oempro_usersmanual

www.octeth.com

Users Manual oemPro version 3.5

“reliable solutions for your website”

_________________________________________________________________________________ of 114 oemPro Users Guide

Copyright © Octeth Technologies



THIS PRODUCT IS DEDICATED TO

“Nihan H., my love and wife, who supports and encourages me every time with her love and trust”

“My family, for their trust one me”

“Cemil-Melek Y., Samim H. who are watching us from heaven. We will follow your way along all our lives. We miss you too much”

“Mert, for his unbelievable hard working and creativity. all these great things would never look like wonderful and

excellent if you have not designed all user interfaces, web sites and manuals. Thank you!”

“Many thanks to everybody who supported us with their valuable feedbacks, comments and contributions. oemPro is a result of all its users and their contributions”

Cem Hurturk

Octeth Technologies CEO, Director of Development and Management

June, 2004



About This Manual

Disclaimer of Warranty THIS SOFTWARE AND ACCOMPANYING DOCUMENTATION ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES AS TO PERFORMANCE OF MERCHANTABILITY OR ANY OTHER WARRANTIES WHETHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. BECAUSE OF THE VARIOUS HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENTS INTO WHICH OEMPRO (OCTETH EMAIL MANAGER PRO) MAY BE USED, NO WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE IS OFFERED. THE USER MUST ASSUME THE ENTIRE RISK OF USING THIS PROGRAM. ANY LIABILITY OF 'OCTETH TECHNOLOGIES' AND ‘DEVELOPERS OF THE SOFTWARE’ WILL BE LIMITED EXCLUSIVELY TO PRODUCT REPLACEMENT OR REFUND OF PURCHASE PRICE. IN NO CASE SHALL 'OCTETH TECHNOLOGIES' AND ‘DEVELOPERS OF THE SOFTWARE’ BE LIABLE FOR ANY INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR LOSS, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, LOST PROFITS OR THE INABILITY TO USE EQUIPMENT OR ACCESS DATA, WHETHER SUCH DAMAGES ARE BASED UPON A BREACH OF EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, BREACH OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE, STRICT TORT, OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY. THIS IS TRUE EVEN IF 'OCTETH TECHNOLOGIES' AND ‘DEVELOPERS OF THE SOFTWARE’ IS ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. IN NO CASE WILL 'OCTETH TECHNOLOGIES' AND ‘DEVELOPERS OF THE SOFTWARE’ OR LIABILITY EXCEED THE AMOUNT OF THE LICENSE FEE ACTUALLY PAID BY LICENSEE TO 'OCTETH TECHNOLOGIES' AND ‘DEVELOPERS OF THE SOFTWARE’.

Credits Interface DesignMert Website Design Mert Manuals Parag Sane [[email protected]] Online visual demo’s for oemPro Parag Sane [[email protected]]

mailto:[email protected]




License and Legal Disclaimer PLEASE CAREFULLY READ THE FOLLOWING LICENSE AGREEMENT. YOU ACCEPT AND

AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT BY USING THE ENCLOSED

SOFTWARE.

1. LICENSE GRANT

In this license agreement, "You" means the person or company who is being licensed to use the

Software, Documentation or Service. "We", "us" and "our" means Octeth Technologies.

“Software” means oemPro and all of its components.

2. TITLE

We remain the owner of all right, title, logo, content and interest in the Software and related

explanatory written materials ("Documentation").

3. ARCHIVAL OR BACKUP COPIES

You may copy the Software for back-up and archival purposes, provided that the original and

each copy is kept in your possession and that your installation and use of the Software does not

exceed that allowed in the "License Grant" section above.

4. THINGS YOU MAY NOT DO

Below, things you may not to do are listed.

• Copy the Documentation,

• Copy the Software except to make archival or backup copies as provided above,

• Reverse engineer, disassemble, decompile, unobfuscate or make any attempt to

discover the source code of the Software,

• Modify the source code of the software

• Sublicense, rent, lease or lend any portion of the Software or Documentation.

• Your license is non-transferable.

5. TERM AND TERMINATION

This license agreement takes effect upon your use of the software and remains effective until

terminated. You may terminate it at any time by destroying all copies of the Software and

Documentation in your possession. It will also automatically terminate if you fail to comply with

any term or condition of this license agreement. You agree on termination of this license to

destroy all copies of the Software and Documentation in your possession.

6. CONFIDENTIALITY

The Software contains trade secrets and proprietary know-how that belong to us and it is being

made available to you in strict confidence.



WARNING!

• Under no circumstances shall oemPro Team or the authors of this product be liable for

any incidental or consequential damages, data loss, security problems, bug related

damages or problems, nor for any damages in excess of the original purchase price.

• Any use or disclosure of the software, or of its algorithms, protocols or interfaces, other

than in strict accordance with this license agreement, may be actionable as a violation

of our trade secret rights.

• The latest version of this software license agreement is available on oemPro Team

website (www.oemp.com). Software user also accepts all the terms and conditions

included in the software license agreement on oemPro Team website (www.oemp.com)

• This program is protected by copyright law. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of

this program, or any portion of it, may result in severe civil and criminal penalties, and

will be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible under the law.

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY

This software and accompanying documentation are provided "as is" and without warranties as to

performance of merchantability or any other warranties whether expressed or implied. Because of

the various hardware and software environments into which software may be used, no warranty

of fitness for a particular purpose is offered. The user must assume the entire risk of using this

program. Any liability of us will be limited exclusively to software replacement or refund of

purchase price. In no case shall we be liable for any incidental, special or consequential damages

or loss, including, without limitation, lost profits or the inability to use equipment or access data,

whether such damages are based upon a breach of express or implied warranties, breach of

contract, negligence, strict tort, or any other legal theory. This is true even if we are advised of the

possibility of such damages. In no case will we or liability exceed the amount of the license fee

actually paid by licensee to us.

http://www.oemp.com/



Table of Contents About This Manual..........................................................................................................3 Table of Contents ...........................................................................................................6 Introduction ...................................................................................................................7 Features covered for Administrators..............................................................................8 Mailing Lists Explained in Details.................................................................................25 Members related functions...........................................................................................41 Effective usage of Subscription and Unsubscription utilities.......................................46 Import – Export Functions ...........................................................................................51 Working with Campaigns [Effective Campaign Management] ....................................58 How to link your content file instead of creating your newsletter on the Fly?............90 Working with Personalization ......................................................................................93 Working with Autoresponders .....................................................................................96 Working with Campaign Clients.................................................................................100 Working with Statistical data.....................................................................................102 Branding of your oemPro ...........................................................................................108 Understanding the way of email sending with oemPro .............................................113



Introduction oemPro is an acronym of “Octeth Email Marketing Pro”. The story of innovation starts in 1998, the first version of oemPro was released and it was named as “Octeth Email Marketing Pro”. In 2002, we have decided to modify the name to oemPro, which is shorter and easier to tell and write. Over the period of almost more than 5 years oemPro has come a long way not only in terms of stability but also features and other offerings. Lots of imitators came into the market with the email marketing solutions but oemPro still stands out in the competition. oemPro is the most trusted name in email marketing and serves to thousands of users world wide. With its powerful and proprietary sending technology, it sends your email campaigns in the matter of time with the features like personalization, filtering, follow ups, automated verification, bounce processing, seamless integration with your existing website design and much more. It’s the most advanced Mailing List Management Solution providing all the necessary tools and features that you need. oemPro doesn’t just stop by providing you the easiest way of sending your campaigns but also provides you with the precise statistical reports such as - read ratios, link click statistics, feedbacks, reviews and much more. This is the Quick Start Guide, guiding you through the whole process of upgrading and installing the fresh copy of oemPro, setting up the basic configuration parameters, creating the mailing lists, adding members and sending your first newsletter. We have tried to simplify our manual as much as we can – we would like to receive any feedback or any suggestions our esteemed clients may have. We will try and work on those suggestions to improve our offerings. We thank you for choosing oemPro as your mailing list management and email marketing solution. Cheers Octeth Team

Features covered for Administrators

Logging into Administration Section We have seen the simplified process of the oemPro installation. Once you are done with the installation it automatically redirects you the “Administration Section” of your oemPro installation. Normally it’s placed under the directory of your oemPro. For example – http://www.mysite.com/oempro/admin/ The oemPro administration will help you manage, update and tweak all the aspects of your email marketing and campaign management. The following screen will appear when you access your administration section. You will be asked to key in your username and password.

(um#1)

Um#1: Administration Section Login Screen

Please key in your username and the password in the respective fields and click on the Login button to access the oemPro administration section. In case if you forget your password you can click on “forgot your password” link and retrieve the password information. If you wish that oemPro should remember your login then you can tick the box “Remember me on next login”, which is just below your username and password fields. This will allow oemPro to remember your login information next time you access the administration section.



http://www.mysite.com/oempro/admin/

NOTE: If you are not clear about a particular step please refer to the animated documentation inside your client control panel. In this detailed oemPro manual we are going to learn how effectively we can use the advanced features of oemPro. In this chapter we will see the elaborated explanation of how you can work with creating / deleting / modifying and setting up the rights based permissions to different administrative accounts. Administrators have total control over every aspect of the oemPro system. You may create different administrative accounts in order to allow different people to have access to certain processes and functionalities of the oemPro system. After you login to your oemPro with the first administrative account you will see a screen shown below. um#2

um#2: Dashboard for the oemPro system The dashboard is the quick overview of the oemPro system and gives you the basic statistics for your overall campaigns, members’ database and the bounce processing statistics.



Working with multiple administrators In order to create / manage / and delete the administrators click on the Settings > Administrators – as shown in the figure um#3.

um#3 - Settings > Administrators

Once you click on the above tab – you will be taken to the section where you can manage all your administrative accounts. You will see a screen as shown in the figure um#4.

um#4 – Administrators

As you can see the page will display and list all the available administrators in your oemPro system. In the above screen it is displaying only one administrative account which we created at the time of the installation. It shows you the Name of the account, eMail address, Account type and in the last column it gives you the ability to edit the privileges of the respective account. By editing these privileges you can define the access rights of every admin user, allowing them to access only a particular section of the system. Now lets first click on the edit link next to our admin account and then see what all options do we have for setting up the rights and access privileges.



Please click on the Edit link as shown in the below figure. um#5

um#5 – click on the Edit link

When we click on the edit link we will be redirected to the account settings of the respective account. This section will have all the information related to the administrator’s account – such as Name, eMail, Username and Password, Time Zone, user interface language, user interface, character set, account type [super administrator or administrator], option to enable – disable rich text mode and settings for the attachments. When you scroll down – you will see the ADMINISTRATOR PRIVILEGES section as shown in the below figure – um#6.

um#6 ADMINISTRATOR PRIVILEGES



This screen allows you to setup all the necessary options for a particular administrator account. By checking or un-checking the boxes given next to the options available to you will enable or disable that particular function for the administrator account. In this example we are in the editing mode of the Super Administrator – and that’s the reason you will see all the options ticked and selected. Now let’s go back to our Administrators screen where we will see how to add new administrators and set the privileges for the same. We will have to click on the create administrator link as shown below in the figure um#7.

um#7 – Create administrator

Once we click on the Create administrator link we will see the following screen – um#8.

um#8 New Administrator Account





Personal Information

Name: You can add any name – it can be your name or just the Super Administrator which is set by default.

