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DAO libraries missing files error

From the customer support:

I am testing SENDBLASTER at a NOTEBOOK with Microsoft VISTA. It presented an error “Some DAO libraries were not found on your PC. Please download….”.

I download, and installed. It did not work. Uninstalled, cleaned registers, made a new sendblaster instalation, rebooted, installed DAO35SETUP againd and I continue receiving same message…

This is a common error among SendBlaster installation on Windows Vista, because SendBlaster must be installed and used with User Account Control enabled on Windows Vista operating systems.

To resolve this DAO35SETUP error please follow these instructions:

  1. Uninstall SendBlaster (from control panel)
  2. log in as administrator (Vista privileges setup)
  3. Enable Vista USER ACCOUNT CONTROL (UAC)
  4. Install SendBlaster
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Email merge software tutorial for newsletter personalization

Email merge means sending bulk and personalized email messages . Every email marketer knows that the main thing in sending bulk emails is the email personalization, as well as sending only bulk emails that contain useful information for the mailing list subscribers.

Examples of email merge

Dear User -> Dear Samantha
Hello Customer -> Hello Mr. Smith

Email merge, often called mail merge, is a common email marketing practice since it has been proved that personalized emails with merged informations are much more appealing than anonymous emails. Merged emails also help in building a relationship with your email audience.

Email merge is done by inserting into the email body, some “tags” that will be removed by the emailing software and substituted with the final email text within merged emails sending.

The email merge software for email marketing SendBlaster has a complete email merge easy to use suite with integrated tags and customized tags support.

With email merge feature your database data will fill your email automatically.

if this is your database:

email merge database info

these will be your customized emails after the email merging:

customized and personalized merged emails

The Software for email merge SendBlaster takes all the tags into the email template you have prepared and sends customized emails to your entire contact list.

Tags customization for email merge

Included into the software for newsletter merging SendBlaster you find 15 ready to use tags for common email merging needs. You will always need to put your recipients name inside the email body and even inside the email subject. You may also want to refer to your business products or events without editing each email one by one.

Email merge is mandatory when we work on large email marketing database of customers.

Example of tags customization inside software for email merge SendBlaster

The default for custom email merge field N°15 is AGE. If you do not plan to use the AGE informations inside your customers database, and may want to display the product your customers bought and you want to send newsletter for, this is how to set a custom Tag field for email merging purposes:

  • go to Fields and Appearance section inside the Email merging Software SendBlaster. You will see all the allowed fields for email merging with their label.
  • Enter inside field 15 the text: product

In your email database list you should write for each customer the Product name they have bought (you can also automatize the new database records with website optin modules with custom fields)

Let’s suppose you are running a furniture shop, and each customer has a field of interest because they are resellers.
This is how your customers database will show:

Email Name Surname Product product-offer
fred@furniture.com Frederik Peters Office chairs starting from 59$
emma@dot.com Emma Forrest Sofa starting from 259$
kyle@restaurant.com Kenny Leary kitchen tables starting from 1259$

The automatic email merge engine will display the database value where you will put the merging field tag.

Example:

Dear #name#,
This is your #month# newsletter on #product# updates

email merge tags use example

personalized sent email will become:

Dear Frederik,
This is your August newsletter on Office chairs updates

email merge final result into inbox, with personalized email

Conclusions

This email merge tutorial uses Email Merge Software SendBlaster to automagically personalize each sent email blast.

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SMTP server time out error

Below is the solution for one of our customers. He was getting “Server time out” error. His account with the smtp server was fine, so we suggested some settings for newsletter software to resolve the situation.

The “server time out” problem may have different causes:

  1. A slow-down in the Internet connection (please double check your network settings)
  2. A too low timeout value (try increasing it, i.e. 300 secs)
  3. You are using too many simultaneous connections (try lowering them)
  4. Some antivirus or firewall is blocking your outgoing traffic after a while (please check their configuration or try disabling them)
  5. Your ISP may be blocking the port used by SMTP after some traffic (please ask them about any policy like this)
  6. The SMTP server is experiencing technical difficulties (which is unlikely, as the same problem would have been reported by other users)
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E-mail tracking made easy

How many email messages were actually read? How many readers followed links? You don’t need any sophisticated tool in order to obtain this valuable information: learn how to use your website logs and report system to realize a good email tracking system that works in any kind of email.

How many people read my mail?

All e-mail tracking systems use the same technique: they insert into the email message body a transparent one-pixel image pointing to a .GIF file on a server; when one of your recipients opens the email message, the invisible image is pulled from the server, generating a logged event that shows when the message was opened.

This technique is easily replicable on any website: insert into the email body a transparent one-pixel image, pointing to a file on your server; after sending your mailing, browse your site stats and see how many unique visitors downloaded that particular file. This will tell you how many receivers actually opened and read the email message.
This method is not perfect: it will underestimate the number of receivers since some people do not allow their e-mail client to download files from online servers; but it is as accurate as any commercial tracking system.

Setup email tracking Step by step:

For each mailing:

  • create a transparent one-pixel .gif image and upload it on your web server. Remember that each mailing should have its own image file: as an example, you can name each .gif file after the mailing’s date: 20060910.gif, 20060911.gif and so on.
  • After finishing composing the message, insert the picture at the bottom (enter its full Url as the image path: i.e. http://www.mywebsite.com/tracking/20060910.gif)
  • Send your mailing
  • After some time, browse your site stats and see how many people (unique visitors) downloaded the image (20060910.gif in our example).

How many people click on email links?

Knowing how many people read your mail is important; but what you probably really want to know is your mailing’s effectiveness: did your recipients positively responded to your message? Did they follow the links you suggested?

Once again, you can simply use your website stats to obtain this information with a simple trick: don’t send “generic” links, but prepare a custom web page for each mailing. You don’t need to actually write new content: if your site has a page named products.htm, make a copy of it and name it products20060910.htm, and put this “custom” link (not the “original” page) in the message. Your website stats will tell you how many unique visitors followed that link: since the only way of reaching that page will be from your mailing (of course you must not put any links to this page on your website!), this is the magic number telling you how many of your recipients clicked on your link.

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