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ArticleLiveNext Sendstudio Update
- By Chris Smith
- Published 09/24/2007
Hi all,
I haven't blogged in a while but I thought I'd give a heads-up about the next sendstudio update we've been working on.
There have been a lot of little changes all over the place (and of course any appropriate bugfixes) to make things easier to manage and to make things a bit easier to use and understand.
For any administrators reading this, we've added quite a few options for you.
The settings page has been re-organized into sections to make it easier to find what you need to change.
We've added a lot of email settings including whether to allow attachments, whether to allow embedded images or not (and whether they are on by default or not) and a limit on the size a newsletter can be. That is - your clients won't be able to send an email over a size you choose (of course this can be disabled so they can send anything).
There is also a warning size which will show a message to let your clients know that an email will take a while for their subscribers to download. The message will still send though.
We also display the approximate size of the email that the subscribers will receive, and the size of the send in total for all subscribers - so you and your clients will know how big the email campaigns are.
One big usability change we have made is that when you save a newsletter, or try to send a newsletter, it checks to make sure that the images will work. If an image doesn't work (maybe it's a wrong url in the newsletter content, maybe it's behind a password protected folder) - then sendstudio will display a message and alert you to the problem so you don't get any broken images in the content.
Another little feature we've added is the option to test smtp server details and bounce details inside sendstudio. Enter your details and click 'Test' and it will let you know if anything is wrong.
Scott has also been working hard on a couple of new features. The first one is a basic spam checking system. It checks your content for particular keywords and gives your newsletter a 'spam-score'. This is not going to guarantee that your newsletter will get through spam filters, it's a guide only - but definitely useful to know where any problems may lie. We currently use spamassassin rules as our guide but we may add other types as well in the future.
The second feature he has been working on is to check your content for particular stylesheet elements or html attributes that different email programs don't like. For example, Outlook 2007 doesn't like background images, Gmail doesn't like stylesheet tags in the headers and so on - so you'll be able to see where your newsletter will break in different email clients. A very handy feature!
I've also been working on some speed tests to compare different mail servers - those details will be published shortly in a separate article.
As I mentioned at the start, no really big features have been added but a lot of little features and usability improvements instead. We're going to constantly add these sort of things to make it easier for you and your clients.
I haven't blogged in a while but I thought I'd give a heads-up about the next sendstudio update we've been working on.
There have been a lot of little changes all over the place (and of course any appropriate bugfixes) to make things easier to manage and to make things a bit easier to use and understand.
For any administrators reading this, we've added quite a few options for you.
The settings page has been re-organized into sections to make it easier to find what you need to change.
We've added a lot of email settings including whether to allow attachments, whether to allow embedded images or not (and whether they are on by default or not) and a limit on the size a newsletter can be. That is - your clients won't be able to send an email over a size you choose (of course this can be disabled so they can send anything).
There is also a warning size which will show a message to let your clients know that an email will take a while for their subscribers to download. The message will still send though.
We also display the approximate size of the email that the subscribers will receive, and the size of the send in total for all subscribers - so you and your clients will know how big the email campaigns are.
One big usability change we have made is that when you save a newsletter, or try to send a newsletter, it checks to make sure that the images will work. If an image doesn't work (maybe it's a wrong url in the newsletter content, maybe it's behind a password protected folder) - then sendstudio will display a message and alert you to the problem so you don't get any broken images in the content.
Another little feature we've added is the option to test smtp server details and bounce details inside sendstudio. Enter your details and click 'Test' and it will let you know if anything is wrong.
Scott has also been working hard on a couple of new features. The first one is a basic spam checking system. It checks your content for particular keywords and gives your newsletter a 'spam-score'. This is not going to guarantee that your newsletter will get through spam filters, it's a guide only - but definitely useful to know where any problems may lie. We currently use spamassassin rules as our guide but we may add other types as well in the future.
The second feature he has been working on is to check your content for particular stylesheet elements or html attributes that different email programs don't like. For example, Outlook 2007 doesn't like background images, Gmail doesn't like stylesheet tags in the headers and so on - so you'll be able to see where your newsletter will break in different email clients. A very handy feature!
