System Update: Archiving Campaigns

By Andrea Saez, on May 17, 2012 - Leave a comment
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Starting today, in order to improve overall performance, detailed campaign reports for delivered campaigns that are more than six months old will be automatically archived. Campaign overview reports will still include high level campaign information but the following data will be removed from the user interface for archived campaigns:

* Click & Open Rate graph
* Link activity
* Detailed statistics: Opens, Unopened emails, Bounce reports, Unsubscribe Requests, Spam Complaints, Forward-to-a-Friend details, Sent Emails
* Heatmaps

While this information will not be available in the system, it is still available for download as a .CSV file within the campaign information.

You can duplicate an archived campaign at any time.

 

New Feature: Configure your DNS Settings

By Andrea Saez, on May 7, 2012 - Leave a comment
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In order to brand the tracking links and help maximize your clients’ deliverability, you will need to configure your DNS entries. This will allow your clients to send campaigns from your own domain. To ease the process, we have implemented a new feature to help you configure and validate your DNS setup.

To set up your DNS entries, go to Settings > Your Site Settings > Set up your DNS

In Step 1, enter your domain name (the same one you used to set up your Site URL)

In Step 2 you will see which tracking, forward and bounce entries you can use. This is important if you would like all links to appear as sent from your own domain, not ours. (Tracking links are inserted upon delivery to your existing links)

Once the changes are propagated, you will see a confirmation page. Keep in mind the process can take several hours (depending on your DNS server’s time-to-live setting), so check back later if it doesn’t work right away.

Read the full Support Document here!

 

New Feature: Validating a sender’s email address

By Andrea Saez, on April 30, 2012 - 3 Comments
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Because spammers often masquerade as legitimate senders (claiming that their emails are coming from a real company or person), receivers will often look to authentication as a way to verify if the sender is really who they say they are. This is especially important when using an email service provider as they may (or may not) be allowed to send on your domain’s behalf.

In order to help your clients maximize deliverability by authenticating their domain using SPF/SenderID and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), we have implemented a new email validation feature.

To validate a sender email address, go to Settings > Validate your email address

In Step 1 enter the email address that will appear as the sender email
(what will appear under “From” in the header of the email)

Step 2 will provide you with DNS setup instructions. There are three methods available:

  • Method 1
    Add a CNAME record to the DNS for the DKIM authentication
  • Method 2
    If your panel does not accept “_”, you will be provided with an alternate DKIM record
  • Method 3
    Add a TXT record for the DKIM authentication

Final Authentication
When the authentication is complete, you will see a prompt letting you know. Keep in mind the process can take several hours (depending on your DNS server’s Time-to-live setting), so check back later if it doesn’t work right away.

 

Make sure this option is enabled in your reseller panel by going to Settings > Your Site Settings > General Settings > Display email validation tool to your clients

Read the full support how-to here.

Template Coding: the importance of template size

By Andrea Saez, on April 24, 2012 - Leave a comment
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It’s always important to remember that coding an email template is not like coding a website – different rules apply. Unfortunately, email clients are not as advanced as one would hope they would be, so when coding, one must remember to keep things as simple as possible.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about important factors to consider when using background images and how it can affect the delivery of your email. This week I’d like to talk about limiting the size of your templates.

Even when coding a website you have to think about how different browsers and screen sizes will render your site. The same applies to email – except you have some different limits consider. While there is no set limit in length, email clients have a default width limit of 600px. It’s important to keep in mind that email clients will not use the full width of your screen to display your email – the last thing you want is for the email to look completely different than in your preview!

If you want your email to be viewed in one clean, straight view that does not require any extra scrolling from left to right, the 600px rule is something to keep in mind.

Luckily, our own Email Campaign Builder can help if you’re stuck – it will resize all images for you to 600px, and even gives you the option to resize/crop any images in your Image Library.

 

So how will this affect you?
I ran a test with a dummy campaign using Email on Acid for Gmail and Outlook2003 – here’s what would happen if I sent an email with 800px wide content. (based on a 1024×758 standard monitor size)

on Gmail

on Outlook2003
 

Notice how in both instances, the template and images are way too large for the preview pane to properly show the email.

Now here is the same email, but with the template at 600px

on Gmail

 

on Outlook2003

Not only is the 600px test cleaner, but I can see more of the content of the email in the preview pane. It required a lot less work to try to figure out what the email looked like.

By keeping these rules in mind when coding templates and you will ensure that your subscribers see exactly what you intended in their inboxes. You can also use tools like Litmus  or Email on Acid to preview campaigns across multiple email clients.