Email: The email address, which will be used for your profile. In case if you forget your login password the oemPro can send the password info to this email account.

Time Zone: You can set this parameter according to your region or the country where you live. oemPro provides you the timezone settings in the “GMT +” or “GMT -” formats. You can define this to match your location and the time zone.

Login Settings

Username: The username for accessing the administration section of oemPro.

Password: The password for accessing the administration section of oemPro.

User Interface

User Interface Language:

As of now oemPro supports only one user interface language – English.

User Interface: oemPro can allow you to switch different skins and layouts if they are available. oemPro is pre-configured with the Enhanced English Skin.

Character Set: oemPro allows number of different character sets to be selected. By default character set is English (en).

Account Preferences

Account Type: This specifies whether your account type is Super Administrator or just the Administrator. Super Administrator has the ability to control all the features of the oemPro system – where as only Administrator can have the limited sets of functions to be used or you can configure the access rights.

WYSIWYG Editor: You can enable or disable the HTML rich text mode for the email campaigns the super administrator can send by ticking or un-ticking this option.

Max. Attachment Size:

oemPro provides a built in facility to add attachments to your email campaigns. The account profile can have the limit for the file size of an attachment. If you set the option of this field to 0 (zero), you can upload whatever size of attachment to the oemPro system.

After we create another administrator account we will be able to see the same in the Administrators sections. The below figure um#9 shows the second account with the Account Type Administrator.

um#9 – new account created





Setting up different privileges for administrators Now that we have created our second administrator we will see how we can setup the privileges. You need to click on the Edit link next to the account you want to edit. After we click on the edit link we will be displayed the basic information for the Administrator account and when you scroll down it gives you the ability to edit the privileges. Mail lists: This section can have six options as shown in the below table.

Create Browse Delete Details Update Access

If ticked – it allows the

administrator to create new mailing lists.


administrator to browse mailing

lists.


administrator to delete mailing

lists.


administrator to see the details of

mailing lists.


administrator to create new mailing lists.

This option allows the overall

access to this feature.

Mail list administrators: This section also has six options available to you.



administrator to create the new

administrator for a mailing list.


administrator to browse the

administrators for a mailing list.


administrator to delete the

administrators for a mailing list.


administrator to check the details

of the administrators assigned for a mailing list.


administrator to update the mailing list

administrator accounts.



Mail list email addresses:



administrator to create the new mail list email

addresses.


administrator to browse the mail

list email addresses.


administrator to delete the mail



administrator to check the details of the mail list

email addresses.


administrator to update the mail




Mail list clients



administrator to create the new mail list client.



list client.



list client.



client.



list client.





Mail list emails Create Browse Delete Details Update Access


administrator to create the new mail list emails.



list emails.



list emails.



emails.



list emails.



Mail list custom fields



administrator to create the new custom fields.



custom fields.



custom fields.



of the custom fields.


administrator to update the

custom fields.



Emails



administrator to create new

emails.


administrator to browse emails.


administrator to delete emails.



of the emails.


administrator to update emails.



Custom fields



administrator to create the new custom fields.



custom fields.



custom fields.



of the custom fields.


administrator to update the

custom fields.



Website integration


N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A This option allows the overall


Member



administrator to create new members.


administrator to browse

members.


administrator to delete members.



of members.


administrator to update members.





Banned member Create Browse Delete Details Update Access



Black listed member




Import members




Export members




Campaign



administrator to create new campaign.


administrator to browse existing

campaigns.


administrator to delete existing

campaigns.


administrator to check the details of campaigns.


administrator to update existing

campaigns.



Campaign tracking




Auto responder






Follow up Create Browse Delete Details Update Access



Newsletter template




Client




Bounce statistics




Member activity statistics




Process log




Account information


N/A N/A N/A If ticked – administrator can

check the account details

If ticked – administrator can

update the account details





Dashboard customization Create Browse Delete Details Update Access



Preferences




Administrator



create new administrators.


browse administrators.


delete administrators.

If ticked – administrator can check the details of administrators.


update administrators.



Administrator email




Administrator privileges




System testing




Mail box






Send engine Create Browse Delete Details Update Access



Help sections




CRON management




Remote update




Plug-In management




Once you are done setting up these options the administrator will only be able to see the sections which he / she is allowed to using these access privileges. This could help you a lot assigning certain tasks to certain administrators only.

The Super administrator account has all the available options at his disposal so as to manage all the aspects of the system.

Working with the branding of each administrator Now that we have seen how to setup the access privileges – let’s take a close look at how do you offer different branding to different administrators? What do we mean by branding? – Well branding allows each administrator to have a specific set of character sets – language – and the interface skin. oemPro comes with the default enhanced English skin. In case you need to provide your administrator a different look and feel, a different set of language and character sets – it is possible. What you need to do is – just click on the Edit link from the Administrators menu and set these parameters to suite the administrators needs.

um#10 – Administrator account branding options.

Once you go to the edit menu of the administrator account you will see these options and you will be able to edit them easily.



Assigning email address for Administrators We have seen how to create new administrators and setup the access rights for them so far. Now lets check out – how to assign multiple email addresses for an administrator. What do we mean by assigning email addresses? Every administrator has certain access rights to perform certain tasks. The email address assignment is for those administrators who are given the rights of creating and sending new campaigns. In order to send new email campaigns administrator has to define – from address, reply-to address and return path. When we create or assign new email addresses for the administrator he can then select the newly created or assigned email id to be used in from address, reply-to address and return path. For example – administrator wants to send an email from [email protected] but wants the reply-to address for the campaign to be [email protected], so that when people reply to his emails they will go to [email protected]. oemPro provides an advanced email assigning facility for administrators so that he can assign different email addresses for different fields [such as – from address, reply-to address and return path]. In order to assign more email id’s to administrator you need to go to Settings > Administrator. You will see the administrators listed on your screen. Click on the EDIT link for the respective administrator account in order to assign new email addresses. um#11

um#11 – going to the edit menu of administrators

After you are inside the administrator editing menu – scroll down and you will see the figure displayed below. um#12






um#12 – Administrator email addresses

In the figure um#12 we can see there is only one email address listed. This is the default email address assigned when we created the account. In order to assign a new email address you have to enter the name and the email address and click on the assign email address button. um#13

um#13 – assigning new email address

After you are done adding the account you will see it in the list of Administrator email addresses as shown below in the figure um#14.

um#14 – new email assigned

Using this tool you can assign an unlimited number of email addresses to any administrator account.





Working with Languages in oemPro oemPro is based on a very flexible framework. By default oemPro comes with English language. You may go to the options editing menu for the administrator and set the language.

Mailing Lists Explained in Details In this section we will see how to deal with Mailing Lists. How effectively you can use opt-in / opt-out, assigning admins for different mailing lists, assigning clients, custom fields, personalization and outsourced member resources. Working with opt-in and opt-out emails and its effective usage oemPro offers a very sophisticated opt-in and opt-out system. It not only allows you to set unlimited number of opt-in / opt-out emails for every mailing list but also extends the ability to send rich text html opt-in / opt-out emails. What do we mean by opt-in and opt-out email?

Opt-in Email The action a person takes when they agree, by email or other means, to receive communications. It requires a mechanism to encourage and allow people to become recipients.

Opt-out Email The action a person takes when they choose not to receive communications. It requires a mechanism by which people can ask to be removed from your email list.

Now let’s see how to add opt-in and opt-out emails. After you log in to your administrative area of oemPro – click on Mail Lists > Opt in/out emails. You will see a screen similar as shown in the figure um#15.

um#15 – Mail list emails – or – opt-in / opt-out emails



This screen will give you the basic information about the existing opt-in/out emails and also will allow you to create more such emails. To create our opt-in email lets click on the Create email link as shown in the figure um#16.

um#16 – Create opt-in/out email.

After you click on the create email link you will be provided with number of options to setup the opt-in email as shown in the below figure um#17. You will have to key in all the details in the respective fields and then click on the proceed button to go to the next step of creating our opt-in/out email.

um#17 – New mail list email screen

Let’s see what all fields and the information we have populate in the above screen.



Administrative Description

This is the description for the identification of the mail list email you are going to create. Enter the description of the email. This is only for administrative purposes.

Content Settings

Content Type: Select what type of content you want to have for the email you are going to create – you may select Text email, HTML email or HTML and Text email – options.

Character set: Select the character set according to your email content.

Priority: Priority of the email – whether it should be High, Normal or Low. The MTA software on your system will need this priority to relay your mail with the high, normal or low priority.

Sender Settings

Sender Name: Name of the Sender

Sender email address:

The email address for the sender which will be displayed to the recipient.

Reply-to Name: Reply-to recipient name

Reply-to email address:

Reply-to recipient address. In case if the person replies to this email which email address the email should come to.

Return-path email address:

Return-path email address – this will be the email address for delivering the bounce delivery reports

Then click on the “Proceed” button to go to the next step of creating your mail list email. Once you do that you will see the below screen where in you will need to edit the mail list email content which will be sent to the subscriber. um#18

um#18 – WYSIWYG editor for composing opt-in/out email





As you can see in the above screenshot you are provided with the advanced html editor to create rich text emails. You will have to define the email subject and then enter the content. If you selected HTML & Text both the modes you will be provided with the text box below this editor to edit your text based opt-in/out email. In the above screenshot we can see there is a question mark next to Email content text. What is it? Well by clicking on this Question Mark link you will be able to add the personalization into your opt-in/out emails. You can add the date of subscription – opt-in/out subscription/unsubscription links. There are lot many personalization tags which you can use to spice up your opt-in/out emails. We will talk about the personalization later on. Lets take a look at how to create an opt-in email. So far we have populated all the necessary information for our opt-in email, now lets add the relevant content and the opt-in confirmation link. In order to add your confirmation link – click on the Question Mark link next to the Email Content text. After doing that a pop up window will open up called Personalization Wizard. This wizard will give you five options for your personalization – for opt-in/out confirmation link we will select Insert Links option. Then second dropdown menu will be given to you – in which we need to select the last option – opt-in/out confirmation link. Once you select this you can click on the Generate link. The tag will appear below the drop down menu bar. The tag for opt-in/out confirmation link is - %Link%. The above tag will be replaced automatically by the correct opt-in/out email link. When someone subscribes with your mailing list – he/she will be sent one opt-in email. If the person who subscribed is the valid user he will receive this email and click on the opt-in verification link in order to confirm his subscription. Once he confirms – oemPro will add this email address in the oemPro database. Similarly when a person has to un-subscribe from the mailing list – he / she will visit our un-subscription page and enter his email id. The oemPro backend will send a confirmation email to the subscriber asking whether he really wants to un-subscribe from the mailing list or not – if yes then he should click on the confirmation link. Why opt-in and opt-out is required is because sometimes some people can subscribe or unsubscribe you from the mailing lists which either you don’t want to. In order to avoid this oemPro provides a method for every user subscribing or unsubscribing to your mailing lists. When you are setting up a mailing list in order to update your prospective and existing clients related to the developments happening at your end then you must have opt-in or opt-out confirmation emails. This way you make sure that the user is not forced to receive your newsletter. These are called email marketing etiquettes.



