Better Tools for Securing Your Account

From day one, protecting our customer’s data has been a top design consideration. Nowadays, many people access their Direct Mail project data from multiple devices (including mobile devices using our iOS app, Stamps), so it’s important we provide our customers more information about their account activity.

The Account Activity section in the Direct Mail Account control panel
The Account Activity section of the Direct Mail Account control panel

New: Account Activity

In Direct Mail 3.5, we added a new “Account Activity” section to the Direct Mail Account control panel (choose Direct Mail > Direct Mail Account from the menu bar). Account Activity shows you information about who (or what application) is accessing your account as well as an approximate geographic location.

If you see activity that is unfamiliar (like someone logged into your account on Stamps), you can instantly sign them out by clicking the “X” icon on the right-hand side of the window. That device will be unable to sign back in without first manually entering your email address and password.

We feel that these changes, as well as other behind the scenes improvements, will help continue to keep your passwords and other data safe from unauthorized access. If you ever have any questions about your account, please see our Security FAQ or contact support.

Update to Direct Mail 3.5.2!

Update: Direct Mail 3.5.2 is now available to Mac App Store customers, as well.

We just released a bug-fix update to Direct Mail. Version 3.5.2 includes some important fixes for bugs and crashes, so we encourage you to update as soon as possible. If you’d like more information, please review the release notes.

Mac App Store customers will have to wait just a bit longer as Apple is still reviewing the update.

Color Me Impressed

For a long time, we’ve offered our built-in templates in a variety of color schemes. But for a long time, we’ve felt that we could make those color schemes even better—which is why we’re excited to tell you about another new feature in Direct Mail 3.5: 100% customizable color schemes.

Selecting a Color Scheme

Introduce custom color schemes in Direct Mail

Most of our templates come in a variety of color schemes. You can identify templates with alternative color schemes by looking for the four-color icon in our template chooser.

The “3 Column” template comes in several color schemes.

Once you’ve chosen a template, you can select a color scheme from the popup menu at the bottom of the window.

Customizing a Color Scheme

Want to tweak the background to better match your logo? Want to use a different highlight color to really make your message pop? No problem. In templates that support customization, you’ll see one or more color wells show up next to the color scheme popup menu.

Each color well controls a different color (e.g. background color, link color, accent color, etc.) To change the color, simply click on the color well and pick from the palette that appears.

Templates With Brains

We wanted to make it easy to brand a newsletter with your colors while not getting bogged down tweaking every accent or text color to match. Our solution was to give our templates some smarts in picking complementary colors. You’ll notice that text, shadow, and accent colors will automatically be set to tints and shades that best complement the background and highlights colors you select. Direct Mail makes you look like a design pro!

Upgrading Direct Mail 3.4 and Older

If you’re upgrading to Direct Mail 3.5 from an older version, you’ll need to create a new message from the template chooser in order to enjoy these new features (and refreshed designs). Don’t worry, your existing messages will continue to display, edit, and send as before.

We think our new customizable color schemes will help you create even better looking newsletters. Try picking colors that complement your logo or brand—and, of course, try and avoid colors that might be a distraction. As always, we’d love to hear what you like (or don’t like) about these great new features. Feel free to sound off in the comments or send us an email.

P.S. For those power users out there, we’ve added a convenient hex color picker to the color panel. Look for it under the “#” icon.

Smarter Smart Groups

In Direct Mail 3.5, we’ve made the Smart Groups feature even smarter. If you’re not familiar with Smart Groups, they work just like Smart Playlists in iTunes, Smart Albums in iPhoto, and Smart Folders in the Finder. Smart Groups give you an easy way to segment and filter your mailing lists according to a variety of criteria. Take a look at this help article to learn how to create a Smart Group.

Smart Groups in Direct Mail

So, what’s new? We’ve added the ability for Smart Groups to include addresses from more than one source group (in the past, it was either one source group or every source group). Now you can better customize your Smart Groups to include addresses from a variety of groups that meet your criteria.

In the above example, we are creating a Smart Group that pulls in addresses from two groups (“Direct Mail Monthly” and “From DM3 Announce”) and then filters those down to just the subscribers located in California. Other criteria that you can filter on include names, custom fields, open/click rates, subscribe dates, and more.

We hope you find these new improvements handy in creating targeted, meaningful campaigns for your subscribers! We welcome your feedback in the comments below or via email!

WordPress Plugin Updated

We rolled out an updated version of our WordPress plugin last night. We’ve modernized the code to make sure it works great on the latest WordPress installations, and added support for multiple subscribe form widgets on the same page.

If you have a WordPress blog, you can use our plugin to add a simple subscribe form widget that automatically syncs with Direct Mail. Install the plugin by logging in to your WordPress Dashboard, then choosing Plugins > Add New from the menu on the left. Search for “Direct Mail” and click Install.

Upgrading an Old Plugin

If you have an old version of the WordPress plugin installed, you can upgrade to the new version, but you will need to re-enter your subscribe form ID and mailing list name after upgrading. For information on how to find your subscribe form ID, please see this help article.

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