Blog: New Features & Updates

Got an email design job? Looking for someone to create a Campaign Monitor-friendly template for you? We're pleased to announce that we're opened a 'Find a designer' category on our forums. Simply post your job requirements and we'll try to put you in touch with a member of our talented community of designers. Just like the rest of our forum, it doesn't cost a cent to post. You don't even have to be a Campaign Monitor customer to join in!

Posting a job?

It's not uncommon for us to stumble across Campaign Monitor-specific job ads on developer forums, job sites and even Craigslist. Now, with our new 'Find a designer' category, we're hoping to bring all those jobs together in the one place where you're certain to find a skilled designer - our forums.

When we see a solid job ad in the forums, it's pretty common for us to give it a good shout-out over Twitter:

What's encouraging is that we've had some pretty awesome success stories, too. As long as there's a bit of detail as to what the job involves and how you will reward the designer for all their hard work, it usually doesn't take long for a keen applicant to get in touch.

Looking for a job?

If you're actively looking for email design gigs, simply add your details here to get started. We regularly get asked for designers who can assist with all manner of projects, so we'll be directing them to this thread in the future.

You can also subscribe to the 'Find a designer' forum via RSS to receive updates as new job postings arrive.

In the past, most job ads have just been slipped into our other forum categories. But as the number of job ads have increased, we've found that this hasn't been ideal for job hunters and punters alike. Of course, there are drawbacks to using our forums (versus a dedicated job site) and we're willing to change our approach if things look like they're getting out of hand. If you have any comments or suggestions as to how we can improve this section in the future, please let us know via the comments below. Happy posting!

For a long time now, autoresponders have been one of the most requested new features for Campaign Monitor. The first vote came in not long after we launched in 2004, and they haven't stopped since.

So what took us so long? Well, autoresponders can be tricky beasts; they can be prone to abuse, become complex to manage, and quickly overwhelm subscribers (hello, spam complaints). They can also be incredibly valuable.

We were prepared to hold off until we knew we could solve these problems in a simple way. After a stack of design iterations, usability testing and a huge effort from our developers and QA team, we are finally ready to put it in your hands. Here's how they look:

Auto-what?

Before we get too carried away, how about a quick introduction. Autoresponders go by a few different names like triggered emails and drip campaigns, but essentially they are an automated email, or sequence of emails sent when a subscriber meets a condition you set. For example, when someone joins your list, your subscriber's birthday, or a month since someone purchased from your store.

Basically, you set the rules around when an autoresponder should be triggered and tell us what emails to send. We'll do the rest.

Below is an example of how an autoresponder would look if you want to send an email to subscribers when they first join your list, send a quick guide a week later, and then a final follow up a month after they signed up:

You can set up an unlimited sequence of emails for each type of autoresponder you create. Combine these with our new date-based custom fields and the possibilities are endless.

Choose your trigger

You never want to email a subscriber when it's not what they asked for or isn't something they'd be interested in. The "set and forget" mentality that comes with autoresponders can be a dangerous thing, so we've made it easy for you to choose exactly what should cause an autoresponder to be triggered.

After trawling the feedback from customers via email, Twitter and our forums, it became clear there were three main types of autoresponders you needed. Here's what you'll see each time you create a new autoresponder for any subscriber list:

You can trigger an autoresponder when a new subscriber joins your list (via a subscribe form or the API), or when a subscriber's date-based custom field (which we announced yesterday) matches a rule you set. Date-based autoresponders can be based on either the anniversary of that date (like a birthday), or an exact match (like a membership expiry).

Of course, there are other scenarios outside these like a link clicked in a campaign, or more sophisticated conditions being met, but as always we're going for the simplest implementation to meet the needs of the majority of customers. If the demand is there, we'll look at adding more ways to trigger them in the future.

Reporting you can actually learn from

We put a lot of thought into building autoresponder reports that you can actually learn from. At a glance we give you an overview of the basics like how many emails have been sent, the average open rate, click rate and unsubscribe rate. But, it's the "over time" stats that are really interesting.

Autoresponders are often something you put a lot of work into setting up initially, but then only tend to check on them occasionally. With that in mind, we focused on making it easy to spot how each email in the sequence is performing over time.

This type of report means that if you make a copy or design change to an email in an active autoresponder, you can come back in a few days and see how that change is performing compared to the initial version.

See how individual emails are performing

As well as comparing the performance of each email in an autoresponder over time, you can also drill down to see the results for each email itself.

For each email in an autoresponder we'll slide down a link activity report showing the unique and total clicks for each.

Just 1¢ an email, or less

Every autoresponder email you send costs 1 email credit, which start at just 1¢ and get cheaper if you buy a bunch. There is no $5 delivery fee like a regular email campaign. If you or your clients have any active autoresponders, we'll let you know when credits are running low automatically so you can top them up.

If you do end up running out of credits, we'll just pause that autoresponder until you jump in and purchase some more. Then you can turn them back on with the click of a mouse. You can read a little more about the billing side of autoresponders here.

Getting started

Everything you see here is live and ready to roll in your account. Autoresponders are list-specific, so simply head into a subscriber list you'd like to set one up for, and you'll notice a new "Autoresponders" link on the right.

We've put together loads of help documentation on getting started with autoresponders, sending a series of emails to new subscribers, creating anniversary style autoresponders (like a happy birthday email) and answers to common questions you might have about this new feature.