Working with different system emails for opt-in / opt-out confirmations oemPro is an intelligent piece of software while handling opt-in and opt-out emails. You can either use a single email for both the activities, opt-in and opt-out. When you create an email with the opt-in confirmation link – the same email if used for the opt-out confirmation would generate the opt-out link. In the previous section we saw how to add the dynamic confirmation link into the email we created. We added %Link% as our tag in the opt-in email created in the previous section. If you do not have two separate emails for opt-in and opt-in, the same tag will automatically replace the necessary confirmation links depending on the preferences set by the administrator. Its always better to have separate emails for different tasks, this way you can personalize the message inside the email and the users can surely make out that the particular confirmation email is sent out either for opt-in or for opt-out confirmation. You can create multiple emails for opt-in and opt-out confirmation as explained in the previous section.

How to assign admins for different mailing lists So far we have seen how to add new administrator account, how to deal with the permission of the administrator account, opt-in and opt-out emails. Now let’s assume that we want to have multiple administrators assigned to one mailing list. Why do we need to do that? By assigning multiple administrators to a mailing list you can make sure that the administrative tasks are not delayed if one administrator is not available. Second most important thing is you can assign multiple administrators in order to distribute different duties to different administrators depending on their access rights. This is mainly required for the large companies or corporations who needs to maintain and manage large mailing lists. In order to assign multiple administrators to a mailing list please click on the Mail Lists > Browse Lists. The following screen will be displayed – um#19

um#19 – Mailing Lists



Now you need to click on the Edit link under the options in order to go to the settings of that particular mailing list. After you click on the Edit link the following screen will appear. um#20

um#20 Update Mail List Menu

This screen will give you the option to update all the different parameters of a mailing list. You can update the settings, administrator, email addresses assigned to the mailing list, customers, emails and custom fields. You need to scroll down till the Preferences section in order to add / delete administrators to the mailing list. You should see the following screen – giving you the option to add more administrators to the mailing list. um#21

um#21 – Assigning more administrators for a mailing list

As shown in the above screen shot you will see what all administrator id’s are already assigned and just below the assigned administrators you have the drop down menu which allows you to select the administrator id and then you click on the Assign button.



For this example we will assign our administrator called Admin1 to the mailing list. Once we assign the administrator you should see the following screen. um#22

um#22 – confirmation for assigning an admin to the mailing list

That’s about it – now if the administrator Admin1 logs on using his username and the password he will be able to see the mailing list assigned to him. He can then make the necessary modifications depending on his access rights.



How to assign clients to every mailing list In the previous section we went through the steps on assigning administrators to the mailing lists. In this section we will see how to assign a client to the mailing list. What is a client in oemPro? oemPro offers a facility to create an account which is termed as a client account and which can be used to check the basic activities of a particular mailing list. When you are running a campaign for one of your client – you can enable a client account and allow that client to check the activities of the different campaigns for different or a single list. If you need to create a new client then oemPro offers the facility to assign the mailing list on the client creation screen itself. In case you need to assign an existing client to the mailing list then you can do that by listing the existing clients and then editing their preferences. Let us first create the client and while creating assign the mailing list. In order to create the client you need to click on the Campaigns > Clients. You should see the following screen after you click on the clients tab. um#23.

um#23 – Browse Clients Menu



If there are existing clients you can see the list of the clients. Now you need to click on the Create client link in order to create a new client. After clicking on the link following screen should appear – um#24.

um#24 – Create a client account

You need to populate all the information required on this screen and click on Add client tab. The first field gives you the option to assign this new client to the mailing lists available. You can select the mailing list or mailing lists. Enter the name of the client – his/her email address, username and the password. You can also tick the option “send login information to client by email”. This is how you can assign the client account at the time of the new client creation itself. Now let’s see how we can assign an existing client to the mailing list. When you see the existing clients lists – click on the Edit link next the desired client as shown in the screen shot below. um#25

um#25 – Editing an existing client to assign it to the mailing lists



Once you click on the edit link you will see the following screen – giving you the details of the clients and the mailing lists he is assigned to. um#26

um#26 – updating an existing client for assigning a mailing list

In the above screen shot we can see that the existing client is already assigned to a mailing list called “test”. You can select the multiple mailing lists for a particular client account. By assigning your clients to specific mailing lists they can view the basic activities for the mailing lists.



How to work with custom fields – how to create them and use them in the mailing lists In order to provide you with a great flexible environment oemPro allows you to create custom fields which can be used to track the extra user information or data. When you create a mailing list sometimes you want to track some extra user information – say what is their favorite color, or which car they own etc. This information tracked from the user is used to carry out the targeted marketing. If you have the custom fields created in oemPro then you can collect these extra details from the subscriber and use them for doing the targeted marketing. For example – you want to send an email to your mailing list and specifically to those who owns a laptop. In the case of custom fields you can only select those subscribers who own a laptop using the rules based targeted sending option. This way oemPro allows you to avoid creating multiple lists manually for different types of parameters such as whether they own a laptop or not – whether they own the laptop of a particular brand or not etc. oemPro’s custom field facility extends the capability of tracking extra data for the CRM purposes and takes the email marketing process to a whole new heights. Let us now work with the custom fields. In order to create the custom fields go to Mail Lists > Custom Fields. You should see the following screen – um#27

um#27 – Custom fields



This screen will list the existing custom fields if you have any. In order to create a new custom field you need to click on the Create custom field link. The following screen should appear – um#28.

um#28 – Create new custom field

oemPro offers several field types to be selected for making a new custom field. As per your selection of the field type – oemPro will generate a database entry for that custom field. Field types offered by oemPro: Text fields, password fields, hidden fields, text area, list, drop list, check box, radio button and notice text.



You have plenty of options to choose the type of the custom field you wish to create. For this manual we will use Text Field. After your select the type of the field you need to click on the Proceed button. You will see the following screen – um#30.

um#30 – New custom field

You will be given appropriate options to fill up for this custom field depending on the type. For text fields we need to populate the below information Title: Title of the field in order to identify what data the end user has to supply. Default Value: Default value is the dummy value for the subscribers ease of use. With this he will understand what information he needs to provide. This absolutely depends on you whether to set it or not. Validation type: Select the validation type out the 5 validations available in oemPro. Do not apply: This is selected when you don’t want to make the custom field compulsory for the subscriber. Accept only numeric value: This can be set to accept only numbers. The field will not accept any data except the numbers. Accept only letters: This options can be set to accept the text input. Accept letters and numerical characters only: This option can accept both the types of inputs – numeric and character as well the combination of both. Check for email format: This option will validate the email format – if the input made by the subscriber is not a valid email format – this will give an error.



After you populate all the information for the custom field click on the Add button. You will see the following screen after oemPro adds the custom field to your database. um#31

um#31 – Custom field creation completed

The screen will also allow you to browse the mailing lists there itself so that you can integrate the custom field into your desired mailing list. This is how you can create multiple – unlimited custom fields for tracking extra user information.

How to work with custom field value validation We have seen in our previous section on how to add multiple custom fields so that we can track some extra information from the user for targeted marketing. When you create your custom field – one of the most important things is the value validation of the custom fields. Some times people tend to enter any random information for these extra fields when they are not ready to share this information. Obviously one can never make sure that the information entered by the person is the correct one or not. But to avoid it to a certain extent oemPro allows you to do the value validation by providing 4 validation methods.

(1) Accept only numeric values: This validation method allows you to validate the input to the numeric values – if the value inputted is not a numeric one or not. This way the subscribers will not be able to input any random value except the numbers.

(2) Accept only letters: This validation method allows you to validate the input to the letters only – if the value inputted is different than letters then the oemPro will not accept the value.

(3) Accept letters and numerical characters only: This validation method will allow you to accept numerical values as well characters.

(4) Check for email format: This type of validation will ensure that the person entering the data is of the email format.





Using custom fields to track extra information for customer relationship management We have seen in the last two sections – on how to add the custom fields and do the validation of the same. In this section we will see how effectively these fields can help us to have a sound customer relationship management [CRM]. What does CRM means? CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a process or methodology used to learn more about customers' needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger relationships with them. There are many technological components to CRM, but thinking about CRM in primarily technological terms is a mistake. The more useful way to think about CRM is as a process that will help bring together lots of pieces of information about customers, sales, marketing effectiveness, responsiveness and market trends. How oemPro helps you collect the information about your customers? oemPro’s built in custom field generation facility allows you to create unlimited custom fields for your mailing lists. These fields can collect the information for your subscribers when they subscribe to your mailing lists and oemPro adds them to the database. Using this information you can get the basic idea on the customer’s preferences and preferred options. These options can help you decide on how you tap these customers by targeting them using the specific information submitted to you by the subscriber. When you start a new campaign you can use these options to decide whether this campaign should go to a set of people. For example if you have a custom field tracking the operating system your subscriber uses, and if you need to tell your subscribers that there is a new product you developed for this particular operating system. Now when you have custom fields enabled and have the data ready with you for the customers having windows, linux or any other operating system then you can easily target these clients by filtering them using custom fields. This will not only help you save your time, bandwidth as well accuracy of your campaign. When you filter the subscribers by the parameter of a specific operating system you will only be sending your emails to a set of the group using that particular operating system. This will work more effectively as you will be targeting only few customers depending on the filter criterion.

Members related functions In this section we will see how to work with members, how to list them, add them, import them, export them and allowing them the access to their subscription area.

Working with members – listing them and managing them oemPro backend is based on a highly optimized algorithms and has the capacity to handle large number of members in a single database. oemPro member management is very sophisticated allowing you the ease of use handling the member database for your mailing lists. It also allows you to search the members based on the different criteria’s – for example custom fields, ascending, descending, members from a particular list etc. This makes it much easier for you to sort the members and manage them. In order to browse the members you need to click on Members > Browse Members. You should see the following screen – um#32.

um#32 – Browse Members



oemPro will ask you to define your criteria in order to browse through the members database. You need to click on the “Show/Hide Filter” link. You should see the following screen with the options to filter the member search. um#33

um#33 – Browse Members

Let’s take a look at what all options we have for the selection of the browse member search criteria. Display the following fields: You can select the by default fields – so that the members with these fields will be sorted out. Search for: You may specify some keyword to search in the following fields. Email address Bounce status Opt-in confirmation status Opt-out confirmation status Subscription status Subscription date Unsubscription date Opt-in confirmation date Opt-out confirmation date IP used on subscription IP used on unsubscription List the members: You may select a particular list or can select the option “any” to have all the lists included into your search parameter. _________________________________________________________________________________

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List members order by: You may select this option to list the members in ascending or descending order. Browse non grouped (Hidden) members: You can select this option to see the non grouped members within your search results. Records per page: You can select this option to set how many records to be displayed on per page. Save filter option: Tick this field to save your filter option. Once you set all the parameters you have to click on the Browse button so that the oemPro framework will search the member’s database depending on your parameters. You should see the screen similar to the below screen shot. um#34

um#34 – Browsing members

You will see all the members’ data according to your search criteria. You will also be displayed some options next to the member’s id. With these options you can edit the member details, check the campaign activity of the member and check the bounce activity as well.



