Cross Bulk Mailer 6.1 User Guide

Cross Bulk Mailer 6.1

User Guide

(The best email marketing module for DNN 7) http://DnnModule.com

7/26/2015 Cross Software, China Skype: [email protected]

QQ: 35206992 Mail: [email protected]

Table of Contents 1. Background ... 3 2. Introduction ... 3 3. What’s new in v6.0/6.1 ... 5 4. Requirements ... 5 5. Quick Start ... 5

5.1 Step 1: Install/Upgrade module ... 6

5.2 Step 2: Add CrossMail_Admin sub module to manage data ... 7

5.3 Step 3: Configure SMTP servers or Amazon SES ... 8

5.4 Step 4: Add Categories ... 9

5.5 Step 5: Add Newsletters ... 10

6. Advanced Features ... 11

7. CrossMail_Opt-In sub module ... 13

8. How to write template ... 14

8.1 Template are ascx files ... 14

8.2 Template directory structure ... 14

8.3 Template created steps ... 14

9. Uninstall Module ... 15

10. About Us ... 15

1. Background

Email marketing is very popular and important today. It can help you to improve both relationship building and communication for your business to prosper. As we know, DNN provides a simple newsletter module which allows site administrators to send bulk mails (by click DNN built-in menu “Admin – Newsletters”). This module works when you have small recipients (e.g. 100 - 200 email addresses). However, when you try sending over 500 emails use this module, it doesn’t work as well as expected due to the follows:

1. This module will try sending all bulk emails at one time by using host defined SMTP server. However, nearly 100% email service providers have quota limitation. For

example, Google Gmail account allows you to send up to 500 mails per day, 100 mails per hour; Yahoo mail allows up to 200 mails per day and 100 mails per hour; MS hotmail allows 100 per day and 50 per hour; Our mail server provider (mail.DnnModule.com) allows us sending 500 mails per day and 60 mails per hour.

This means most of your emails are abandoned by mail server. For example, when we click “Admin – Newsletters” module to send mails to over 20,000 registered users of

http://DnnModule.com for the first time, nearly 99% mails are abandoned by our mail server. And our hosting vendor warned us not do that again, otherwise our mail accounts will be closed.

Please note, the abandon is controlled by mail server, DNN is not aware of that. And DNN just think mail is sent successfully.

2. Email sending is a resource consumes action. It consumes many CPU and memory resources while sending bulk emails together. Because most websites are hosted by 3rd hosting providers and don’t have too much CPU and memory quota, your site may be recycled or even shutdown while sending emails.

3. As mentioned above, “Admin – Newsletters” module using host defined SMTP server to send mails. This is a big problem if you have multiple portals which belong to different companies on same DNN instance. Even these portals have their own mail server, they still have to rely on same SMTP server to send mails. This will make host defined SMTP server overload quickly. We strongly recommend super user to remove “Admin -Newsletters” page/module for all portals in this case.

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In one word, DNN built-in “Admin - Newsletter” is not an ideal module to processing bulk emails. You need a more powerful module to handle your email marketing, Cross Bulk Mailer is one of the best choices for you.

2. Introduction

Cross Bulk Mailer is an enterprise-level email processing module for DotNetNuke. It includes 2 sub modules (CrossMail_Admin and CrossMail_Opt-In). By fully utilizing DNN schedule job mechanism, it can help you to send over 100,000,000 emails easily than ever. It has many cool features which can help you to process email marketing as easy

as ABC, as follows:

1. Multiple portals support. Super use can enable / disable email sending for each portal, and control other options like maximum mails per day / per hour,sending interval and whether they can use host defined SMTP server.

2. Multiple SMTP servers support. Site administrators can create multiple SMTP servers for their portals, and specify properties like server priority / maximum mails per day (per hour), etc.

3. Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) support. With Amazon SES, you can send huge emails (e.g. 5,000,000) per day.

4. Advanced technical to send bulk mails (SMTP server pool, multiple threads and asynchronous). It uses DNN schedule jobs to perform all background actions (send bulk mails / synchronize recipients from roles / check bounce mail addresses, etc.). All you need to do is to provide valid SMTP servers, create newsletters which need to send, Cross Bulk Mailer module will handle other jobs. It will send only certain amount of emails per time, but keep on sending every n minutes, so it will delivery all your emails at last, but will not break your SMTP servers limitation.

