Update: Direct Mail 3.4 is now available in the Mac App Store.

Just in time for the holidays, we’re happy to announce a brand new version of Direct Mail (3.4) that delivers two oft-requested features: Daylite 4 integration and a “forward to a friend” feature for sharing your emails. Read on for more information, and be sure to download the update today! Mac App Store customers will need to wait a bit longer, as Apple is still reviewing the update.

Daylite 4 Integration

We are big fans of Daylite and know that many of our customers rely on Daylite and Direct Mail to stay in touch with their clients and customers. Although Daylite 4 (launched earlier this year) did not initially support third-party integration, it has recently been updated to support integration with Direct Mail. We’ve worked hard to make integrating with Daylite even easier than before—you don’t even need a plug-in!

You will need Daylite 4.1 to support integration with Direct Mail.

Importing Contacts

Now importing contacts (people and companies) from Daylite is as easy as dragging and dropping. Try selecting your contacts in Daylite and then dragging them onto Direct Mail’s window:

Contact Syncing

Instead of importing your contacts from Daylite each time, you can also set up Direct Mail to automatically sync with one or more of your Daylite Groups. Now it’s easy to manage your mailing list from inside Daylite and use Direct Mail for creating, sending, and tracking your email campaigns. Direct Mail will keep up-to-date with name, email address, and other changes you make inside Daylite.

Please see this help article for more information on setting up syncing with Daylite.

Linking Email Campaigns

Daylite makes it easy for you to keep track of email correspondence with your clients. Now Direct Mail can automatically link sent email campaigns back to Daylite, as well. You can even jump from Daylite into your Direct Mail email campaign report with one click:

We think you’re going to love the integration between Direct Mail and Daylite. Please let us know what you think in the comments or via our support site.

Forward to a Friend

Direct Mail 3 has long made it easy for your recipients to share your email on Facebook and Twitter. Now we’re adding support for sharing via the original social network: email. Our templates in Direct Mail 3.4 now include “Forward to a Friend” links that your recipients can use to pass along your newsletter. If you use your own templates, you can add this functionality by including a link with the href set to “[forward to a friend url]”.

You’ll be able to see when people share your newsletter by looking at the Links section of your history report (just like for Facebook and Twitter).

What Else?

We’ve also added a brand-new web-based API to Direct Mail 3.4. This makes it possible to add, remove, or update your Direct Mail mailing lists from other web-based applications—even when your computer is turned off. Please see our API documentation for more information.

Another addition is a new bulk-edit feature. Now it’s easy to edit the contact information (like correcting the spelling of a company name, for example) for several addresses at once.

Enjoy!

We hope you like these new changes in Direct Mail—be sure to check out the recently updated Stamps for iPhone (and now iPad), too! We are already hard at work on some exciting new changes to be announced in the new year!

Read the release notes or get the update today!

Stamps is a great way to view your email tracking reports from your iPhone, iPod touch, and now iPad! We’re happy to announce that version 1.2 of Stamps is available now from the App Store and features several great enhancements.

Detailed History Reports

We’ve enhanced the history reports to show you detailed activity information for each recipient. See which email addresses opened, clicked, bounced, unsubscribed, or filed a spam complaint. You can even see what each individual recipient clicked on in your message.

Just like Direct Mail on your Mac, you can view a report of the top email clients and get a fully-interactive map of where your recipients were when they opened your email.

Full-Screen Subscribe Forms

If you use your iPad in store or at trade shows to collect subscribers for your mailing list, then you will love the new full-screen mode for Stamps subscribe forms. Just use two fingers to zoom in to your subscribe form (just like you would to zoom into a page in Safari) and it will automatically go full-screen.

Get the Update!

If you already have Stamps on your device, open the App Store to update. If you haven’t tried out Stamps yet, visit https://directmailmac.com/stamps on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to try it out. It’s completely free! You can learn more about it here.

Great news for our App Store customers! Apple has just approved the 3.3.1 update to Direct Mail. To update, just open the App Store and click the Updates tab.

If you downloaded Direct Mail directly from our website (i.e. not from the App Store), then you don’t need to worry—you likely already have version 3.3.1, which was released for direct download a few weeks ago.

View Direct Mail in the App Store

A brand new update for Direct Mail is out today and it features some great new improvements that we’re excited to tell you about. It’s been a busy month or so since our last update, and today we’ve got a double whammy: Direct Mail 3.3 and Stamps for iPhone 1.1. Read on for highlights of what’s new, check out the release notes for the nitty gritty, or download the update.

New Templates

We love seeing the sharp-looking emails that you put together using our professionally-designed templates. Direct Mail 3.3 introduces over 20 new templates in three families: Skyline, Storesletter, and Versatile. We think you’ll appreciate the additional options these templates provide. For in-depth tips on using our templates,  check out last week’s post on Top Template Tips to Try!

Facebook Integration

Growing your mailing list is a key part of email marketing, and a great way to grow your list is by including a subscribe form on your website. This latest version of Direct Mail comes with an all-new subscribe form builder that makes it easy to:

• Create professional looking subscribe forms with custom logos, colors, and form fields. We’ll host it for you for free!
• Create an embeddable subscribe form that you can paste directly into your website
• Add your subscribe form to your organization’s Facebook Page with one click!

Take a look at our Facebook Page (click Newsletter Signup) to see how nicely our forms integrate into Facebook. Now you can add a form to your Facebook page in seconds.

Notifications

People love getting notifications on their iPhone and, new in Mountain Lion, on their Mac. We’ve upgraded Direct Mail and our Stamps app to send you notifications when your email campaign finishes sending, and when design tests complete (Mac only):

You’ll want to make sure and update Stamps to version 1.1 (just open the App Store app). Never heard of Stamps? Check out this blog post for an introduction.

And More!

This blog post just scratches the surface of what’s new. Other improvements include a great Preview on iPhone feature, significant performance improvements, expanded printing support, Twitter sharing support (Mountain Lion only), and more. Take a look at the release notes for details, and be sure and watch our Twitter or Facebook feeds for new blog posts on the changes.

How to Upgrade

If you downloaded Direct Mail from our website, just choose Direct Mail > Check for Software Update from the menu bar. Direct Mail will automatically download and update itself. If you downloaded Direct Mail from the Mac App Store, you’ll have to exercise some patience while Apple reviews and approves the update. We’ll post to our blog, Facebook, and Twitter feeds when Apple approves the update.

As always, we welcome your feedback and look forward to going in-depth on some of these changes in future blog posts.

Update: Direct Mail 3.3.1 is now available in the App Store, as well.