Depending on how you have implemented StrongMail, it may make sense to create a limited access user account. This will allow you to setup processes that can harvest information from the StrongMail application log files.

Here's how to do it:

1.) Create the following group with the groupadd command.

$ groupadd -g 5000 smuser

2.) Use the useradd command to create the following user account in the home directory.

$ useradd -u 5000 -g 5000 -md /home/smuser -c "Strongmail Linux User " -s /bin/bash smuser

$ cat /etc/passwd
$ cat /etc/group

Review the changes you have made to these files, there should be lines at the bottom beginning with the string smuser.

3.) Assign initial passwords to both accounts. For user smuser assign the password of smuser (type smuser in at this point - lowercase no quotes)

$ passwd smuser
Changing password for smuser
New Password:
BAD PASSWORD: it is based upon a dictionary word

Retype New Password:
$

4.) Logout of the StrongMail system.

$ logout

5.) Test the account you have just created by logging in as user smuser with a password of smuser. IMPORTANT: Once you confirm that the user is functioning properly, change the password again to insure that it is secure.

6.) Repeat steps 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 for each additional user account to be created. Note that linux expects the home directory name (/home/smuser1) to be identical with the username (smuser1), the last argument to the
useradd command.

7.) To allow read only access to the strongmail/log directory for read only access, the world permissions of Read/eXecute must be granted to both directories.

Existing Permissions for the directories strongmail and strongmail/log are:

Perms      Owner       Group       Name
drwxrwx--- strongmail strongmail strongmail
drwxrwx--- strongmail strongmail log

and should be changed to the following:

Perms       Owner       Group       Name
drwxrwxr-x strongmail strongmail strongmail
drwxrwxr-x strongmail strongmail log

$ cd /data1
$ chmod 775 strongmail
$ cd /data1/strongmail
$ chmod 775 log

Special thanks to Norm DeValliere for helping out with this post.

Each release of StrongMail EAS and Message Studio goes through a rigorous testing and certification process. From the software engineers who unit test their code to the quality assurance engineers who hammer on the application in every way they can think of to try to break it, StrongMail software gets put through the wringer in order to make sure that our customers get the most robust product possible.

Unfortunately, there are just some things that we cannot reproduce in our testing environment. For that, we need the help of our customers. We need customers to put StrongMail EAS and Message Studio through real-world trials, including high-volume and high-frequency sending, very large data sources and advanced targeting queries.

As we get closer to the release of StrongMail EAS and Message Studio 4.2, we are looking for customers who are willing to install the Beta software and test it out using their own templates, mailings, and process. Testing those types of scenarios will make sure that we have captured any remaining issues before the final certification process.

What, you ask, would make someone want to participate in the Beta program? Well, there are many reasons, including

• Early access to new features, enhancements, and bug fixes
• Opportunity to provide real-time feedback and have direct influence on the software
• Extra support from StrongMail for installations and addressing reported issues
• Test new software in advance of its availability
  

Below is a short list of some of the new features that will be available to 4.2 Beta program participants

• Numerous usability enhancements
• New EAS clustering options
• New and improved APIs
• New dynamic content testing engine
• Enhanced standard reporting options
• Business Intelligence Server integration for advanced and ad-hoc reporting
  

If you are interested in being 4.2 Beta program participant, contact us at product@strongmail.com.

This will probably be the last pun that I use to announce the release of a new version of StrongMail EAS and Message Studio (who am I kidding? It's not the last time).

I am excited to announce that the latest release of StrongMail EAS and Message Studio software is now available. This is an exciting release with many new features and security enhancements, including certification on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, versions 4.4, 4.5, and 4.6.

You can download the new version from the StrongMail FTP site. Just download the installation file(s), unpack them and then install at your convenience. Specific instructions for installation are included in the README file. For questions or for further assistance, please contact StrongMail Support.

Included below are details about many (but not all) of the big enhancements.

EAS

• A new HighPriority mailing class has been added that allows Message Studio users to specify high priority for specific mailings.
• Load balancing across Virtual IPs. Users can now distribute the load across IPs within a Virtual Server Group by designating a percentage of the total volume of messages to be sent through a particular IP address.
• A new Feedback Loop report is now available. This report displays the count of FBLs received, categorized by ISPs.
• A new failure category (8xxx) has been added for invalid addresses.

Message Studio

• Ability to send mailings using Normal or High-Priority (related to the EAS enhancement above).
• Ability to filter and sort templates in the Content tab of create/edit mailing screens. This feature allows users to include or exclude approved/unapproved templates and to sort the template pick list by last modified date.
• Ability to do mass deletes on all list screens. This allows users to select one or more rows in any screen that displays multiple items and then click the delete button to remove all selected items at once.
• Ability to copy a template or a content block from one department to another department within the same organization.
• Campaign SmartLists: the most mailing assets (data sources, targets, lists, templates, mailings, etc) can now be assigned to a campaign. When a user does this, a new SmartList will be configured that contains the assets assigned to the campaign.
• StrongTools menu: users can add a web application to be displayed under the StrongTools drop down menu and when clicked will be opened inside a Message Studio tab.
• Enhanced the scheduling options for recurring mailings to allow very flexible options for launch cadences.

