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.

If you are using images in your HTML e-mail campaigns you will need to ensure that these images are hosted somewhere on the Internet so that your recipients can see them.

Not everybody has access to a web server for hosting image files, but this is not a problem when you use Suite26.   You can use the built-in File Manager for storing any images for your campaigns.   Just ensure the images you upload are kept within the Public folder.

To make things easier the WYSIWYG editor includes a handy “Insert Image” button which will can link through to the File Manager, making it simple to add images into your e-mail campaigns.

You can find more further details in our Help Centre:

- Using the File Manager
- Adding images into your HTML e-mail campaigns (FCKeditor)
- Adding images into your HTML e-mail campaigns (TinyMCE)

If your website uses Google Analytics and you are sending recipients of your e-mail campaigns to pages on your website, then you may be interested in our Google Analytics Tracking option.

This allows you to add a unique reference to an e-mail campaign that will be passed through to Google Analytics whenever a recipient clicks on a link to your site from your e-mail campaign.  The visit is then records in your Google Analytics report as coming from that campaign, allowing you to track it’s effectiveness.

It’s really easy to set up and can be added to new campaigns or existing ones.  We’ve written a how-to on setting up Google Analytics tracking for those who want to give it a go.

Users of Suite26 will know that you get given your own unique sub-domain to access the system.  For example:

http://mycompanyltd.26.co.uk

By default we generate this from the main account holder’s first name and surname.   If you don’t like the sub-domain we choose for you then you can change it to something you prefer.  Maybe you would choose your company name or something similar.

Your chosen sub-domain can only contain letters, numbers and hyphens and you cannot pick one that is already in use by somebody else.

If you send e-mails on behalf of other people, you’re a creative agency or maybe you just run lots of different websites then you may be interested in the multi-client capability of Suite26.

It allows you to keep contacts, e-mail campaigns, files and reports together under seperate clients so that there is no fear of sending an e-mail campaign to another client’s/site’s contacts!

You can easily switch between clients at any time by using the Change link in the top right hand corner of the screen.

By default all accounts have one client setup (called Default Client).  If you would like to add more just click on the Options tab and then View All Clients.

For more information see the article in our Help Centre titled Setting up clients within Suite26.

Suite26 now fully supports DomainKeys, DKIM, SPF and SenderID for users who wish to improve the deliverability of their campaigns and reduce the risk of being caught by spam filters.

E-Mail authentication is used by a number of ISPs, large and small, in the fight against spam.  E-Mail which has been authenticated ensures that it has been sent from a server which is legitimately allowed to send mail for the sending domain, improving deliverability and sometimes reducing the chance of it being flagged as spam.

Some webmail services also provide a visual indication to the user receiving the mail that e-mail has been authenticated and successfully verified.   For example in Yahoo! webmail the user will see a small symbol with a key next to the sender’s e-mail address.  This visual indication shows you have taken the time and effort to authenticate your domain and can project a more professional image.

Above, how an e-mail would display in Yahoo! webmail when if has been successfully authenticated by DomainKeys and below how it would look if it had not been.

It’s fairly easy to setup authentication in Suite26.  All you need to do is choose a domain you wish to send mail from (we recommend using a sub-domain or one specially registered for the purpose) and add that domain to Suite26.   We will provide you with 4 entries that need to be made to the DNS for that domain.  Once those entries have been made, any mail you send from that domain via Suite26 will be authenticated.

For more details, please visit our Help Centre and read the article about E-Mail Authentication and once you are ready to set it up please read our setting up E-Mail Authentication article.

We’d like to start by saying thank you to everybody who has contacted us recently with suggestions of features they would like to see implemented into Suite26.  Please keep them coming to suggestions@26.co.uk

From this feedback we would like to announce two small new features which may be useful in some circumstances.

Disable WYSIWYG Editor:

Some users design their e-mail templates in their favourite design program (Dreamweaver etc) and host the images for their mailer on their own servers.  In these cases it may be desirable to bypass the built-in WYSIWYG editor functionality. 

To turn off the WYSIWYG you will need to click on the Options tab, then Preferences and tick the Disable WYSIWYG Editor checkbox. With the editor disabled you will simply be provided with a standard text box to paste your HTML code into.

Disable Link Tracking:

Suite26 has always had the ability to turn tracking (opens & clicks) off on a per e-mail basis (available from the Send Campaign wizard), but it is now possible to disable tracking for a specific link within a campaign.

You may want to do this if you have a link which you wish to insert personalised information into (such as a membership number or e-mail address).  To disable tracking for a specific link you will need to switch the WYSIWYG editor into HTML code view and edit the link to add so that it contains rel=”s26-no-track” - your link should look like this:

<a rel=”s26-no-track” href=”http://www.mylinkhere.com/mylink.html”>

If you require any help with these new features or need further information, please e-mail support@26.co.uk and we will be happy to assist.