Blog: New Features & Updates

Since we released the Campaign Monitor API way back in July 2005 we've seen it used in ways we never anticipated. On top of the way you guys have been using it, we've also been incredibly lucky to have many customers put together API kits in their language of preference (such as Ruby on Rails, PHP, .NET and Flash).

For those of you familiar with the incredibly popular Drupal content management system, Campaign Monitor customer Alexis Bellido recently put together a free Drupal module that makes it easy to integrate Campaign Monitor into any form on a Drupal managed site. Install the module then drop in your API key and List ID and you're done.

Judging by the comments, a number of further improvements to the module are in the works, so if anything eventuates we'll be sure to post about it here. A huge thanks to Alexis for putting this module together, we're looking forward to seeing where he takes it from here.

I don't care who you are or how many emails you've sent in your time, you're not human if you don't get that horrible anxious feeling in your stomach right before pressing the "Send" button on a big campaign. Wait! Let me just triple check the creative one more time! Is this definitely the right subscriber list? Maybe I'll get the boss to give it one last look over.

You know the drill.

This anxious feeling is only compounded when the software you're using doesn't make the final sending process crystal clear. I've used plenty of email apps in my time where you're never really sure which button or screen would actually start the send process. It's always been a priority of ours to make this step as clear as possible and take any surprises out of the process. Even so, there's always room for improvement.

We just pushed a number of small tweaks to the create/send process live. Among other things, I'd like to introduce the "Big Green Button"...

Hopefully this and a range of other small tweaks can take the old anxiety dial down a few more notches when sending your Campaign Monitor campaigns. We just pushed the same updates live in MailBuild too, which should help those nervous clients of yours when sending their own campaigns.

Each time you send a campaign, it's important to keep the from name and sending email address consistent for each issue. This helps receivers recognize you and also reduces any filtering/image blocking issues if you're in their address book. To make this process easier from now on, we just pushed a nice little update to the first step in the Create/Send process live. Here's the new layout, followed by an explanation of each change.

So what's new?

1. The "Choose your client..." option has been moved up to it's logical home at the top of the screen.
2. As soon as you select a client, we automatically display the last subject you used for that client. This is especially helpful if you're sending a series of emails or use a consistent subject for most campaigns. e.g. ABC Widgets November Newsletter. We realize many of you mix up your subjects for each issue, so instead of pre-populating the field, we just display the previous subject above it.
3. As well as pulling out the last used subject, we also pre-populate the last from name, from email address and reply-to address you last used for that client. No more guess work required.

This update wasn't so much based on customer requests as more of a common sense decision. From personal experience sending the Campaign Monitor and MailBuild newsletters, I always used the "Edit and Resend" feature to ensure I used the same sender details for each campaign. This update wipes out that step and encourages those already not taking this approach to stick to best practice.

We refrain as much possible from discussing other product news in the Campaign Monitor blog, but this one was just too juicy to resist. Late last week we pushed out a big update to MailBuild that allows your clients pay for campaign delivery with their own credit cards.

Not only that, but you can even set your own marked-up rates for each client and that's what we'll charge them. We'll then take our cut, put your profit aside and send it to you each month via PayPal. Here's a quick screenshot to give you the idea.

This new update makes it so much easier to manage how your clients use their account and is also a great way to create a new revenue stream without lifting a finger. If you've got any clients that would like to send their own emails based on templates you design, now's a better time than ever to create your own MailBuild account.

As many of you guys know, we have a one-off manual approval process for all Campaign Monitor accounts where a member of our team reviews your campaigns, subscriber lists and permission practices before you can send any decent sized campaigns from your account. This process is one of a number of safeguards we take to ensure our software is never abused by the bad guys, and all you good guys out there are sticking to best practice.

The only drawback from our current approach was that it caused delivery delays for some customers at the worst possible times (as in, right after you’ve told your client you’re about to send their campaign). We’ve always shared your frustration about this inconvenience and have recently made some simple changes to our approvals process in an attempt to minimize these delays as much as possible.

Instead of having to wait for a member of our team to get in touch with the questions they might have, we now allow any new customers to get the ball rolling first by answering a few simple questions earlier in the process.

On many occasions, these answers combined with a review of your site, campaign content and subscriber list is enough for a member of our team to give your account the green light. This change effectively cuts the approval time in half for most customers. We made this change a week before Christmas and so far it’s been working very well. We’re always looking for ways we can stay out of your way as much as possible, and are really happy to have this one live.