Are you fearless in the face of danger? Do you have nerves of steel? Never met an app you couldn’t break? If so, we’d love to have you join us in testing the next great version of Direct Mail!

We have been hard at work for a very long time bringing a new set of amazing features to Direct Mail (not to mention working on a fresh design that looks and feels great on Apple’s new OS X Yosemite). We’re convinced that the new update will open up even more email possibilities to you and change the way you use Direct Mail. And by “change”, we mean “make it a whole lot better.”

If you have a knack for hunting down bugs and would like a sneak peek at what’s next, please apply here to be a beta tester. Unfortunately, we can’t take everyone, but we will do our best!

Update: Thanks for the enthusiastic response! Our beta testing pool is now full and we can’t take any more at the moment.

by Jonathan October 2, 2014 in Announcements

We want to remind all of our customers up north that Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) takes effect starting July 1st. If you’ve never heard of CASL or need a refresher on what it means for your email marketing activities, please take a look at the support article that we’ve prepared:

About Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL)

If you are unsure if you have proper consent (either express or implied) from your subscribers, we recommend setting up a subscribe form and then emailing your subscribers (before July 1) inviting them to sign up to your new list if they wish to continue receiving communication from you.

If you have any questions about CASL or setting up a subscribe form, please reach out to our support team.

by Jonathan June 24, 2014 in Announcements

We will be performing some maintenance on our database servers tonight from 12 AM to 2 AM Pacific Time. During the two-hour maintenance window, the Direct Mail application on your Mac will not be affected, but your access to online services from within the app will be temporarily suspended (including sending campaigns, updating reports, subscribe forms, and design tests). Sent email campaigns will not be affected and open and link tracking will continue to work normally.

Please reach out to our support team with any questions.

by Jonathan May 23, 2014 in Announcements

Our latest update to Direct Mail addresses some issues that have been “bugging” some of our users. The update is free and can be downloaded from inside the Direct Mail app by choosing Direct Mail > Check for Software Update from the menu bar at the top of the screen. Here’s a quick look at some of what’s changed:

• Germans users who sync Direct Mail with Daylite will be happy to learn that the “Individuelle Anrede” (Individual Salutation) field can now be synced to Direct Mail and included in mail-merge tags.
• Several bugs causing crashes, hangs, and high CPU usage (especially when under memory pressure) have been crushed.
• If you’re so inclined, you can now hand-pick the image that will appear when sharing your campaign via Facebook or Twitter.
• Direct Mail now warns you if your choice of From address will run afoul of any DMARC policies (see the recent AOL and Yahoo changes).
• Support for the new gTLDs announced by ICANN.
• …and many other improvements here and there.

More complete details are available in the release notes. Now, on to Direct Mail 4.0!

by Jonathan May 2, 2014 in Announcements

AOL today followed Yahoo’s lead in implementing a new policy change aimed at reducing fraudulent or spam email. If you use an aol.com “From” address for your email campaigns, you’ll want to take note of how this policy affects email you send using Direct Mail.

The Policy Change

AOL uses a technology called DMARC to digitally publish policies governing how their domain name can be used. The recent change requires that any email bearing an aol.com From address must originate from an AOL mail server IP address. Email providers like Gmail, Hotmail, and others who use DMARC will reject aol.com email that is not sent from AOL mail servers. This change was done in an effort to combat fraudulent email, but also impacts mailing lists and email service providers (like us). Mailing lists and email service providers like Direct Mail send email using their own mail servers, not AOL mail servers, which could cause legitimate email campaigns from aol.com addresses to be bounced or marked as spam.

However, there is a solution.

The Solution

The solution is to simply not use an “@aol.com” From address for your email campaigns. The best solution is to use an email address from a private company domain—like joe@abc-company.com. If that is not an option, you can use an email address from another free provider (like Gmail or Hotmail/Outlook.com). However, note that there is a good chance they could follow AOL and Yahoo’s lead and implement a similar policy change in the near future.

AOL’s policy change may be inconvenient in the short-term, but their goal is laudable. Hopefully, over time, this change will result in less spam and fewer fraudulent emails. As always, please contact our support team with any questions.

by Jonathan April 22, 2014 in Announcements