When creating your email campaigns you want to do everything you can to ensure that your mail reaches your recipient's inbox.  Whilst most spam filters keep tight lipped about what would cause a message to be marked as spam, Microsoft has released a short guide of things to avoid getting caught in the Outlook junk filter.

You'll find the guide here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA010450051033.aspx

Most points there are fairly obvious and would never be used by legitimate mailers, but a couple there may catch people out who use a term in a legitimate way.

The guide is not a complete list and there are many other factors that could still cause your email to get blocked.   It should also be noted that this guide is for the filter built into the Outlook client only.

Here at Suite26 we always advise you to test your email campaigns as much as possible in as many different email clients before sending.   It's easy to register a Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail account and just send a preview message to those accounts, but we would also recommend using an email testing service such as LitmusApp which will test your email in a number of different email clients and against lots of different spam filters.

Recently Gmail announced a new feature that allows recipients to click a 'unsubscribe from this sender' link within the Gmail interface to be removed from future mailings.   The same feature is also available to Gmail users when they use the 'Report Spam' button.

Gmail users access this link by first clicking on the 'Show Details' link when they receive a message, as seen in the image below.

We are pleased to announce that Suite26 now supports the additional unsubscribe method the Gmail is providing.   A Gmail recipient clicking on this link will be unsubscribed from you contacts within minutes of clicking the link and you will see the unsubscribe recorded in your usual campaign reports with a reason of 'Feedback Loop'.

At present Gmail will only show this unsubscribe link when the email has been signed with DomainKeys/DKIM so that they can be sure that the email has come from a valid sender, it is therefore important for you to setup an authenticated domain with Suite26.  It only takes a few minutes to setup an authenticated domain, it's totally free with Suite26 (many providers will charge you £100s to do this) and, even better, it will help your deliverability - what are you waiting for?

We are often asked why the links in an email campaign often show up in blue when received by a number of different email clients (ie; Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo etc).   Blue links are the default behaviour for most of these email clients but there are a couple of quick things you can do to ensure your links are the desired colour in the majority of them.

Please see our help article about changing link colours in your email for full details.

By adding an authenticated domain into your Suite26 account you could improve the deliverability of your e-mail campaigns.   Sending from an authenticated domain ensures your mail is signed by DomainKeys, DKIM and validates against SPF records.   Additionally, the link tracking URLs in your campaign will use the same authenticated domain which can sometimes help when it comes to getting past spam filters on your recipient's computers.

An authenticated domain is by no means a guaranteed way of ensuring your email does not end up in spam folder, but it can certainly help.

For more information please see our help article about authenticated domains, DomainKeys, DKIM and SPF.

Setting up a domain is easy and should only take a few minutes.   You will need to know how to make some DNS entries for your domain (your web host should be able to help you with this).  If your domain is already hosted with Global Gold then we can make the changes for you.

There are no disadvantages to setting up and authenticated domain, only advantages, therefore we recommend that all users set up an authenticated domain as soon as possible.

Full instructions can be found in our help centre: Set up an authenticated domain for DomainKeys, DKIM, SPF and SenderID

As always, if you need any assistance please do not hesitate to contact us.

On February 15th 2009 Lycos UK shut down it's email services as they had previously advised.

We would advise Suite26 users to remove (or set to Do Not Mail) any contacts from their list using the lycos.co.uk e-mail address.

If you regulary import contacts into Suite26 you may find the list of fields on the "Match Fields" stage quite long, especially if you regularly only need to import into a couple of fields.

Suite26 now allows you to set your preferred fields which are seen on the "Match Fields" stage of the contact import.  Just click on the Options tab the Import Field Preferences and choose which fields are visible to you and which are not.

Once you set your preferences you will only see the fields you need on the "Match Fields" stage of the contact import.   A simple toggle facility will remain on that page to allow you to easily switch between seeing your preference fields or all fields.

Suite26 now allows you to create multiple subscribe forms which you can place on your websites, blogs, forums etc to enable people to signup to your mailing list(s).

Each form can have it's own set of options, such as whether double opt-in is enabled, what confirmation e-mails are sent and which URLs to redirect users to after signing up.

You can also choose to automatically add the new subscription into one (or more) of your contact groups.

Once you have selected the options you want you will be given the HTML code you need to place on your site to start collecting subscriptions.

To get started, just click on the Contacts tab and then Subscribe Forms.

For more information, please see our help article on creating subscribe forms.

Suite26 now allows you to add special tags into your e-mail campaigns which will be replaced with actual values when your campaign is sent.

You can use these tags for adding in the day of the week, month name and year, among other things.

These tags can be added into your campaign by using the Insert Special Tag area when editing your campaign content.

If you have added any personalisation to your e-mail campaigns (ie name, e-mail, membership number etc) you may wish to preview how the e-mail would be look for a particular user. This is now possible when sending a preview e-mail. 

From the e-mail campaign overview click on the Send Preview link and enter the e-mail address where you want to receive the e-mail or select one of your contact groups as you normally would and click Continue.

There is now a second stage to the send preview process where you will be asked how you want to personalise the preview send.

The default setting will use the details of the recipient(s) of the preview (if they are not in your contacts database any fields in the e-mail will be blank)

The second option is to select a contact at random from your database and use the details for that contact to personalise the preview e-mail.

For the third option you will need to enter the e-mail address of one of your contacts and their details will be used for the personalisation.

This new feature is a great way to ensure that e-mails you have personalised can be tested thoroughly and arrive as expected with your recipients.

It is now possible to specify which version of your e-mail campaign (TEXT or HTML) you wish the View Online link to display.

The default view online link as shown below will always take the recipient through to whichever version they received (TEXT or HTML):

[viewonline]Click here to view this e-mail in your web browser[/viewonline]

To override this default behaviour, just edit the code as show below:

[viewonline:HTML]Click here for the HTML version in your web browser[/viewonline:HTML]
[viewonline:TEXT]Click here for the TEXT version in your web browser[/viewonline:TEXT]

For more details please see our help article about adding unsubscribe and view online links to your e-mail campaigns.