Features

Weekly Tips Roundup: June 3

Whether you’re new to Direct Mail or a seasoned professional, you’re bound to learn something new from our @directmailmac Twitter feed. We’ve started posting daily tips on how to get the most out of all the features packed into Direct Mail. Every week or so, we’ll roll up the recent tips and post them here to our blog, too.

Many of our customers have discovered new features they didn’t know about, while others have learned great time-saving tricks. Take a look and let us know what you think!

Schedule your email campaign to send itself at a later date

View your email campaign reports on the go with our iOS app

Save time with handy multi-touch gestures

Organize and archive your messages (and autoresponders) with easy-to-use folders

Turn your Facebook Page fans into email subscribers

by Ryan in Features

Quick Tip: Checking For Broken Links

No one likes sending out an email campaign only to discover that the message contained a broken or incorrect link. Wouldn’t it be great if Direct Mail could alert you to these kinds of problems before you send? Luckily, Direct Mail includes just such a feature! Check out the “New Spam Test” option in the menu bar (or click the Spam Test icon in the toolbar). As part of the test, Direct Mail will take a look at each link in your message and let you know if there is a problem.

Choose Message > New Spam Test from the menu bar to check for broken links

by Jonathan in Features

Search and Segment Like a Pro

You are probably already familiar with the “Search Addresses” box in the toolbar, but in this blog post I want to introduce you to a couple more powerful ways you can search for addresses in your mailing lists. There are lots of reasons you may find yourself wanting to do more than just a simple search, including:

  • Sending a special email campaign to just a particular segment of your mailing list (like the folks who engage the most with your emails)
  • Bulk operations, like unsubscribing, editing, or removing a list of email addresses

Both searching features can be found in the menu bar, under the Edit > Find menu: Find Addresses Matching List and Find Addresses Matching Rules.

Find Addresses Matching List

Screenshot of Find Addresses Matching List
Choose Edit > Find > Find Addresses Matching List… from the menu bar.

This feature works exactly as advertised. Just type or paste in a list of email addresses and click Find. Direct Mail will search for and display all the matching email addresses it finds in your address groups. There is flexibility in how your enter your list, too. Emails can be one-email-per-row, or comma-separated, or any other delimiter. They can include names (e.g. “Joe User” <joe@example.com>) or just plain email addresses (jane@example.com).

Find Addresses Matching Rules

Screenshot of Find Addresses Matching Rules
Choose Edit > Find > Find Addresses Matching Rules… from the menu bar.

This is where the real fun starts. This feature allows you to set a list of criteria (or “rules”) to search for. For example, you could search for contacts that match all of the following:

  • Subscribed in the past six months
  • Open rate greater than 30%
  • Most recent location is “California”

We’ve provided some sample rules that you can use to get started. To access the sample rules, click the “gear” menu in the bottom-left corner of the window.

Making Search Results Useful

Depending on the purpose of your search, there are several actions you can take with the results of your search. For example:

  • You can copy and paste the search results into a new address group. This could be a segment of your list that you send a targeted campaign to later.
  • You can bulk-edit the search results by selecting the addresses and choosing Addresses > Edit from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
  • You can bulk-unsubscribe the search results by selecting the addresses and choosing Addresses > Mark as Unsubscribed from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

We hope you “found” these search tips handy 😉. More searching tips are available in our support section, including finding duplicates, finding invalid email addresses, and help on finding your most engaged subscribers.

by Jonathan in Features

Multi-Touch Gestures in Direct Mail

How awesome is Apple’s new ultra-thin MacBook? The excitement around the new Force Touch trackpad got us thinking about sharing some super handy trackpad gestures that you can use today to make navigating around Direct Mail even easier. All you need is a recent MacBook that supports multi-touch (or a Magic Trackpad).

Zooming Design Test Thumbnails

Use the pinch-to-zoom gesture to zoom in or out of your design test thumbnails. Here’s an example:

 

Navigating Campaign Reports

We love how easy it is in Safari to go back or forward just by swiping to the left or the right on the trackpad. Did you know that you can use that same gesture to move backwards or forwards in your Direct Mail campaign report? This gesture makes it easy to dive into the details of a report and then swipe back to the summary:

 

Zooming Maps

Did you know that Direct Mail lets you see where your subscribers are when they open your newsletter? Just head over to the Maps section of the campaign report. While you’re there, use the pinch-to-zoom gesture to zoom in or out:

 

Quick Look Attachments

Okay, technically this is not a multi-touch gesture, but it’s still super useful! In the Attachments window, use the space bar on your keyboard to open a Quick Look preview of your attachments. You can also click the Quick Look icon.

What’s Next?

We’re excited about the new possibilities that technologies like multi-touch and Force Touch bring to the user experience, and look forward to incorporating more of them into Direct Mail. Stay tuned for more blog posts on features of Direct Mail that are new—or just new to you!

by Jonathan in Features

Using Emoji in Email Subject Lines

Trying to compete for your subscriber’s eyeballs in an increasingly crowded inbox can be tough. One tactic that you may not have considered before is using special characters (called “Emoji”) in the subject lines of your emails. Read on to learn what you should know about using Emoji in email.

Emo-what?

Similar to emoticons or webdings, Emoji are mini-illustrations that can be inserted alongside text. In fact, as far as your computer is concerned, they’re just another character of text. The use of Emoji started in Japan as a way to express one’s self in text messages and then grew in popularity worldwide when Emoji capabilities were added to the iPhone (and later OS X 10.7).

Emo-how?

Adding Emoji characters to your subject lines can be a fresh way to stand out from the crowd. Here’s how to do it in Direct Mail:

The Emoji character panel in OS X 10.7 and 10.8.
The Emoji character panel in OS X 10.7 and 10.8.
  1. Switch to the Messages tab and click the subject line you want to edit.
  2. Choose Edit > Special Characters from the menu bar.
  3. Select the Emoji character set.
  4. Double-click the Emoji character you want to insert into the subject line.

Words of Caution

Before you get carried away adding Emoji to your email, please consider the following tips:

  • Emoji works best when used in moderation (i.e. just one symbol) and when placed at the beginning of the subject line.
  • Don’t add Emoji just to add it. Try and use it to replace a word or add some extra meaning.
  • Emoji may not render properly in all email clients. Use our Design Test feature to see what it looks like in popular email clients.
  • Don’t overuse Emoji. Your subscribers will quickly tire and likely complain (i.e. spam) if you add Emoji to every email you send.

There are a variety of holiday-themed Emoji icons (snowflakes, stars, etc.) that you may want to try out over the next few months. Have fun and be creative!

by Jonathan in Features

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