5. Advanced technical to track email read / open status, works on nearly 100% email client applications. You can track whether / when email is opened / read by recipients, and adjust your email marketing plan.

6. Group newsletters with categories.Each category has its own recipients and suppression addresses. It can be bound to certain user roles and automatic retrieve recipients from them. The recipients can also be imported from MS Excel documents and csv files (or export as Excel file to download). And it doesn’t require you to install MS Excel on the web server.

7. Allow site administrator to create extra attributes for the recipient, e.g. create an extra “Occupation” attribute for the recipient, and specify its value as “Teacher” for a recipient. These custom extra attributes can also be shown in CrossMail_Opt-In sub module.

8. A newsletter can have multiple attachments. The newsletter content can be generated from external url / RSS feed / site page / site module, or copy from an email template / an existing newsletter. It also supports token replacement to personalize email content.

9. Hyperlink tracking. You can create specific hyperlinks (e.g. http://DnnModule.com) and insert them into newsletters, module will track who (and when) click them while reading emails. This is a great way to verify the effect of your email marketing.

10. Automatic send birthday greeting emails to related recipients.

11. Common features like Opt-In/Opt-Out, subscribe/unsubscribe/welcome notification and view mail online are also available.

12. Bounce mail address (invalid mail addresses) automatic detection.

13. Template based for CrossAdmin_Opt-In sub module, you can create your own mail Opt-In/Opt-Out display interface.

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Visit http://DnnModule.com/FreeDownload.aspx to download 60 days trial edition and test on your site. The trial edition has all features like official version and can be installed on official domain names.

Note: v6.1 requires DNN 7.1+ (7.1.0 – 8.x are all tested) to run. If your sites are still under DNN 6.x/7.0, please check http://dnnmodule.com/Store.aspx for other old versions.

3. What’s new in v6.0/6.1

1. Redesign the email read/open tracking mechanism.

2. Redesign the email sending mechanism (SMTP server pool, multiple threads and asynchronous). Now it consumes less resource, but sends emails more efficiently. 3. The new “Send Interval” property allows you to send mails multiple times per hour,

this will alleviate the web server pressure greatly.

4. Allows site administrator to create extra attributes for the recipient, and these attributes can also be shown in CrossMail_Opt-In sub module.

5. Subscribe notification support. 6. Subscriber welcome email support.

7. Improve the semaphore file detection mechanism.

4. Requirements

1. DNN 7.1+ (7.1.0 – 8.x are all tested).

2. Sql server 2008/2012 or Sql express 2008/2012 3. Asp.net framework 4.0+

5. Quick Start

The typical scenario involves the following steps: Step 1. Install/Upgrade module.

Step 2. Add CrossMail_Admin sub module to manage data. Step 3. Configure SMTP servers or Amazon SES

Step 5. Add Newsletters.

5.1 Step 1:

If you already bought module, unzip package which you download, you will see “Cross Bulk Mailer 6.1 Pa (standard).zip” (or “Cross Bulk Mailer 6.1 Pa (enterprise).zip” if you bought enterprise edition), choose it as install package.

If you want to trial module first, you can download “Cross Bulk Mailer 6.1 trial edition (unzip me).zip” at http://DnnModule.com/FreeDownload.aspx, unzip it you will find “Cross Bulk Mailer 6.1 Pa (trial).zip”. The trial package can be installed on official domain names for 60 days.

Click “Host - Extensions - Install extension wizard“ to install module. After installation, you will see 2 sub modules.

Install via Ftp

The install package is about 4mb in size. If you have problems uploading by clicking “Host - Extensions - Install extension wizard”, you can use another way to install it, as follows:

1. Upload “Cross Bulk Mailer 6.1 Pa (standard).zip” to Install\Module folder of your site using ftp tools.

2. Click “Host – Extensions”, select “Available Extensions” tab, choose

“CrossMail_Admin” which is under “Modules” section, click “Install” button to install.

