Users Manual oempro version 3.5

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www.octeth.com

Users Manual

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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”

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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 Design

Mert

Website Design

Mert

Manuals

Parag Sane [[email protected]]

Online visual demo’s for oemPro

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

browse mailing lists.

delete mailing lists.

If ticked – it allows the administrator to see the details of

mailing lists.

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.

create the new administrator for

a mailing list.

browse the administrators for a mailing list.

delete the administrators for a mailing list.

If ticked – it allows the administrator to check the details

of the administrators assigned for a mailing list.

If ticked – it allows the administrator to update the mailing list administrator accounts. This option allows the overall

Mail list email addresses:

create the new mail list email

addresses.

If ticked – it allows the administrator to browse the mail

list email addresses.

delete the mail list email addresses.

If ticked – it allows the administrator to check the details of the mail list email addresses.

If ticked – it allows the administrator to update the mail

list email addresses.

Mail list clients

create the new mail list client.

list client.

delete the mail list client.

If ticked – it allows the administrator to check the details of the mail list

client.

list client.

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Mail list emails

create the new mail list emails.

list emails.

delete the mail list emails.

If ticked – it allows the administrator to check the details of the mail list

emails.

list emails.

Mail list custom fields

create the new custom fields.

browse the custom fields.

delete the custom fields.

If ticked – it allows the administrator to check the details of the custom

fields.

update the custom fields.

Emails

create new emails.

browse emails.

delete emails.

If ticked – it allows the administrator to check the details of the emails.

update emails.

Custom fields

create the new custom fields.

browse the custom fields.

delete the custom fields.

If ticked – it allows the administrator to check the details of the custom

fields.

update the custom fields.

Website integration

N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A This option

allows the overall access to this

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Banned member

feature.

Black listed member

feature.

Import members

feature.

Export members

feature.

Campaign

create new campaign.

If ticked – it allows the administrator to browse existing campaigns.

delete existing campaigns.

If ticked – it allows the administrator to check the details of campaigns.

update existing campaigns.

Campaign tracking

feature.

Auto responder

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Follow up

feature.

Newsletter template

feature.

Client

feature.

Bounce statistics

feature.

Member activity statistics

feature.

Process log

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Dashboard customization

feature.

Preferences

feature.

Administrator

If ticked – administrator can

create new administrators.

browse administrators.

delete administrators.

If ticked – administrator can check the details of administrators.

update administrators.

Administrator email

feature.

Administrator privileges

feature.

System testing

feature.

Mail box

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Send engine

feature.

Help sections

feature.

CRON management

feature.

Remote update

feature.

Plug-In management

feature.

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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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 opt-information for our opt-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 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.

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Working with different system emails for 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 in confirmation link – the same email if used for the opt-out confirmation would generate the opt-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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

Users Manual oempro version 3.5

Users Manual

About This Manual

Disclaimer of Warranty

Credits

Table of Contents

Introduction

Features covered for Administrators

Logging into Administration Section

Working with multiple administrators

Setting up different privileges for administrators

Working with the branding of each administrator

Assigning email address for Administrators

Working with Languages in oemPro

Mailing Lists Explained in Details

Working with opt-in and opt-out emails and its

effective usage

Working with different system emails for in /

opt-out confirmations

How to assign admins for different mailing lists

How to assign clients to every mailing list

How to work with custom fields – how to create them

and use them in the mailing lists

How to work with custom field value validation

Using custom fields to track extra information for

customer relationship management

Members related functions

Working with members – listing them and managing

them

Banning users for the specific mailing list or ban them

globally

Effective usage of Subscription and

Unsubscription utilities

Understanding how you can use a POP mail box to

handle subscriptions / unsubscription and password

reminders.

Setting up Custom success and error messages

Import – Export Functions

Using Import utility

Comma Delimited file:

Importing your data from MySQL table:

Importing your Mail Box:

Send opt-in confirmation emails of the selected mail lists

Exporting your data to multiple formats – comma

delimited, EXCEL, CSV or XML

Exporting members to comma-delimited file

Working with Campaigns [Effective Campaign

Management]

Creating your campaigns in couple of easy steps