, however they may not contain the pipe character, as that will break the parsing engine.
Valid Fields:
"Email", "Prefix", "Firstname", "Lastname", "Position", "Company", "Address", "Address2", "City", "State", "Zip", "Country", "Phone", "Mobile", "Fax", "Website", "EmailFormat", "Occupation", "Age", "Birthday", "Income", "Gender", "ContactOwner", "ContactType", "InitialContact", "Notes", "MailingLists", "User1", "User2", "User3", "User4", "User5", "User6", "User7", "User8", "User9", "Lastmod", "User10", "User11", "User12", "User13", "User14", "User15", "User16", "User17", "User18", "User19", "User20", "User21", "User22", "User23", "User24", "User25", "User26", "User27", "User28", "User29", "User30", "User31", "User32", "User33", "User34", "User35", "User36", "User37", "User38", "User39", "User40", "User41", "User42", "User43", "User44", "User45", "User46", "User47", "User48", "User49", "User50"
Valid Operators:
"=" (Equal To), "!" (Not Equal To), "<" (Less Than), ">" (Greater Than), "~" (Contains), "-" (Does Not Contain), "+" (Is Contained Within)
Options:
- Do Not Overwrite Existing Rules -- This will append the new import to your existing ruleset.
- File Contains Fields Across Multiple Lines -- If the file you're uploading has fields which contain multiple lines of text, you must select this option. You will additionally have to modify your import file in three ways:
- The first line of the file must contain the header:
"Rule Number|Field|Operator|Test|Result". - Each new record must be preceeded with the characters, "~~".
- The final line must contain only the characters, "~~".
- The first line of the file must contain the header:
Multiline File Example:
Rule Number|Field|Operator|Test|Result ~~1|Email|=|myemailaddress@domain.com|This is me! and I have multiple lines in this field! ~~1|Email|=|youremailaddress@domain.com|This is you! ~~
Browse our collection of royalty free clipart. You can use these images in your emails as you see fit without any worries regarding licensing fees.
|
Animals: International Flags: Food: Objects: |
People: Places: Plants and Flowers: Scenic Beauty: |
Master List Import Textfile
Importing a tab-delimited textfile into the dotCal mail Master CRM is designed to be a flexible, straightforward process. The file you want to upload with your contacts must be:
1) on your hard drive, and
2) saved as a tab-delimited textfile.
You may import as much or as little data as you would like. The only columns (also sometimes referred to as "fields") which are REQUIRED on an imported file are:
- Email (Required in first column), and
- MailingLists (Required in the last column).
In all cases, the header row defining the fields you are choosing to import should match the fields as they appear in your Master Contact List (case-sensitive).
If you would like to import a contact's email address to more than one Mailing List, you can do so by including multiple Mailing Lists in the last column, separated by a comma (e.g., "FirstList,SecondList,ThirdList"). Make sure the MailingList(s) in the last column of your file exactly matches the Mailing List(s) you created in dotCal mail. Here is an example of what an imported file might look like
|
To import your data from a spreadsheet (e.g., Excel), please make sure every column header on your spreadsheet matches exactly to a Master List header. Allowable headers are:
- Email (Required in first column)
- Prefix
- Name*
- Firstname
- Lastname
- Position
- Company
- Address
- Address2
- City
- State
- Zip
- Phone
- Mobile
- Fax
- Website
- Country
- EmailFormat (Note: this is one word)
- Occupation
- Age
- Birthday
- Income
- Gender
- ContactOwner
- ContactType
- InitialContact
- User1
- User2
- User3 ... etc... through User50
- Notes
- MailingLists (Required in last column)
Note: although "Name" is not a defined field in the Master List, you can use it (instead of Firstname and Lastname). If your spreadsheet has both first names and last names in the same column, use the "Name" column heading.
Another note: if you are uploading data into a User field defined as a "Checkbox" type, you can upload multiple values by separating each value with the pipe | character, like this: value1|value2|value3 flexible, straightforward process. The file you want to upload with your contacts must be: 1)
Creating Surveys
Creating surveys in dotCal mail is a simple form-based process. Under the Libraries - Survey Library tab, you will see a record of all of your surveys and can create new questions.
Getting Started
In the Survey Library screen, you will be able to see every survey question you would like to ask. In each email you send out will be one (and only one) question which will link to each follow-on question. Each question in your Survey Library is treated as a separate object and questions can be tied to as many editions as you like. The Contacts screen will track individuals' responses to surveys; the Survey Library screen will track the total up-to-date number of responses for each question (not tied to individuals). You can reset the number of responses to each question on the Survey Library screen - this does not affect individual answers because those answers are associated with the inidividual contacts in each mailing list.
The Survey Code is a short unique identifier that you can use to remember the question. In your survey reports, and when working with Follow-On Questions, you will need that Survey Code. It's a good idea when building lots of survey questions to have Survey Codes that are similar to each other (e.g., "Survey1Question1" and "Survey1Question2"), since they are displayed on the Survey Library page ordered by Survey Code.
Next Questions allow you to have your recipients answer more than one question. You will create your first question, and in the form field where it asks for the "Next Question Survey Code", you will provide the Survey Code for the following question. You can create branching surveys, which will display a different Next Question based on the response given. This is helpful if you need to ask a specific follow up question based on the response (e.g., if you ask "Did you buy Product X?" you can have a different question based on whether the survey respondant answered "Yes" or "No")
When you are ready to put your survey in a dotCal mail, select the FIRST question and click on the "Generate Survey HTML" button. Note that if you only have one question, click on the "Generate Survey HTML" button for that question.
After you have generated your Survey HTML, paste it into the content of the edition would like to send to your recipients. You will see that the HTML generated has both an HTML form and a link. You do not need the form, and may use just the link to have your recipients take your survey.
Displaying Multiple Questions per Page
It is also possible to display more than one question per page. To trigger this functionality, use the 'Question display page' select box at the top of each question. This sets the page number the question is to be included in. You are allowed from 1 to 10 pages, with no limit to the number of questions per page. When taking this type of survey, the end user will first see all questions assigned to page 1, followed by all questions assigned to page 2 etc... until there are no questions assigned to the subsequent page. All questions per page must be answered before the end user is able to proceed.
There are a few key differences to keep in mind when creating grouped surveys of this type:
1, The questions presented to the end user are determined exclusively by the page to which they are assigned. Any per question or per answer settings are ignored as they are not compatible.
2, Grouped surveys of this type can only be included in your dotCal mail via a html link. That is, the option of including the first question in your dotCal mail as a form is not compatible.
Dynamic Data
Dynamic Data starts when you go to your "Update Account" screen and check the box to activate Dynamic Data (by default this is OFF for users for simplicity).
After you activate "Dynamic Data", when you go to the Edition Editor, you will see a new area where you can "Add and Modify" dynamic data for your edition. If you click on this link, you will be taken to a new page where you can define your Dynamic Data Rules.
The Dynamic Data function is like a more powerful and flexible version of the built-in mail merge (a.k.a. the _Placeholder function). Here's an example:
Say you want to include a special message in your email to everyone who is having a birthday this month. You would go to the Dynamic Data Rules screen for the edition you want to send out and add Rule 001 to be:
If Birthday CONTAINS Nov REPLACE Dynamic001_Placeholder WITH "Happy November Birthday To You!"
If BIRTHDAY = blank REPLACE Dynamic001_Placeholder WITH "We don't have your birthday on file - please update your profile and give it to us"
ELSE REPLACE Dynamic001_Placeholder WITH "Your birthday is Birthday_Placeholder"
Then you would put Dynamic001_Placeholder (this is automatically added to the "Include" popup in the Edition Editor) in the message somewhere and dotCal mail will automatically make the mail merge based on the rules you define.
You can have up to 999 rules per edition, and up to 999 comparisons per rule (the above example is 1 rule with 3 comparisons). Maximum data content per Placeholder is 64K.
Term Definitions:
· Rule #: The number which corresponds to the placeholder value.
· Field: The user field to make the comparison against.
· Operator: What type of comparison should be used.
· Test Value: The value to compare against the data stored in "Field."
· Replace with Result: The value with which to replace the placeholder.
Marketing with SMS - A How To Guide
dotCal mail integrates your SMS (short message service for mobile phones) and email marketing into one system. Currently in its development phase, you can build SMS lists with the help of double-opt-in website subscription forms.