Banning users for the specific mailing list or ban them globally You can ban the subscribers from your mailing lists if you wish to. This feature is important in order to block some users to access the newsletters from your mailing lists. In order to ban the users you need to click on the Members > Banned Members. You will see the screen below. um#35

um#35 – Banned Members

In order to ban the email addresses you need to click on the Create ban rule link. Once you click on the link you should see the following screen which will provide you couple of options in order to ban the member. um#36

um#36 – ban members





You can select the options provided to you in order to ban the members globally, to a specific mailing list, by IP address, by domain name and by email address. Partial texts are enabled. You can enter only a part of the item such as @example.com will match all *@example.com addresses.

Effective usage of Subscription and Unsubscription utilities Let us now check the effective usage of subscription and unsubscription utilities. We have already seen how the opt-in and opt-out subscription emails they work. In this section we will learn how to use the POP3 mail box to process the subscriptions / unsubscriptions and password reminders.

Understanding how you can use a POP mail box to handle subscriptions / unsubscription and password reminders. In order to create our POP mail box for subscriptions/unsubscriptions or password reminders – you need to click on Settings > Mail Boxes. You should see the following screen. um#37

um#37 – Mail boxes

In order to create a new mail box please click on the Create mail box link. You will be provided couple of options in order to setup your POP mail box. These options are explained below.


You can enter any description for this to identify your mail box.

Connection settings

Email Address: Enter the email address for this POP3 mail box.

Host Address: Enter the host address for your POP3 server. For example – mail.mysite.com. This can be also an IP address.





Server Port: Enter the POP3 server port – normally its 110 for almost every POP3 server but in case if its located on any other port you may change this value to the suitable one.

Authentication settings

Enable APOP Secure

connection:

Generally you do not require APOP secure connection but in case if you do please check this box.

Username: Enter your username for the POP3 server.

Password: Enter your password for the POP3 server.

Use this box for

Select the purpose(s) of this Mail Box and select one or more values. To select more than one option, hold down CTRL key while selecting. There are two options available – Request Processing and Bounce Handling.

Assigned Mailing Lists

Select one or more mailing list to assign the SMTP server. In order to select multiple mailing lists you need to hold the CTRL key and then click on the multiple mailing lists.

Auto request processing

Subscription: You may specify any word or phrase over here in order to make oemPro automatically process the related request for subscription by identifying and comparing this word or phrase with the subject line of the emails received on this particular POP3 mailbox.

Unsubscription: You may specify any word or phrase over here in order to make oemPro automatically process the related request for unsubscription by identifying and comparing this word or phrase with the subject line of the emails received on this particular POP3 mailbox.

Password reminder:

You may specify any word or phrase over here in order to make oemPro automatically process the related request for password reminder by identifying and comparing this word or phrase with the subject line of the emails received on this particular POP3 mailbox.

Once you set all the above options you may click on the Add button in order to add this new mailbox to your oemPro system. Now if you receive an email on this particular mail box with the subject line subscribe – oemPro will process this request as a subscription request. Similarly if the subject line is unsubscribe or password then oemPro will process the request for unsubscription and password reminder respectively. This way you can create the POP mail boxes to process your subscription, unsubscription and password reminders.

Setting up Custom success and error messages In order to setup custom success and error message you need to go to the Mail Lists > Website Integration. You should see the following screen when you access the Website Integration section. um#38

um#38 – Website Integration

In the screen shot um#38 – we can see there are three options available to us, Subscription Form, Unsubscription Form and Result Screens. We need to click on the Result Screens in order to setup our custom success and error messages. Manage screens section is used to generate the different subscription and unsubscription screens. Once we click on the result screens menu we will be given the following screen um#39.

um#39 – Result Screens for Subscription and Unsubscription



By default oemPro provides four screens.

Default subscription failure screen Default subscription success screen Default unsubscription failure screen Default unsubscription success screen

You may edit these existing screens by clicking on the Edit link next to the listed screen. To create a new screen you can click on the Create Screen link. When you click on the create screen link you will be provided the following screen with couple of options and the WYSIWYG editor. um#40

um#40 – new screen

On this screen you need to populate the following fields with the related information.

Screen Preferences

Screen Type: You have three options, Subscription – Unsubscription or both

Name: Define the name of the screen

Redirect URL

Define the redirect URL if you want your screen to be redirected to a page. This is option can only work when you have not defined any SCREEN HTML Code.





Page HTML Code:

Enter your custom screen HTML code – this code will be displayed when someone subscribes or unsubscribes through the online subscription/unsubscription form.

Once you are done with adding the screen you can associate this with the mailing lists you wish.

Import – Export Functions Import – export functions are important for those who want to import a huge database of members to the oemPro members database or to export the big database for the backup purposes. In this section we will see how to import and export the database of members using the comma delimited file, MySQL table or through the Mail Box.

Using Import utility oemPro allows you to import the members email id’s and other information to the database very easily. There are three methods available to import the data into your oemPro database. In order to access the Import function you need to go to Members > Import Members section. You should see the following screen when you access the import members utility. um#41

um#41 – Import Members



There are three methods (1) Comma Delimited file (2) MySQL Table and (3) Mail Box. Comma Delimited file: Using this method you can import the CSV file. You can define your custom delimiters and can also choose the different types of line breaks – windows, linux, macintosh etc. While importing the members you can also set the import options such as.

• Validate email address format • Ignore duplicate members • Ignore black listed members • Ignore banned members • Import members as opt-in confirmed

When you go to the import menu for comma delimited files you should see the following screen. um#42.

um#42 – Import from comma-delimited file

Lets check what all options we need to populate in order to import the data from the comma-delimited file.

Target Mail List

Select the target mail list in which you plan to import the members from the comma-delimited file. You can also select the multiple lists by holding down the CTRL key and selecting multiple lists.

CSV File Location

Path to data file: Provide the path to the csv data file – or you can upload the data file using the below option

Upload data file: Upload the data file using this option.



CSV File Settings

Fields terminated by:

You need to define a delimiter for terminating the field.

Fields enclosed by:

You need to define the delimiter for enclosing the field – i.e. the data between this enclosed symbol will be imported as a field.

Lines Terminated by:

If you are using the windows notepad to create the delimited file you should choose windows cr lf option – if you are using the linux or unix system to create the CSV file then you should choose the linux / unix option – and for macintosh you should choose macintosh cr option.

Duplicate Checking

Using this option you can avoid importing duplicate members to your mailing lists.

Import options

You can set these options if you want to depending on your choice. • Validate email address format • Do not import black listed members • Do not import banned members • Disable auto responders for imported members • Mark members as opt-in confirmed • Send opt-in/out confirmation email (valid if the above option is set to 'pending for opt-

in/out confirmation')

Below is the example of how a delimited file looks like: um#43

um#43 – delimited file

We have created this demo file using the Programmers File Editor. What you need to understand is you need to tell your oemPro that what the data you are trying to import is. So what you need to do is define the first line of the import file the fields you want to import. If you see the above example you will see we defined email as our field and then below that we have our email address between the enclosures.



Importing your data from MySQL table: Now lets see how to import the members data from the MySQL table. Click on the MySQL table Link under the Import Members menu. You will see the following screen. um#44

um#44 – Importing the members from MySQL Table

Here in this type of import option you need to define the MySQL Host, MySQL username and password, the database name and the table name where the email addresses are stored. oemPro will automatically connect to the database using the information provided by you and add all the email addresses in the MySQL table to your oemPro database. This option is very useful when you have to migrate the members of the other database to the oemPro database.



Importing your Mail Box: oemPro also provides a very convenient way to import the members from your mailbox. The mails you receive on your pop3 server can directly be imported as a member to oemPro database. Please click on the Mail Box link under the Import Members menu. You will see the following screen. um#45

um#45 – Import from Mail Box

In order to start importing the members from your Mail Box you need to define the Mail box host – POP3 Server address, Mail box username and password – and define the import options you wish to have. After you provide all the information just click on the Proceed and oemPro will connect to your mail box and import all the email addresses from your Mail Box data. Send opt-in confirmation emails of the selected mail lists All these three import methods have an option of sending an opt-in confirmation email to the end imported end users. This is necessary in order to make sure that you are not carrying out spam activity and the users are subscribed to the mailing lists with their own choice.



Exporting your data to multiple formats – comma delimited, EXCEL, CSV or XML In the last section we have seen how to import your members with three different methods. Now let us see how to export your data from the oemPro database to different file formats – such as comma delimited, excel, csv and XML. In order to export the data please click on Members > Export Members. You will see the screen similar to the following one. um#46

um#46 – Export members data

In the screen above we can see that there are two methods or options we have to export our data – either in the comma-delimited file or in the XML file.



Exporting members to comma-delimited file Click on the comma-delimited link on the export screen and you will see the following screen. um#47

um#47 – exporting members to comma-delimited file This export option provides you couple of parameters.

Mailing List to Export

Select one or more mailing lists to be exported into the comma-delimited file. In order to select more mailing lists – hold down CTRL and go on selecting the lists.

Target Location

Enter the path of your unix or windows server, write permission should be enabled on this folder. This is required only if you plan to save the exported file on the web server.

CSV File settings

Fields terminated by:

This will determine the termination of the field and oemPro will be able to sort two different fields and add them to their respective tables.

Fields enclosed by:

This will work as a enclosure of every field. The value you feed in here will be added at the beginning of the field and at the end.

Lines terminated by:

Every operating system has its own proprietary method of terminating or inserting a new line character. Here you can define it for windows, unix, and macintosh.

Notification

Enter the email address so that the oemPro will inform you about the completion of the export process. If you leave it blank it will be disabled.

Options

If you tick this – the data exported will have the respective headers, this will help you identify the field very easily if you have custom fields associated with your oemPro members database.



Working with Campaigns [Effective Campaign Management] After looking at all the other parameters like setting up opt-in opt-out emails, importing members, exporting members etc – lets now move on to campaigns. This is important most section in order to effectively create and manage the campaigns. oemPro provides a very easy and smooth process to create the campaigns. oemPro also allows you to customize your campaign depending on your choice like creating a CMS based campaign, adding the extra tags to track the read ratios, link click ratios, to schedule these campaigns for some date etc. This section is kept as simplified as possible.

Creating your campaigns in couple of easy steps By now you are all aware that oemPro is the most easy to use and advanced campaign management system. It also provides you a very simple way to create your campaigns in couple of steps. Let’s see how. In order to create your campaign click on the Campaigns > New Campaign. You will be displayed the screen shown in figure um#48.

um#48 – Create a new campaign

oemPro provides an easy to use campaign creation wizard consisting major 6 steps. In the above screen you need to key in the campaign name. The name is for identifying the campaign. Once you enter the name you need to click on the create campaign button. This action will take you to the next step of selecting the recipients [i.e. you need to define the list]



Once you click on the create campaign you should see the following screen – giving you the option to select the single or multiple mailing lists. um#49

um#49 – Select the single of multiple lists

Now you need to select which list you want your campaign to be sent to. You have the option to select a single list or even multiple lists. Once you select your list you can click on the “Proceed” button. Once you click on the button “Proceed” you should see the following screen allowing you to choose the sending rules. um#50

um#50 – Setup sending rules



There are several options to choose and filter the subscribers using the sending rules for targeted campaigns. Here we will just proceed to the next step. Don’t worry we are going to cover the sending rules topic under the targeted marketing topic. For this example lets click on the “Proceed” button and go to the next field called campaign info. Once you click on the “Proceed” button you will see the following screen. um#51

um#51 – Campaign Info

This step will provide you with many options like assigning the client for this campaign, scheduling options, campaign information such as whether it has to be the CMS based campaign or quick campaign, whether to send the sending reports to the admin and client or not and finally to set the email address for the from field, reply – to and return path. Assign the clients In the first option you can select the client you want to assign for your campaign. The selected client will be able to login to the password protected area and track the statistics about the campaign they are assigned to. You can also select more clients by holding down the CTRL key and selecting the multiple clients. Set Campaign Schedule options This option will allow you the schedule the campaign. This means you can send your campaign in future for single time or you can send it in the future for multiple times. This option allows you to not only set the specific time but also the date. It also allows you to choose whether this campaign will be sent in future multiple times – like everyday or every Monday or every month and how many times you can send it.



