Direct Mail Blog

Color Me Impressed

Posted by Jonathan on May 22, 2013 @ 6:00AM in Features

For a long time, we’ve offered our built-in templates in a variety of color schemes. But for a long time, we’ve felt that we could make those color schemes even better—which is why we’re excited to tell you about another new feature in Direct Mail 3.5: 100% customizable color schemes.

Selecting a Color Scheme

Introduce custom color schemes in Direct Mail

Most of our templates come in a variety of color schemes. You can identify templates with alternative color schemes by looking for the four-color icon in our template chooser.

The “3 Column” template comes in several color schemes.

Once you’ve chosen a template, you can select a color scheme from the popup menu at the bottom of the window.

Customizing a Color Scheme

Want to tweak the background to better match your logo? Want to use a different highlight color to really make your message pop? No problem. In templates that support customization, you’ll see one or more color wells show up next to the color scheme popup menu.

Each color well controls a different color (e.g. background color, link color, accent color, etc.) To change the color, simply click on the color well and pick from the palette that appears.

Templates With Brains

We wanted to make it easy to brand a newsletter with your colors while not getting bogged down tweaking every accent or text color to match. Our solution was to give our templates some smarts in picking complementary colors. You’ll notice that text, shadow, and accent colors will automatically be set to tints and shades that best complement the background and highlights colors you select. Direct Mail makes you look like a design pro!

Upgrading Direct Mail 3.4 and Older

If you’re upgrading to Direct Mail 3.5 from an older version, you’ll need to create a new message from the template chooser in order to enjoy these new features (and refreshed designs). Don’t worry, your existing messages will continue to display, edit, and send as before.

We think our new customizable color schemes will help you create even better looking newsletters. Try picking colors that complement your logo or brand—and, of course, try and avoid colors that might be a distraction. As always, we’d love to hear what you like (or don’t like) about these great new features. Feel free to sound off in the comments or send us an email.

P.S. For those power users out there, we’ve added a convenient hex color picker to the color panel. Look for it under the “#” icon.

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Smarter Smart Groups

Posted by Jonathan on May 13, 2013 @ 6:00AM in Features

In Direct Mail 3.5, we’ve made the Smart Groups feature even smarter. If you’re not familiar with Smart Groups, they work just like Smart Playlists in iTunes, Smart Albums in iPhoto, and Smart Folders in the Finder. Smart Groups give you an easy way to segment and filter your mailing lists according to a variety of criteria. Take a look at this help article to learn how to create a Smart Group.

Smart Groups in Direct Mail

So, what’s new? We’ve added the ability for Smart Groups to include addresses from more than one source group (in the past, it was either one source group or every source group). Now you can better customize your Smart Groups to include addresses from a variety of groups that meet your criteria.

In the above example, we are creating a Smart Group that pulls in addresses from two groups (“Direct Mail Monthly” and “From DM3 Announce”) and then filters those down to just the subscribers located in California. Other criteria that you can filter on include names, custom fields, open/click rates, subscribe dates, and more.

We hope you find these new improvements handy in creating targeted, meaningful campaigns for your subscribers! We welcome your feedback in the comments below or via email!

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WordPress Plugin Updated

Posted by Jonathan on May 9, 2013 @ 12:00PM in Announcements

We rolled out an updated version of our WordPress plugin last night. We’ve modernized the code to make sure it works great on the latest WordPress installations, and added support for multiple subscribe form widgets on the same page.

If you have a WordPress blog, you can use our plugin to add a simple subscribe form widget that automatically syncs with Direct Mail. Install the plugin by logging in to your WordPress Dashboard, then choosing Plugins > Add New from the menu on the left. Search for “Direct Mail” and click Install.

Upgrading an Old Plugin

If you have an old version of the WordPress plugin installed, you can upgrade to the new version, but you will need to re-enter your subscribe form ID and mailing list name after upgrading. For information on how to find your subscribe form ID, please see this help article.

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Changes to Daylite Syncing

Posted by Jonathan on May 1, 2013 @ 10:04AM in Announcements, Features

The just-released Direct Mail 3.5 update includes some changes to how Daylite syncing works. If you don’t use Daylite in conjunction with Direct Mail, then this blog post will probably not interest you. If you do, however, then you might be interested in what has changed.