The first step to setting up your account to manage SMS is to allow the creation of SMS Lists. This is done in the My Account - Update Account screen. Check the box to allow a new SMS List to be created.
Next, you create your SMS List. Go to the Control Panel and click the New List button. At the bottom of the left column, you will see a new checkbox that will allow you identify the list as an SMS list. When you create the list, it will be identified in your Control Panel as an SMS list.
Third, you will need to create a website signup form that allows new subscribers to opt-in to your SMS List. To be added to an SMS List via websign signup form, you need to add an additional checkbox that confirms that the recipient gives permission to be contact via SMS. This will add a special phrase to the Notes field of the contact that is used to confirm that the recipient has indeed opted in to receive SMS.
The special phrase - "SMS permission given with subscription" - identifies a recipient as being ok to be sent an SMS. If you would like to add someone to an SMS List without having them use the website signup form described above, you must add this phrase first to the contact's Notes field in the Master CRM. Due to the sensitivity of users receiving unsolicited SMS, it is absolutely critical that you be very careful when adding people to an SMS List this way. Spam complaints from SMS messages carry a $100 fine per complaint if no double-opt-in record is provided.
Building an SMS message is easy - it's just like using the Text Only Message layout in your Edition Editor. Simply type your message, up to 110 characters, and click the Save Changes button. The preview function works the same way.
Once you are ready to send your SMS message, you may do so with the usual Send screen. You will notice the page is slightly different, but the same functions are available.
After your message has been sent, you will receive two confirmation emails. The first confirmation is sent to you when all of the SMS messages have been delivered to the SMS servers. The second confirmation is sent after the SMS servers have delivered all of the messages. Because the SMS servers are at a different location and run on separate schedules, there may be several minutes delay before your SMS message is delivered.
There is no tracking information available on SMS messages, due to limitations of how SMS works.
Pricing for your SMS messages is just like your emails. Each SMS message counts as one email sent.
You can use fields from your Master List in a dotCal mail edition by inserting Placeholders into the text of the email.
This mail merge capability allows you to place each contact's data directly in the content of the email like this:
Fieldname_Placeholder where Fieldname is the name of a field in the Master List.
When you use placeholders like this, you can insert them anywhere in your email. If you are using one of our templates, look for this button:
An example would look like this:
Hi Firstname_Placeholder Lastname_Placeholder, it was great meeting you at User1_Placeholder
Available fields for placeholder replacement:
- Name
- Email
- Firstname
- Lastname
- Company
- Address
- Address2
- City
- State
- Zip
- Country
- Phone
- Mobile
- Fax
- Website
- EmailFormat
- Occupation
- Age
- Birthday
- Income
- Gender
- ContactType
- InitialContact
- ListAddress1
- ListAddress2
- User1 .. User50
List Placeholders
Certain elements of the mailing list itself are made available to you in the form of placeholders. These are:
- MailingList
- Edition
- ListEmail
- ListAdminEmail
- ListAddress1
- ListAddress2
- ListCompany
Dynamic Placeholders
You can also merge in Dynamic Placeholders, which rely on rules to search and replace. This function must be turned on in the My Account - Update Account screen. Once activated, you will be able to add dynamic data rules in your Edition Editor.
Use this method if you are NOT using the dotCal mail/ACT! Plug-In. For more information about the dotCal mail/ACT! Plug-In program, visit our Help page.
(Courtesy of Interact Corporation)
1. Choose File, point to Data Exchange, and then choose Export. The first panel of the Export Wizard appears, asking you the type of file that you want to export and the name and location of the file to which you want to export it.
2. From the File Type drop-down list, choose Text-Delimited.
3. Click the Browse button to the right of the Filename And Location field, locate the file to which you want to export your data and click Save. You can enter the name of a new file, and select the type of text delimited format, (TXT or CSV) from the "Save as type" dropdown list, and ACT! will create the new file for you.
4. Click Next. The next Export Wizard panel asks what kinds of data you want to export. You can export contact records or group records, but you cannot export both record types at the same time. If you want to export both record types, you will have to go through the export process twice by first saving and exporting contact records, then saving and exporting group records.
5. Specify whether to export contact records or group records.
6. To specify how ACT! exports the data, click Options. The Export Options dialog box appears.
7. Specify the field separator that you want to use when creating your export file, and specify whether to export field names, then click OK. By default, ACT! uses a comma to separate fields when it creates a delimited text file. If the application into which you plan to import the file requires tab-separated fields, select Tab. If you select the Export Field Names option, the first line of the export file will contain the ACT! field names. This can be useful for mapping fields when you import the file into another application.
8. Click Next in the wizard panel. The next Export Wizard panel asks you which contact or group records you want to export.
9. Specify whether to export the current record, the current lookup, or all records in the database, and click Next.
10. The next Export Wizard panel asks you to specify the order in which contact fields from the currently open database will appear in the delimited text file. You can save the field order you specify as a field map that you can reuse when you export data in the future. For email address, be sure to use "Email Login".
When you have saved your file on your hard drive, go to Excel and follow the dotCal mail instructions for Excel.
Unsubscribe and Profile Update
The 3 features in this area of the List Settings page relate to handling your recipients unsubscribing and updating their profiles by clicking on a link automatically placed at the bottom of your email.
1. Allow email recipients to unsubscribe and/or update their profiles. This is a feature you are strongly encouraged to have, since people always want the freedom to unsubscribe from your email list. Note that if you are broadcasting an email to over 100 recipients, the unsubscribe link is automatically added to your email. You are given two styles of footer and one type of header selectable in the drop down menu. Footer #2 is a little more more concise than Footer #1.
Footer 1 language: This dotCal mail was sent to you on behalf of your company name. You can take your email address off your company name's email list, or update your profile and/or send comments to your company name. If you request to be taken off your company name's email list, we will honor your request pursuant to dotCal mail's permission-based email terms and conditions.
Footer 2 language: This dotCal mail was sent to you on behalf of your company name. Leave this mailing list, or modify your profile. If you request to be taken off this email list, your company name will honor your request pursuant to dotCal mail's permission-based email terms and conditions.
Header language: If you elect to add a "header", this language will preface your email:
Click here to view this email as a webpage.
followed by:
Click here if you would like to update your profile or take yourself off this email list.
2. Send confirmation to Administrative Email of unsubscribes. When recipients unsubscribe, you can elect the option to receive an email notification when they do. In either case, your Master List will be updated automatically -- check the Email Format field for the unsubscribed recipient.
3. List Owner - this is the name of the company or organization that owns the list. The unsubscribe language in the footer of your emails will reference this person. Note that if this is blank, the footer will reference the
SalesForce PlugIn: Object Mapping
This is where you will map your SalesForce fields to your dotCal mail CRM fields. The "Remote" column are SalesForce fields and the "Local" column are your dotCal mail CRM fields.
You must define at least one field mapping as the "primary key", which is used as the unique value that the two records share. It is strongly recommended that you use the SalesForce Object's ID mapped to a user defined field as your primary key. This will ensure the most reliable synchronization.
You may define the priority that you would like to assign each field. These priorities are:
- Remote: Always use the value found in SalesForce
- Local: Always use the value found in dotCal mail
- Lastmod: Use the value from the field that was modified most recently
NOTE: It is strongly recommended that you give priority to "Remote" for the primary key mapping.
There are a few special functions that are available to you. These take multivalue fields in dotCal mail and map them to true/false (or boolean fields) in SalesForce. This is extremely useful if you want to map the EmailFormat field to a field in SalesForce such as "opted-out" or "emailable" or "bounced." These functions are:
- FUNC: Unsubscribed -- Takes an EmailFormat value of "Unsubscribed" and turns it into a "true" value. It turns any other values found in the EmailFormat field into "false" values. For use with mapping to SalesForce fields such as "opted-out" or "unsubscribed."
- FUNC: Bounced -- Takes an EmailFormat value of "Bounced" and turns it into a "true" value. It turns any other values found in the EmailFormat field into "false" values. For use with mapping to SalesForce fields such as "bounced."
- FUNC: Emailable -- Takes an EmailFormat value of "Multi-Part," "HTML Only" or "Text Only" and turns it into a "true" value. It turns any other values found in the EmailFormat field (ie "Unsubscribed" or "Bounced") into "false" values. For use with mapping to SalesForce fields such as "emailable."