Campaign Information This options lets you select the type of the campaign you plan to have. There are two options available to us (1) Quick Campaign (2) CMS Based campaign.

(1) Quick Campaign: This kind of campaign is created on the fly with the help of built-in WYSIWYG editor. You can type in your content or paste the HTML content inside this editor and create your rich text formatted campaign.

(2) CMS Based Campaign: These types of campaigns are those in which you select a ready made template saved in the oemPro database to create your dynamic campaign. You just need to feed in the necessary data and that’s it.

Status reporting You can choose to send the reports for the campaign you create to the admins email id as well to the clients email id. This way you can inform the client about the sending activity taking place for the campaign. Send email from You can define an email id for sending this email which will be displayed to the recipient when he / she receives your email. Reply to You can set the reply to email address for your campaigns – when the recipient replies this address he will use to send his reply. Return path (for bounces) You can also define the return path of the email – when the email bounces back the mail server uses the return path. This return path email address can easily be used for bounce processing. Once you define all the above options you need to click on the “Proceed” button. You should see the following screen. um#52

um#52 – select the SEND ENGINES

Now you need to select the Send Engine, either an MTA or the Send Mail binary installed on your server. The benefit of selecting the MTA – [SMTP Mail Server] is that your emails are going to the sender with an authenticated ID and not from the default server id in the cases of sendmail binary. Sendmail binary is normally set to use the default server wide user “nobody” – when the



email is sent to the recipients mail server if it goes through the nobody id sometimes it is treated as a spam. In order to avoid the spam we strongly recommend you to use the MTA Send engine. Once you choose your option please click on the “Proceed” button. Once you click on the “Proceed” button you should see the following screen. um#53

um#53 – Create the campaign Content

This screen will allow you to choose the newsletter content. You can switch to the Quick Campaign Mode anytime even if you have selected the CMS based campaign. You can enable the email features like – personalization, tracking the link clicks, tracking the read ratios and you can also embed the images to the email. If you have selected the CMS based campaign then you will have to select a CMS based template from the newsletter template drop down bar – otherwise you will need to select the type of content. Content Type: Select your content type. You have three options (1) Text email (2) HTML email (3) HTML+TEXT mail Depending on your selection whether you would like to have your campaigns in text or html mode the oemPro will give you the respective editor. [i.e. either text editor or the rich text advanced editor] Character set: You can set the character set you wish to set. Priority: This is the option which can set the email sending priority. You have three options – High, Normal and Low priority.



After you are done with populating these options you need to click on the “Continue” button. This will generate either the rich text html editor or just a text box depending on the option you selected for your campaign. Once you click on the “Continue” button oemPro will generate the editing box shown in the below figure if you have selected HTML email option. um#54

um#54 – add your newsletter content and design

oemPro provides you the option to attach the files to your campaign as shown in the above screen. This is a full fledge HTML editor with the facilities to paste from the word documents, linking the images, creating the url links, forms, changing the text to bold, italics, underline, changing the alignment, bullets and numbering, changing the fonts, font size, text color, background colors, find and replace etc. Almost all the available features in a professional HTML editor is available at your disposal with oemPro. You can also paste the source code if you wish to by ticking the source – pasting it and once again unticking it.



That’s the final step – once you are done creating your campaign just click on the “Proceed” button. Once you do that you should see the following screen. um#55

um#55 – brief campaign information

The last step will give you the brief campaign information with the options you defined. It also provides you the ability to Preview the Campaign by sending it to a particular email or in the Browser. It also provides a way to check the estimated recipients. Once you are happy with the way your campaign is sent or looks you can click on the “Save Campaign” button. Once you save the campaign oemPro will start delivering your email campaign to your mail gateway at the defined time of period. Once you click on the “Save Campaign” button you will see the following screen. um#56

um#56 – Congratulations Screen

This screen will also give you a quick link to the reports of your campaign. You may click on the link and check out the campaign statistics.





How to create and save the draft of the Campaign In order to create the campaign and save it as a draft – follow the steps in the previous section up to the “Proceed to step 3” – you should see the Schedule option on the screen. Just select the “Do not schedule” option and follow all the other steps as is shown and explained in the last previous section of creating your campaigns. Once you reach over to the last step – oemPro backend will detect that you select “Do not schedule” option and will save your campaign as a draft of the campaign.

Send your campaigns to multiple mailing lists This feature allows you to send campaigns to multiple mailing lists. Some email managers they only allow sending your campaign to a single list – so for multiple lists you need to repeat the action again and again. oemPro makes it easy to select multiple lists when you go through the campaign creation wizard. The first option of the campaign wizard is to enter the name of the campaign, after you enter the name of the campaign oemPro will give you the option to select a single list or the multiple lists. In order to select the multiple lists just hold down the CTRL key and select all the lists you wish the campaign should be sent to. That’s about it – you are ready to send your campaign to multiple mailing lists. Follow the other steps as mentioned and explained in the section for creating campaigns.

Effective use of targeted email campaigns using the sending rules This section explains the most advanced feature of oemPro – “TARGETED EMAIL CAMPAIGNS” What do we mean by Targeted Campaigns? The simple explanation about the term Targeted Campaign is to send your newsletter or email only to a particular audience having specific interests or parameters. oemPro provides the custom fields generation, using this option if you want to track some extra users data like how much monthly income a person has, what car he owns, whether he owns a website or not etc. etc. Now say for example if you want to make a campaign and which only targets the people with a certain level of income. If you are not provided with the facility to sort the data and to send the campaign only to that sorted data then it would be a big hassle for an administrator to find out whether the members has a certain level of income or not. If you have say around 10,000 subscribers – searching for each and every member and then making another list for them and then targeting your campaign to them. Ahhhhh.. this seems a lot more complicated.

oemPro will simplify this for you, using its advanced filtering and send rules technology. Please follow the steps as per the Create New Campaign up to the Send Rules step. You should see the screen as shown in the below figure. um#57

um#57 – Send Rules

Now let’s click on the first drop down menu we have and see what options we have at our disposal. um#58

um#58 – Send rules – options

Now say for example we need to create a campaign for those who subscribed on a particular date. If you look at the above screen shot you will see that we have following options with us.

• Email Address • Bounce type • Password • Opt-in confirmation status



• Opt-out confirmation status • Subscription date • Unsubscription date • Opt-in confirmation date • Opt-out confirmation date • Subscription IP address • Unsubscription IP address

Now for this example we will select the subscription date, as shown in the below screen we will now move on to selecting the option from the second drop down menu. um#59

um#59 – send rule – options

Here we are provided six major parameters for our first field.

• Equals to [whether our first field i.e. subscription date equals to] • Greater than [ whether its greater than the subscription date ] • Smaller than [ whether its smaller than the subscription date ] • Not equals to [ whether it does not equal to the subscription date ] • Includes [ whether the subscription date includes ] • Not includes [ whether the subscription date does not include ]

Let’s select the option equals to for this example. After selecting the option in the next field you can enter the date – for example 13th Mar 2005 and then just click on the Add Send Rule. When you do that the screen will be refreshed and you will be provided with the option to create another rule. um#60

um#60 – create another send rule.

This is how you can create multiple send rules to make sure that the email is going to only those who match all the conditions of the send rules.



Sending rules using custom fields What you need to do over here is to select the custom filed which will be listed in the first drop down menu and set the proper options. This custom field will be then added to the send rules and using which you can carry out a targeted marketing for your campaigns. Other steps can be followed just like the previous topic of how to create sending rules.

Working with advanced scheduling system – sending campaigns on specific dates, time and for multiple times. oemPro provides you a great deal of scheduling features which can not only schedule you campaign for a particular date and time but also allows you to send the scheduled campaign for multiple times. Lets take a look at how it works. When you follow the first three steps of creating a campaign wizard you will be provided with the following screen. um#61

um#61 – Campaign Information [ schedule options]

We can see in the above screen shot that we have the schedule options available at our disposal.





This process will give you the number of options like • Do not schedule • Send immediately • Send in the future at a specific time • Send in the future multiple times

Depending on your selection the menu just below the above selections available will be activated to set the time and date. When you select “send in the future at a specific time” – you will be given the option to set the time and the date only. When you select the 4th option “send in the future multiple times” you will be provided with the option to set the frequency of your email – i.e. whether to send it every day or 1st day, 2nd day and so on. You also have the option to select the days – like every Monday every Tuesday. You can also schedule to be sent every month instead of defining the days. The last option can be used to specify how many times a campaign should be sent. This way you need to worry about sending your campaigns multiple times and need not waste time to create the same campaign again and again whenever required.

Creating your campaigns using an advanced template based system [CMS based] WHAT IS CMS? Let’s first understand what does CMS means. CMS (Content Management System) is the most popular needs in today's websites. Usually, this technology is being used in web page content management, however, oemPro includes this powerful technology to create and manage your newsletters. In this way, you can perform more efficient email campaigns in shorter time. CMS BASED NEWSLETTERS oemPro‘s unique feature, “CMS based newsletters”, offers you great flexibility to create and manage your newsletters. Once you created your CMS based newsletter template, you will only enter the contents of the defined sections in the template. In this way, you can protect the format and look-n-feel of your newsletter designs. Also, if you are providing marketing service to your clients, your clients will only submit the contents and oemPro will insert those contents to the correct places in the template. In this way, you will need to define the template only for the first time, and your newsletter design will not be changed while sending your email campaigns.

BENEFITS OF CMS BASED NEWSLETTERS oemPro is proud to offer this unique feature to you. Below, some benefits of this feature are listed. You will discover more benefits when you get start to use this feature: • Save time on creating email campaigns • Define templates and your users will not be able to change them • Save your newsletter format • Insert dynamic contents to your templates • Define multiple content blocks in your templates • And much more… Creating a CMS based newsletter template is as easy as creating a traditional newsletter template. Octeth provides couple of free template layouts which you can seamlessly integrate into your CMS based templates – just click on the below url and you will be able to download the templates in the zip format. http://www.octeth.com/resources/templates/ These templates are just the designs and do not have the tags necessary for the dynamic content editing. In order to create a new CMS based template click on “Campaigns > Newsletter Templates”. You should see the following screen. um#62

um#62 – Newsletter templates

Now you need to click on the “Create template” link. For this example we will use one of the free templates provided by octeth. While creating a template you need to understand that the images you will be using are linked properly to the proper URLs, otherwise they may not show up.



http://www.octeth.com/resources/templates/

Once you click on the “Create template” link you should see the following screen. um#63

um#63 – Newsletter template types

Here you will be given two options for creating templates

(1) Traditional template (2) CMS based templates

We are trying to learn how to create the CMS based template – so lets go ahead and click on the “CMS based template” link. You should see the following screen after you click on the “CMS based template” link. um#64

um#64 – Create CMS Based newsletter template

On this screen you will be provided with couple of options which will be useful in identifying the template.






