The MailBuild Blog

Big news: MailBuild merging into Campaign Monitor

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:15:35 +1100

OK, so this isn't just big news, it's really really big news. In just under 2 weeks time, the entire MailBuild feature set will be merged with Campaign Monitor to create the ultimate email marketing application for designers. You can send campaigns for yourself, your clients and let your clients send their own campaigns, all from the same easy to use account. The best part is, you don't have to lift a finger. It's all being done for you behind the scenes.

What's new?

There's lots of great stuff packed into this upgrade, but here are a few of the highlights.

Improved interface - We've made some big improvements across your account to make it easier to use and more powerful.
Huge reporting overhaul - Your clients are going to love the new great looking reports that make it easier to see the numbers that matter.
Full design and spam testing - Let your clients see screenshots of their campaigns in more than 20 email clients and run it through popular spam filters before they send. They can even pay for each test at a price you set.
Import your own creative - On top of our template functionality, you can now import campaigns from the web or your own system with a single click.
Google Analytics integration - Automatically tag links in your clients campaigns to track the visits, sales and conversions on their site.

How will this impact my clients?

Other than a shiny new interface, your clients won't notice much difference. We've worked hard to make this migration as smooth as possible and minimize any changes your client will experience. They'll still login from your site address (or your own web site) and all existing drafts, campaigns and lists will be right where they left them.

You might want to let your clients know they won't be able to login to their account over the weekend starting 9pm on Friday 28th November (US Eastern standard time - see in your own time zone). Everything else like subscribe forms and sent campaigns will still work behind the scenes, and they'll be able to login again on Monday December 1st.

See screenshots and learn more

Instead of packing every little detail into this blog post, we've we've put together a detailed preview site where you can read all about the updates and check out screenshots and screencasts of what's coming.

See what's new - www.thenewcampaignmonitor.com

So what happens to MailBuild?

While the MailBuild brand will be gone, all the great features that you and more than 30,000 other customers rely on will live on within Campaign Monitor. Once we launch the new version, we'll be running everything from the new campaignmonitor.com web site, which will also be going live that day.

We're really happy with the finished product, and can't wait to see you guys using it.

"Uncomplicated, inexpensive & really, really easy"

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:41:15 +1100

As a designer, I used to say 'No!' to producing email newsletters - they always fell in the too hard basket for everyone involved.
For me, MailBuild has made the whole process uncomplicated, inexpensive & really, really easy. And now my clients can control the campaigns themselves, which they love. Hooray!

Adrianne Barba, bird.STUDIOS

MailBuild API and Flash AS3

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:34:07 +1100

If you have a Flash based site, and you'd like to have a newsletter signup inside your Flash pages, then the MailBuild API is the way to go.

Thanks to MailBuild customer Kuljit Athwal we now have a (partial) API sample in Action Script 3, in addition to the existing AS2 sample files.

You can grab both versions over at our API sample kits page. Great work Kuljit!

Easily add your ExpressionEngine site members to MailBuild subscriber lists

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:23:14 +1100

Users of the excellent content management system ExpressionEngine will be happy to see a new extension released a couple of days ago.

Developed by Stephen Lewis, the SL FreshView Subscribe extension "automatically subscribes newly registered (and confirmed) members to one or more MailBuild or Campaign Monitor lists".

This extension is free to download, and makes it super fast to integrate your email newsletters with your website members area (or for your ExpressionEngine using clients).

All you need to do is plugin your API key and ListID, and you can even register people into multiple lists at once. Thanks to Stephen for an excellent piece of work!

Check out the SL FreshView Subscribe extension in the ExpressionEngine forums now.

MailBuild downtime this Saturday September 14th

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:32:00 +1100

[UPDATE] Thanks for your patience, we are back up and running after successfully completing our maintenance.

Due to some maintenance requirements, we have scheduled an extended downtime period for MailBuild Saturday evening of the 13th, US Central time. We are specifying a total downtime of 6 hours overnight, but if all goes well expect MailBuild to be back sooner.

What does 'downtime' mean?

This maintenance period will have the following effects:

You and your clients will not be able to login to MailBuild (or c/send.com)
Campaigns scheduled to be sent during this period will not go out, but will be sent automatically as soon as the application comes back up.

However, subscribes and unsubscribes will be captured during the downtime, and processed into your reports afterwards. Campaigns sent previously will continue to display correctly, links will work and clicks and opens will be recorded correctly.

We will update this post if our plans change before Saturday, and also once the application is back up and running. Thanks in advance for your patience while we go through these maintenance periods.

MailBuild Ruby Gem updated

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:13:27 +1100

Cameron Yule's Ruby Gem wrapper for the MailBuild API, which we mentioned in a recent post has just been updated. Cameron announced Version 1.1 on his blog which adds support for multiple subscriber lists.

Visit the MailBuild API documentation for links to all the API details.

Beautiful new templates now available

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:01:51 +1100

The biggest challenge to great email design is inconsistency between email clients when they render HTML and CSS. To help save you a huge amount of time, hassle and possibly hair pulling, our support team guru Travis has coded up a huge selection of brand new MailBuild templates.

