Year in Review

One of things that I look forward to every December is the parade of year-in-review specials that pop up on TV. It’s always fun to see where we have been and to look forward to where are going. In that spirit, here’s a brief look at some of the 2012 highlights for us here at e3 Software.

Direct Mail 3

Beautiful Templates

January was an exciting month for us as we launched our all-new Direct Mail version 3. The result of nearly a year’s worth of intense development, it packed over 100 new enhancements, including a beautiful template editor, in-depth email campaign reports, and blazing-fast performance. Even better, we launched all-new pricing plans to deliver great value for all types of senders. We said goodbye to our old website and launched a fresh, usable, and fast redesign. To help keep our awesome customers in the loop, we started this blog and brought back our monthly newsletter.

Stamps

Our next milestone was the launch of our iPhone application, Stamps, in May! Stamps makes it easy to keep tabs on your email campaign reports while you are away from your Mac. We had a blast putting together our first mobile application and have continued to improve the app in response to your feedback!

Design Testing

Thumbnail view gives you an easy way to preview your message in over 30 of the most popular email clients, including mobile, web, and Windows clients.

July saw the release of a great update to Direct Mail. We introduced retina-quality graphics to make sure Direct Mail looked stunning on the new MacBook Pro that Apple had just unveiled one month prior (and now the new 13-inch model). We also unveiled a new Design Testing feature for viewing full-size screenshots of your email in over 30 different email clients. This has become a most-loved feature, with thousands of design tests processed thus far.

Social Sharing, Notifications, and More!

We welcomed fall with round of updates to Direct Mail and Stamps in September that brought some awesome new features:

  • Live mobile previews of your email pushed to your iPhone
  • One-click publishing of your subscribe form to your Facebook page
  • Email campaign sharing on Facebook and Twitter
  • Delivery status notifications on your iPhone and Mac
  • An ever-expanding template library

Stamps Comes to iPad!

Stamps comes to iPad

We didn’t want to coast into the end of the year (plus we were having so much fun delivering great new features), so we pushed hard to finish 2012 with a bang. November brought our iOS app, Stamps, to the iPad. While we were at it, we added support for a handy subscribe form kiosk mode on the iPad, making it easy to collect new signups for your mailing lists on the go.

Finishing Strong

We finished up this year by introducing fantastic new integration with Marketcircle’s Daylite 4 application. We were very happy to deliver this feature, as it had become one of our most-requested enhancements. We also introduced a new web-based API that opens the door for Direct Mail integration with a host of other web-based products. Lastly, we shipped a Forward to a Friend feature that is the easiest-to-use and best-looking feature of its kind that I’ve ever seen.

Thank You!

It’s been a tremendous year for us and we owe it all to our amazing customers. Thank you for allowing us to serve you. We are very grateful for your support and look forward to surprising and delighting you with a series of new improvements in 2013!

by Jonathan in In-Depth

Read All About It: November Newsletter

The latest issue of our monthly newsletter is here! Read about new changes in Direct Mail, including Forward to a Friend, and Daylite 4 integration. We’ve also included tips on protecting your email reputation, a great deal on holiday email templates, and information about Stamps for iPad. Read now.

If you’re not a subscriber, you can add yourself to our list at the bottom of this page.

by Jonathan in Newsletters

All New Daylite Integration and Forward to a Friend Features!

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!

by Jonathan in Announcements

Stamps Comes to iPad!

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.

by Jonathan in Announcements

Use Transparency to Make Your Logo Look Great!

Many of the templates that come with Direct Mail include a placeholder for your company logo. Like this:

Since your logo is one of the first things your recipients will see, it’s important that it looks great. Oftentimes our team sees newsletters with logos that don’t mesh well with the background color of the newsletter, like this:

See that big white box surrounding the “art” logo? I think you’ll agree that it would look better if we got rid of the white background and had the logo blend in with the background. Here’s an easy technique you can use to make your logo blend in with the background:

Step One: Open your original logo artwork file in the Preview application

Step Two: Choose Edit > Show Edit Toolbar from the menu bar, then choose “Instant Alpha” from the Selection Tools menu

Step Four: Click and drag the colors you want to make transparent (in this case, the white background).

Step Five: Press the delete key to remove the selected color

Step Six: Choose File > Export from the menu bar. Choose “PNG” as the file format and make sure the “Alpha” option is checked.

Now when you choose your newly exported PNG for the logo, you’ll see the background color of the newsletter come through:

Use this same technique on your own logo to make a great first impression on your readers! Feel free to ask any questions in the comments and we’ll answer them right away!

by Jonathan in Features

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