"Remote" column are SalesForce fields and the "Local" column are your __PORTAL_PRODUCT
Maintain Duplicates for Textfile Import
When you import a tab-delimited textfile into dotCal mail, you can choose to have the existing contacts always take precedence. These 2 checkboxes preserve any CRM data associated with the contact - the top checkbox preserves data about the contact, the bottom checkbox preserves mailing list assignments (if the box is checked, you can only add to the existing mailing lists, if UNchecked, you are redefining the mailing lists).
If the top "Maintain Existing Data" checkbox is not checked, the import file will always take precedence, so that if you have a blank field for an existing contact that you are uploading in your upload file, that blank field will take precedence and overwrite (delete) any data that exists in dotCal mail.
One way this is useful is if you want to clear out all data from a particular field (e.g., remove all data for your contacts' User1 fields). If you uncheck this box, you can also use this to remove data. For example, if you uploaded a text file with a blank User1 column (a column with User1 at the top and no User1 data for any uploaded contact) and unchecked this box, it would clear out the User1 data for each contact that was uploaded.
The Maintain Mailing List data checkbox allows you to upload a redefinition of Mailing Lists. If this box is not checked, your upload file will define the Mailing Lists that each contact is on. If the box IS checked, you will only be able to add to the existing lists (thereby preserving the lists your contacts are already on).
How the Master CRM Works
The Master CRM (CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management) is a complete contact management system. Think of the Master CRM as an umbrella over all of your mailing lists. Your contacts (and recipients of your emails) can be in as many mailing lists as you would like, but the Master CRM is the central location to find out about those contacts.
In the Master CRM, you can store a contact's personal information (name, address, phone numbers), demographic information (age, gender), other contact information (where you met the contact, notes), and up to 50 user-definable fields. To view all of your contacts, click on the "View All" button on the left side of the Master CRM screen. To bring up the detailed contact record, simply click on the contact's email address.
With Shared Access (under the My Account tab), you can also control who "owns" each contact. You can use Shared Access to set up contacts associated with members of your team (e.g., salespeople) and then track each team member's progress.
Each contact has 4 CRM tools associated with the contact:
- Events - these are emails scheduled for delivery to that contact
- Activities - these are date/time-based activities between you and the contact (e.g., meetings, phone calls, emails sent)
- Prospect/Sales Tracking - this keeps track of the sales cycle with the contact
- Billing - accounts payable and receivable for this contact
You can also get detailed reporting for your Master CRM database by clicking on the "Reports" tab. This is useful for viewing trends in your contacts (e.g., Top 25 email domains), detailed company information (i.e., summary information for all contacts from a company), or team member performance.
Finally, you should become familiar with the various Utilities:
- Import/export - get your contacts' data in and out of dotCal mail with XML or textfiles
- User fields - define your User1-9 fields, and determine if you want to display them in your detailed contact record screen
How to cancel a broadcast
When you broadcast an edition to a mailing list, it gets queued up in our servers for delivery. Delivery cycles run every 20 minutes, so the longest your email should wait in the queue to be delivered is about that much time, except in the highest traffic times, where your email may be behind other broadcasts in the queue (other broadcasts should never delay your email more than a few minutes).
If, after you click the "Send Now" button, you would like to cancel your broadcast, you can return to the "Send" page and use the "Cancel Broadcast" button next to the progress meter of your broadcast, at the bottom of that page.
It should be noted that canceling a broadcast in the middle of a processing queue is dangerous, as you will lose record of who will have already been delivered the email. If your email is in process of being delivered, only cancel your broadcast in case of extreme emergency.
Also important to note is that when you send a broadcast, it can only be canceled from the Send page. As a convenience, you can see a record of all of your broadcasts in the MasterCRM Calendar, but deleting the Broadcast activity from the Calendar will NOT cancel the broadcast.
AntiSpam Notice
Rule Number 1: Thou Shalt Not Spam. Spam is generally defined as an unsolicited email advertisement. dotCal mail is to be used to send emails to people who have "opted-in" to receive your message. This means that you may use dotCal mail to send your email only if the intended recipients of your email have advised you that they want to hear from you.
You may also consider using an Opening Paragraph to better communicate with your recipients, and reading our General Email Marketing Tips.
To broadcast an email using dotCal mail, the sender must confirm and certify that the email complies with all applicable laws regarding email deliveries (a partial list is available at spamlaws.com) as well as the Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Anti-Spam Policy of dotCal mail.
Among other items, US Federal law (effective January 1, 2004) requires commercial email messages to include the following (you can review/modify these on the List Settings screen):
1) accurate "from" and "subject" lines;
2) clear and conspicuous identification that the message is an advertisement or solicitation;
3) a proper unsubscribe mechanism such as a valid return email address and/or unsubscribe link; and
4) a valid physical postal address of the sender
For more information, please consult your legal counsel.
How To Use Shared Access
The Shared Access page allows you to create sub-accounts inside a single account, and provide different permissions to different users in that account. Each user uses the same username, but enters a different password. Once logged in, that user will be able to access only the parts of the account that the administrator grants access to.
For the most part, the table is self-explanatory. If you check a box, that user will be able to access that particular function. There are a few things you should be aware of.
The "Mastercontacts" permission has 3 possible values - View All, Edit User's, and Edit All. If the View All box is checked, this user will be able to view all of the contacts, including all of the stats associated with those contacts, and (if Broadcasts are granted) be able to broadcasts emails to those contacts. If you have only the "Edit User's" box checked, this sub-account will only be able to access contacts that that contact "owns". Contact ownership is defined in the Master Contact List with a field called "ContactOwner". The last box, "Edit All" will give the subaccount to all information for all contacts in the Master List.
The top section "All_Lists" applies to all individual lists, and takes provides for those permissions on ALL mailing lists.
If you allow a user to create new mailing lists, that user will have full permissions for the new lists created.
Approval For Mass Email
To prevent unauthorized use of the dotCal mail system, if you are going to send to a large list, we require that you be approved for mass exports.
This is a quick process - just send an email to approvals@emailer.dotcal.com. In the email, include the following information:
• Your account username
• Your company name
• Your email list policy (how you get your lists)
• By sending this email, you are acknowledging you have read and agree to our "Anti-Spam" and "Terms of Use" policies
Important Note: If you rented, purchased, or traded for a list, you should not use this software. We charge $20-$50 per spam complaint if you do not have a legitimate opt-in record (proof of business relationship and approval to send email) for the complainer. Repeat offenders will have their license to use this software revoked. We do this to protect your ability to send messages to your clients, and to maintain our position in the industry as being 100% spam free.
Problems with quotes and apostrophes in your email
Some word processing programs (e.g., MS Word) will create special angled quotes and apostrophes; this causes a problem with the ASCII character set, which you can set using the Template Manager. dotCal mails default to send emails in the Western European (ISO-8859-1) character set, which should alleviate the problem of some of your recipients seeing funny characters instead of the quotes and apostrophes you copied and pasted into your dotCal mail. The UTF-8 character set encompasses more characters than the US-ASCII and Western European, and may prove to be a better solution, particularly if you are including accented letters.
You have 3 remedies for this:
- Do not write your content in your word processor
- Select the Western European character set in your List Settings page. This does affect the ability for some recipients on older email servers to receive your message
- Select the UTF-8 character set in your List Settings page. This is a newer standard, and may not be compatible with some legacy systems, but should display most of the characters you are trying to show.
Note that subject lines cannot contain accented characters.
Creating Dynamic Effects in Email
There are many ways that people can create dynamic effects with email, mostly having to do with mouse rollover effects. Of the two popular methods, JavaScript and cascading stylesheets (CSS), CSS is by far the preferred method.
Using JavaScript in the body of an email message will greatly reduce the effectiveness of your email. This is because Javascript can be used by less scrupulous programmers to create pop-up windows, mess with your browser settings, and various things you don't want to happen in an email. For this reason, most email programs will either treat JavaScript-embedded emails as viruses (and not deliver them), or disable the JavaScript in the delivered message. It is strongly encouraged that you not use JavaScript in your message.
Stylesheets can be used to create all kinds of rollover effects, but are limited in what they can do with images (usually, your rollovers will change a font color, background color, or text style). The only limitation with this is that some older email programs may not be able to fully display your stylesheet. Be sure to put your stylesheet in line with your message, and not use a HTML tag.
Send To A Friend
This feature, accessible on the List Settings page for any mailing list, allows you to put a link or a small form at the bottom of your email, so that recipients can forward on the email to their friends. For privacy reasons, the recipient of the Send-to-a-Friend message is not automatically added to your CRM until the friend opts-in using the link at the top of the message he or she receives.
