Observations & Answers Archives
Designers are everywhere!
Posted by Mathew Patterson on August 19, 2008
A little while back I posted a poll that asked 'Who do you design for?'. The idea was to find out whether you were mostly freelancers, design company owners or employees, inhouse designers or something else. We've had over 300 responses covering all areas of design, and we wanted to...
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7 comments so far
Who do you design for?
Posted by Mathew Patterson on August 4, 2008
.pds-question {width:500px;font-weight:bold;} .PDS_Poll input {margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:5px;} .PDS_Poll label {margin-bottom:5px;} .pds-answer {width:450px;} .pds-vote { width:450px; } Do you build websites for hot new bands, or international movies stars? Are you part of the team at a renowned design agency? You might be....but probably not. The great mass of web designers don't...
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5 comments so far
Pimp your favorite web group
Posted by Mathew Patterson on July 28, 2008
The native environment of the common-or-garden nerd, traditionally, is behind a monitor in a quiet room. However, sometimes the greatest experiences and best opportunities to learn come when getting together in meatspace. We hear from a lot of new designers looking for general advice on design, and from designers wanting...
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8 comments so far
Free t-shirts to a good home (or design studio)
Posted by David Greiner on July 24, 2008
We just received a big shipment of new Campaign Monitor tees this week, so I figured it was a good a time as any to remind you all about how you can get your hands on one. Of course, there's the easy way, but instead of selling them we'd much...
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2 comments so far
Web Design World in Seattle, WA
Posted by Diana Potter on July 15, 2008
Next week is Web Design World in hopefully sunny Seattle, Washington. There will be some great speakers, including Jared Spool, Steve Mulder and Dan Rubin I'll be there both Monday and Tuesday to enjoy it and I know some of you are from Seattle and might be there as well....
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1 comments so far
Tell us your favourite sites!
Posted by Mathew Patterson on June 20, 2008
Over in the Freshview blog we recently posted about some of our favourite books. You're all welcome to drop in there and suggest some more for us! Today though we'd love to hear about your favourite web design related sites. Where do you go to learn about running a web...
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6 comments so far
Which email clients are your subscribers using?
Posted by Mathew Patterson on June 18, 2008
We're used to having quite detailed information about the different browsers (and versions of browsers) that our website visitors are using, and being able to design with that in mind. However, it's never been that easy to know which email clients your list subscribers are using to view your painfully...
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10 comments so far
Designing for the inbox: My Web Directions talk
Posted by Mathew Patterson on June 17, 2008
On May 16th I spoke at the excellent Web Directions South: User Experience on the topic of "Designing for the inbox". You can listen to a slidecast of my talk synced (almost!) with the slides below, but be sure to check out the other great talks on the Web Directions...
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3 comments so far
Watch your language!
Posted by Mathew Patterson on June 13, 2008
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet At least so said Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet. He may be right about the smell, but I think we can all agree that renaming a rose to stinkweed would not bode well for chances at...
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Recent changes to CAN-SPAM
Posted by Mathew Patterson on June 12, 2008
If you are a US based sender of email, you'll be aware of the CAN-SPAM Act which regulates commercial email sent from the US. Last month the US Federal Trade Commission announced some additions to the Act, and we wanted to bring them to your attention. Of course, Campaign Monitor's...
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CSS support in mobile.me email?
Posted by Mathew Patterson on June 10, 2008
Although the majority of the Freshview team slept blissfully through the WWDC keynote, we were all interested to hear about Apple's new Mobile Me service, which will replace .mac in July. Once Apple's new web applications are up and running, we'll be sure to thoroughly test the .me email...
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3 comments so far
Email as conversation, not invasion
Posted by Mathew Patterson on June 4, 2008
Have you ever really thought about the way email campaigns are sometimes described? Have you heard your clients talk about "email blasts" and "mail shots"? Sounds less like we are emailing our subscribers, and more like we are declaring war on them! Without getting too carried away, it's clear...
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3 comments so far
The future of email?
Posted by Mathew Patterson on May 30, 2008
It's easy when reading about people overwhelmed by email, the rise of spam and systems like Inbox Zero to see a bleak future for email. There's no doubt that some of the email we get should not be in our inbox - some of it would be better off as...
