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
Need to schedule a mailing to send at a later date/time? Easy!
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
Everyone knows that the bigger their email list, the better, but when it comes to email marketing, the quality of that list is just as important. What do we mean by quality? Engagement. The best mailing lists are filled with subscribers that open and act on the emails that they receive. Our friends at Return Path recently compiled a list of tips for building a larger, more engaged email list. You can check out the entire guide here, but we’ve highlighted some of our favorite tips below.
Before we begin, don’t forget that Direct Mail makes managing your email list sign-up process easy! You can create a subscribe form in Direct Mail, connect it to your website or Facebook page, and even integrate it into the other services and apps your company already uses.
Experience Your Customer’s Point of View
Take a step back and view your mailing list sign-up process through the eyes of your customers. For example:
Is your email list sign-up form easy to find locate on your website?
What about on a mobile device?
Have you clearly spelled out the benefits to signing up for your list?
Have you set the right expectations for how frequently you will email them?
Have you removed as much friction from the process as possible? For example, if you have a lot of required fields on your subscribe form, consider making some of them optional.
Get Your Relationship Started on the Right Foot
What do your subscribers see after they’ve signed up for your list? Creating a custom “thanks for subscribing” page or a welcome email can help get the relationship started off on the right foot. See this help article for how to configure Direct Mail to send a welcome email to your new subscribers. Or click here to learn how to set up a custom web page that new subscribers will see after they sign up.
Also, it’s great to entice new subscribers with promises of special discounts, exclusive content, early access, etc.—just be sure you follow through. Be sure that your email newsletter delivers on any promises you may have made during the sign-up process.
Promote Your List
Don’t be satisfied to let your sign-up form hide away in the footer of your website. There are lots of places you can promote your mailing list:
Make signing up for your list part of your online store. You can use our Zapier integration to connect Direct Mail to Shopify, Magento, Gumroad, and other online stores. Check our API for building custom integrations.
Do you send out email receipts or other transactional email? Consider including a link to your email list sign-up form in those emails, too!
Include an email sign-up form on your Facebook page. Direct Mail makes it easy.
If you have a physical retail location, use our iOS app to turn any iPad into a email list sign-up kiosk.
Leverage Social Media
You can give your email list a boost by promoting it from other social media channels that you may already operate. For example:
On occasion, promote the benefits of your email list to your followers on Facebook or Twitter and include a link to sign up
Purchase a “promoted tweet” that advertises the benefits of your email list and includes a sign-up call-to-action button
Annotate your YouTube videos so that viewers can click-through to your website or email list sign-up form
Purchase a sponsored post on Instagram that entices your followers to sign up
Here We Grow!
If you found some of the above tips useful, we encourage you to check out Return Path’s full guide of 50+ tips at this link. These suggestions can help you grow the size of your email list and improve subscriber engagement, building the foundation for a powerful email marketing channel. If you have any questions or comments, please get in touch and tell us what you think. We love to hear from you!
We have some shiny new bits available for you to download today. Our version 4.3 update includes oft-requested new features as well as enhancements to existing features, like autoresponders, that make them even easier to use. Here are some of the highlights of what’s new and improved (or you can read the release notes for the details).
Folders!
Your messages and autoresponders can now be organized into folders. This is one of the most frequently requested features, and it’s easy to see why. If you have a long list of messages that you feel are cluttering up your project, use message folders to keep them nice and organized. Likewise, use autoresponder folders to keep your various automated campaigns organized and under control.
If you select a folder in your source list, you’ll see a handy grid view of all the messages and folders contained therein (double-click the thumbnail to jump right to the message for editing).
Contacts Syncing
Direct Mail has always supported importing contacts from your OS X Contacts app. Now you can sync your OS X Contacts to an address group in Direct Mail with just one click. Direct Mail will take care of updating contacts that have changed, as well as syncing unsubscribe information back to the Contacts app. This feature also works with the older “Address Book” in OS X 10.7.
Autoresponder Sequences
Campaign automation was one of the big new features to arrive in Direct Mail 4. This update builds on that foundation to make autoresponders even more useful and easier to use. The first improvement is that autoresponders can now be triggered by previous autoresponder emails. For example, you may want to create a three-week email training course that people can subscribe to online (one email per week). Here’s how to do that:
Create three autoresponders: Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3
The Week 1 email is triggered when a person subscribes to your course using a Direct Mail subscribe form
The Week 2 email is triggered seven days after the Week 1 email
The Week 3 email is triggered seven days after the Week 2 email
Look for the new “Trigger after another autoresponder” option in the Autoresponders window.
Another improvement is that autoresponder emails can now be triggered manually. In our above example, you may have a friend who did not fill out the subscribe form, but that asked to be added to your training course. To enroll that person in the email course, simply add their email address to your list in Direct Mail, then choose Addresses > Trigger Autoresponder from the menu bar at the top of your screen. Your friend will now begin receiving your email course.
Additional Improvements
The release notes contain more detail, but this release includes a host of other improvements and bug fixes including:
A new, modern look for the Autoresponder, Design Test, and Spam Test windows
Design Test results can now be sorted by popularity, and results appear more quickly
Mail-merge tags can now be safely used inside URLs (see the release notes or help documentation for detail)
How to Upgrade
Upgrading is easy (and free)! Just open up the Direct Mail app and choose Direct Mail > Check for Software Update from the menu bar at the top of your screen. Mac App Store customers will receive the upgrade automatically in a few weeks once Apple has approved the update. Update: Apple has now approved the update.
Thank you to all our customers that have provided and continue to provide feedback on Direct Mail. We are excited to bring these improvements to you today, and look forward to the next round of great new features coming soon! Got an idea in mind? Please get in touch!
Since version 1.0, Direct Mail has always employed encryption to keep the contents of your email campaigns, mailing lists, reports, etc. private as they move between our servers and your Mac. This is also true for our iOS companion app, Stamps. Not only does this keep your information private, but also ensures that your data is not tampered with as it is transferred across the Internet. Beginning recently, we have started encrypting the content of your email campaigns as they are sent to each person on your list, too. This is known as encryption in transit, and it uses the same technology (TLS) that your web browser uses to keep your Internet browsing safe from hackers. This protection is enabled for all customers who send their email via e3 Delivery Service.
You may wonder why Direct Mail did not encrypt email in transit right from version 1.0. The reason is that most email providers (like AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) did not support the necessary technology until only recently. As the need for encryption and digital privacy has become more apparent, a large number of email providers have made the necessary changes to accept email over secure channels.
Despite these advances in email security, it’s important to remember that it is still not a good idea to send sensitive information like credit card numbers, social security numbers, passwords, etc. via email. As mentioned above, a large number of email providers support encryption in transit, but there are still some who do not. There may be subscribers on your mailing list whose email providers do not yet allow them to receive their email securely.