The type of Send To A Friend options are:
- Large - a 2-part form, where the recipient can add their friend's email address and a message to their friend
- Small - a one-line form with a space for the friend's email address
- Link - a small graphic that is linked to a webpage where they fill out a form with their friend's email address and a message to their friend
- Link Colleague - another small graphic, this one is more applicable to a B2B list
The Thank You URL is a special page that can come up after the forwarder sends the message to his/her friend. This is useful when combining with promotions, encouraging people to forward your message to as many friends as possible. You can also put a website profile update form on this page, encouraging users to update their profile after they receive the send-to-a-friend email.
The Large Form Message applies if you have selected the Large Send-to-a-Friend Form. This message will appear in the textbox. In the case of the Link send-to-a-friend options, this message will appear as the default text in the page that the recipient sees after clicking on the send-to-a-friend link.
Email programs that block reads
Some email programs, like recent versions of Outlook and Outlook Express, will by default block all external content from emails sent by people not identified as "trusted senders". Since this is the default for all senders, you may notice in your testing that you see your emails in the preview pane with a message that says "Rick-click here to download pictures. To help protect your privacy, Outlook prevented automatic download of this picture from the Internet".
For dotCal mail to register a "Read" by a recipient, those images have to load. This means that if the email is deleted before the user right-clicks to allow download of images, it will not register as a read.
Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done about this. Since it is controlled by the user, it is entirely up to the user's discretion to accept images being downloaded from your email. This is one reason why it's important to put compelling content in text near the top of your message.
Sent Graph On Tracking Page
The number of emails sent on the first graph on the tracking page represents the number of email successfully delivered to your list. This is an important distinction, as when you first delivered your message, it gave you a number of valid emails in your list that you were sending to before bounces and unsubscribes were registered. As an example, you may have sent 1000 emails out on a broadcast, but 100 may have bounced and 50 may have been unsubscribes. In this case, the graph would display 850 Sent, as 850 were successfully sent to valid recipients.
Because our email servers deliver their messages so quickly, there is a short delay between when the message was sent and when your data tables mark recipients as "Sent". With very long broadcasts, this can take as long as 30 minutes - please be patient after you broadcast your email, and give our servers a chance to update your database with all the "Sent" tags for your edition.
There are a number of reasons why we do not allow for attachments in emails you send out.
1. Attachments make your messages "heavy", meaning that all of your recipients would now receive more than just a small email message. This would greatly irritate someone on a dialup connection, as well as slow down our ability to deliver messages to your recipients.
2. Many viruses are sent through attachments. The virus threat causes many recipients, particularly corporate recipients, to completely filter out messages with attachments.
3. Even if you sent an attachment with your email, it would not be trackable. One of the great strengths of this system is the ability to track what links people click on. Due to the nature of attachments, you would not be able to track them.
Therefore, it is in everyone's best interest for you to create a link to a file, rather than attach the file to an email. If you need to put your file on the web, consider using our Document Library (included with every paying account).
Relative Read and Click Rates
The Relative Read Rate and Relative Click Rate numbers (shown below the bar graphs on the Campaign Statistics page) are a rough estimate of how well your campaign went.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Every campaign is different, with different intentions and different measures of effectiveness - this is only a rough guide and a good way to compare and track your various campaigns.
Relative Read Rate is the ratio of the total number of reads over the total number of emails sent. Relative Click Rate is based on a ratio of clicks with respect to the number of reads.
Auto Hard Bounce Domains
Question: I set my "Number of Bounces until Contact is Hard Bounced" setting to X. Why are some email addresses hard bounced after the first bounce?
Answer: Some domains (yahoo.com, earthlink.net, hotmail.com, and others) require us to hard bounce after the first "mailbox not found" error to ensure our customer's emails are delivered as quickly and with as little mail filtering as possible. This is because many email harvesters will perform "dictionary attacks" against major domains to obtain valid email addresses. That is, the email harvester has a predefined list of email prefixes (the "username" from "username@yahoo.com") that have a high probability of being valid and will email a domain with these, removing those which bounce from the list, and thus end up with a large number of valid email address which can be sold off or spammed directly by them.
Contact Information
The Contact Information area on the List Settings page defines the list manager for all editions sent to this mailing list.
These three fields are very important, since they identify you, the sender and are required to be accurate to be in compliance with the law. Your email's "From" name and email address are defined by these two fields. The Contact Email is your email's "From". When your recipients reply to your email, they will send their reply to this email address.
The Administrative Email is NOT displayed to your recipients (this is helpful if you are managing the email broadcasting for another client). The Administrative Email is the email address that will receive all system notifications, such as Send-to-a-Friend, and Unsubscribes, and Broadcast Confirmations.
As of Jan 1st 2004, an email sender's Physical Postal Address is a requirement for all commercial email originating in the US or being delivered to US recipients. This address is an active, valid mailing address where your organization can receive mail and will appear at the bottom of the email you send.
Alternative Browser Compatibility with dotCal mail
When will dotCal mail be compatible with alternative browsers, like Mozilla, Safari and FireFox?
It's not a matter of dotCal mail being compatible with Mozilla, it's a question of when Mozilla will bring their JavaScript technology up-to-date.
Just like Apple's Mac browsers, Mozilla's browsers have severe limitations in what kind of JavaScript they can render while you are working within dotCal mail. The WYSIWYG Edition Editor, and the text modification buttons (bold, italics, etc) in the form-based Edition Editor will not work because Mozilla does not support inline frames and dynamic content very well. We are all hoping that Mozilla improves their browser soon to resolve this.
Character Set
Defined on the List Settings page for a mailing list, the character set defines the alphabet that the recipient's email program will display. Of the languages available, the most compatible is Western European (the default). Western European is similar to US ASCII, with a few extra characters (note that a small percentage of old email servers will have problems with the Western European character set). If you are using angled apostrophes, quotes, bullets, or accented characters, and are having issues with formatting, you may want to switch your character set to UTF-8.
The other languages should be used when you are sure the recipients are all using that language.
The automatic spellcheck only works with messages set to US ASCII or Western European.
The new UTF-8 Unicode format is the most compatible with all languages. Most modern mail servers and email programs are compliant with this standard; however, some legacy systems may not be able to read emails in this format.
Maximizing Deliverability
At dotCal mail, we try to provide you with the tools to maximize the deliverability of your email. If you see issues with deliverability (e.g., emails being put directly into your recipients' spam folder, or an inordinate number of bounces), there are a few things you can do:
1. Use the Preview page for your edition to check spelling and the use of spamtrap keywords. The bottom line - if your email looks like spam, it may be filtered like spam.
2. Encourage your recipients to add your "From" email address to their address book. Most email filters check their address book first, particularly users of AOL, Hotmail, and MSN.
3. Check the MasterCRM record for the contacts that bounced or were filtered. There should be some clues for you that describe what happened to cause this. The recipient server may have been down, or the recipient may have changed email addresses, or there may have been a network outage at the time of delivery.
It's a good idea to be familiar with the Bounce codes on the Manage Contacts page for your mailing list. Refer to the Tips button on that page to see what Bounce-A/B/C/D/E means.
If you have any questions about this process or would like to report any problems that you see to us, please do not hesitate to do so. We have industry-leading email deliverability and work every day to preserve this capability for you.
Outlook creates exclamation point in message
If any line of your email is longer than 255 characters, Outlook will force a line wrap. Unfortunately, Outlook doesn't do this very nicely - it will add an exclamation point (!) and a space at that line break.
The best way to fix this is to break up your line with a space (use the space bar). This will allow Outlook to wrap the line on its own.
Note this 255 character wrapping includes all your HTML tags and text. If you add the space any place that can break up the continuous unbroken characters, it will fix the problem.
Recommended Opening Paragraph
Here at dotCal mail, we have worked hard with ISP's around the world to ensure your message gets through to your recipients. We have very strict anti-spam policies, and it is against the dotCal mail's Terms of Use for you to send unsolicited commercial email (spam) using the dotCal mail system.
We also understand that you may have people on your list that may not remember who you are. To prevent irritating those individuals who might think you are spamming them, we recommend using the following introductory message (opening paragraph) near the top of your email. The following is an example you can modify to suit your needs:
Welcome to your company's monthly promotions email for July 2002. You're receiving this email because you are either an existing customer or have requested information from us. Take a look at our Privacy Policy (put a link here). At your company name, we don't send unsolicited emails. If you think you've received this email in error or do not wish to receive future emails from us, feel free to unsubscribe. Simply scroll to the end of this email and follow the instructions.
