It's almost here. On August 1, we're bringing you a beautiful new interface with stream-lined navigation and a more engaging user experience. Contactology 5.0 changes how you interact with your email marketing software.

• The left-hand navigation bar has been eliminated. All the tools you need are available by clicking on the top level navigation bar with drop down menus.
• The campaign details page (where you set campaign info like subject line, tracking options, etc.) has been totally revamped.
• We've redesigned campaign reports to make them easier to read and understand.
• Downloaded reports will now export into individual CSV files rather than one big file. Our goal was to make this report faster to download and improve application performance.
• The new UI design puts more of your important content above the fold.
• When sending or scheduling a campaign, you'll notice that the preview of the email is now on a separate tab.
• You won't see the term "suppressed" in the new user interface. We've made the function uniform by calling it a "global unsubscribe" throughout the application.

New tool for white label partners

Our new skinning tool lets white label partners easily set up their reseller interface. They can apply their own branding (logo, colors, etc) and relevant customer facing information from within their admin account. In the past, new white label partners relied on the Contactology development team to set up their customer portals.

For our existing reseller/white label partners, post release, you’ll notice your own skins have been updated with our new look. You’ll still see your own logo and color scheme.

We've put together an FAQ regarding the release of Contactology 5.0. Here's what you can expect:

Downtime:
We are recommending that customers refrain from creating campaigns and using the user interface between 8 am - 12 pm on Sunday, August 1 EDT.

Will previously scheduled campaigns send?
Yes. Any campaigns that are scheduled will continue to send. Recurring and triggered campaigns will also continue to function.

Will API calls continue to respond?
Yes. The API will be unaffected.

Will my subscription center continue to collect opt-ins?
Yes. All of your forms and opt-ins will function normally.

Will my contacts and previously sent campaigns still be there?
Yes. All your lists, campaigns and reporting will still be available.

See It In action during our live webinar.
Join us on Friday, July 30 for a tour of the new user interface.
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm EDT
Register here.

Tutorials – coming soon
Over the coming weeks, we'll be launching video tutorials for all the common functions inside the application. Most of the processes will be exactly the same as the previous version of Contactology.

Now, please enjoy a sneak peek at Contactology 5.0:

3 Options for Adding an Opt-in to Your Website:

1. Add a hyperlink to your Contactology subscription form
2. Copy and paste the form code from your Contactology account to your website
3. Use the form code along with our hidden image feature

How do you know which option works best for you? Let's break these down into three categories:

• easiest
• easy
• easy if you have some web support.

Easiest - Use the link we provide you and place it on your website

If you're looking for the super simple solution, you can grab your subscription center link from your Contactology account and place that link on your website. This can be an extremely effective method. Many of our clients design an attractive button with a strong call to action and link the button to their subscription center. The web visitor clicks on the button and is directed to your subscription center where he or she can sign-up. There's no extra work for you.

Getting your subscription center link is simple. Your first step is to login to your Contactology account and click on settings. Next, choose sign-up options. When you click on this link, you'll be taken to a page that displays several forms of code for your lists. You'll choose the list you'd like to use on your website to produce the sign-up form via the drop down menu located at the top of the page. Once the list is selected, Contactology automatically generates the url. It can be linked to an image or simple text.

Here is an example from one of our clients using this feature beautifully: SPARKcon

Easy - Copy and paste the form code to your website

You can also copy and paste our form code into your site. The code snippet is located in the same section of your Contactology account as the URL link to the subscription center. Just follow the directions above to get there.

Next, grab the code and place it on your website. Once it's added, you'll see a form with an input area for your web visitors email address and a "submit" button. Once someone enters their email address and clicks the submit button, they are taken to the subscription center to complete the sign-up process. Your account has its own personalized code snippet and looks something like this:

<form accept-charset=”UTF-8″ name=”IBNSubscribe” action=”http://clicks.skem1.com/signup/” method=”POST” >
<input type=”hidden” name=”c” value=”####”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”lid” value=”#”>
<input type=”text” name=”email__sValue” value=”" ><br>
<input type=”Submit” value=”Subscribe” >
</form>

Here is an example from one of our clients using our form code and customizing it with their CSS and imagery: Wizard World.com.

Easy with some web support - Use a hidden image for a seamless user sign-up experience

For our advanced users, we offer a third sign-up option which provides the most elegant user experience when signing up for your email campaigns.

The hidden image allows your subscribers to bypass the subscription center. From the user perspective, they see the form on your website, type in their email address and click "Submit". They are directed to a success page where they receive a confirmation that the opt-in has been completed. Your success page would utilize the Hidden Image URL information that will ensure the form information is correctly tied to the chosen list.

To set up this feature, you'll use a slightly different sign-up box form code:

<form action=” insert success page location here” method=”POST” >
<input type=”hidden” name=”c” value=”####”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”lid” value=”#”>
<input type=”text” name=”email__sValue” value=”" ><br>
<input type=”Submit” value=”Subscribe” >
</form>

Your success page can look however you'd like, but it will need to include the hidden image code. Here's an example: <img src=”http://server1.emailcampaigns.net/autoadd/?c=####&email=address%40emaildomain.com&lid=#” />

* Important: you’ll have to put in this code using a dynamically changing script (ie php, ruby, java) so that the information for “address%40emaildomain.com” in the image src code can be updated with the information from the sign up form. This code will not work if coded using just html.

You'll probably need some assistance from a web-developer to set up the hidden image code, but it shouldn't take more than a few minutes to get this working properly.