I've also been working on some speed tests to compare different mail servers - those details will be published shortly in a separate article.
As I mentioned at the start, no really big features have been added but a lot of little features and usability improvements instead. We're going to constantly add these sort of things to make it easier for you and your clients.
Spread The Word
14 Responses to "Next Sendstudio Update" 
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said this on 27 Sep 2007 11:42:53 PM CDT
I love Send Studio. The ability to send to "list a excluding anyone who belongs to list b" and the ability to "not" the selections would be an enormous help for us. Right now we can use SendStudio to send to everyone at @aol.com, but what about the remaining people, how would we send to everyone else? Anyway, love the s/w look forward to updates!
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said this on 26 Sep 2007 1:55:04 AM CDT
Sounds awesome.
A really important feature for us would be rules that if a subscriber in one list signs up into a new list, then they are unsubscribed from the previous list. This would really help with people upgrading from an autoresponder list selling them the product to an autoresponder list teaching them how to use the product. This would be SO helpful. As would the ability for people to subscribe by sending in an email rather than just filling in a form (awebber has this feature). If you had those 2, the program would be perfect. Thanks for all the work! [ Chris's note: Unfortunately neither will be in the very next update. They are both on our list of things to add though ] |
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said this on 25 Sep 2007 8:26:52 AM CDT
You may think those are little, but the ability to check against Outlook compatibility is huge! It is the number one complaint we get. When can we expect this update to be released?
[ Chris's note: We're hoping to have it released within the month. It needs a lot of testing due to all of the changes we have made ] |
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said this on 25 Sep 2007 12:49:11 AM CDT
Sounds great. Great job! Look forward to it.
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said this on 25 Sep 2007 4:07:15 AM CDT
When will be available the new version ? thanks
[ Chris's note: We're hoping to have it released within the month. It needs a lot of testing due to all of the changes we have made ] |
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said this on 02 Oct 2007 5:14:54 PM CDT
This is wonderful news. Especially the Outlook 2007 compatibility checker. We're looking forward to this release with great anticipation.
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said this on 25 Sep 2007 12:11:38 AM CDT
Awesome Spam Checker - How does that work ?
[ Chris's note: We took the spamassassin rules and trimmed them down a little and basically run each one against the content. You will be able to create your own rules easily enough, we're going to document it all ] |
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said this on 25 Sep 2007 12:20:45 AM CDT
Excellent. You can tell a good software company by how frequently they update their products. Interspire get's an A from me.
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said this on 25 Sep 2007 11:16:18 PM CDT
Brilliant! The spam and stylesheet checks will be very handy when testing an email.
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said this on 28 Sep 2007 6:23:09 AM CDT
Sounds great! I hope you use other words than "doesn't like" in the software though. Outlook 2007 does not "dislike" certain elements, it just doesn't show them. Clients that use SS will not be alarmed by the phrase "doesn't like", but they will be by "doesn't show".
[ Chris' note - I was just providing examples of what we will show and what you will see. It actually says "Gmail doesn't show the CSS style: background-image" for example ] |
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said this on 26 Sep 2007 2:08:21 PM CDT
I'd echo Garett's comments, - if this includes bug fixes AND new features, that's fantastic.
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said this on 01 Nov 2007 5:23:45 AM CDT
Hi,
Steves comment is very good. Will there be an option to target subscribers who have not opened a specific newsletter (or more important) clicked a specific link? Is this possible today (by filtering the statistics)? Keep up the good work! :) [ Our reply: Yes, this feature will be included ] |
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said this on 02 Nov 2007 11:06:17 AM CDT
Great updates. How about additional filtering capabilities like "Exclude subscibers where email contains @aol.com; and Exclude subscribers where State = CA, OH, VA"
[ Chris' Note - not in the next version but this is on our list of things to add ] |
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said this on 17 Oct 2007 8:17:27 PM CDT
The upgrade sounds great. I hpoe there will be an option to target subscribers who have not opened a specific newsletter or clicked on a specific link!
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