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3 comments so far
Connecting with Campaign Monitor
Posted by Mathew Patterson on May 29, 2008
We're always looking for new ways to connect with all you guys and girls who use Campaign Monitor - in our business it is easy for us to never hear from you at all, let alone actually meet and connecting with you. Although you have told us we have a...
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No more currency conversion charges for the US
Posted by Mathew Patterson on May 27, 2008
Although we are an Australian company (based by the southern beaches of Sydney) the vast majority of all of you designers are based in the USA, or are at least more familiar with US dollars. For that reason we have always priced Campaign Monitor in US dollars. However, when we...
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2 comments so far
Web Visions in Portland Oregon
Posted by Diana Potter on May 23, 2008
It's Web Visions time again here in my local town of not so sunny Portland, OR. I'll be there both Thursday and Friday to enjoy some great sessions from speakers like Campaign Monitor's frequent blog contributor Mark Wyner, Jason Grigsby, and Jeffrey Veen. So if you're going to be attending...
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2 comments so far
Web Directions South tomorrow
Posted by Mathew Patterson on May 15, 2008
Just a reminder that I'll be speaking at Web Directions South: User Experience tomorrow at Melbourne Town Hall.I'll be talking about how we can create a great user experience for email, and during the session I will be mentioning the following items: Bunnings WarehouseGordon RamsayUnderpants That's something to look...
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How do you bill your customers?
Posted by Mathew Patterson on April 30, 2008
We often get asked by Campaign Monitor users how they should charge their clients when they send campaigns for them. The Campaign Monitor model is simple - we charge you based on our simple pricing model, and leave charging your clients up to you. Here is a few of the...
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1 comments so far
Some pepper with your email list?
Posted by Mathew Patterson on April 17, 2008
Recently we mentioned our Google Analytics integration, which is excellent for keeping up to date with what your subscribers do after they read your emails. How about knowing when people signup to your lists though? You can already grab the new subscribers RSS feed (find it at the bottom of...
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Email Standards Project: Gmail Appeal
Posted by Mathew Patterson on April 9, 2008
If you've been keeping up with the Email Standards Project you will know about our Project Gmail Grimace, where we asked designers to send us photos of themselves experiencing the frustration of designing for Gmail. We gathered them all together, and created a short, fun little video to try...
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Downtime Explanation and Update
Posted by David Greiner on April 2, 2008
At 9:30am (US Central time - see this in your own time zone) this morning, all customers were unable to login to their Campaign Monitor accounts. As of 11:11am, these problems have been resolved and everyone can now access their accounts. What happened? Power issues hit a bunch of our...
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Redefining spam
Posted by Mathew Patterson on March 27, 2008
Not long ago, spam was reasonably easy to define as unsolicited commercial email. Advertisements for things you never asked about, email from companies you had never heard of. Offers to increase the size of various parts of your body and claims of missing millions, yours for the asking. However, as...
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3 comments so far
Web Directions South: User Experience
Posted by Mathew Patterson on March 18, 2008
Following on from their great conferences in Sydney and Vancouver, the Web Directions team is putting on a one day conference in Melbourne, focusing on "concepts, technologies and techniques for building great user experiences on the web". If you have ever been to a Web Directions conference before you...
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We're Hiring: Web Interface Designer
Posted by David Greiner on February 27, 2008
One of the biggest benefits of selling software for designers is, well, we get to know lots of designers. Today I'm hoping that pays off as we open up our first ever pure design role at Freshview. We're looking for an interface designing guru to join our Sydney team and...
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Making faces at Gmail
Posted by Mathew Patterson on February 1, 2008
Over at the Email Standards Project we've been continuing our efforts to reach the right people from the major email clients, so we can work with them on improving the rendering of HTML and CSS in email. We've had some early success which is really encouraging. One notably quiet company...
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HTML email coming soon on the Blackberry
Posted by Mathew Patterson on January 29, 2008
Some important news if you send to a lot of mobile subscribers, or view emails on your own Blackberry. While existing Blackberry devices and software only support plain text email rendering, RIM has announced that an upcoming software update will add HTML and rich text support to the platform. HTML...
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Freshview at Webstock in February
Posted by Mathew Patterson on January 22, 2008
Next month, in New Zealand's Silicon Welly, there will be a gathering of designers, developers and assorted web nerds at Webstock 2008. There's a great lineup of speakers, including Dan Cederholm, Jason Santa Maria and Fresvhiew favourite Kathy Sierra, so it should be a fantastic event. I'll be there to...
