Bulk Emailer

Font Icons Not Displaying in Internet Explorer IE 9 / 10

With the Bulk Emailer application we have used font icons to improve response and scalability with different devices. So far we have been happy with how they work using some boot strap code that is used for our user interface.

What we have noticed, and it’s no big surprise… Internet Explorer 9 and IE 10 will not display font icons correct.

What you should see is this:

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But ends up rendering like this:

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The Problem is WOFF Fonts on IIS

For IIS 6 and later, they do not handle WOFF fonts as icons for Internet Explorer. Most other browsers will support them, however IE like usual will behave like a black sheep.

There appears to be two solutions to this problem.

Solution 1 – Adding a MIME type to Internet Information Server IIS

Add the following MIME type to the IIS server settings.

  • .woff application/x-woff

    1. Open IIS Manager and navigate to the level you want to manage. For information about opening IIS Manager, see Open IIS Manager (IIS 7). For information about navigating to locations in the UI, see Navigation in IIS Manager (IIS 7).

    2. In Features View, double-click MIME Types.

    3. In the Actions pane, click Add.

    4. In the Add MIME Type dialog box, type a file name extension in the File name extension text box. For example, type .xyz.

    5. Type a MIME type in the MIME type text box. For example, type application/octet-stream.

    6. Click OK.

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Solution 2 – Adding some code to the web.config

A lot of people don’t have access to configure IIS in DotNetNuke, so you can add the following to the web.config.

Under the yellow below add the green lines

<system.webServer>
    <staticContent>
       <mimeMap fileExtension=”.woff” mimeType=”application/x-font-woff” />
    </staticContent>
  </system.webServer>

This should get you out of trouble.

Bulk Emailer–Customer Review

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I wanted to place this review on the DNN store but there is no review button in my download page for your product. It may be because it is an old order or product version. Please would you turn it on so I can post it and feel free to post it with my name on your site.

Regards

Richard Sletcher

If you have not yet used the InteractiveWebs email module you don’t know what you are missing. It is spectacular. The system is vast and would require a manual to list all the super cool features but let me give you some of my highlights.

  1. The user interface is clean and extremely user friendly.
  2. You are able to send SMS and email
  3. The inclusion of MyTokens allows you to personalize at a whole new level. Let me rave for a moment…

Imagine you have a list of restaurant clients containing FirstName, LastName, BirthDay, FoodPreference. You could send out an email like this…

Dear [MyToken:FirstName]

Your birthday is coming up in [MyToken:DaysToBirthday] and we would like to help you celebrate by offering you a 20% on [MyToken:MealPreference]. 

Regards

Richard

… Get the idea?

The best part is that you can automate the entire process. You simply build a list of all people having a birthday in 5 days time and then tell the email to run every day. Each day the system builds a list of people with upcoming birthdays and sends an email or SMS all driven from your internal data. 

  1. You can schedule the emails to run in intervals as small as a seconds apart and as large as a years apart.
  2. And the best of all… The InteractiveWebs team is totally on the ball when it comes to support.

OK… ENOUGH! 

This is a killer module and I recommend that you take the time to try it out.

Richard – one seriously happy InteractiveWebs customer!

Bulk Email Messaging and Bounce Back Monitoring

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The Bulk Email module for DotNetNuke has a feature known as Bounce Email Monitoring, and it is probably a good idea to understand what it does and how it does it so we can explain how best to configure it.

Sending a Bulk Email Message

When an email message is generated using the DotNetNuke Bulk Email Module, a list of all the email addresses that you have selected from multiple sources is generated into a database.

The lists that you select can include.

  • Website Users
  • Custom Lists that you import
  • Microsoft CRM Marketing Lists
  • Imported contacts from email programs
  • Custom typed email address

Once the list is complied, email addresses are removed.

  • Duplications
  • Email addresses on the unsubscribed list
  • Email addresses on the bounce email list (that meet the requirements set)

Then the email messages are sent out and ticked off as being sent.

You can see that bounced email addresses will only be removed if they are on the bounced email list, and have bounced to a count matched the settings configured.

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How the Bounce Email List is Generated and Counted

Periodically, the module will use the setting for the POP 3 account to look for email messages that it can add as a bounce. To do this, it will download all messages in the mailbox and look using some complex searching tools for email messages that appear to have bounced back from a failed send attempt.

Unfortunately email servers report bounce messages in different ways, so the code that reads the email messages and looks for bounce backs is long and complex. For this reason, the process of finding bounce messages should be kept to a minimum to reduce the load on the server.

Reduce Load

The best way to reduce load is to minimise the number of mail messages that the process needs to check.

The best way to do this is three fold.

  1. Send email from a unique email address that suggests no normal communication should run through that account. noreply@domain.com is my suggestion. That way the only email messages in that mailbox should only ever be bounced messages.
  2. Delete processes messages. The module can do this for you, but if the mailbox is a normal account, then ensure it is basically kept empty.
  3. Manually delete messages that are not bounce messages. If you intent to use a general account, then you should keep it as free as possible from general communications.

What happens if you don’t do this?

The process of downloading thousands of email messages, checking them all and processing them all can take hours. It will put a huge load on both the web server and your email server. It will increase your data transfer costs both on your web and email server.

So follow the suggestions and the result should be clean and fast.

Want to know more about email messaging in DotNetNuke.

DotNetNuke Bulk Email on WebFarm Support Added

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Today we have added support to the DotNetNuke Bulk Emailer module for WebFarms.

We have identified a feature of Bulk Emailer for DotNetNuke that has caused some issues with the running of the module on a WebFarm.

There is an automatic enable feature that checks when you start a bulk email message that the scheduler for the module in the Host / Scheduler is enabled. If it is not enabled, the module will enable it.

The Problem

With WebFarms there are two processes that run at the same time.

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This will cause duplication of sending email messages.

The solution is easy… just disable one of the schedule processes. However this will be automatically re-enabled by the module.

The Fix

To solve this we have added an option to the Bulk Emailer Settings. This option enables you to tick that you are using a WebFarm, stopping the automatic enabling of iWebs BulkEmailer EmailSchedule process.

Additional Steps Required

After you enable WebFarm mode, you will need to go into the Host Scheduler processes and disable all but one of the multiple processes for the iWebs BulkEmailer EmailSchedule.

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The result will be that only one of the schedulers run and only one email message will be sent.

DotNetNuke Bulk Emailer URL’s Broken

 

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If you are using the Advanced Email Module for DotNeTNuke, called bulk emailer, and you find that the links you place in your emails are not working when they arrive as an email. Then the fix is simple.

In the Bulk Emailer Settings Menu

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Click on the option to Update Link

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This will force the module to operate on the URL that you are currently working with on the site. It is necessary when you install the module in a dev URL and then try to operate through another URL such as a final domain name url.

The help for the item reads:

If you change the domain name that this module is operating on, then you should click ‘Update Links’ to reset the base URL for Email Tracking, Unsubscription and View Online.

Email Statics and Campaign Monitoring

imageWe have improved the functionality in our Bulk Email module for dotnetnuke, to now allow the sorting of the stat view by the column headings.

Click the “Read Time” heading, and you will sort by read time. etc.

Additionally there is an option to export to excel.

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This will allow the instant export of the campaign results into an excel spread sheet for later analysis.

 

 

imageUnder the view statics, we have added the tracking of link URL’s used in the message, and a total for the number of links clicked.