With autoresponders out the door we're back to work on another very exciting (and rather huge) new feature which I can't wait to share with you all soon. The team have put a lot of work into this update, and we honestly can't wait to see what clever implementations you all come up with. Enjoy.

By popular demand, you can now include dates in your custom fields. Using the new 'Date' data type when creating a new custom field, you can send targeted campaigns based on say, your subscriber's age, when they purchased a product or perhaps when their warranty is about to expire. Plus, with 20 custom fields now available in your account, you can only imagine the possibilities! Lets briefly go through how you can set up and use date fields in your campaigns.

Adding a new date field to your subscriber list

To create a new date custom field for in Campaign Monitor, go to your subscriber list and click on 'Custom fields' in the right-hand column. Lets call this field something meaningful, like 'Birthday':

Click the 'Add Custom Field' button to save your new date field. Now you'll be able to import dates into your subscriber list from a file, or manually add them into that field by clicking on any email address in your list. If 'This field should be visible to recipients when they edit their settings in the preference center' is checked, then you can also get your subscribers to update their details via your preference center! Find out more about adding dates to custom fields.

What can I do with these date fields?

Using dates in your custom fields, you can create all sorts of interesting segmented campaigns based on birthdate, purchase date, last visit to the doctor - you name it!

Lets assume that you've updated your subscriber list with the birthdates of your subscribers, using a field called "Birthday". Now, say that you want to send a youth-oriented newsletter to subscribers aged 18-24 years of age. To create a segment for these folks, simply go back into your subscriber list, click 'Segments' in the right-hand column, then create a new segment. Lets call this one, "18-24 years of age". Create your first rule based on your new "Birthday" field and click, 'Add rule'.

For the first rule in the segment, we need to specify that our subscribers are older than 18 years of age. So, "Birthday" will be less than "19 Jul 1992":

Now we're going to set an upper-age of 24. Using the drop-down below, we'll add another "and" rule based on "Birthday". This time, it will be "Birthday" is greater than "19 Jul 1986":

Click 'Save and refresh count'. We're done creating this segment and ready to create a campaign that's relevant to folks in this age bracket!

How do I collect dates from my subscribers?

We've made it really easy to collect dates from your subscribers, via your subscribe forms and the preference center. To create a new subscribe form that includes drop-down lists for entering dates, simply go into your subscriber list and click, 'Create a subscribe form'. Make sure your date field(s) are ticked, then 'Generate the code'. Once you've tweaked the supplied code to taste, you should get a form like this:

Subscribers can also update their own date fields via your preference center. Once you've created a date custom field or two with "This field should be visible to recipients when they edit their settings in the preference center" ticked, simply add the <preferences> template tag to your campaigns and leave 'em to it!

So, that's the skinny on using dates in your custom fields. Many thanks to everyone who requested this new data type - hopefully this will make a big difference to how you segment your campaigns. If you've been super-vigilant when using date fields, you may have also noticed another major addition to your account as a result of our recent update; never fear either way, we'll be letting you know all about it in the next few days!

If you use Wufoo or read their blog, you probably know that they're a team hell-bent on making their online form builder more powerful and sensationally enjoyable by the day. Since they integrated with us earlier this year, there's been nothing but good news and happy customers on both sides. After all, it seems that Wufoo and Campaign Monitor are a match made in web app heaven.

So, today we woke up to more happy tidings: You can now sync Wufoo's multiple choice fields, drop down fields and checkboxes with Campaign Monitor's custom fields! That's right, you can now segment your subscriber lists and send targeted campaigns, based on information you collect in your Wufoo forms.

While Wufoo has always supported field matching with our custom fields, until now it's only been with a couple of fields and it didn't work if you were using dropdowns, radio buttons or checkboxes in Wufoo. As we all know, collecting information via text-fields can be prone to user-error, so this wasn't entirely practical if your intent was to eventually segment your subscriber lists based on what your subscribers had typed into your forms.

However, that's all behind us now. Imagine sending a survey to all your subscribers, then having your custom fields automatically populated with the responses. Imagine no more messy exporting, then importing to keep your subscriber list up-to-date. Imagine sending campaigns based on your subscribers' state or country, frequency preferences or even favorite color. To me, this smells like victory.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you're say, using a drop down field in Wufoo and matching it with a custom field in Campaign Monitor, the options available have to match up on both ends like this:

If an option exists on Wufoo's end, but not ours, then that option simply won't be recorded in the custom field. Check out Wufoo's custom field documentation for more on what to keep in mind when matching Wufoo form fields with our custom fields.

We've always been big Wufoo fans, but this level of integration really gives them a special place in our heart. For more information on this mega Wufoo update, check out their blog, then get toying with your custom fields!

If you've been flicking through your subscriber lists recently, you may have noticed that you can now search for a subscriber across all your lists. Searches not only return matching subscribers based on name and email address, but also display the list they're on, status and the date they were added:

This makes it a simple task to locate and edit individual subscriber details, say, if you want to ensure a particular email address has been unsubscribed from your list.

Thanks to everyone who requested that we add a search function to your subscriber lists. It may be a fairly subtle tweak, but we're certain it will save you and your clients a fair amount of clicking when trying to find one or more elusive subscribers!