July 2018

Getting Ready for macOS 10.14 “Mojave”

Last month, Apple previewed the next big update coming to the Mac this fall: macOS 10.14 “Mojave”. We are hard at work getting Direct Mail ready for the new operating system, and will have an update ready before Mojave becomes generally available.

Please note that if you choose to install beta versions of macOS 10.14, you may encounter bugs that could interrupt your workflow. For business-critical tasks, we recommend remaining on macOS 10.13 until the public release version of 10.14 is available.

Update (August 3rd): The latest public beta of macOS 10.14 is not compatible with the current release version of Direct Mail. If you need to run Direct Mail, please do not install the public beta, and instead remain on macOS 10.13 or earlier.

Dark Mode Sneak Peek

One of Mojave’s headlining features is a brand new “Dark Mode”. We think Direct Mail looks great in dark mode and wanted to share a sneak peek of what you can look forward to in the fall!

Mojave and Apple Mail Stationery

Direct Mail has long been compatible with Apple Mail stationery (where it appears in the “Legacy” section of Direct Mail’s template chooser). However, Apple is removing Apple Mail stationery from macOS 10.14. This will not present a problem for most customers, since stationery is rarely used these days. If you are, however, using stationery in Direct Mail and wish to do so after upgrading to macOS 10.14, click here to learn what you can do to prepare. Hint: upgrade to Direct Mail 5.3 before upgrading to macOS 10.14.

Direct Mail 5.3: Introducing Personal Data Reports

Our latest free update to Direct Mail began rolling out today, and we’re excited to share with you some of the improvements you can look forward to!

Personal Data Reports

New data privacy laws around the world mean that our customers may find it necessary to respond to personal information access and erasure requests that they receive from their mailing list members. In order to make it easier for you to respond to these requests, Direct Mail now includes the ability to generate and print (or save) a formatted personal information report. If necessary, you can also now easily erase all personal information related to an individual. These features can be found by choosing Window > Personal Data from the menu bar.

Improved Performance

Updated database technology under the hood means that you should enjoy a smoother, faster Direct Mail experience, with less waiting on a spinning cursor. In addition, campaign deliveries now start 2× faster!

…and More

A new emoji button in the toolbar ?, a new “Starter” template, and a host of bug fixes are just some of the additional improvements you will find in Direct Mail 5.3. To get a full list, check out the release notes (or see them in-app by choosing Help > What’s New in Direct Mail from the menu bar).

How to Update

Your copy of Direct Mail will update automatically over the next few days. If you want to grab the update right away, open Direct Mail and choose Direct Mail > Check for Software Update from the menu bar.

July 2018 API Update

This is a technical blog post for consumers of our Direct Mail API. If you would like to receive email notifications each time our API is updated, please sign up here.

If you currently use our API, we want to make you aware of some minor, non-breaking changes that rolled out this week in conjunction with our Direct Mail 5.3 update. In order to help our users comply with lawful data erasure requests that they may receive from EU citizens, Direct Mail is now able, upon user request, to delete and anonymize campaign report data specific to a particular individual. This has implications for consumers of our API:

  • The JSON object that represents a campaign report recipient now has an additional boolean property named anonymized. If this property is true, it means that the information for the recipient has been anonymized/deleted, and you will find that other properties on the JSON object (e.g. email, bounce reason, etc.) are null or false, so as not to reveal information about the recipient.
  • The JSON object that represents a campaign report recipient has always included links to resources related to that recipient, including archived-address, live-address, opens, and clicks. If the recipient has been anonymized, those linked resources will be anonymized (as in the case of archived-address), return 404 not found (as in the case of live-address), or return empty data sets (as in the case of opens and clicks)
  • It is now possible for the number of reported opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, etc. for a campaign to decrease over time. This is only possible in the case that the Direct Mail user chooses to delete data for a particular individual.

We do not anticipate that the above changes will break anyone’s use of the API. This information may be useful as you update your own business processes and software to be compatible with privacy law changes around the world.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team.