Direct Mail now synchronizes unsubscribe information back to Daylite. Previously, if a contact was  marked as “unsubscribed” in Direct Mail, that information would not appear anywhere in Daylite. Starting in version 3.5, when a contact is marked as “unsubscribed” in Direct Mail, the corresponding contact in Daylite will be moved to a group called “Unsubscribes” the next time you sync. The “Unsubscribes” group in Daylite is created for you automatically and will appear as a sub-group of the Daylite group you sync with.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you have synced Direct Mail to the “Mailing List” group in Daylite. Here’s what your group looks like in Daylite:

The "Mailing List" group in Daylite

…and here’s what it looks like in Direct Mail:

The "Mailing List" group in Direct Mail

Now let’s say that Victor Chan unsubscribes from our list:

Victor Chan unsubscribes

The next time sync Direct Mail with Daylite, Victor Chan will be moved out of the “Mailing List” group and into the “Unsubscribes” group. Victor Chan will also disappear from your list in Direct Mail (as Victor is no longer in the “Mailing List” group that Direct Mail syncs with):

Victor Chan now appears in the "Unsubscribes" group in Daylite

A Note on Performance

If you have a large number of unsubscribes that have not been synced over to Daylite yet, you may find that the syncing process takes a long time to complete. We are working with Marketcircle to improve sync performance in future versions of Daylite.

Conclusion

We hope you find this improvement to Daylite syncing useful in your day-to-day workflow. Please let us know if you have any questions—and please let your friends know about how easy it is to use Daylite with Direct Mail!

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Introducing Campaign Report Sharing!

Posted by Jonathan on May 1, 2013 @ 6:15AM in Announcements

It’s been a busy couple of months since our last update, but we’re finally ready to take the wraps off of a new feature that we think you’re going to love: campaign report sharing! Now you can share a great-looking, live-updating campaign report to anyone that has a web browser—including, of course, all Macs, PCs, iPads, and smartphones.

Share your campaign reports to anyone with a web browser

You’ll notice right away that the web version of your campaign report looks exactly like the Summary section of your report in Direct Mail. This is a great way to see, at a glance, the key performance indicators for your campaign. The web report automatically updates once a minute to match what you see in Direct Mail (that includes syncing any notes you add, too).

Share your report by navigating to the Reports tab and clicking Share

Sharing your campaign reports couldn’t be easier. In Direct Mail, switch to the Reports tab, click the Share button, then choose Share Report. For more information, please see this help article. Note that you’ll only be able to share reports for campaigns sent with Direct Mail 3.5 or newer.

Campaign report sharing is just one of the many improvements we’ve made in Direct Mail 3.5. We’ll be sharing more of what’s new in a series of upcoming blog posts. You can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter to get these updates pushed right to your inbox.

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About Today’s Update

Posted by Jonathan on January 22, 2013 @ 5:17PM in Announcements

Update: The 3.4.2 update is now available for Mac App Store customers, as well.

Eagle-eyed customers may have noticed that we released another update to Direct Mail today, a mere seven days after our last update. While we don’t normally like to release updates so close together, we felt the improvements contained in today’s software update were important enough to justify getting it into your hands as soon as possible. The primary improvements are fixes to bugs that were causing intermittent crashes for about 7% of our users. More information can be found in the release notes.

It’s important to us that your experience with Direct Mail be as seamless as possible. We hope these fixes contribute to a better experience and look forward to rolling out additional improvements in the coming months.

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Read Our January Newsletter

Posted by Jonathan on January 17, 2013 @ 2:55PM in Newsletters

The first newsletter of the new year is out! Read this month’s issue for tips on how to use mail-merge tags more effectively, news about recent software updates, a chance to win a free iPad mini, and information about e3 Software at Macworld!

If you’re not yet a subscriber to our newsletter, scroll to the bottom of this page to join!

