Introduction
Some time
ago we developed an in-house Mail App to distribute our various
newsletters to our clients. We maintained a text file which contained all our clients' email addresses,
which we then imported into the Mail App. Each email was created using Outlook or a similar tool, and the html was "copied and pasted" into the Mail App. From there it was a single click to send the html (email) to each address in
the text file.
Like us, many of our newsletter Subscribers had attempted to
use inadequate software to handle mail distribution, and were
looking for alternatives. Our
in-house system was serving us well and getting the job done
(more or less), but had certainly never been developed to be
sold as a commercial product, evolving over time to do what
we needed done. So we started rewriting it as a commercial product, and called it CapeSoft Mailer. The original spec was to accomplish similar functionality and performance to
our existing app, with some cool extras (multiple mailing groups,
importing email addresses in a range of formats, handling duplicate
addresses etc etc).
That was were we started... CapeSoft
Mailer now does (or will do within the near future) everything we (and our customers)
have thought to be useful and realistic. The design is still simple and should feel easy and familiar, but the feature
list has grown immensely since we released the product in May
2001; See the next section for a rough list of the current features.
Happy mailing...
 Features
Although the overall feel and design still
feels straight-forward and easy to use, the features list has
grown to the point where there are too many features to list
each one, but here's a rough idea. Bear in two things in mind when you read through this list; firstly the list
is still growing (although it is slowing down at last <g>), and secondly the primary thought when designing is to keep things clean, familiar,
and straight-forward. The simple tasks are easy to set up and use, with a very low learning curve,
but the more complex, powerful functionality is there if you
open the other eye <g>...
- Client data (email address, first
name, last name, plus five other fields which you can customize)
is kept in Mailing Groups - no limit to how many addresses
/ groups you set up.
- Emails can be created using the
WYSIWYG editor, collected from a mail server, imported from
an html file, or using the old "copy and paste" technique.
- Create any number of emails, and
store them in any number of Email Folders (see screenshots).
- Each email address can be set to "not
receive attachments", "disable", "exclude", "flag", or receive "text only (no html)".
- If you have loads of email addresses
to administer, use the "Maintain Addresses" tool to quickly scan all Mailing Groups for any given address, and maintain
the address in all the groups at the same time (easier than
it sounds)...
- CapeSoft Mailer picks up duplicated
addresses, problematic addresses, etc etc
- Easily scan Mailing Groups for
all the analysis data you could want...
- Full logging is kept or all activity;
easily establish which mails have gone to which Groups or
to which individual addresses, analyzing by Group, by email
address, or by email!
- Sending mail is as easy as selecting
an email, selecting a Mailing Group, telling the system what
logic to apply (Send to all addresses, send to selected addresses,
etc etc), and clicking the "Send" button... A single email is sent to each address (no "CC" or "BCC" shortcuts are used).
- Network support! Any
Mailing Group can be shared across your LAN, so users on
running CapeSoft Mailer on different PCs can access the same
data!
- Addresses can be imported or exported
from Mailing Groups to / from a number of file formats, with
all the functionality you would expect
- Addresses can be flagged using
a Wizard, where you can easily flag addresses which match
any criteria which you stipulate. So sending an email to all the clients in a 10,000 email Mailing Group, based
on who lives in a certain area, owns a certain product or
whatever, is very easy. Supports heaps of options / functionality here... You can even use the five extra fields per Mailing Group in these rules, so
you're not limited in any way...
- Send personalized email, "Dear
Fred", "Dear Stan", "Thanks for purchasing product X", etc etc. Use any fields from the client's data which Mailer will fill in on a per email
basis as it sends emails.
- Supports all typical email functionality:
attachments, embedding images etc etc.
- And much more!
- ...Add to all that:
- A really good quality program,
- Great support,
- Easy to understand "help" documents,
- An easy to use, easy to learn interface,
- Free, regular updates, available
from our website
|
Main
Software Page
for
an extended trial period.