How to manually unsubscribe a contact
You can manually mark someone as Unsubscribed two ways. This is important to do, as it will prevent further emailing to the contact. DO NOT REMOVE THE CONTACT FROM YOUR MASTER CRM - if you remove the contact from the CRM and then re-upload the contact into your CRM or into any mailing list, it won't be marked in the CRM as an unsubscriber, and will therefore be sent to again.
The two ways are:
1) You can change the email format in the MasterCRM to "Unsubscribed"
2) You can also upload a list of Unsubscribers to your MasterCRM. In the EmailFormat column place the word "Unsubscribed"
In managing your email lists you may notice that certain emails have bounced. Here are the codes for the reasons messages most often bounce:
- A - User unknown or recipient mail configuration error
- B - Bad domain (mail host does not exist)
- C - Connection problem with mail host
- D - Filtered, most likely by a content-based spam filter (check your edition content for spam-ish keywords)
- E - Mailbox full, or other temporary warning that the message couldn't be delivered.
- U or None - An unknown or no reason given for bounce
If we get a response from a mail server that would normally be categorized as a bounce type "C" (i.e. the server is busy or unavailable), we will continue to attempt deliveries for up to three days. If after that time we cannot deliver the email, it will then be recorded as a bounce "C". Once the bounce has been recorded, the system will not automatically attempt to resend and you must manually resend in a subsequent broadcast.
In all cases, a short transcript of the bounce reason we received from the recipient's server is available in the Master CRM record for that contact.
Adding contacts without email addresses
You can add contacts without email addresses into the dotCal mail system in two ways. In all cases, if you have a contact that does not have an email address, that contact will be identified in the CRM as ###@noemail.com, where ### represents a unique identifying number.
You can import contacts without email addresses into the CRM like any other file import. If the email address is a blank field, we will automatically assign one to it in the format described above (###@noemail.com).
A spamtrap is an email address that email blacklisting services use to identify spammers. If one of the email addresses in your list is identified as a possible spamtrap, take it very seriously - there is a good chance that address could result in a spam complaint (something you want to avoid at all costs). Be extra sure that those contacts are indeed real people and that you have a double-opt-in record for them.
Changing edition names is good if you need a better summary of the content of the page. HOWEVER, be very careful. You should not change the name of an edition after you send it - you will lose the ability to track that edition if you do.
You can override the default layout (set in your "List Settings" page) by selecting a new layout here, or with the "Layout" link in the navigation menu.
The Link Library is a collection of every link we have recorded you sending in an edition plus any additional links you have stored for future use in emails to be sent using dotCal mail.
Each link can be removed from this page, but if it is, it will remove all tracking information associated with it, so be careful when you do this.
The Notification Options column is a way for you to keep informed of activity by your recipients. When either threshold is reached, a notification email will be sent to the email address specified. The Threshold for All Clicks is a global check for the total number of clicks made to this link from any edition you have sent out. It's a good way to inform yourself when your emails have hit certain activity milestones. The Threshold for Recipient is useful for following up with a recipient of one of your emails, so if you need to know immediately when someone has clicked on a certain link, you can enter a number here and be immediately contacted. Note that this Threshold for Recipient adds the number of times a recipient has clicked on a link inside that edition only (it is NOT a global check for every time that recipient has clicked on the link).
At the bottom of this screen is an easy way to add links to your Link Library. You can either add them one at a time by filling out the top text field and clicking "Add Link", or you can add many domains at once using the Crawl function at the bottom of the page. The Crawl function can add a substantial number of links to your Link Library, so read the crawling options carefully before crawling a website.
Managing Your Email List
The Manage Email List page provides you with detailed information about the contacts in one specific mailing list. To help you understand the performance of your campaigns, this legend provides some useful information:
No Contact - the email edition has NOT been sent.
Sent - the email edition has successfully been sent (the number represents the number of times sent).
Read - the email edition has been read (the number represents the number of times read).
Survey - the recipient answered your survey (if a number is indicated, that is the answer the recipient chose).
Bounce - the email was not successfully delivered.
Find out more about bounces.
An important note about deleting contacts:
When you delete a contact from this mailing list, the contact still exists in your Master List. If you want to make sure someone doesn't receive another email from you, go to the Master List and change that contact's Email Format to "Unsubscribed".
The Document Library is a place where you can store files (i.e., images and documents) for use in your email editions. Since it is impractical to send documents as attachments to big lists of people, we make it easy for you to make those attachments available in a single click to download. Getting started is easy - just click on the folder name on the left side of the screen.
After selecting a folder, use the form at the bottom of the page to upload any file from your hard drive and provide this information:
- Choose New File or Replace and existing file
- Description - information about the file
- Sharing options - if you have Shared Access enabled and choose "Owner Only", other Shared Access Users will not be able to see the file you uploaded
- Folder - which folder to put it in (or create a new folder).
Any link to that file from a dotCal mail will be tracked, so you will know how many people have downloaded your file.
Document Library Storage
Your storage space in the document library expands as your subscription level increases. Each account is allocated storage space based on the following formula:
20kbytes x Monthly Subscription.
So, if you are subscribed for the $39.95 plan, your document library can hold up to 799 kbytes of data (20 kbytes x 39.95 =799 kbytes)
Files must be under 2 Megabytes to be included in the document library.
To add additional Storage Space to your account click on "Add space to your Document Library" from within your Document Library. Storage is added in increments of 10MB for $10/month.
How to Reduce Your Bounces
Bounces occur for a variety of reasons, the most common of which is that the recipient does not exist (invalid email address). However, some bounces are the result of filters or blocks placed on your recipients' email servers.
Getting around those filters and blocks can be tricky, but a few steps may go a long way toward helping you be a more effective email marketer:
- Try changing your recipients' Email Format (in the Master List) to "HTML Only" - some older email servers don't understand the dotCal mail format, which is "multipart/alternative". Older email programs, like Lotus Notes and PINE should be set to "Text Only", as they are not capable of interpreting HTML email.
- Don't make your email look like spam - if you have all kinds of gaudy, big-bold-text annoucements about free this or limited time that, it'll probably get picked up by a spam filter (and ignored by your recipients).
- Whenever possible, put your recipients' Firstname and Lastname into your Master List. Having names associated with your list makes it appear like you really know who your recipients are.
- If your ISP is still blocking your legitimate messages, contact your ISP and find out what rules they have set up for email filtering and how you can control them. It may be that the ISP has set up a spam filter that also filters out legitimate emails from your friends, family, and business contacts (unfortunately, this is an all-too-common occurrence).
At dotCal mail, we work very hard to ensure your messages get through to their recipients.
More information about this subject is available through http://www.talkbiz.com/assassin.html
Remember, above all, do not spam!
External Interface To Document Library
This Knowledge Base file describes how to interface with the Document Library using an external HTTP POST.
To upload a new file into the Document Library, you must supply the following name/value pairs:
- Username - the account username
- Password - the administrator password for the account
- ExternalPost - set this to any non-blank value
To add a file to the Document Library, send the following data:
- newlibfile - this is the raw (binary) data of the uploaded file
- newfilenum - set this to a number of an existing library file, or "new" if it's a new file
- newdescription - this is the description of the file
- Sharing - the owner of the file, matching the name of the contact as defined in the Shared Access screen
- Directory - the directory in the document library to put the file
- newfoldername (optional) - to put the file in a new folder (use a slash to separate subdirectories
Limitations of Macintosh with dotCal mail
Apple's Macintosh is a great computer platform; unfortunately, some Mac browsers have severe limitations in what kind of JavaScript they can render while you are working within dotCal mail. The WYSIWYG Edition Editor, and the text modification buttons (bold, italics, etc) in the form-based Edition Editor will not work in these browsers because they do not support inline frames and dynamic content very well. Internet Explorer, and some versions of Firefox have demonstrated this.