Upgrade

When upgrade from trial edition to official edition (or upgrade to new version), you don't need to uninstall previous module first. Simply reinstall the official edition (or new version) will keep your existing data.

Note, when you upgrade from v5.0/5.1, you need to update web.config file to support email read / open tracking manually. As follows:

1. Open web.config file, locate < system.webServer > - < handlers > section. 2. Add <add name="CrossMailTracking" verb="*" path="*crossmaillogo.jpg"

type="Cross.Modules.Mail.Business.TrackingHandler, Cross.Dnn.Modules.Mail" /> node. See below image as example.

3. Save web.config file.

If you directly install 6.0/6.1 or upgrade from v5.2/v5.3/5.4/5.5, you don’t need to do this.

5.2 Step 2:

CrossMail_Admin sub module is used to manage all data. You only need 1 instance per portal.

All features in CrossMail_Admin sub module are self explanatory. We recommend you to login in as super user (host account) if possible. Because some features, like “Admin Control Panel – Host (Super User) Features – Portal Rules”, are only available for super users.

5.3 Step 3:

SMTP (Simple Message Transfer Protocol) servers are used to send emails. You must create at least 1 server before sending bulk mails. By default, module will

automatic create a SMTP server based host SMTP server settings (which is under DNN built-in menu "Host - Host Settings - Advanced Settings - SMTP server settings"). If the host SMTP server is invalid, you can create other SMTP servers by click

Expand “New to SMTP server? Expand here to see how to configure it” section if you are not familiar with SMTP server. Please take care of “maximum mails per day / per hour” values, they are very important.

Expand “What's the ‘Bounce reply subject’? How to get it?” section to see how to configure “Bounce reply subject”, this is the key to find out invalid mail addresses (bounce mail addresses).

In v5.2, we also add Amazon SES support.Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is a highly scalable and cost-effective bulk and transactional email-sending service for businesses. The great advantage of Amazon SES is that it allows you to send huge emails per day (e.g. 500,000) in theory, while most email providers only allows hundreds of emails per day. For more information, please visit http://aws.amazon.com/ses/

It is easy to use Amazon SES in Cross Bulk Mailer module. If you have huge emails to send (e.g. you need to send 100,000 emails per day), we recommend you to sign up an Amazon SES account and configure it here. Note, your SMTP servers will be ignored if you have Amazon SES configured (you don't need to create other SMTP servers in this case).

5.4 Step 4:

Categories allow you to group the newsletters (and recipients) easily. Each category has its own recipients and suppression addresses. Click “Admin Control Panel – Data Manager - Categories“ to create categories.

Category can be bound to certain user roles and automatic retrieve recipients from these user roles. It can also import email addresses from MS Excel documents (or export as MS Excel files). Please note, it doesn’t require you to install MS Excel application on the web server.

5.5 Step 5:

Now you can click “Admin Control Panel – Data Management - Newsletter “to add newsletter which will be sent. The mail content can be generated from RSS feed / external url / a page on your site / a specific module on your site, or copy from an email template / an existing newsletter. It also supports token replacement to personalize email content.

You can click “Send Test Mail” button to test if newsletter content is display correct in mail.

Click “Available Tokens” tab to find detail description of tokens. Please be aware of the usage of following tokens:

[Unsubscribe:Begin] ,[Unsubscribe:End],[ViewOnline:Begin],[ViewOnline:End]. They are the keys to provide unsubscribe link and view mail online link.

Congratulations, now everything is ok. Module will use DNN schedule job to perform bulk mail send actions,wait a few minutes you will see the results. If you are a super user, you can click “Admin Control Panel – Host (Super User) Features - Process Right Now “to tell module to process schedule jobs right now.

6. Advanced Features

As you can see in CrossMail_Admin sub module control panel, it offers more interesting features than we mentioned in “Quick Start” chapter, like create extra attributes for the recipient, specify send rules for each portal, send birthday greeting mails, bounce mail addresses detection etc.Instead of write a long and complicated help document to explain every detail of them, we choose to integrate these information directly into module interface. And try our best to make every feature self explanatory.