These templates are fully tested in all the major email clients from Outlook 2007, our old friend, to Thunderbird and Lotus Notes. While they won't appear exactly the same in all cases, you will see that they are very close in most cases, and will always look great.

In order to achieve this, we've had to make some compromises, and the code is a little more complex and less easily editable than before. However, you should still be able to grab these templates and make something awesome for your clients or even your own email campaigns.

Each template contains a version with all the relevant MailBuild tags built right in, including the new multiple repeater tags. You also get a copy of the original Photoshop file, so you can go in and change some of the graphical elements.

We think you'll find these new templates really useful, and visually appealing, so visit the templates page and have a look around!

A Joomla plugin for MailBuild

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:19:59 +1100

It looks like Van Eldijk Studio's been busy making a slew of useful extensions for Joomla and low and behold, one of them is for MailBuild!

The extension makes it easy for anyone to add a subscribe form to your existing site without playing around with HTML. Add your MailBuild account details and you're good to go!

Added on July 30, this extension is still pretty new but we'd love to hear from some Joomla users who have tried it out.

You can read all about the extension and download it from here.

In case you haven't been keeping track this marks the third community created plugin for MailBuild (Drupal, Ruby Gem and Joomla) which is simply fantastic! Keep up the great work guys.

A Ruby Gem wrapper for the MailBuild API

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:59:18 +1100

Super smart MailBuild user and Glasgow based developer, Cameron Yule has released the first version of his new MailBuild API interface for Ruby on Rails.

Cameron has all the details over on his site, and even includes an example Rails application that demonstrates the use of the new gem.

Great work Cameron! We always love to see people who are willing to share their work with other MailBuild users in this way, so if you've done something soimilar yourself, make sure you let us know.

Cameron's gem has been added to our MailBuild API documentation where it joins existing PHP and Flash API examples.

We've got some big plans for future improvements to the MailBuild API, but we're always interested in hearing what you think is important or could be useful too, so leave us a comment below.

Editor update: Feedback and Fixes

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:45:10 +1100

It's been 24 hours since we launched the new editor and I just wanted to say a quick thanks to everyone who has been sending in so many kind words about the upgrade. It's awesome you're finding it a big improvement, and especially cool that your clients are digging it too.

A number of you guys have also notice some irregular behavior with some templates, and we've been hard at work fixing these issues. We just pushed another update to the editor live that included fixes for the following issues:

Floating titles that include links can now be updated once added.
Drag and drop sorting is now working across the board. Some templates has some pretty serious nested table action but we've worked through it so drag and drop away.
When editing an existing floating image, you can now delete it altogether, as well as replace it.

On an unrelated note, a number of customers have been asking if they can nest a repeater within a repeater. I'm afraid that's not supported right now, and unless there is serious demand it's not going to happen in the short-term.

Thanks again for all the great feedback. Of course, If you spot any other issues moving forward, please get in touch. We want this transition to be as smooth as possible for both you and your clients.

The new MailBuild editor is alive and kicking

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:51:20 +1100

I'm very pleased to announce that the new MailBuild editor has just been pushed live and is now available to all of your clients. We covered the list of new features here last week, but here's a quick summary if you missed it:

Multiple repeater support - Include as many repeaters in your templates as you'd like.
Inline CSS - We automatically move all your CSS inline when sending the campaign for the best results in all email clients.
Drag and drop - Move repeater items quickly and easily.
Live preview - See precisely how your content looks as you type.
Bigger, resizable WYSIWYG editor - Great for clients adding big chunks of content to their campaigns.
Huge performance increase - Rebuilt from the ground up, feels like you're editing a local document.

The only change to the template tagging structure is the addition of a new toc='true' attribute in the repeater tag, which I'll discuss in more detail below. We've also put together a sample template that includes multiple repeaters and uses this new attribute.

Download the sample template (including Photoshop files - 2.5mb .zip)

Now that the new editor is out in the wild, we'll also be releasing a whole bunch of new sample templates that take advantage of the more flexible editing environment. Look out for an announcement here soon.

Answers to common questions

Will my old templates break?

Not a chance, the editor will continue to work for all your older templates. In fact, there have been no changes to the current templates tags, you can just include as many repeaters as you like, instead of the previous limit of one.

What happens to the table of contents when there are multiple repeaters?

As you know, we automatically populate your table of contents tag as your client adds items to their template. Now that we support multiple repeaters, you can tell us which repeater should populate the table of contents with the toc='true' attribute in your <repeater> tag. Here's how it looks for a repeater that includes a title, description and image...

<repeater toc='true'>
  <$title$>
  <$description$>
  <img src="<$imagesrc link='true'$>" width="200">
</repeater>

If you have the table of contents tags along with multiple repeaters and no toc='true' attribute is present, we'll use the first repeater found in your code.

Can I have a repeater that is just images and no text?

You sure can. Previously a repeater needed to include a title, but you can now have image-only repeaters. This means, for example, you could include a photo gallery in your template, among other things.

