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.

If you use a yahoo.com “From” address for your email campaigns, you may have noticed that there is now a greater chance of your email bouncing or being marked as spam. This is due to a recent policy change by Yahoo on how email sent from yahoo.com  addresses should be handled. This blog post explains, in brief, the policy change and what you can do about it. Remember, this only affects you if you are using a yahoo.com From address on your email campaigns.

The Policy Change

Yahoo uses a technology called DMARC to digitally publish policies governing how other mail servers should interpret email sent from yahoo.com. The recent change  requires that any email bearing a yahoo.com From address must originate from a Yahoo mail server IP address. Email providers like Gmail, Hotmail, and others who use DMARC will reject yahoo.com email not from Yahoo mail servers. This change was done in an effort to combat fraudulent email, but has not been without its share of controversy. The controversy stems from the fact that this policy change breaks most mailing lists and can cause some trouble for email service providers (like us). Mailing lists and email service providers like Direct Mail send email using their own mail servers, not Yahoo mail servers, which could cause legitimate email campaigns from yahoo.com addresses to be bounced or marked as spam.

However, there is a solution.

The Solution

The solution is to simply not use a “@yahoo.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 Yahoo’s lead and implement a similar policy change in the near future.

Yahoo’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.

Many Direct Mail users save their project files on a shared network drive (like a company file server). Recently, we identified issues that, in some cases, could cause slower performance and data integrity problems when saving a Direct Mail Project to a shared network drive. These and other issues are addressed in the recent 3.6.3 update to Direct Mail released last week. We encourage all of our customers to upgrade right away. You should see snappier performance, as well as improvements to image resizing, Retina-display appearance, CSS inlining, and more.

How to Update

If you downloaded Direct Mail from our website, simply open Direct Mail and choose Direct Mail > Check for Software Update from the menu bar.

If you downloaded Direct Mail from the App Store, open the App Store and navigate to the Updates tab.

We’re happy today to take the wraps off a special holiday present for all our fantastic  Direct Mail customers. Direct Mail version 3.6—available today—includes a host of bug fixes and improvements, including one new feature, in particular, that we’d like to tell you about.

A Whole New Way to Work with Templates

A primary focus of this update was improving the template editor experience. We want Direct Mail to be the easiest way to put together the best looking emails out there. With that goal in mind, here are a few of the improvements we made in version 3.6.

Revamped Template Gallery

Our templates now come in a wider variety of ready-made layouts: one-column, two-column, image-ready, text-only, and more. The new template and layout chooser do a great job of showing off the available designs and also make it much easier to find the style and particular layout that you want for your newsletter:

Fully Customizable Layouts

Our templates now come with 100% editable layouts. For example, after choosing a template, you may find yourself wanting to add another paragraph of text, include a sidebar, or add a gallery of images. These types of changes are now as easy as clicking the “+” button and selecting the type of section you want to add. Take a look:

These new flexible layouts make it incredibly easy to put together the perfect layout in just seconds.

Automatic Translation

To support our customers around the globe, we’ve translated key portions of our templates (like unsubscribe links, view online links, company name, etc.) into German, Spanish, French, Swedish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, and Japanese. When you select a template in the editor, you’ll see the translated version appear automatically. Direct Mail references your OS X language settings when choosing which language to present.

Enhanced Typography, Appearance, and Compatibility

As you browse through our collection of templates, we hope you’ll notice the refined typography and better selection of built-in color schemes (which you can always customize to match your favorite colors). After you send your newsletter, your recipients will notice how much better they look in their email client. We’ve gone through each template and made a host of changes to ensure they are easier to edit and are more compatible with the most popular email clients.

Where To Find The New Templates

The features described above are available in the templates that come built in to Direct Mail. If you’re already using a template from an older version of Direct Mail, you’ll need to create a new message and choose the updated version of the template from the template chooser. In other words, editing or duplicating an existing message won’t give you access to the aforementioned new template features.

Other Improvements

Templates aren’t the only thing we’ve changed in this update. We’ve fixed a plethora of bugs and spent many hours enhancing and refining the features you already love. If you like, you can view the release notes or just jump right in and download the update.

Thanks for all your feedback and suggestions. We look forward to unveiling the next generation of Direct Mail in the New Year. From all of us here at e3 Software, we wish you a wonderful holiday season with family and friends and a Happy New Year!

Update: Direct Mail 3.6 is now also available in the Mac App Store!