 

 

 

CakeMail Getting Started – Reseller Guide

By Andrea Saez, on April 16, 2012 - Leave a comment
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Last week we told you about our new CakeMail Getting Started User Guide - this week we have another treat for you, a new Getting Started Guide just for resellers!

In this new guide, you will find details instructions on getting up and started with a  reseller account:

  1. Enter your company information
  2. Configure your DNS Settings
  3. Add users
  4. Configure your Site Settings
  5. Brand your site
  6. Create your clients
  7. Upload and share templates
  8. Offer Add-ons

Check out the full guide here! 

 

CakeMail Getting Started User Guide

By Andrea Saez, on April 10, 2012 - Leave a comment
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Support grows and evolves every day – and with it, our knowledge base. We’ve just added a handy how-to in order to help you get started with your first campaign.

In the guide you’ll find:

  1. How to build your contact list
  2. How to build and edit the content of your campaign
  3. How to test and send your campaign successfully

From creating your first list, to editing the contents of your campaign, to testing and scheduling your campaign successfully – we have documented step by step instructions to help you get started.

You can read the full get started guide here!

HTML Template Coding Tip: Why not background images?

By Andrea Saez, on April 3, 2012 - Leave a comment
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If there is one rule of thumb when it comes to coding HTML email templates, it is to remember that coding a template for email is not like coding a template for a website. There are many attributes that, while they seem pretty obvious they should work, they actually do not. One of these attributes is a background image.

Background images in HTML email templates have long been acknowledged as inconsistent in their rendering across email clients. While modern email clients (such as those on iOS devices) may display them correctly, more traditional desktop email clients, like Outlook, offer absolutely very little support. Modern web clients like Gmail have recently implemented background image support, ‘background-position’ is still not supported. Hotmail, in the meantime, offers very limited support on this.

Many users feel that background images are important features, there are a few factors that should be taken into consideration before using a background image in an email:

  1. Remember that many email clients offer a “preview pane,” which may not render the image correctly. This could cause your background image to look distorted.
  2. Your campaign should include an equal image-to-text ratio. CakeMail offers a testing tool called SpamAssassin, which will help you analyze your image-to-text ratio. Here are a few things to aim for:
    • A maximum of 40% image coverage
    • A minimum 60% text coverage
    • More than 3 images in the page – if any at all.
    • Not all images touching
    • At least 400 characters of text

    As per anti-spam law, all emails must contain some form of text (even if it a simple “hello”). Image-only emails will not display properly and are almost certain to be flagged as spam.

  3. Always assume that the majority of your readers will use an email client that will strip out your background image. Here are a few design tips in case that happens:
    • Give your table a background color that matches the background image as close as possible.
    • Make sure there is enough contrast between your text and the background image/color in case the background image is stripped out.

If you would like more information on background image support across all email clients, take a look at The Email Standards Project homepage.

Social Media sharing with CakeMail

By Andrea Saez, on March 26, 2012 - Leave a comment
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CakeMail currently offers two types of social media integration – one to share your campaign, and the other to add follow links to your Facebook or Twitter pages.

To share your campaign on Facebook/Twitter:
The Social Media Toolbar will allow you to insert a toolbar on top of your email, allowing people to forward the campaign to a friend or share it on Facebook or Twitter. To insert it, simply click on Insert Social Media Toolbar under the Advanced Options when creating your campaign.

To add follow links in your campaign:
A social media section is available to be inserted in Optimized Templates only. Simply click on the Facebook/Twitter icons under Add section to insert the section in your campaign. To edit the links, hover over each icon and add the direct link to your social media page.

View this support document and many others in our Knowledge Base!

New CakeMail Knowledge Base

By Andrea Saez, on March 23, 2012 - 1 Comment
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We’re excited to announce the release of the new CakeMail knowledge base! This new version includes updated documents and resources for our latest v3.3 release, along with improved search functionality and a more intuitive document structure to help you find what you’re looking for with ease.

The new knowledge base divided into three categories – reseller, end-user, and API – all of which are easy to navigate through. Our Support section has also been updated, with a more user-friendly look and quick links to access some of our most popular features.

CakeMail Knowledge Base
Support Site

CakeMail Browser Support

By Andrea Saez, on March 5, 2012 - Leave a comment
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Take advantage of all available features in CakeMail by having an up-to-date browser.

Browsers supported natively (As of January 2012):

  • - Google Chrome 5+
  • - Firefox 3.5+
  • - Safari 3+ (Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad)
  • - Internet Explorer 7+
  • - Opera

Browsers supported through Chrome Frame only:

  • - Internet Explorer 6
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