Email Yogi is a great site for hints, tips and email best practice.
Email Yogi
October 28th, 2010hello.catchthefire.com
October 18th, 2010One of our full serve clients, Catch The Fire Ministries wanted the benefits of full serve but with self serve capabilities – they have a number of local church campus’ in Toronto, Canada, but also a number of churches around the world, such as Catch The Fire Raleigh in NC, USA.
So we built a branded version of the self serve system at junctionjhello, with some alterations.
First, they needed to integrate with their own CRM software. The Toronto office uses Everest, an ERP system that runs on SQL. Our system uses MySQL, and we built a sync application that syncs the two databases.
Second, we added a filter system so users can send an email by category, for instance, to all the users who live in Toronto.
Finally, the marketing team wanted to have an area on each church campus email template for a common ad space. So we created an html file that they can update, and every campus email that goes out shows the same ads.
Of course the site is fully branded too. So everyone is happy… Catch The Fire has branded email marketing software that’s super cheap, without the hassles of setting it up or maintaining it. And for junctionjhello income of course, but also for important valuable customer feedback.
Delivery into junk mail boxes
October 13th, 2010It’s almost impossible to get 100% success on delivery… with the best will and resources available, every provider has email that goes into people’s junk mail. We sign up to all sorts of email lists for research, and a number of these end up in our junk mailboxes, even from the largest providers.
This is really because junk mail filters are increasingly tough to get around, and some people have their email set up so that any email that’s from someone that’s not in their address book gets deleted.
There are a number of tips and tricks though, like ensuring your recipients have your sending email address in their address book. junctionj also has a link on their templates to show users how to do that – http://junctionjhello.com/lists/ensure-delivery.html
news
October 2nd, 2010Well we’ve been slack at updating the blog, seems like there is so much going on, we’ve let this one slip.
We’ve been busy updating the site with the odd bug or two as we’ve had feedback from users, plus adding content that has been on our own list.
We’ve improved our import functionality to allow importing with Excel, Open office and CSV files. You can also export your data, with the ability to choose which data you export – so you can export for instance just your bounced back email addresses.
We set the site up to use SSL in readiness for our payments gateway which is also live, so credit card data is secure.
We’ve set up a password reset for when you forget your password.
Finally, if you haven’t watched it yet, check out our screen cast, a short video that shows just how easy it is to send email with junctionjhello.com (if you are logged in, you need to log out to see it).
Update April 13
April 13th, 2010We’ve been working hard on a couple of projects – ten16entertainment.com was finished last week and we’re please with the results…. the site was designed by Khroma Creative, and we did the build, using a custom Word Press installation.
We’re also working on a client version of junctionjhello, integrating their data with a back office sync. Pretty cool really.
On another note, signed up for a couple of cool things. There is a site called diyseo which is great for search engine optimisation, and also shoemoney has a free 12 week internet marketing course which is well worth it!
junctionjhello self serve issue log
February 3rd, 2010
We’ve started getting users on the self serve application, and a few more bugs are emerging. I am glad that we can iron out these bugs early on – this is what that beta test is all about!
We have uploaded a page with our known issues - http://junctionjhello.com/home.php?inc=home-issuelog.
Seeking trial users
January 15th, 2010
As you will be aware, we are very excited about our self serve email application launching this week. It’s essentially a do it yourself system where you add your email list, choose a template, add content and send! It has some tracking too so you can see open rates and clicks.
W are pricing it at $5 per campaign, plus $0.01 per email sent. So if you’ve got 1,000 emails to send, it’ll cost you $15.
We’re not going to be charging for a few months as we are looking to invite people to use the system for free to help us test it out and make sure it’s running smoothly. We successfully sent out 600 emails the other day for a client, and while it works beautifully, there are a few things we need to do to make it more usable.
If you are interested in using the system, I have taken down the sign up link so please email russ @ junctionj.com and I’ll give you the secret sign up link!
image copyright Jo Smith – junctionjimage.com
checking out images on the blog
January 14th, 2010
Using google docs to compare documents
January 7th, 2010I had an issue today that led me to learn something new and useful.
While working on the self serve app, I discovered in testing that the import function was not working. My developer was offline and I thought I’d take a look at it. I am not a coder, and have no grid for php, but I had something to go on. I had origionally outsourced the development of the app to Charthouse, and they had completed the code work, but it wasn’t designed. So I know that when we got the code, the import component worked. In adding the design or something, perhaps the code had been mistakenly broken.
I thought I’d compare the two files. So I printed both files off to see if I could make any sense of them, see a glaring error. I quickly realized that doing a manual check like that would take ages and be prone to error. So after quick research online, I discovered that google docs can do it simply!
Here’s how to compare any two documents. Create a new google doc. Copy and paste the code (or text) into the new doc. Save it. Then copy the text from the file you want to compare, and save again. Then go to file > see revision history. Check the 2 boxes next to the 2 recent revisions, and click the ‘compare checked’ link. Google docs shows you the differences!
How easy is that! Probably works for spreadies too, but I didn’t try that.
SVN
January 4th, 2010While we set up and tested we used sub version – SVN – to track changes. When you have a number of developers in different locations as we do, it’s fundamental that you use something to track who has done what, and what files have been updated. SVN is just that. We set up a development environment (dev env) and put all the source files there under SVN. Then each developer and project manager checks out the files, and after they have worked on them, updates the system with their changes.
As the team leader and project manager, I am not that technical, especially when it comes to using command line prompts. Fortunately we have a excellent and knowledgeable server administrator who took me through the basics. This post is by no means a tutorial on svn, but it’ll give you a grasp of the process.
My server admin set up the dev env, putting the files into SVN.
I SSH into the server, then change my user to root using the sudo su – command.
Files are checked out from the server using svn co – svn check out.
This downloads the files to your local machine, so you can make changes. Then when the files are saved, you need to add this back to your local svn repository – this is the bit I couldn’t get for ages…. you download from the server, make changes to your local files, then add the files back to your local respository using the command svn ci – ci standing for check in.
When you use svn ci, it brings in the text editor to make a note of the changes – this gives a log essentially. Exit and save the text editor, then it uploads the files to your local repository.
Finally, update the server with the changes by svn up – svn update, and it gives a revision number of you update. You may need to watch out for the permissions on the file – the update may not put the correct permissions, so watch out for the need for a chown – talk to your server guy about that.
It helps to have two command prompt windows open – I am on Mac OSX so I’m using Terminal. I have one window open for the server – checking out and checking in – and one window for the local checking in.