Here is some sample php code for coding the hidden image:

<?php
$sEmail = (isset($_POST['email__sValue'])) ? $_POST['email__sValue'] : ”;
if ($sEmail != ”)
echo(‘<img src=”http://server1.emailcampaigns.net/autoadd/?c=####&email=’ .urlencode($sEmail) . ‘&lid=#” />’);
?>

The example above is for forms with just one custom field that is the required email address. If you'd like to have more fields than just the email address, you'll have to add in the appropriate token codes to display and update. For example, you might want to collect both the email address and the first name of your subscribers. You can find those tokens by looking at your custom fields inside Contactology.

Questions?

As always, our support is standing by via email, chat and phone to answer any questions you may have. We're here to help you with all your email marking needs - including providing easier ways for people to find your lists and subscribe to them. Email us at support@contactology.com or call us Monday-Friday 9 am - 6 pm EST.

Application Performance

Clients with big databases (50,000+ or more) may have noticed slowdowns when accessing saved searches, lists and the send or schedule page. We’ve launched several performance improvements that should significantly speed up these processes in the app.

Template Editor in Design Mode Gets Bigger

If you’re using a template in Design Mode, you’ll now have more space in the editor. We’ve made the editable area larger, giving you more space to create and tweak your content.

Here’s what it looked like before:

And here's the new and improved version. Note the extra white space for inserting and editing content.

Click-through Reporting

We've made several modifications to click-through reporting. To see these changes, take a look at one of your sent campaigns under the completed tab. Scroll to the bottom where we display the image and URLs that received clicks.
You'll notice you can now paginate through your click-through report. In the past, all of the links were listed on one page. Now, you can easily and quickly scan through your report in an organized fashion.

Take a look at the new report:

There's also a big change in how we're displaying images that have been clicked. Previously, we showed the actual image in the campaign report with click-through results. This translated into a very messy reporting screen. Now, rather than displaying the image by default, we allow you to click on an icon to determine whether or not the recipient clicked on a linked image or hyperlinked text.

Having this data allows you to determine which linking tactic provides the best click-through rate for your campaigns: an image with a link or hyperlinked text.

In addition to the cosmetic changes, you can now track any personalized URLs you may be using in your campaign. We discuss that in more detail below.

Tracking Personalized URLs

If you are using custom URLs, they'll now be tracked like a standard URL. For example, if you're integrating your email marketing with PURLs, each clickable PURL will show up in your campaign reporting. To use this feature, each email recipient will need to have their own personalized URL associated with their contact record. This is accomplished via a CSV import or through the API. Read more about PURLs and why they are useful.

Date Token Updated:

Earlier in June, we launched our new Date token. It allows you to automatically insert the current date into a campaign. We noticed that when using a formatted version of the date token, if you placed it in the subject line without a space, the token wasn’t being populated. This only occurred when you were changing the format from the default {EC:Date} to some other format. For example, {EC:Date:n/j/Y} did not populate, but if you placed a space after the second colon, it worked. We’ve edited the feature to work with either scenario.

We also noticed that the Date Token was not populating in emails on the archive page. We've corrected this aberration.

Questions?

As always, let us know if you have questions. Email us at support@contactology.com or call 1-866-363-0670 to speak with an account manager.

We are delighted to announce the launch of a new look for Contactology. We've spent lots of time planning and developing a sleek interface that will give you the best user experience possible when creating, sending and tracking email marketing campaigns.

What's Changed?
The left-hand navigation bar is a thing of the past. Contactology 5.0 has a simple top-level navigation that places all of our features at your fingertips. We have replaced the static tabs in our old interface with simple drop-down menus. Functions are categorized under contacts, campaigns, surveys, reports and settings.

What Hasn't Changed?
When we started our redesign, our goal was to take the powerful Contactology feature set and place it in an interface that is easy-to-use. We didn't want to shock our existing users with new processes. In the new interface, you'll go through the same steps as before when creating and sending a campaign.

Video Tutorials
We'll be launching a series of video tutorials on our blog during the coming weeks with step-by-step instructions for using the new user interface. Don’t worry — we’ll be with you every step of the way.

Webinars
Be on the lookout for invites to our webinar series on the new interface.

White Label Partners
We’ll be sending you information on how this will change your user interface and skin.

Keep visiting the blog during the coming weeks for more details.

We came across an interesting situation this week. One of our clients was receiving a big deduction from our Message Quality Score (MQS). The deduction was citing that a URL in their email was on the Spamhaus Block List (SBL), and after some detective work we discovered that the client's domain URL was triggering this message. This was a bit puzzling as the sender is a stellar email marketer with a clean list and no spam complaints. But it didn't take us long to discover the culprit. The issue wasn't due to the customer's content, but rather the hosting company that houses their web domain. Despite the fact that the customer isn’t a spammer, and they’re using Contactology’s premium email delivery services, their website domain was still causing some problems. Here’s why:

Sometimes many different web sites are lumped together on the same NameServer given to them by their website host. The NameServer is the mechanism that associates your IP address with your domain name. Your website might be hosted on the same NameServer as your neighbor's website and herein lies the problem. If your neighbor is abusing their domain, you might accidentally get lumped in with their blacklisted domain.

The Solution:

If you are using Contactology's Message Quality Score, and you receive the SBL warning for your domain, call the company that is hosting your website and tell them about your problem. They'll be happy you alerted them to a problem that's damaging their reputation. No website host wants their IPs blacklisted.

When you call, let them know that you have mistakenly been labeled as a spammer because your domain is being associated with a different website that they are hosting and it has been blacklisted.

Here's what you can suggest to them to correct the problem:

1) Reverse the primary and secondary NameServer records
-or-
2) Delist the affected IP addresses

If you're interested in reading more about our Message Quality Score, check out this article in our resource center. You can also check your MQS score for free by creating a free email marketing trial account.