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Behind the scenes at the Freshview office
Posted by David Greiner on January 16, 2008
I don't know about you but I always love getting a peek into how other people work. It's always interesting seeing the real space people are spending their time in at the other end of the pipe. I recently put together a post on the Freshview blog about our new...
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Christmas email competition winners!
Posted by Mathew Patterson on January 15, 2008
As we revealed last year, we have some pretty good prizes lined up for the Campaign Monitor customer who sent (in our judgement) the best Christmas email. We were looking for a balance between creativity, design and practicality, for an email that works under the constraints of email clients, like...
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2 comments so far
More answers about DomainKeys & authentication
Posted by Mathew Patterson on January 2, 2008
Midway through 2007 we introduced email authentication to Campaign Monitor, as an optional change you can make to increase the deliverability and security of your email campaigns. We've seen a huge amount of people setting up Sender ID and DomainKeys records for their 'from' domains. We introduced an email authentication...
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1 comments so far
The best Christmas emails of 2007 - seriously good prizes up for grabs!
Posted by David Greiner on December 19, 2007
Back in October Mat announced that we'd be running our annual Christmas design competition again this year. Well, the time is certainly upon us and we've already seen some crackers being sent through our pipes the last few weeks. This year we've decided to up the ante a little on...
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6 comments so far
Early win for the Email Standards Project
Posted by David Greiner on December 18, 2007
We've had an incredible response since we launched the ESP site late last month. Hundreds of thousands of page views, endorsements from many high profile designers and bloggers and some interesting conversations popping up all over the web. Of course, this response was fantastic and exactly what we had hoped,...
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2 comments so far
Want to work for Freshview?
Posted by David Greiner on December 5, 2007
After just completing a mammoth office fitout and a big move into more space, we're looking for a number of new people to join the Freshview team. This is a pretty cool opportunity for anyone interested in shaping the future of 2 award winning (and much-loved) web applications used by...
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Older campaign reports temporarily out of whack
Posted by David Greiner on
Some of you might have noticed that your recipient activity report for older campaigns might be showing some strange numbers at present. When performing some routine maintenance yesterday we inadvertently messed with this particular report. Fear not though, we're working on an update right now that will restore your figures...
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Audio from the Future of Web Design
Posted by Mathew Patterson on November 30, 2007
I posted recently the slides from my talk at the Future of Web Design conference. Now the Carsonified team have helpfully posted the MP3 audio for the talks too. You'll even hear an early pre-launch mention of the Email Standards Project. Here is the direct link for my audio: The...
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The Email Standards Project launches
Posted by David Greiner on November 28, 2007
After a couple of months of hard work and some amazing help from others, I'm excited to announce that the Email Standards Project site has just officially launched. First off, I wanted to say a huge thanks to a few people: Luke Stevens for his awesome hard work on the...
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8 comments so far
Email and the Future of Web Design
Posted by Mathew Patterson on November 16, 2007
Over on the Freshview blog I've just posted the slides and outline of my talk from the Future of Web Design last week in New York city. It focused on the lack of love for HTML email, where that has left us, and what the future holds. Around 500...
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2 comments so far
Payment gateway back online
Posted by David Greiner on November 14, 2007
Just under 8 hours ago (at around 1am Sydney time) our payment gateway decided to go offline without notice. Because we don't charge you until you actually send your campaigns, this meant that no campaigns, either scheduled or being sent immediately could be delivered. After working with them for the...
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Getting better results from competition lists
Posted by Mathew Patterson on October 22, 2007
Campaign Monitor is used by people in all kinds of industries and for all kinds of reasons. Some businesses are more naturally suited to email contact, and some types of email contact are more welcomed than others. One type of list that seems to get a disproportionate amount of spam...
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Performance improvement update
Posted by Mathew Patterson on October 19, 2007
The changes we have put in place since the slowness and disconnections earlier in the week have made a big improvement. We are still progressing on our longer term changes though, to make sure we can maintain a reliable service as more customers come on board. We know that you...
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Slowness and downtime for Campaign Monitor
Posted by Mathew Patterson on October 17, 2007
Last night, Sydney time, Campaign Monitor and MailBuild were both handling very high loads, and you or your clients may have experience slow response times, missing images and dropped connections to the server. Our monitoring did pick this up, and our server support team began working immediately to improve performance....