Fortunately, this problem can be overcome. You have three options:
- Virtual PC, a program available for Macintosh users
- Safari, the latest versions of this browser appear to support all of the latest Javascript functionality
- Switch to PC, using Internet Explorer for the PC, which allows you to use the dotCal mail platform to its fullest capacity
Require Captcha Authentication for Single Opt Ins
Utilizing single optin scripts opens your account to unscrupulous Internet users who have "bot" scripts that search the web and add bogus email address to legitimate lists. If you have set your account to Allow Single Opt In Signups, it is strongly recommended that you require Captcha authentication. Once this setting has been checked, you will need to insert the following code into each of your signup forms:
<img src="http://emailer.dotcal.com/captcha.pl?username=careoregon"> <input type=text name=captcha_value value="">
Delayed Broadcast Billing & Delayed Broadcast
Question: I have a question about the feature that allows us to delay the sending of email batches. If we have a batch that we want to work on today (the last day of the month) and want to press the send button today but actually will schedule the sending for tomorrow (the first day of next month), what month will the emails be attributed to (this month or next month)?
Answer: The emails are counted when they are queued up - so if you hit the "Send" button today, the emails would be added to this months total notwithstanding the fact that the emails are actually scheduled to go out at a later date.
Why some recipients have high read numbers
Some of the recipients of your emails may show very high numbers of reads. There are some reasons for this:
- They are very interested in your email and want to read it again and again (kudos to you!)
- Your email is sitting at the top of their inbox. This is important, particularly if they have a Preview Pane. Every time that Preview Pane loads, it loads the read registration image, which tells our server that your email was read again.
- It was forwarded on to someone else using their "forward" button. When someone forwards an email to a friend with their email program's "forward" button, it sends the entire email (usually intact) to someone else. This means the read registration email is unchanged when the recipient of the forwarded message opens it. For this reason, every opened email that the email was forwarded to marks as a read to the original recipient.
Text Only Message Does Not Display Line Breaks in Outlook
If you are designing a Text Only message, you may run into problems when viewing your edition in Outlook 2003. This is because Outlook 2003 removes all line breaks it thinks are unnecessary in the display of the message.
By default, most email programs wrap text messages at 72 characters. Recent versions of Outlook do not do this, preferring to let a text message wrap at the edge of your preview pane.
If your text message has newlines at other locations, Outlook may reformat your text message. To see it accurately, click on the "This message has extra line breaks" bar at the top of your message while in the Outlook preview pane. From there you can restore the line breaks and see how it will look on all other email programs.
Setting Up Triggers and Auto-Responders
Setting up an auto-responder is a simple task with dotCal mail. Under the "Help" tab, or on any mailing list's Contacts page, you can get to the website signup form page. From there, there are two ways to set up your autoresponder.
You can use the Auto-Subscribe Wizard, which walk you through a 5 step process to create your website signup form, and in one of the steps you will be asked for the mailing list and edition you would like to have triggered, or activated with a delayed trigger (we call auto-responders "triggered emails"). In the wizard, you can define an immediate trigger (useful if you want to make a "thank you for signing up for our list" email to be sent to your new subscriber), as well as up to 2 delayed followups.
If you would like more delayed triggered emails (auto-responders), you can look at the "Special Options", at the bottom of the main Website Signup Form page.
Since this capability ties directly in with your Master CRM, you can look in there at any time to see the emails that are scheduled to be sent to any of your new subscribers under the "Events" section in the detailed record for the contact.
DeDupe Against Other Lists
From the "Manage Email List" screen, you can click on the "Clean List" button to access this feature which enables you to remove email addresses which are in another list. If you wanted to make sure that a certain contact was only in List #1 and NOT in List #2, you would:
a) go to List #1's Manage Email List;
b) click the Clean List button;
c) select List #2 from the dropdown menu;
d) select the radio button indicating that List 1 has priority; and
e) click the De-Dupe Against This List button.
This process would automatically remove the duplicate from the second list and update the Master List.
In the case of a duplicate email address, the address remains in whichever list has "Priority" and is removed from the other list. If you want to de-dupe against more than one list, go in order of priority. Example: if you want to make sure a contact is in only one of List #1, List #2, and List #3, and List #1 is higher priority than List #2, which is higher priority than List #3, simply run the De-Dupe Against List #2 first and then List #3.
Embedding Link to Webpage In Message
Every time you send a dotCal mail, the dotCal mail system automatically creates a webpage for you. We create this page for your recipients that had a problem viewing the HTML version of your email. By allowing them to click on a link to the webpage, you can track their reads and clicks, and provide them with the intended version of your message.
If you would like to include a link to this webpage in your email, you can do so by adding the following URL to your email:
http://emailer.dotcal.com/r.pl?SessionKey_Placeholder_mrecEnc_Placeholder
This link is automatically included at the top of all "text-only" messages you send out. If you would like to include this this link your HTML messages as well, simply create a link (<a href=>) to the URL provided above.
In the Template Manager/List Settings page, you can also select "Header+Footer" in the Unsubscribe/Profile Update options, which will include this link at the top of the HTML part of your message.
This feature allows you to track when a text-only recipient clicks on the link to your webpage and on any link on the webpage its in.
Searching Master CRM With A Wildcard
To search the Master CRM for anything in a field, use the asterisk (*). Example: to find all the contacts with anything (not a blank field) in the Company field, type * into the search field and select Company from the drop down menu.
You can also search the Master CRM for any fields that are blank. Use the tilde (~) by itself in the Search textbox to do this.
Extended Story
The Extended Story feature allows you to create a shortened version of an article in your email, with a link to the full story. This link is trackable, and will open a web browser that displays the entire email, with all of the extended stories in it.
The 2 placeholders you need are ExtendedStoryStart_Placeholder and ExtendedStoryStop_Placeholder. Between these placeholders, dotCal mail will create a link in the email that looks like More..., which will link to the full story when clicked on. These placeholders can be inserted into your HTML with the "Include" button (form-based Edition Editor), or the special character button (WYSIWYG Edition Editor), or embedded directly in your uploaded HTML.
Below is an example of what your message body would like (in your Edition Editor):
This is a paragraph about some product or service you want to sell. This product is really great and you should buy it from us. ExtendedStoryStart_Placeholder We have over 100 widgets in stock, and they're on $10 each. We make widgets in our plant every day.ExtendedStoryStop_Placeholder
In the email you sent out, you would see this:
This is a paragraph about some product or service you want to sell. This product is really great and you should buy it from us. More...
Once the recipient clicked on the "More..." link, a web browser would open and would show the entire email:
This is a paragraph about some product or service you want to sell. This product is really great and you should buy it from us. We have over 100 widgets in stock, and they're on $10 each. We make widgets in our plant every day.
Note that the Extended Story feature has to be tested in the email you receive. In the Preview screen, you will see your entire message, not the version with the "More..." link in it. You can send yourself a test message using the Send screen to make sure it is working as you want it to.
General Content Tips
Now that you can design and send out a newsletter, you need to fill it with content that your audience will want to read. If you are promoting a business through your newsletter, you want to express a sense of community, of shared interests, of an accessible, customer-oriented company. Some ideas that will enhance the readability and interest from your readers are:
- Announcements: There are ways to announce new web site content, sales, and upcoming contests without sounding like a pushy ad. Emphasize the benefits of promotions by naming prizes that can be won from your site. Subtly highlight discounts and new product lines without resorting to a hard-sell.
- News: Find interesting tidbits or news regarding your market sector. For example, if you have a skiing newsletter, you could include a short, fun history of the sport. Make it informative and different.
- Links: Give links to helpful and/or site-related information, or choose a "Link of the Month." For more exposure, consider trading newsletter links with another partner site. For more information on how to insert links into your page, read the tutorial on embedding HTML.
- Various fun stuff: Anything goes, as long as it is entertaining, cool, and has at least a tenuous relationship to your site. Recipes, famous quotes, funny anecdotes, jokes, and surveys are all good ideas. Be creative and readers will keep coming back.
Articles and More Information
Tips for Writing Better Emails
Articles about Email Marketing
- "RE: Email Subject Lines That Work?" by Bryan Eisenberg, ClickZ, 21 May 2001
- "12 Common Mistakes in Email Marketing" by GrokDotCom
DomainKeys
DomainKeys is Yahoo's email authentication protocol. It is licensed under the GPL version 2.0 and is seeing fairly wide adoption throughout the industry.
How it works
When an email is sent, the mail server digitally signs the message with a private key. When a DomainKeys compliant receiving mail server accepts the message it uses the public key to decode the digital signature and determine if the message is valid.
What you need to do
You simply need to publish the correct DomainKeys public key in your DNS record for your sending domain. Your "sending domain" is defined as the domain portion of the email address used as the "From:" address on the list settings page for each list. For example, if your "From:" address is "myname@mycompany.com" your sending domain is "mycompany.com".
