How does MailDirect manage Bounced emails?

There are a number of reasons for bounces – inactive accounts, host not found, mailbox full, etc. To view the bounces for a particular campaign, click on the campaign name for more details. For all/any bounces, there is a link to download a .csv file containing the list of addresses along with the reasons for bounces. The moment MailDirect detects bounced emails, the email addresses in the mailing list are blocked for future mailing. This is a precautionary move aimed at reducing bandwidth usage in future campaigns as mails going to bounced address are wastage. This process also reduces load on the servers. You can review the bounced email addresses by checking with the users via other media and update your lists with corrected addresses.

• Statistics available in MailDirect The Campaign Statistics page displays the entire list of campaigns with the following information per campaign – Sent, Blocked, Views, Clicks, Bounces, Date and Time of the campaign
• Recipients Sent – Number of recipients in the mailing list to whom the Email / SMS was sent
• Recipients Blocked – Number of email addresses blocked because of previous bounce history, no mails are sent to these ids.
• Views Track – Recipient level tracking of which recipient has viewed which mail
• ClickThrough Track – Recipient level tracking of click – throughs
• Bounce Track – Report on the number of email addresses bounced and the reasons for each bounce

How do I personalize a message?

Using MailDirect, you can engage in personalized marketing via Email or SMS to your target audience. This of course, assumes that personalization information is available in the database. By default, this is limited to the recipient’s First-Name & Last-Name. In addition to these fields, you can add up to 7 more user-defined fields. For personalization to take place, you must insert some special tags, which act as placeholders in your message. These will be substituted with the appropriate values when the message is sent to a recipient. A few examples are %FNAME for “First name” and %LNAME for “Last name”. The tags are case sensitive, which means you MUST use UPPERCASE only. And the “%” sign is mandatory too. Consider a user “Rahul Saxena” with an email ID “rahul@demo.com”. In the message, a reference to ‘%RECIPIENT%’ will be substituted by “Rahul Saxena”. You will typically use this as the “To:” email address in your message. Similary, %FNAME% will be substituted by Rahul and %LNAME% by Saxena. In case of missing personalization information in the database, the %FNAME% and %LNAME% strings will be removed from the mail for that recipient.

How do I create and upload an .eml message?

The following simple steps will help you create and upload an .eml message

• After designing your HTML page, load the final design in your browser.
• Simultaneously open a New Mail window in Outlook Express. Click Edit>Source Edit. When you enable Source Edit, you will see three tabs at the bottom of the New Mail window – Edit, Source and Preview.
• Copy the HTML source code of your HTML page (in your browser, right click your mouse and choose View Source; or from the menu bar on top, click View>Source; the source code will open as a Notepad text file. Select All and copy) and paste it in the Source interface of the New Mail window in Outlook Express.
• Check in ‘Preview’ whether the page loads as designed. If there are images, make sure they load completely.
• Go to Edit, review the copy and make any final changes that you may want (typos, check the links, etc.)
• Include a ‘Subject line’.
• Save the file (File>Save As in the menu bar) as an .eml file. (The default file name will be the same as the subject line).
• Upload this .eml in MailDirect. MailDirect will ask you to upload the new .eml file while working with the Campaign Manager.

How do I create and launch an email campaign?

To create and launch an email campaign, carry out the following steps: (to be verified against the actual working)

• Click on Campaigns. You have two options for creating a new campaign – ‘Create email online’ and ‘Upload a pre-prepared message’
• When you click on either option, MailDirect will prompt you to give a name for the campaign. Give the desired name and description for your campaign, say ‘MailDirect: Campaign 1’
• If you click ‘Create email online’, MailDirect will guide you to a text editor (a text box). Use the text editor to write text messages (for campaigns which do not require extensive formatting)
• If you click ‘Upload a pre-prepared message’, MailDirect will ask you to upload an .eml file. (How to create and upload an .eml message)
• Submit the above data and the browser will load the next page. Give essential details like the ‘From’ address, ‘Name’ of the sender and the ‘Subject line’.
• Select the mailing list i.e. the list of email recipients.
• Save the campaign. Your campaign will now be visible under ‘Planned Campaigns’ section. Click on the campaign name in the Planned Campaigns table.
• You have four options:
  1. Edit – In case you want to change any of the campaign details or the message in itself
  2. Test – In case you want to see how the email will appear to the recipient
  3. Start – In case you want to start broadcasting your Email to the recipients
  4. Abandon – In case you want to shelve the campaign
• Click ‘Start’ to launch your campaign. You will be given a link to a real-time monitor where you can check status of the campaign – number of emails sent out, number of emails still pending, time taken, etc.
• Go to ‘Statistics’ to view reports on campaign analysis.