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The Email Standards Project website
Posted by Mathew Patterson on October 12, 2007
We've just launched the splash page for the new Email Standards Project website at email-standards.org, which is the future location of a lot of news and resources relating to our push for consistent, reliable web standards support for email. You can enter your email address to be notified when the...
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2 comments so far
Downtime notice
Posted by David Greiner on
Over the last few days we have been implementing a brand new load balancing system for both Campaign Monitor and MailBuild to keep things purring along even faster and add another layer of redundancy to our network. Unfortunately, a change related to that upgrade last night unexpectedly caused a problem...
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1 comments so far
Email standards: Join our Facebook group
Posted by Mathew Patterson on October 9, 2007
Right now we're working on the new website for the email standards push that kicked off recently. That site will include a section on how you as a web designer can get involved and help improve the situation. One simple step you can take right now, if you are a...
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eBay and Campaign Monitor join forces to reduce phishing emails at Yahoo! Mail
Posted by David Greiner on October 5, 2007
Ever get those nasty emails telling you that you need to verify your PayPal details, or someone has a question about something you're selling on eBay? The email looked legit enough, so you followed the link and logged into your account, only to find that a phisher has just stolen...
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2 comments so far
Web Directions South 2007 - a brief review
Posted by Mathew Patterson on October 3, 2007
At 4:30am on last Thursday morning, the Freshview team were having seconds thoughts about this whole Web Directions idea. A few hours later though, with our booth setup and designers starting to appear, we knew it would be worthwhile. We had arrived with 200 Campaign Monitor t-shirts and a new...
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3 comments so far
Web Directions — win an iMac from Freshview
Posted by Mathew Patterson on September 26, 2007
Tomorrow and Friday some of the Freshview team will be at Web Directions South in Sydney, running demos of Campaign Monitor and MailBuild, meeting customers new and old, and also giving away some great prizes. We have a serious stack of t-shirts to give away (the t-shirts you all helped...
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3 comments so far
What stops your clients from using your email marketing services?
Posted by Mathew Patterson on September 24, 2007
Our recent MailBuild and Campaign Monitor demo movies have proved super popular, and have been a great way to introduce designers to the product. In the past, and particularly since we released our demos, we've had several requests for videos that Campaign Monitor and MailBuild customers can use to sell...
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Scheduled maintenance late Saturday night through Sunday morning
Posted by David Greiner on September 14, 2007
Apologies for the short notice, but we'll be taking the Campaign Monitor application offline for a total of 8 hours between 8.30pm this Saturday night and 4.30am Sunday morning (US Central time - see this in your own time zone) to make some key hardware upgrades and add some additional...
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2 comments so far
Email marketing tees for the ladies
Posted by David Greiner on
Our email marketing tees have been way more popular then we ever hoped. We've sold loads through the site, and also given plenty away to customers doing great design work or helping out in our forums. Taking the advice of the one and only Kathy Sierra, we've just added some...
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MailBuild in 3 minutes
Posted by David Greiner on September 11, 2007
Based on the awesome feedback we received after launching the Campaign Monitor video tour, we've just put the finishing touches on our MailBuild tour. For those of you who haven't heard of it, MailBuild is the other member of the Freshview family. MailBuild is perfect for your clients that want...
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4 comments so far
Interviews galore for the Freshview team
Posted by David Greiner on September 6, 2007
As a preview to his upcoming talk at the Future of Web Design in New York this coming November, Mat sat down with Jo Andrews from Carson Systems to give attendees an idea of what he'll be covering. Mat talks a little bit about what we do at Campaign Monitor,...
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New Zealand's new anti-spam legislation
Posted by Mathew Patterson on September 3, 2007
On September 5th, New Zealand's Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 comes into effect. For Campaign Monitor customers, this should have little impact, because it is essentially just requiring that New Zealand businesses have direct permission to email people, and always provide an unsubscribe link. Our permission policies already extend beyond...
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6 comments so far
Scheduled maintenance early Sunday morning
Posted by David Greiner on August 31, 2007
We'll be taking the Campaign Monitor application offline for a total of 4 hours this Sunday morning between 1am and 5am (US Central time - see this in your own time zone) to make some key hardware upgrades and add some additional layers of redundancy to both Campaign Monitor and...