Visit our Domain Authentication page (found in the Help section) to obtain the most up to date DomainKeys record and ask your domain administrator to publish this in your domain's DNS record. Once published, you may submit your domain for testing by our system. Once your domain passes the tests, your emails will be DomainKeys compliant.
Please Note: For full authentication compliance you will need to have your administrator publish our Sender-ID record, which is also available on the Domain Authentication page.
TextOnly Message
Most emails that are sent to your recipients will be formatted in "Multipart", which means that those recipients will be delivered the highest-caliber email possible. Not all of your recipients will be able to receive HTML email (there are many reasons for this, including network firewalls, or individuals using older email programs). You can override the email format for any recipient using the Master CRM.
In case someone can only receive a text message, the textbox at the bottom of the Preview screen for your edition will be delivered to that recipient's inbox. dotCal mail has 2 settings - if you see "Automatically Generated" in the textbox on the Edition Editor page, dotCal mail will attempt to convert any text you have entered into a nice, reader-friendly text format. If you would like to modify the text message, you can put whatever you like in that textbox. Remember, modifications have to be done in the Edition Editor. You may find it helpful to copy the TextOnly part here, and then paste it into the Edition Editor for modification.
At the Preview page, you will see what exactly the text-only version of your email looks like.
If you change the Text-Only Message part, but then would like to revert back to an automatically-generated text version, all you have to do is delete everything in this text box on the Edition Editor.
Note that tracking information and stats for text-only messages is disabled, due to restrictions on line length.
Using anchors or targets to reference articles
You can easily create links to other parts of your email using "anchor" (also refered to as "target") tags. These links reference various locations in your message marked with <a name="something">. To link to this location in your email, simply create a link that looks like this: <a href="#something">click here</a>.
This will create a clickable link that will instantly move the page to wherever the < a name="something"> marker is.
Please note: The clickable link location begins with a '#' whereas the target link does not.
You can embed the Send-to-a-Friend form into a dotCal mail with a form like this:
<table> <form method="post" action="http://emailer.dotcal.com/send2friend.ice?tag=Unique_Placeholder&sentby=Email_Placeholder" target="_blank"><tr><td><font color="#000000"><b>Send this email to a friend:</b></font></td></tr><tr><td><input type=text size=20 maxlength=50 name="email" value="Enter Email Address"> <input type=submit value="Send" style="background:#9997fd; color:darkred; font-weight:bold"></td></tr><tr><td align=center><textarea rows=3 cols=24 name="comment">Check out this email!</textarea></td></tr><input type="hidden" name="tag" value="Unique_Placeholder"><input type="hidden" name="sentby" value="Email_Placeholder"></form> </table>
To add a link send-to-a-friend, you use this:
<a href="http://emailer.dotcal.com/send2friend.ice?tag=Unique_Placeholder&sentby=Email_Placeholder">Send this email to a friend</a>
Use dotCal mail to Coordinate Events
Ever wanted to use a simple tool to tell people about an event and follow up with them? With dotCal mail, it's easy.
You can direct people to a website with an auto-subscribe box, and have them sign up for a list, and then have them receive up to 2 follow-up emails. On your website signup form (see this on the "auto-subscribe" page on your Manage Email List page), all you have to do is add these two lines:
<input type=hidden name="delay1days" value="10">
<input type=hidden name="delay1edition" value="CoolerTips_7feb02">
which will send out that MailingList_Edition 10 days after the individual signed up.
You can also manually add events into the Master List. You can easily send a reminder dotCal mail to that contact by setting the edition and the date of the reminder email on the Event #1 and Event #2 fields in your Master List.
Salutation
Defined in the List Settings, your salutation will go above the graphical part of your email. This is how you personalize your email. We will put the recipient's name (defined in your Email List) after the 'Prefix', if you have defined it. If not, we will put the 'Addressee' in the salutation.
Example: if you have your 'Prefix' defined as 'Dear', all emails you send out will have a 'Dear Joe' or 'Dear Mary' at the top of the email; if you have your 'Addressee' defined as 'Valued Customer', any recipients you did not supply a name for will receive their email addressed as 'Dear Valued Customer'.
You can also embed the Addressee field inside your email using the 'Addressee_Placeholder' string. This will display the recipient's Firstname (if you have it) or the Addressee you define here (if you don't) in place of the Addressee_Placeholder string.
Embedding Profile Update or Unsubscribe In Email Body
You can embed an "Update Your Profile" link (which also includes the Unsubscribe option for recipients) in the middle of your email using this link:
http://emailer.dotcal.com/un.ice?Unique_Placeholder&Email_Placeholder&rec_Placeholder
Anyone that clicks on the link to that URL will be taken to the standard unsubscribe/profile update page. Your settings for that page are defined on the Manage Email List page.
On some text-only recipients, this link can be too long. To use a shorter link you can use this:
http://emailer.dotcal.com/un.ice?Unique_Placeholder&ToEmailPrefix_Placeholder&rec_Placeholder
We also provide these pages in Spanish and French. To make the unsubscribe/profile update in these languages, append this to the end of the links above:
&Espanol (for Spanish)
&Francais (for French)
Recipient mail program crashes
Occasionally we hear about recipients of emails sent out of our server causing a recipient email program to crash. This is almost always due to software being out of date (not having a recent version) or other conflicts with HTML email rendering programs. Since it is impossible to get on every recipient's computer to fix it, the easiest solution is to convert the recipient's EmailFormat in the MasterCRM to "Text Only".
The only email programs we know of that have this problem are Outlook and Outlook Express from before 1997, old versions of Lotus Notes (version 4), and old versions of Eudora (from before 1998).
How do Gmail users view emails?
If you send your email to a recipient on Google's Gmail service, you have nothing to fear. Gmail works almost identically to Outlook 2003, in that it by default will not load images. On one hand this may reduce your readability, as images are required to load for a "Read" to register. On the other hand, if you are writing truly compelling content, it is easy for the Gmail user to click on a link that says "Load External Images" to download all the images in your email.
If you do not want Gmail users to go through this, you can always set their EmailFormat to "Text Only" in the MasterCRM; however, it is probably in your best interest to keep the message with the standard EmailFormat in your Master CRM.
Import Email List From Excel
This instructions apply when you are importing using the quick import on the Manage Contacts page. Note: this is a different import process than if you are importing with the Master CRM screen.
Start Excel. Open the spreadsheet file (.xls) that has your contacts.
Your file can have a header, or label, row (it's optional). The spreadsheet should only contain contact data. Column A should have names, Column B should have company names, and Column C should have email addresses.
Select File, Save As.
At the bottom of the Save As dialog box, set the "Save As Type" option to Text (Tab delimited) (*.txt).
Enter the file name you want to save it as (like mainlist.txt) for the export file and click Save. Remember where you saved it, because you'll have to upload it to dotCal mail later.
You will probably see a warning about the destination file type not supporting multiple sheets or formatting - click OK.
Bring up your dotCal mail window and select the file you just exported (e.g., mainlist1.txt).
dotCal mail will handle the rest of the import for you!
How to make Flash more effective
Not all of your recipients will be able to display any Flash in your dotCal mail. Since JavaScript is disabled in most email programs, you can't run any of the standard website-based Flash detection scripts. So what do you do?
We discovered a cool way to do this, which is likely to be beneficial to you. Since Flash will display as a transparent image, you need to put an image behind it that people can see if the Flash movie does not play. Here is some sample HTML:
<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td width="500" height="375" background="http://www.stadis.net/images/flashbg.gif">
<embed src="http://emailer.dotcal.com/presentation/intro.swf" border=0 width=500 height=375>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Currently this technique can only be used on imported HTML files (not through the dotCal mail templates)
Sender-ID
Sender ID is Microsoft's email authentication protocol. Though Microsoft hopes to have the protocol adopted industry wide, it has not seen wide spread adoption due to licensing concerns.
How it works :
Sender ID works by determining if the sending mail server is authorized to send email on behalf of the purported sender of an email, as defined by the value of the "From:" header of an email message. An existing Internet protocol, Domain Name Service (DNS) is used as a database and query mechanism to obtain the authoritative information needed to pass judgement on each message.
What You Need to Do:
You simply need to publish the correct Sender-ID record in your DNS record for your sending domain. Your "sending domain" is defined as the domain portion of the email address used as the "From:" address on the list settings page for each list. For example, if your "From:" address is "myname@mycompany.com" your sending domain is "mycompany.com".