How do I create a .csv File?

CSV stands for Comma Separated Values. It refers to an ASCII (text) file where each individual data field is delimited by commas. Each line in your CSV file represents one recipient in your database. The line should preferably be formatted like this: Email-ID, Mobile-Number, First-Name, Last-Name e.g: raj@qlcomm.com, 919812345678, Raj, Kumar. As far as an Email Campaign is concerned, only the Email-ID field is mandatory. Again as far as an SMS Campaign is concerned, only the Mobile Number field is mandatory. However, without the First Name, Last Name and other user defined fields, personalization will not be possible. Most spreadsheet programs and database management systems allow easy exporting of data as CSV files. Moreover, since CSV files are just ASCII text, you can easily manipulate them with any text-editing tools such as Excel, Perl, VBScript, etc.

What Is List Management?

Creating a List and mapping recipients (email address/mobile numbers) to the list is the essence of List Management. The following are the important steps in List Management

• You can upload mailing lists with three to eleven fields of information per user. Email Address, Mobile Number, First Name and Last Name are the default fields provided. The rest are user-defined/customizable.
• You can upload mailing lists with three to eleven fields of information per user. Email Address, Mobile Number, First Name and Last Name are the default fields provided. The rest are user-defined/customizable.
• Save the file as a ‘CSV’ file.
• Click on ‘List Management’. To create a new list, give a name and description, say ‘Product A’ and ‘Customers of Product A’.
• Click on ‘Add recipients to lists’. A window will open with two options where you can upload the .csv file that you saved or you copy the entire data into the text area.
• Select the list with which you want to associate the data.
• Click ‘Upload’. The data would be uploaded. In case there are any identical Email ids in the list, they will be uploaded only once.
• Facility to update existing recipient details is also provided.

How do I access MailDirect service?

When you sign up for MailDirect, you get a Login ID and password from QLC. From your browser, go to http://maildirect.qlc.co.in. Login using the login name and password sent to you.

What do I need to use MailDirect?

Once you sign up with QLC for the MailDirect Service you will need only the following:

• Internet connection
• You can upload mailing lists with three to eleven fields of information per user. Email Address, Mobile Number, First Name and Last Name are the default fields provided. The rest are user-defined/customizable.
• A web browser – Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, etc.
• Your mailing lists in .csv format
• Your messages saved as .eml

How to use the MailDirect Survey Module?

• Configure MailDirect Survey details
• Create a questionnaire for the survey
• Personalize the look and feel of the survey template as per your requirement
• Select recipient list(s) and create a survey campaign
• Publish Survey link

How to use Auto Unsubscribe feature in MailDirect?

To Compose an HTML message with the Auto Unsubscribe Link:

• In the compose area of the Campaign Message, select the appropriate location to insert the unsubscribe link, and then select the Unsubscribe_Start option from the Select Personalize Code drop-down list.
• Type the message to be displayed to the recipient in the Campaign Email as the unsubscribe link after the Unsubscribe _Start field code.
• Select the Unsubscribe_End option from the Select Personalize Code drop-down list to insert the Unsubscribe_End field code after your unsubscribe message. To Compose an EML message with the Auto-Unsubscribe Link.
• Select the HTML Editor mode.
• Copy the Unsubscribe_Start, Unsubscribe Message and the Unsubscribe_End from the compose area and paste it at the required location in the campaign EML.