We do have more plans for the editor moving forward, such as making it easier for your clients to add personalization tags and giving more sophisticated clients a more advanced editor. In the mean time, we'd love to hear your thoughts on the new editor and any suggestions on how we could make it even better.

Coming next week: All new MailBuild editor

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:55:55 +1100

The past few weeks we've been hard at work putting the final touches on an all new version of the MailBuild editor. It's launching this time next Monday (July 21st), but we wanted to give you a heads up on the new features we'll be including.

Here's a quick screencast showing some of the new features in action. You can also check out a higher quality version here.

Multiple repeater support

Of all the feature requests we've received for the editor, this has been the most popular by far. For many of you, a single repeater just didn't cut it. We've completely re-built the editor, allowing you to include as many repeating items in your template as you need.

Inline CSS

This is a big one. We now automatically move all of your template CSS inline for your clients when sending the email. This means a much more consistent rendering across all email clients, especially those with poor CSS support like Gmail and Outlook 2007.

You won't need to make any updates to your templates either, this will work automatically for all of your clients current template designs.

Drag and drop

Re-ordering the items in your newsletter is now as easy as picking it up and dropping it where you'd like. Even if you've coded your template using nested tables, you can still drag and drop any repeating items to change their order. No more moving items up and down click by click.

Live preview

Now your clients can see exactly how their content will look in the email as they type it. No more switching back and forth between editing and previewing just to see how your content will look. After using the new editor myself, I can personally vouch for how much of a time saver this is.

Bigger, resizable WYSIWYG editor

If your clients are adding lots of content to their emails, the limited size of the current editor made it hard to see a lot of what they were writing at once. The new editor maximizes use of the available screen real estate and can be resized to any height your client prefers.

Huge performance increase

The entire editor has been rebuilt from scratch and is now much faster than the original. This speed increase combined with the live preview feature make it feel just like working on a local document.

We'll be rolling out the new editor next Monday, so you might want to let your clients know in advance that these improvements are coming. The editor will still work in more or less the same manner, so your clients shouldn't have a problem picking up where the old editor left off.

We hope you like the changes, this is the first in a series of big updates we'll be making to MailBuild over the next few months. Look out for an update to the blog the moment the new editor goes live next week.

Do your readers understand your terminology?

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:18:02 +1100

We web designers and developers can easily forget how much of our day to day language is incomprehensible to outsiders who don't know their AJAX from their Jif. Over time, we tend to develop ways of talking to our clients that they can actually understand, which is great.

However, there are other areas where industry specific jargon can creep in without being noticed. One such spot is in our MailBuild templates. Not so much in the technical construction of the templates, which are intended for clients, but more in the labelling used, which is aimed at your client's subscribers.

For example: You know what a web version is, and your client might know, but their readers? Probably not. Instead of using the actual phase web version in your template, why not describe what it actually is. "If you can't read this email, view it on the web".

There are other spots you might want to work on. Do email readers understand what "unsubscribing" actually means? Could you be clearer perhaps: "If you are no longer interested in these emails, unsubscribe now and you will not get any more."

Once you've sorted out your templates, you can work on your language when explaining things to your client. Do they know what an open rate actually is? Have you helped them understand what bounces are? These are useful terms that can be easily glossed over.

You may already do this of course, which is great! Now all you need to worry about is your clients using their own jargon that the readers don't understand!

What's the latest CSS support in email clients?

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:55:20 +1100

Over at Campaign Monitor we've posted our 2008 update to our testing of CSS support in email clients. There's been no Outlook 2007 style shocks this year, but we have seen some changes worth noticing.

There's now 21 different sets of test results covering both desktop and web based email clients. This information will definitely come in handy when deciding how to construct your templates.

Visit http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css for the full report, including downloadable PDF and web versions. Thanks to Freshview community and support guy Travis for putting together this big update.

MailBuild and sending to membership lists

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:44:58 +1100

In many cases, deciding whether your client's subscriber lists meet our permission guidelines is pretty straightforward - perhaps it is a list of customers or people who filled in a subscribe form.

There are some other cases which are less clear cut, and that we get asked about a lot. The most common area of misconception is with membership lists. Typically, this includes things like Chamber of Commerce members, Real Estate Association members and conference attendee lists.

Often such lists are openly shared with the members and sponsors of such organisations, even with the explicit understanding that they will be used by members to contact each other.

However, we don't allow you or your clients to send to such lists with MailBuild (or Campaign Monitor). Even though often this usage is allowed by the Association or organisation, the key difference is the other members have not given their explicit permission to you directly.

They have given their permission to the group they joined, or the conference they attended, but not directly to you or your client. So while in some cases people will be happy to hear from you, others will not, and we've seen many complaints from such lists in the past.

That's why we can't allow sending to membership lists, unless your client is the actual organisation itself. Of course, if you have contacted individual members and obtained their permission, that's totally fine.

Maintaining a higher level of permission even than the organisation that owns the list helps us to protect our whitelisted status, and ensure we can keep delivering email for all of our customers.

We always appreciate your help in explaining these policies to your clients. Don't forget about our permission guideline handouts that you can download to give to your clients, to help them understand.