Template Name: Define the template name for identification.

Template Description:

You can also have a template description for making the identification a little more comprehensive.

Lines terminated by:

Every operating system has its own proprietary method of terminating or inserting a new line character. Here you can define it for windows, unix, and macintosh.

Owner Administrators

Select the administrator who will own this template.

Preferences

Character set: Define the character set for your CMS based template

Priority: Define the priority for the email which will be sent using this template.

Content Type: Define the content type of the CMS based template. You can have three options – TEXT, HTML and Both types [TEXT and HTML]

Image Settings

Embed Images to the email You may select this option to embed the images and the styles in the email which is being sent using this template. It is advised that you do not embed your images and styles since some of the email filters and scanners can treat these images as a virus threat and can reject your email. Do not download images and styles, link to them remotely This option will keep the images and the styles of the CMS based templates on their respective locations or URLs. The images or style sheets used in the campaign will not be embedded to the email created through this template.

Now lets click on the proceed button. Once you click – you should see the following screen. um#65

um#65 – final step to create the cms based template

Now for this example we will use the template number 1 from the Octeth’s free template library. Just download the template – extract it to a folder. The folder will have three folders HTML, PSD and Thumbnails. HTML folder will contain the html file and the images for the template design. PSD folder will have the photo shop file which you can edit and change the design. The Thumbnails folder will have the thumbnail of the template. Let’s go to the HTML folder and open up the html file having the formatted layout for your template. When you open the html file in the browser window – go to View > Source. This will display the source of the html file in the text file. Click on the Edit tab and click on the Select all link, this will select your html code for the template. Now you need to click on the Edit > Copy and copy the source code to the clip board. Go to our oemPro and click on the Source label displayed on the rich text html editor. Screen – um#65. This will change the editor’s mode to the source editing mode, by selecting the source code press CTRL+V and paste your copied source code from the html template provided to you.



Then once again click on the source label to switch over to the html editing. You should see the following screen – um#66

um#66 – after pasting the content.

Now wherever you want to insert the content you need to add the custom tags which will allow you to only edit the content in that particular table. Now you need to insert the following tags to the places where you want to insert contents: %INSERT:CMS:[Content Name]:[PLAIN OR HTML]% For example, you have a newsletter which has three columns for your contents. The following tags are inserted: %INSERT:CMS:Content of left column:HTML% %INSERT.CMS.Content of middle column:PLAIN% %INSERT:CMS:Content of right column:HTML%



For this example we will add the following tag to our CMS based news letter as shown in the below screen. um#67 %INSERT.CMS.Content of middle column:HTML%

um#67 – after adding the tag

Once you are done adding the necessary tags you should click on the “Add Template” button. This will add your CMS based templates with the design you have allowing you to edit the content where the tag is inserted. Lets see how it allows us to do so. Follow all the steps up to the “Campaign Info” section creating the new campaign. Under the campaign info section select your campaign type as “CMS based”. Then proceed to the next step. Select the send engine and proceed further. Then you will be provided with the following menu – figure um#68.

um#68 – Newsletter content



Here you will be provided a drop down menu list for selecting your newsletter template as shown in the below figure. um#69.

um#69 – select the necessary cms based template

Now you need to select the necessary CMS based template from the drop down menu and click on the “Continue” button. Once you click on the Continue button oemPro system will automatically detect the tags from the selected template and would create those many editing boxes for you to fill in the content. You can see that in the below figure – um#70

um#70 – adding content to the CMS based news letter.

Just add the necessary subject and content in this HTML editor and click on the “Proceed to Step 6” button. This should provide you brief information for the campaign you created before saving it for the sending purposes. The same screen will also include the Preview information and the links for previewing the newsletter we created.



There are two options for the previewing newsletter

(1) Preview by email (2) Preview on browser

For this example we will use preview on browser. When you click on the preview on browser link you should see your first CMS based newsletter with the content added at the right place in the newsletter template. um#71

um#71 – preview of your CMS based campaign

That’s how the CMS based newsletter templates reduce your time for arranging the layout again and again as well gives you the ability to add your content quickly – easily and with a more sophistication.



Creating your campaigns on the Fly with the in-built HTML editor Now that we have seen how to create our CMS based newsletter templates and using those templates how to create a campaign - let us see how to create on the fly campaigns. Follow the first steps as explained in the create a new campaign up to “campaign info”. You should see the below screen. um#72

um#72 – create a quick campaign – on the fly campaign

Once you select this option – populate all the other options and click on the “Proceed to step4” button. On the next screen select your MTA or sending engine and then Proceed further. You should see the following screen. um#73.

um#73 – selecting the content type

Here you need to select the content type – whether it’s a text email, html email or both the type of email. Once you set all the options click on the continue button. This continue button will generate on the fly HTML Editor which can be used to edit your content and create an on the fly newsletter.



Once you say continue you should see the below screen for editing your newsletter content. um#74

um#74 – content editing menu

Here you should add the subject of your email and add all your content required for a newsletter. Once you are done adding the content proceed to next steps as explained in the Create a new Campaign section. Once you do that you will be shown brief information on your campaign and also given the option to preview the same. Once you are sure about it you can click on “Save Campaign” button.



Sending campaign reports oemPro not only provides you an easy and sophisticated ways to create campaigns but also can allow you to send the campaign reports to the clients. This way the client is informed about his campaign’s success. In order to assign client accounts to send the reports you need to follow the first few steps of Creating a Campaign. When you are on the 3rd Step of your campaign oemPro provides you an option to assign a client account so that the client can receive the campaign reports. The following screen will be shown on the 3rd Step of campaign creation. um#75

um#75 – assigning a campaign owner client

In the above screen you will be given an option to select the client. This selected client will receive the necessary campaign reports and also he can logon to his account and check the statistics related to the campaigns he is assigned to. Once you select the client you can proceed to the next steps and complete the creating of the campaign. Once oemPro sends out the campaign your client will be updated through email on the campaign reports.



Defining different email address for each field and campaign [reply-to, from, and return-path] With oemPro you can define different email addresses for reply-to, from and return-path. Setting up these addresses not only helps you manage the bounced emails easily but also make sure that if the client replies back you can receive the email on a certain id. In order to set the different email addresses please follow the steps for creating a campaign up to the third step [i.e. campaign info]. You should see the below screen. um#76.

um#76 – Campaign Information for defining different addresses

Here you can select the Send email from address from the drop down menu bar next to the “Send email from” field. Next to the drop down menu there is a link called “Apply all” you can click on this link in order to apply the same email address for your reply-to and return-path addresses. You can also select a separate email address for Reply-to and Return-path if you wish to. Once you select these addresses proceed to the next steps and complete your campaign with other information. When the oemPro sends an email – at the subscribers end it will show up that they have received an email from the address oemPro admin defined for send email from field. When the subscriber replies back to the email he will reply back to the email address defined in the Reply-to field. When the email is bounced back the other mail server will return this email to the email address defined in the Return-path. This is how you can effectively set these addresses and carry out your campaigns in a most sophisticated manner.



Using multiple send engines – like Sendmail, Qmail, Exim, MTA oemPro has a flexible environment in order to setup the email sending engine. It is not necessary that you require the SMTP server access. If you are on a Linux/Unix web server you can use the sendmail binaries for all the major mail transport agents. In order to choose your mail transfer agent – you need to go to the Step 4 of the Creating a New Campaign. You will be provided the selection menu to select either the MTA send engine or the sendmail binary on your server – as shown in the below figure. um#77

um#77 – selecting mail transfer agent

It is advisable that you use the MTA [SMTP] system to send out your emails in order to get away from getting your campaign listed as a spam. What happens when you use the sendmail installed on your server is – the sendmail will try to send an email through the default server user id and the chances of getting it listed as a spam are higher than the SMTP authenticated server sending.



How to add link tracking and click tracking elements to your newsletters When you send your campaigns through oemPro – oemPro not only allows you to send your campaigns effectively and efficiently but also allows you the track the link clicks and the read ratios of your campaign. If these options are enabled oemPro will track the link click and read ratio data and store them for the administrator / client for as a statistical report. This allows the client to get the idea about the campaign’s success. Just follow the steps of creating a new campaign up to the 5th step where you need to add the content to your newsletter. On the 5th step you should see the following screen. um#78

um#78 – Track link clicks and track reads

As shown in the above figure you can see there are two options called “Track link Clicks” and “Track reads” – when you enable these two options oemPro will automatically add the necessary tags into your campaign in order to track the data. Whenever subscriber clicks on a particular link – oemPro will record the click and save it to the database for the future statistical analysis, similarly it can also track how many times a person has read the email sent by the oemPro system. These are very useful and important features to track the important statistics. Once you are done selecting these options proceed to complete all the steps.



Personalize your newsletter with outsourced list fields How to personalize the outsourced fields in order to identify them? Well oemPro provides and easy to use process which could allow you to alias or personalize the fields you capture using the outsourced mail lists. Lets check how to create an outsourced email list first and then set the alias names for each field we have. In order to do that you need to click on “Mail Lists > Browse Lists”. You should see the existing list of mailing lists available to you. Now click on the “Create new mail list” link. You should see the following screen. um#79

um#79 – Create new mail list [outsourced list]

Here you need to define the name of the list – description and then you have to select the source type. For this example we will select outsourced email list. Other options can be set depending on your preferences. Figure um#80 shows that we have selected outsourced type of mailing list.

um#80 – outsourced mailing list creation



Now that you have selected the outsourced list option – click on the add mail list button. Once you click on the add mail list button the list will be created. Now that the list is created you can choose to edit from the link given on the screen as shown in the below figure. um#81

um#81 – for detailed list settings click on the click here link

After you create the mailing list you should see the above screen where in you can click on the link provided to you for detailed list settings. Once we click on the link – we should see the below screen for selecting the MySQL database and the table for creating outsourced list. um#82

um#82 – detailed editing of the outsourced list



You have to enter the details of the MySQL database. MySQL Host, the username for accessing MySQL database, the password for the username and the MySQL database name. Once you enter these details you need to click on the “List databases” button. This will list the available database to you as shown in the below figure. um#83

um#83 – outsourced database

In the above screen shot we can see that when we click on the “List databases” button it gives us the list of databases available to us. Select the database you wish to use for outsourced list and then once again click on the “List databases” – this action would get you the tables inside the database as shown in the below figure. um#84

um#84 – tables listed for the database

Now in the above screen we can see that the table names are listed – what you need to do is select the table name – in this example we will select the table mos_users. Once you select the table. You need to define which field is the email field – this is important when oemPro imports the database. When you select the necessary table you will be prompted by a dialogue box. You just need to click on the ok button and oemPro will fetch the field details available under the particular table name. Once the details are fetched and listed – you will have to select which field is the email field. The selection can be done just below the table name parameter.



