With apologies to all who follow this blog hoping to read some perspective on industry trends, or deliverability best practices, or musings on business from our leader…today’s post is primarily for Delivra’s clients.

Our technical staff (Development + IT) is constantly making improvements to our software. Sometimes these changes are worthy of fanfare such as press releases, webcasts, and the like. Other changes are infrastructure-related: behind-the-scenes things that, if done right, aren’t noticed by users but contribute to system scalability and performance.

And then there are changes like the ones we deployed last night–not earth-shattering enough to alert the media, but noticeable enough to our user community that we can’t just let the occasion pass without saying SOMETHING:

New Header Options and Text Message tabs

Starting today, when you access a file in your Delivra HTML content library, you’ll see some additional features. The ability to edit the HTML message is familiar, but we’ve added the ability to specify From: and Subject: lines as well as to edit the text version of the content.

Previously, when setting up a new mailing, you’ve always had the ability to import HTML content from the Delivra content library. Then, you would fill in your Subject: line, and optionally change the default From: line, as well as the default Text Version of the mailing. Now, however, you can streamline the process of creating a new mailing by associating each of these fields–From, Subject, and Text Message–with your HTML content in advance, so that all can be imported into the mailing with the click of a single button.

But what about your existing content files?  They don’t have a From line, or a Subject line, or a Text Message part associated with them.  Will they still work?  Absolutely.  When creating a new mailing, the system will import these fields only if values exist for them.  If any these fields are left blank (which will be the case with all content created before today), then for those fields, the process you’re used to does not change at all.

Note that this change also applies to our Enterprise-level features for split-test and triggered mailings, making it possible to use files from your Delivra library when setting up these advanced mailing types (which require that a From: and Subject: line be specified as part of the imported content).

Also, when editing the Text Message field, there is an “HTML to Text” button in the upper right-hand corner.  If you’ve already built your HTML content, use this button as a shortcut to automatically generate a plain text version of the content without HTML tags.  You can then edit the auto-generated text version, if you want to customize what will be seen by any of your recipients whose email reader isn’t HTML-capable.

To all Delivra clients out there, we hope you find these changes helpful!  Contact your account manager or technical support if you have any questions.

And to any non-Delivra clients who made it this far, thanks for your interest.  We now return you to your regularly-scheduled emailchatr programming.

Chris Broshears | Product Development