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Smarter Mail-Merge Tags

Posted by Jonathan on January 17, 2013 @ 2:38PM in Features, In-Depth

Using mail-merge tags is an easy way to personalize your message for each recipient. You can personalize your emails with information like the recipient’s name, company name, or up to 15 other fields of your choosing. However, long-time and first-time users of Direct Mail may not be aware of some of the more powerful mail-merge features that were added in Direct Mail 3. In this blog post, we’ll talk about two ways to make your emails more dynamic and more personal.

Fallback Values

Let’s start with a simple example. Here’s a mail-merge tag being used in the greeting of a message:

The "[first name]" mail-merge tag being used in a greeting

The “[first name]” mail-merge tag being used in a greeting.

 

But what if your mailing list doesn’t contain a first name for every recipient? That would mean that some people would see “Hello” and then just blank space where the name was supposed to go. We can use fallback values to remedy this situation. Try this instead:

Use the "fallback" feature of a mail-merge tag to provide default values when merging.

Use the “fallback” feature of a mail-merge tag to provide default values when merging.

 

Now regardless of whether or not you have first name data for all the recipients in your list, the results will look great. Your recipients will either see “Hello Jonathan” (if that’s what you had listed as their first name in your mailing list) or “Hello Friend” (if you didn’t have their first name in your mailing list).

This technique works with all the mail-merge tags available in Direct Mail. We recommend using the Preview window to see ahead of time what your final, merged message will look like for each recipient in your list.

Conditionals

Conditionals take mail-merge tags one step further. They allow you to use if-else logic to create messages whose content changes depending on the recipient. For example, let’s imagine that I am sending out a reminder for an upcoming event where lunch will be served. I have already collected meal preferences for everyone on my mailing list and stored them in my mailing list under the column Custom 1. Here’s how I could use conditionals to include a special paragraph in my email for only those folks that prefer vegetarian meals:

We use conditional mail-merge tags to include a paragraph only for our vegetarian subscribers.

We use conditional mail-merge tags to include a paragraph only for our vegetarian subscribers.

 

Now only the recipients that have the word “Vegetarian” in the Custom 1 column in your mailing list will see the paragraph about the vegetarian meals. If you need even more advanced logic, you can use if/else-if logic as well as other equality operators (=, !=, >=, <=, >, and <). Please see our support article for more information.

Conditional mail-merge tags are available under the “Conditionals” section of the mail-merge tag menu. As with fallback values, we recommend using the Preview window to see what the results of your mail-merge will look like for each recipient in your list.

Conclusion

We hope the above examples have been helpful in understanding how mail-merge tag fallback values and conditionals can improve your emails. We have found that email campaigns that are personalized to the recipient tend to have far better open and click rates. For more information, please see the following two support articles:

How do I personalize my message with mail-merge tags?

How do I personalize my message with if/else logic?

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Vote for Stamps and Win an iPad mini!

Posted by Jonathan on January 15, 2013 @ 11:09AM in Contests

Vote for Stamps and Win!

Want to win a brand new iPad mini plus iTunes gift card? Head over to Macworld’s Facebook page and vote for your favorite apps to be automatically entered in their contest. We really hope you vote for Stamps—it’s in the Productivity section!

VOTE NOW

If you’ll be in San Francisco at the end of the month, don’t forget to swing by our booth and say hello!

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Direct Mail 3.4.1 Brings Bug Fixes, Performance Enhancements

Posted by Jonathan on January 15, 2013 @ 10:38AM in Announcements

We took the wraps off of the first software update of 2013 just a few moments ago. You can run software update right now to get the changes. Mac App Store customers will have to wait a few more days for Apple to approve the update (we’ll update this blog, Twitter, and Facebook when they do).

Here is some of what’s new:

  • The “History” tab has been renamed to “Reports”
  • The first-run experience for new users of Direct Mail has been streamlined and otherwise improved
  • Several crashing bugs were fixed
  • The image editor has been improved to allow fine-grained adjustments to image sizes and to stop blurry upscaling of small images.
  • Added support for importing additional Daylite attributes (Salutation and Suffix)
  • …and various other enhancements and fixes

Feel free to read the release notes to get the full list of changes. Please let us know what you think!

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