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14 comments so far
Campaign Monitor at Web Directions South
Posted by Mathew Patterson on August 30, 2007
Anybody who has attended one of the excellent Web Directions conferences in the past will know what a great opportunity they are to hear great talks and meet up with your web colleagues. This year Web Directions South is on in Sydney from September 25th to 29th, with two...
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Authentication follow up - you've been busy
Posted by David Greiner on August 28, 2007
When we launched our new email authentication system last week, we had no idea how well it would be received. To be honest, authentication can be a tricky concept to get your head around and I was a little nervous about how popular it would be. Sometimes I love being...
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4 comments so far
Check your mail. No, the other one!
Posted by David Greiner on August 14, 2007
It's been 3 long months since we asked for your help designing the new Campaign Monitor t-shirts. After hundreds of great entries, a vote-off, getting them designed, building an online store and finding a printer, it was very satisfying seeing the first batch shipped from our office this afternoon. If...
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3 comments so far
Payment gateway problems
Posted by David Greiner on August 10, 2007
Anyone trying to pay for a campaign for the last few hours would have noticed a frustrating "Server busy" message. Our sincere apologies for this. Turns out our payment gateway is having some unscheduled downtime. We're working with them as I type this and will post an update here the...
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2 comments so far
There are typos, and then there are typos!
Posted by David Greiner on July 20, 2007
I sent out the Campaign Monitor newsletter to 30,000 or so of our customers and subscribers last night, which you can check out here. Before I send each newsletter, I normally run it through most of the popular email clients to make sure it still looks fine, plus forward it...
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10 comments so far
Campaign Monitor tees - flaunt the nerd within!
Posted by David Greiner on July 19, 2007
It's been a long wait but the Campaign Monitor t-shirts have finally arrived. A big thanks to everyone who voted and left comments in our quick survey. We had hundreds of votes cast and decided to go with the top 3 designs as voted by you. Once the tally was...
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9 comments so far
Campaign Monitor in 3 minutes or less
Posted by David Greiner on July 3, 2007
We've just put the finishing touches on a new demo movie for Campaign Monitor. We wanted to put something together that covered all the benefits of using Campaign Monitor in a few short minutes. Check it out now, you'll need Flash installed to watch it. It's always a tough call...
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2 comments so far
Where did the web site go?
Posted by David Greiner on June 28, 2007
Hey guys. First off, apologies for the web site being unavailable the past few hours. You'll be pleased to know this had absolutely no impact on the Campaign Monitor service. Your emails were still being sent and tracked, new subscribers were being added to lists and you could even access...
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4 comments so far
Downtime Notice
Posted by David Greiner on June 26, 2007
Some customers would have had a problem accessing their account for up to an hour today due to an apparent power outage at the data centre Campaign Monitor calls home. This not only affected us but thousands of other larger sites around the web. We were back on track not...
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How far does permission stretch?
Posted by Mathew Patterson on June 18, 2007
I received an email recently from a well known writer in the IT industry with the subject line 'Please help save my marriage :)'. I recognised his name in the 'from' field, otherwise I would have deleted it immediately. This is how the email began: Dear Subscriber,One way or another,...
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T-shirt update: The votes are in!
Posted by David Greiner on May 23, 2007
First off, a big thanks to everyone who voted and left comments in our quick survey. We had hundreds of votes cast and decided to go with the top 3 designs as voted by you. Luckily for us, there were 3 fairly clear winners, and the number one choice got...
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9 comments so far
It's t-shirt voting time people!
Posted by David Greiner on May 7, 2007
OK, so we were hoping for maybe 3 or 4 funny suggestions from you guys for our upcoming t-shirt design. Forget that! 61 comments and more than 100 suggestions later, you guys have come up with some absolutely hilarious ideas that we can't wait to print. We spent a few...
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1 comments so far
Campaign Monitor t-shirts: we need your help
Posted by David Greiner on May 1, 2007
We've had the idea for Campaign Monitor t-shirts in the back of our minds for a while now. Trouble is, coming up with a funny shirt is kind of hard, especially when it revolves around a fairly dry topic. But hey, if communism and couches can be funny, surely email...
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71 comments so far
Want to work for Campaign Monitor?
Posted by David Greiner on April 24, 2007
It's been a busy year for the Freshview team, which I guess can happen with more than 1,500 new customers signing up to our apps each month. Still, I think we've managed pretty well for a full-time team of 5 (there were 3 of us less than 6 months ago)....