Once you select the email field you can scroll down and check what all fields you wish to import and can define the custom names for the fields you want to import. The fields will be displayed to you in a tabular format – this will also allow you to define the alias name of that particular field for your oemPro system. The below screen shows exactly the way outsourced fields are displayed. um#85

um#85 – field aliases for the outsourced database

The above screen gives you the ability to add an alias name to the fields of your MySQL database. This is mainly to identify a field with oemPro labels so that when making a targeted marketing you can these tags very easily. Once you are done adding the alias names for the fields of outsourced database click on the Update button. Now when you browse through the members you will see the aliases placed as the header of each personalized field.





Sending your newsletter in multiple formats – HTML or TEXT By now you must be aware of how to send your newsletters in multiple formats. In this section we will once again see how to send emails in multiple formats – html and text. When you create a new campaign – on the 5th Step oemPro will give you the option to choose the type of the content you want to send it to your mailing list. You can select simple TEXT only format, HTML [rich text] Format and finally a combination of format i.e. TEXT and HTML both. In case if you choose TEXT+HTML format then the subscribers who are subscribed to TEXT format will receive an email in the normal simple text and those who are subscribed to HTML format will receive an email in rich text HTML format. oemPro will generate the editing boxes for html and text email depending on what you choose. You will be able to edit your TEXT and HTML content through these editing boxes and will be able to send your newsletter in multiple formats.

How to link your content file instead of creating your newsletter on the Fly? So far we have seen how to create campaigns through the built in Editor integrated into oemPro. oemPro also provides the ability to link a content file instead of creating a newsletter on the fly using the editor. In case if you want send a content as a newsletter and which is already created on your server under your website. You can simply link this URL using oemPro and all the content will be sent to subscribers as a newsletter. What you need to do is – in the create campaign menu follow all the steps up to 5th step. On the 5th step select your content type and then click on continue button. You should see the following screen. um#86

um#86 – email content url

In the above screen shot you will be able to see that after the Email subject line you have the option to add eMail content URL. This URL will allow oemPro to fetch the content from that location and integrate it as a newsletter. That’s it – now you can directly link your content of the newsletter through a URL.



Preview your newsletter before you send it over to the mailing lists by sending it to your email address It’s always better to preview your newsletter or email you are planning to send it across to your subscribers. This is mainly because when you preview the newsletter you are sure that what all content is going through this and how it looks. In case if there is something which you would like to change you can change it before actually saving it and start sending the newsletter. Once you are done with the content of your newsletter you will proceed to the next step – of preview and save. You should see the following screen. um#87.

um#87 – Preview your campaign

You have two basic options for previewing your campaign.

(1) Preview by email (2) Preview on browser

Preview by email option will allow you to preview your campaign through email. This will send an email with the campaign content to the email defined by you. Preview on browser will open up a pop up window inside which it will show you how the campaign would look like. Estimated recipients will give you the details on how many users the email will be sent to. This may vary when the campaign is actually sent.



Track your campaigns in real time – track the read ratios, click throughs, sending performance, failed recipients etc. After you are done creating your campaign the most important part is to check – how successful your campaign was or is. oemPro provides a very sophisticated system which tracks the read ratios, click throughs of the links inside your newsletter, sending performance and how many recipients failed to receive the email. In order to check all these things – you need to click on the “Campaigns > Browse Campaigns”. um#88

um#88 – Browse campaigns

In the above screen shot you are able to see the listed campaigns – and next to each campaign there are links for the options – that is Edit – Preview – Track. You need to click on the Track link in order to track the different statistics. You should see the following screen once you click on the Track link under the options. um#89

um#89 – send log and statistical reports

Here you can check the read ratio’s by clicking on the “Reads” link. You can check out the Link click statistics by clicking on the “Links” link. Along with these statistical reports you can also check the forwards, ratings and errors associated to a particular campaign.



Working with Personalization Now that we have seen how to create our campaigns with different methods and options – let us check out how to spice up the newsletters with personalized fields and messages.

Personalize your campaigns, auto responders, system generated emails etc In order to personalize our campaigns, auto responders, and other system generated emails we will need to use the dynamic tags. oemPro provides a very advanced and dynamic tag system which can help you personalize your newsletters and other emails in the matter of no time. We will show you how to add these tags and personalize your emails so as to make sure that the end user receiving these mails feels that it was addressed to him and not to a bunch of people at one go. For example if you have to send an email to 100 subscribers with their own names or surnames appearing in the newsletter. [e.g. Dear Mr. Lynch]. Now if you are sending this email through outlook express or any other email client you will need to generate each email separately to add the personalized message. oemPro provides you the facility to reduce your work by adding only a tag which will be processed by oemPro backend and appropriate value is added from the database. To do that follow the steps of creating a campaign up to the Step 5. When you see the editor for the content click on the link which is next to the label “Email Content” as shown in the below screen shot. um#90

um#90 – personalization link



You can see the link for “[?]” – Please click on this link and you will see a pop up window as shown in the below screen shot – um#91

um#91 – personalization wizard

You will be able to see the personalization wizard which will allow you to choose different information sets and its tags to be added to your newsletter for personalization. You have following options for adding the personalized tags into your campaign.

• Insert recipient info: You can insert the recipient information such as - member id number, email address, bounce type, password and custom fields.

• Insert recipient membership info: You can add the recipient membership information such as - mail list membership ID number, opt-in confirmation status, opt-out confirmation status, subscription status, subscription date, unsubscription date, opt-in confirmation date, opt-out confirmation date, subscription IP address, unsubscription IP address

• Insert mail list info: You can add the mailing list information such as – mail list ID number and name of the mailing list.

• Insert campaign info: You can add the campaign information such as – name of the campaign.

• Insert links: You can insert the links into your newsletter such as - current date, current date with custom formatting, remote content from another location, recipient mail list IDs of this campaign, browser version of this email, member account area, unsubscription link, unsubscription link for custom mail lists, rating the email, forwarding email to friends, opt in/out confirmation link

When you click on the drop down menu bar and select one of these five options you should see the respective tags menu right below and a link “Generate” – which will help you to generate these tags and give you the detailed explanation how the tag would work. That’s about it – so from now on you need to write Dear Sir or Dear Madam but you can integrate the personalization using which every mail will become personalized for the subscriber.



Effective usage of personalization by adding the tags to display certain information in the emails sent through oemPro system Now that we have seen how to use the personalization – let us check how to add some information – like the date and time of the email sent to the subscriber. In order to do that we will have to select the option - Insert Links and under that current date. Then click on the link Generate in order to generate the tag. Once you do that you should see the information for the tag in the following format. um#92

um#92 – date personalization tag

The highlighted part is the tag for inserting into your newsletter. So when you need to insert the current date into your newsletter with the format defined in the image you just need to add %Date% tag into your campaign. This tag will insert the current server date into your campaign. Please be advised that these tags are case sensitive and you must add them as generated and shown in the above figure.

Un-subscription links In this section we will see how to add un-subscription link using the personalization wizard. In order to add these links you need to go to Insert Link > unsubscription link. Then click on the Generate link in order to generate the tag for unsubscription link. You should see the following screen um#93.

um#93 – unsubscription link

Please remember that it is advisable to add unsubscription link to every campaign or newsletter you send out to your subscribers. This way you assure your users that they can anytime unsubscribe from the mailing list if they wish to. This also protects your newsletter being treated as a spam.



Working with Autoresponders oemPro provides a very easy and advanced process to setup your autoresponders and follow up emails. In this section we will see how to set the autoresponders with different options and assign them to the mailing lists. Autoresponders can be set to send out password reminders, automated follow ups etc.

Creating unlimited autoresponders and assigning them to multiple mailing lists In order to create the autoresponders you need to click on the Campaigns > Auto Responders. You should see the following screen. um#94

um#94 – setting up autoresponders

Here you can create unlimited number of autoresponders and follow up emails. Before you actually create the auto responder you need to define a following group – that means you need to click on the Create follow up link. You should see the following screen. um#95

um#95 – New Follow up Group

Here you need to select the Mail List to assign and the name of the follow up group and then click on the Add follow up button. Once the follow up group is added – go to Campaigns > Autoresponders again. Now you will see the follow up group listed on your screen and you will see the Autoresponder link under the options column. Click on the autoresponder link. You should see the following screen. um#96



um#96 – Browse Auto responders for your follow up group.

This screen will list all the available autoresponder for the defined follow up group. We have to click on the create auto responder link. When we click on the Create auto responder link we will see the following screen. um#97

um#97 – Create a new auto responder

Here you can add all the details about your autoresponder – let us see what all fields we need to populate the information. Before we check that out you can also use the existing auto responder for the follow up group if you have any. Now lets discuss about the other fields. Descriptive Note: Here you can write the description of your autoresponder. Content Type: Select the content – whether TEXT, HTML or both. Character Set: Select the character set for your autoresponder. Priority:



Select the priority of the autoresponder – you have three options high, normal and low. Sender Name: Select the Sender Name – you can add Auto Reply as the sender name as well. You can have anything for that matter. Sender email address: The email address which will be show in the from field at the recipients end. Reply-to Name: Add the reply-to name if it is other than the senders name. Reply-to email Address: Add reply to email address if it is other than the senders email address. Return-path email address: Add return-path email address – which could help you track the bounced emails. Once you add the information to all these fields – click on the Proceed button. oemPro will process your request and give you the ability to add your content to the autoresponder using the advanced HTML editor. The HTML editor and the TEXT editor again depends on the preferences you set while creating a new autoresponder. You should see the following screen. um#98

um#98 – Add the content through the editor for your autoresponder

Once you add the necessary content just click on the “Add autoresponder” button just below the HTML editor and your autoresponder will be added to the oemPro’s follow up database. You should see the below screen – um#99



um#99 – a new autoresponder record created

Now you can go back to Campaigns > Auto responders – and then you will see your follow up groups. Click on the autoresponder link and you will be able to see the assigned autoresponders for that particular follow up group. In order to have your autoresponders work for a particular mailing list you must have the CRON automated tasks enabled for the same. You can do that from Settings > Cron Modules.



Working with Campaign Clients In the last section we have seen how to work with autoresponders and add them to different mailing lists as a follow up email. In this section let us check out how to work with campaign clients. Campaign clients are those username / password pairs which will have access to the statistical data of a particular campaign. For example you are planning to do a campaign management for one of your client – you will send a newsletter to the subscribers list and then you want to allow your client to check the statistical reports – what to do then? Well oemPro has the solution for you – you can create the client account and assign a mailing list for that client id and ask your client to see on his own the statistical reports of the campaign.

Creating client accounts and assigning them the mailing lists to track the campaigns Adding a client to your oemPro database is very simple. In order to create a client account go to Campaigns > Clients – and you will be able to see the existing clients list if you have them added to your oemPro database. You should see the following screen – um#100

um#100 – Browse Clients

Now you have to click on the “Create Client” link. Once you do that you will be given couple of options – like setting up the mailing list, the name of the client, username and the password. You will be able to see the following screen. um#101

Um#101 – Create a new client account





Now lets see what all options do we need to populate. Mail List to Assign: Select a single mail list or multiple mail lists from the menu. In order to select the multiple mail lists you need to hold down the CTRL key and go on selecting the lists. Name: Enter the Name of the client. Email: eMail address of the client. Username: Username you wish to assign it to a client. Password: Password for the username assigned. Send login information to client by email: You can tick this option to send the client information to your client directly on the email specified above. Once you fill up all the necessary information you can click on “Add Client” button and add this client to your database. You can assign these clients accounts to the multiple lists if a single client owns multiple mailing lists. The client account will be able to log in to his control panel and check out the existing processed campaigns – its statistical data and he can also check the campaigns which are being processed. The client account can track these campaigns live from within their client area.