Visit our Domain Authentication page (found in the Help section) to obtain the most up to date Sender ID record and ask your domain administrator to publish this in your domain's DNS record. Once published, you may submit your domain for testing by our system. Once your domain passes the tests, your emails will be Sender ID compliant.
Please Note: For full authentication compliance you will need to have your administrator publish our DomainKeys public key, which is also available on the Domain Authentication page.
Who received text vs HTML email
- the recipient is using a text-based email program, or has HTML email rendering turned off
- the recipient deleted the email before it loaded
Send Webpage to a Friend or Colleague
- Date_Placeholder - the full date
- Year_Placeholder - the 4-digit year
- Month_Placeholder - the 2-digit month number (e.g., "10 for October")
- MonthNameLong_Placeholder - the full name of the month
- MonthNameShort_Placeholder - the 3-letter short month name
- Day_Placeholder - the day number (e.g., 20 for March 20th)
- DayNameLong_Placeholder - the full name of the day of the week (e.g., "Tuesday")
- DaynameShort_Placeholder - the 3-letter short day name (e.g., "Tue")
Working with images in the Document Library
Using RSS Feeds with your emails
Multiple email addresses for one contact
Here are a few tips to help you with email marketing.
1. Make your marketing e-mails inviting, stay away from SPAM words (sale, days left, etc)
2. Make your e-mail campaigns interactive so they have something to click on that can be tracked.
3. Let them know they are in control of being on or off your list.
4. If you're unsure...white background, dark border, and dark letters are safe for a professional e-newsletter.
5. Include bullet lists when you can to make your features or points clear.
Marketing tips provided by Dan Lavelle, CCC
You may run into a situation where a recipient believes you have sent him or her a virus.
This is always the result of a bad virus scanner or a virus scanner that is improperly configured.
http://emailer.dotcal.com/r.pl?SessionKey_Placeholder_mrecEnc_Placeholder
Recipient Challenge Response Filters
Generate Subscribe Code Multiple
How To Embed A Target In A URL
Limitations of Preview With Stats
- Using Dynamic Data or placeholders in your links
- Using an image map in your HTML
- Changing the name of an edition after it was sent
- Removing links from the Master Link Library
- Horribly malformed, nonstandard HTML
Copying Content from Microsoft Word
- Start new list with no subscribers - no contacts in your email list for this mailing list
- Copy your Email List from - this allows you use up to 3 rules to define your new list. They are additive, meaning that dotCal mail performs the list creation process by following each rule in turn. Each new rule can either add new contacts (the "Add" checkbox) or remove contacts from the previous rules (the "Exclude" checkbox).
When creating a new list, if you are using the where dropdown where somefield has this in it: and you want it to look for ANY value in that field, put an asterisk (*) in that last text field. - Import list from another account - you will need to have that other account's username and password. If you do not supply a Mailing List, it will copy the other account's entire master list into your account.
- A/B Split - this allows you to create 2 new lists instead of one, used best for testing the performance of similar (but not the same) email campaigns. For more information about how to do this, look at the Tips by the A/B Split checkbox.
How to integrate Impact Engine
There are two ways to export your contacts, both export to a tab delimited text file.
Import Email List From Palm Pilot
Generate Website Profile Update
Viewing Master List of Contacts
Import CRM Contacts Into Existing Mailing List
How to E-Commerce-Enable Your Emails To e-commerce-enable your email, you must first have a web-enabled merchant account. Most banks offer this service, as well as third-party vendors like Authorize.net (www.authorizenet.com). You may also want to look into Paypal.
Web-based purchase forms usually work with HTML forms. Instructions for creating payment forms will be provided by your bank.
Tracking Options Query Strings
SalesForce PlugIn: Logging In Enter your SalesForce username and password into the boxes provided within the Credentials area of the SalesForce PlugIn. If you are having difficulty logging in, first double check the spelling and case of your username and password. Be aware, however, that SalesForce often requires that you use a security token appended to the end of your password. To receive a new security token, log in to Salesforce at http://www.salesforce.com and click Setup | My Personal Information | Reset Security Token. Outlook 2007 does not support the use of background images in tables in HTML email. This means that any tables using the "background" function will not render an image in the background. Note that this applies to all table elements, table/tr/td tags are all affected. You cannot bypass this with CSS styles. Username Error Question: I keep getting the following error whenever I click on any button after I get logged in:"You must enter a valid username. Go back and fix it." Am I doing something wrong? Website Tracking Hints If you are enabling website tracking with webtracks, be sure to do the following to ensure it works: This goes right below the Page Headline. It should be slightly more descriptive, but again is trying to encourage your readers to spend more time on this page. Type of List This defines the type of list you would like this Mailing List to be - public, private, or hidden. Import Email List From Outlook Click on the File menu and select "Import and Export". Choose "Export to a File", and click Next.
Incorrect image rendering in Outlook 2007
We are unsure as to the reasoning behind the Microsoft decision to not support these very basic HTML elements, and we are unable to determine whether or not this will be fixed.
Answer: It has to do with the Internet Security Settings/Cookie Settings on your computer. If you can please check/modify your internet security/cookie settings so that your system allows "third-party cookies" (the setting is "medium" on IE), everything should work again. The other fix is to add emailer.dotcal.com as a "Trusted Zone" to IE. Bottom line, for security reasons, our system needs to verify that is actually you trying to get into the system before it will grant access to your data.
Page Sub-headline
Public Public lists can be subscribed to by anyone that is a member of any other list.
Private lists can not be subscribed to without your permission. Recipients CAN unsubscribe themselves from these lists.
Hidden - hidden lists are lists that your recipients do not know they are on. The only way to unsubscribe from a hidden list is to unsubscribe from ALL of your lists.
The ability for a recipient to voluntarily add him/herself to another list is handled with the "update your account profile" link at the bottom of every email you send out.
The Brief Description of This List is a short description that the recipient will see when reviewing the different lists available from you.
The User-Update Fields are fields that you allow your recipients to update on their own.
The User field values are defined using the link on the Master List front page.
It will then ask you for a format - choose Tab Separated Values (Windows).
Then choose Contacts. You will then save the file someplace on your hard drive - make sure you remember where you saved it!
Once you save it, open the file up in Excel and change it so the fields line up with Column A for Name, Column B for Company, and Column C for Email. Follow instructions for importing from Excel from there.
Generate Double Optin Subscribe Code This signup box works similarly to the other auto-subscribe boxes. The difference is that an email is sent to the new subscriber, confirming that the person that filled out the form is at the email address supplied to you. How to create trouble ticket or support request system You can create your own trouble ticketing / support request management system, and have it integrated into your dotCal mail account. Go to the Help tab, and click on the Website Signup Form page. There you will see instructions on how to create a form to put on your website for your clients to create support requests. Page Headline This is a big, bold statement that you will use to entice your readers to spend more time on the site. Import Email List From Outlook Express In Outlook Express™, select "File" in the Menu Bar, then "Export", and then "Address Book". This is the subject of the email, set in the Edition Editor. It's important to make your subject line something catchy, but not something that your users will think is just another piece of junk mail.
Double Opt-In is a more secure method of ensuring your subscribers actually signed up to be on your list (since anyone can access your auto-subscribe form on your website). Double Opt-In does require more work on the part of your subscribers (they have to click on a button provided in their email instead of the instant gratification of signing up through the website).
Support requests require the user to already be in your Master CRM. Their email address acts as the main index for tracking each support request.
When the Address Book Export Tool dialog box comes up, select the "Text File (Comma Separated Values)" option, and click the "Export" button.
In the CSV Export dialog box, enter a name for the export file (such as maillist.csv), and click "Browse" to save this file somewhere on your computer (remember where you saved it!), then click "Next".
Check the Name, Company, E-Mail Address boxes. Then click "Finish" to complete the export.
Then open the file up in Excel and follow the Excel instructions.
http://www.yoursite.com/somepage.cgi?UserID=1234&Name=Mary
The bolded text above (everything after the question mark) is the query string. If the Query String option is off (default), dotCal mail tracks the click-thru as:
http://www.yoursite.com/somepage.cgi
By turning this feature on, dotCal mail will track the query strings in your clicked-through URL's. Turn this on using the Query Strings dropdown menu on the List Settings for each list that has editions which contain links with query strings.
Email Subject Line
Make sure your subject line is relevant and that your subject line accurately reflects the intent and content of the email.
Also note that accented characters may not be used in subject lines.