For long help information, we use DNN expandable section (or a separate tab page) to display them. For example:

Expandable help section

Separate tab help page

For short yet important help information, we use DNN standard help text to display on edit interface. For example:

Display help information on edit interface.

And we provide detail information for every field using DNN help label. Whenever you feel confuse, just click the help icon of that label, you will see similar information like below:

We also provide a “Quick Start” and “Help” section in “CrossMail_Admin sub module” control panel.

Help in control panel

7. CrossMail_Opt-In sub module

Besides CrossMail_Admin sub module, Cross Bulk Mailer package also contains CrossMail_Opt-In sub module which can be used to collect mail subscribers (or let user to unsubscribe). Unlike CrossMail_Admin sub module, the CrossMail_Opt-In sub module can be put many times on multiple pages (or on same page if necessary).

Add CrossMail_Opt-In module instance to a page, click “Opt-In settings” to

customize it. Please note the “Confirm Subscribe” and “Confirm Unsubscribe” options, normally we don’t recommend to check on them because they will make

subscribe/unsubscribe complicated.

If you create extra attributes for the recipient in “CrossMail_Admin sub module – Admin control panel – Configurations – Recipient Attributes”, you can show them in

CrossMail_Opt-In sub module, to let user to enter related value while subscribe.

8. How to write template

8.1 Template are ascx files

As you can see in “CrossAdmin_Opt-In sub module – Opt-In settings – General - Template” section, this module is template based, you can create your own mail Opt-In/Opt-Out display interface. Please note, templates are ascx files, you need to be familiar with asp.net syntax to custom it.

8.2 Template directory structure

Template files should be put in the DesktopModules\CrossMail\Template\OptIn\

folder.

1. Create a folder under DesktopModules\ CrossMail \Template\ OptIn, named it as MyTemplate as example.

2. Copy DesktopModules\CrossMail \Template\ OptIn \default\App_LocalResources directory and DesktopModules\CrossMail \Template \ OptIn \default\

OptIn_Standard.ascx file to MyTemplate folder.

3. Change OptIn_Standard.ascx file name as your wish, for example, MyTemplate.ascx. Of course, you can keep its original file name if you wish.

4. Open MyTemplate.ascx file via Visual studio 2008 or something else, change its content. Note, you need to be familiar with asp.net syntax before change it.

5. Click “CrossMail_Opt-In sub module – Opt-In settings”, in “General – template”, select “MyTemplate.ascx”.

6. Now module will use your own template to display.

Of course, you can put your own templates under DesktopModules\CrossMail \Template\OptIn \default directory if you like.

9. Uninstall Module

Click “Host - Extensions“, then click the button to uninstall CrossMail_Opt-In and CrossMail_Admin module one by one. Check on “delete files” option to remove all database tables and module files with this package.

10. About Us

DnnModule.com is built to provide quality DNN modules, some of them are free, some not. We wish these stuffs (free or not) can be useful to you.

Note, nearly all modules of us provide free trial editions, you can download them at

http://DnnModule.com/FreeDownload.aspx. Followings are parts of our released modules:

Cross Bulk Mailer 6.0

Classified Pro 8.4 (ecommerce, store, auction, classified ads, content localization support)

Cross Article 7.9 (news article, blog, content localization support)

Cross Video Gallery 6.6 (dnn 7.x video/audio/youtube module, html 5 & flash based) Ultra Flash Player 7.9 (22-in-1)

Cross Photo Gallery 5.9 (dnn 7.x photo/flickr/picasa module)

Cross Image Slideshow 5.2(18-in1)

Silverlight Photo Gallery 5.7

Silverlight Carousel Magazine 4.0

Silverlight Panorama Viewer 2.0 YouTube Sidebar 4.2

Cross Visitor Tracking 5.0 (free)

Cross Skin Chameleon 5.3 (free)

Yahoo Media Player for DNN (free) Flash Numeric Rotator 3.3 (free)

Child Page List 3.0 (free)

Simple Menu Bar (free)

Please visit http://DnnModule.com/Store.aspx for more detail.

11. Support

Visit our support forum at http://DnnModule.com/Forum.aspx or mail to