Working with Statistical data

After going through all the other features of oemPro such as settings, creating new campaigns, lists, members – now let us talk about the Statistical data.

This is the most important feature required to track the success rate of your campaign and the overall oemPro system activities. oemPro provides a comprehensive set of statistical reports and data related to your campaigns, members subscriptions, un-subscriptions, bounced emails etc. oemPro provides following types of statistical reports:

• Bounce Statistics: [click on Statistics > Bounce Statistics] oemPro detects the bounced back emails and can process them in different categories like soft bounce, hard bounce etc. which could help the admins to take the necessary action to either remove these email addresses from the database or to see if it was due to some error or not.

• Member Activities: [click on Statistics > Member Activities] This kind of statistics will give you the detailed idea about the member activities – such as subscriptions – un subscriptions etc.



• Member Statistics: [click on Statistics > Member Statistics]

This will give you the member statistics – the number of members subscribed to each mailing list.

• Campaign Statistics: [click on Statistics > Member Statistics] This will give you the detailed statistics for the campaigns you process through oemPro – how many emails were sent – how many emails had permanent errors etc.



• Process log:

This is the process log of oemPro – this will give you the broad overview on what all processes defined in the cron module. This will also show you the start time and date – end time and date and the status of the process.



Understanding recipient statistics Now that we know how to check the different statistical reports for oemPro database – lets check the basic concepts of recipients statistics. Let us understand what is read ratio, link click tracking and forward to friend concepts.

Read Ratios What are read rations? While creating a campaign if you select the option of tracking read rations – then oemPro will generate the statistical reports on how many times your subscribers read your email. This is a nice utility in order to track the success of your campaign. In order to check the read ratios of the sent campaigns you need to click on the Statistics > Campaign Statistics – then select the campaign you wish to check the read ratios for and then say continue. You should see the following screen um#102

um#102 – Send log for campaigns

The above screen will give you the basic statistics of the campaign you sent – details like total recipients, sent recipients, failed recipients, overall process and the duration for the campaign. Just below these details there are couple of links – Live Track, Reads, Links, Forwards, Ratings, Errors. For this topic we will click on the Reads link which will give us the read ratio statistic. You should see the below screen. um#103.

um#103 – read ratios

This will give you a graphical output of the read ratios as shown in the screen shot um#103.



Link click tracking Link click track is another feature which allows you to track the users clicking on the links from your newsletter. In order to check the link click ratio of the sent campaigns you need to click on the Statistics > Campaign Statistics – then select the campaign you wish to check the link click ratio for and then say continue. You should see the following screen um#104


The above screen will give you the basic statistics of the campaign you sent – details like total recipients, sent recipients, failed recipients, overall process and the duration for the campaign. Just below these details there are couple of links – Live Track, Reads, Links, Forwards, Ratings, Errors. For this topic we will click on the Links link which will give us the link click statistic. You should see the below screen. um#105.

um#105 – link click statistics

This will give you the graphical statistical reports on how many links are clicked, when they are clicked and by which subscriber.



Forward to a friend facility and statistics Forward to a friend is the small utility provided by oemPro for subscribers. The subscribers who receive the email – can directly forward the same email to their friends or coworkers etc. In order to check the forward to a friend statistics of the sent campaigns you need to click on the Statistics > Campaign Statistics – then select the campaign you wish to check the forward to a friend statistic for and then say continue. You should see the following screen um#106


The above screen will give you the basic statistics of the campaign you sent – details like total recipients, sent recipients, failed recipients, overall process and the duration for the campaign. Just below these details there are couple of links – Live Track, Reads, Links, Forwards, Ratings, Errors. For this topic we will click on the Forwards link which will give us the link click statistic. You should see the below screen. um#107.

um#107 – forward to friend statistic

These details could help you contact the prospects who received the forwarded email from their friends.



Branding of your oemPro

oemPro provides a very advanced branding facilities in order to integrate it with your existing websites’ look and feel. It not only gives you the ability to change the interface but also allows you to integrate the subscription and un-subscription forms seamlessly into your existing website.

In this section we will be learning how to deal with oemPro advanced template system in order to create a customized template, look and feel and the layouts. In order to work with the oemPro templates and branding you must have the knowledge of HTML.

Understanding oemPro branding and template system oemPro has a very advanced yet simple template system. Anyone can edit these templates and integrate oemPro to their existing website design. When you extract oemPro you should see the following directory structure as shown in the screen shot um#108

um#108 – directory structure for oemPro files



In the above image we have highlighted the templates directory. oemPro comes pre-loaded with Enhanced English template set which resides in the templates directory.

When you have to create another set of templates you just replicate the enhanced english directory and edit the files inside.

The enhanced english directory structure will be as shown in the below screen shot. um#109

um#109

In the above screen shot we are able to see that the enhanced skin has different sections subdirectories with their own set of templates inside. It also has the css files, images and the scripts used to create and generate the menu items of the oemPro system.

In order to edit the skins of the administrators you can edit the files within the section_administrator directory. You can either edit them in the editors like Dreamweaver or any other html editor.

Please be advised that before editing any templates understand how oemPro uses the tags for displaying the related data over the screen when you actually work with oemPro.

You can edit the css files in order to match your websites css.



How to re-brand oemPro to suite the look and feel of your website We have seen how oemPro uses the template system and its directory structure in the previous topic. Now lets take an example on changing our look and feel for members area. In order to work with the templates for members area we need to browse through the enhanced english skin and go to the directory called section_member. Please note that before making any changes directly to the enhanced english skin – make a back up copy of the whole folder. The directory section_member will look something similar to the below screen shot. um#110

um#110 – browsing the folder section_member

This folder has couple of html files and the sub folders. These html files are the templates which will create the look and feel of the oemPro member section. You can use dream weaver – or if you are a professional and have expertise editing the code in the text format you may open this document through Programmers File Editor or similar applications. If you open the file inside the Dreamweaver it should look something similar to the below screen shot. um#111

um#111 – editing the template with dream weaver.



In the above example you will be able to edit formatting of the fonts – tables etc. You need to remember that first look at the whole file and the source of this file before editing anything as these files have special oemPro tags in order to generate some dynamic fields etc. If any of the tags are missing from the file your template will break. oemPro has developed its own tags which can be integrated into an html file and then the backend php scripts would automatically replace those tags with the necessary information. Say for example we need to list the custom fields of the mailing list – then we will use the following tag. Opening TAG <LIST:CUSTOM:FIELDS:PasswordField> Closing TAG </LIST:CUSTOM:FIELDS:PasswordField> The above tags are used to display the custom fields and especially PasswordField. Similarly there are number of different tags which are used to show different information. You will have to go through each file and check the tags used and make sure that those tags are kept in the files as it is.

Working with language files for adding extra language support Now let’s see how to work with the language files and migrate it in the local language. oemPro comes with english language pack by default. The language file is located inside your systems directory under data/languages folder. You should have a file called lang_english.inc.php. In order to have your language setup inside the directory you just need to copy lang_english.inc.php to another file name and save it inside the same directory as lang_english.inc.php. Say for example we want to add a language file for Turkish language, we should then name it lang_turkish.inc.php in order to identify easily. Now you can open up the saved file and edit it in order to reflect the Turkish language. The default language file looks something similar to the following image. um#112

um#112 – language file.

Now what you need to do here is just replace the text between the inverted commas to your own language. That’s about it and you will able to see the whole interface of oemPro in a different language if you select the new language as your administrators language.



Working with multiple templates and languages and set them for different administrators oemPro allows you to setup different template and language sets for each administrator. In order to set different template and languages for an administrator account go to Settings > Administrator. You should see a list of administrators on your screen; next to each administrator you have a link for editing the administrator. Click on the link to edit the administrator. You should see the following screen. um#113.

Now in order to set the different user interface and the language you can edit the values for the fields “User Interface Language” and “User Interface”. After you set the appropriate language and the skin the administrator will be able to see oemPro in the newly applied language and the interface.





Understanding the way of email sending with oemPro In this section we will see the difference between different mail sending methods – be it MTA, Sendmail, Qmail etc., we will also try to understand what exactly happens when oemPro starts sending emails to the subscribers, the performance and the capacity of oemPro, while sending if the operation times out then what kind of measures and protection system oemPro has and finally common pitfalls.

What is the difference between MTA, sendmail, Qmail and SMTP We have come across the terms MTA, sendmail, qmail and smtp for many times when we created the campaign, when we created the send engines etc. What is MTA? MTA is an acronym of Mail Transport Agent. Mail transport agent is a program which allows a person to transfer his mails from one location [i.e. email address or server] to another location [email address or server]. The MTA actually handles sending and receiving the email to and from the system it is based upon. Most MTAs support aliasing and forwarding, as well as either the POP or IMAP protocols for clients which do not have standard MTA support upon their computer. MTAs which support POP and/or IMAP are referred to as mailhosts, and often support other functions. MTAs are used to accept mail from the network and the outside world, then forward the mail to specific places. What is sendmail? Sendmail is basically a mail transport agent – it is also available as a binary which could execute without having to have the sendmail mta installed on your server. It’s a small executable program which runs on your server and can transfer the emails from one destination to the other. The draw back with sendmail binary is that it runs as a default server user – and therefore the mails sent through sendmail binary sometimes may be caught as a spam mail since its generated through a default common server id and not with the unique id. What is Qmail? Qmail is an MTA for unix like operating systems. It uses the simple mail transfer protocol to exchange emails with MTA’s on other systems. Qmail has an advanced, secured and highly scalable Mail Transport system. What is an SMTP? SMTP is an acronym of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol – A protocol used to send email on the Internet. SMTP is a set of rules regarding the interaction between a program sending email and a program receiving email. This is the protocol widely implemented over the internet for exchanging emails.

What happens when oemPro sends the emails We have seen the difference between smtp, mta, sendmail and qmail in the last section. Now let us check out how oemPro mail sending process is all about. Before we check out the graphical presentation of the oemPro mail sending process let us first understand how it happens. Mail Sending Process of oemPro

1. After you create your campaign and save it to the oemPro database – the oemPro cron module at the specific interval will check the list of campaigns and the schedule of the same and if there is a campaign which is be sent – it initiates a command to oemPro backend scripts.

2. Once the cron initiates the execute command for the oemPro back-end scripts – these scripts would use the campaign information and the list information.

3. Before selecting the email id’s from the database to send the campaign oemPro will analyze the options – such as whether the campaign is set for rich text, simple text or both types of content. whether oemPro needs to apply any personalization options or not, whether oemPro should use the MTA / Sendmail Binary or any other send engine.

4. Once these options are checked and set by oemPro – oemPro starts connecting to the members database.

5. oemPro then checks the member options whether this member is set to receive the email in the TEXT format or HTML format, depending on the information oemPro then generates the email with certain options set in the campaign.

6. Once the information is verified oemPro starts sending emails [piping emails] through the selected send engine.

7. oemPro also can handle the load balancing if the send engine has this option enabled.



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