The README files have much more information about all of the new features and bug fixes in this release, so be sure to review it to get all of the details.

Got an idea for an enhancement you would like to see in a future release of EAS or Message Studio? Send an email to product@strongmail.com.

Despite it being April Fool's Day, this is no joke. It's 4.1 on 4/1.

StrongMail EAS and Message Studio 4.1 are now available for download. These latest releases of the StrongMail software have a lot a great new features that will appeal to a wide range of users. Customers using Message Studio 3.2.x will be especially interested in the new Migration Tool that we have included which will make the transition from version 3 to version 4 a snap!

Here's a quick breakdown of some of the new features in each version--

StrongMail EAS 4.1

• Overflow to Disk
  Customers can now configure their injecting applications to send SMTP messages to a StrongMail server at a high sustained rate. The StrongMail server buffers the incoming messages to disk to avoid sending server busy messages back to the injecting application. There are two modes, Memory Queue and Disk Queue, that users can choose based on their business requirements.
  

• Pause/Resume Message Assembly API
  StrongMail has added the ability for applications to request that message assembly be paused temporarily but still allow the StrongMail server to continue to accept transactional mailing SEND requests and queue them up until a resume request is received. This enables users to make changes to the transactional mailing without having to shut down the entire transactional messaging process.
  

Message Studio 4.1

• Transactional Mailings
  Customers now have the ability to create, manage, and test transactional mailings through the Message Studio user interface.
  

• User-Defined Asset Lists
  Most menu categories now support user-defined lists. Users can select items and either right-click or drag-and-drop items into the list to create your a custom collection for browsing and organizing data.
  

• Expanded External Data Sources
  This release introduces support for connecting to the following external databases: PostgreSQL, Sybase, IBM DB/2.
  

• Automated Web Analytics Tags
  The Add Tracking Tags screen has been enhanced to allow users to easily add parameters to the tracking URLs that are utilized by web analytics applications. Users can create their own tags or modify the default tags for the following products: Omniture, Coremetrics, and Google Analytics. This feature works with any link-based web analytics software.
  

• Target Editor Enhancements
  The Target Query editor now supports grouping terms with parentheses and allows the of deleting specific terms from a query. Additionally, a data preview button allows users to browse the values contained in a database column and select the value into the query.
  

• Migration Tool
  A new migration tool enables the migration of data from existing Message Studio installations from versions 3.2.3 and 3.2.4 to version 4.1 (upgrades from 4.0 do not need to migrate any data). The migration utility is automatically invoked when you run the setup script for Message Studio 4.1 using the upgrade mode.
  

These are just the highlights. There's much more in each of these releases than I have room to list. If you are a current StrongMail customer, visit the Support Portal today or contact StrongMail Support to get ready for Version 4.1! If you are not a current StrongMail customer and want more information about version 4.1, contact our Sales team to learn more.

In Message Studio 4.0, users now have the ability to easily upload all of their HTML and image files all at once. The new Media Server feature will unpack the zipped files and automatically publish all of the images to StrongMail media servers or third-party servers so that when recipients get a message, the images will be served from the specified location.

The HTML template can also contain absolute (src="http://www.myserver.com/images/2008/picture.gif") or relative (src="images/picture.gif") paths for images. When the template is uploaded, Message Studio will scan the code for all image references. For any images that have relative paths, Message Studio will automatically convert the path to point to the specified image server.

To get started with using the media server in Message Studio 4.0, all you have to do is go to the Administration module in the left navigation panel and create connections to internal or external media servers. You can leverage the StrongMail tracking server (either on-board or off-board) as a media server or you can use a third-party server to host your images. In addition, you can set up a group of servers as a single media server for use with a load balancer.

When you set up a media server, you can designate the server as either writable or read-only. With a writable media server, when you upload a zip file with the HTML and images in it, Message Studio will upload the images into a temporary folder until you specify the media server. If you create a connection to a read-only media server, you must upload images directly to the media server outside of the Message Studio interface. If the media server configuration includes multiple servers, Message Studio will upload the file to each server.

Once you’ve set up a media server configuration in Message Studio, you can upload a zip file (containing images and a single HTML template) or an HTML template that includes image references on the Template import screen. Once you specify the media server the template should use, Message Studio will automatically update any relative image links within your HTML template to reflect the media server URL that you specified during set up.

That's it.

Now, when you preview the email template during mailing setup or when you launch the mailing and recipients view the email, the images in the template will be served by the media server.

For most of our customers, email is a mission critical component of their business. Along with that status comes the need for security. StrongMail is designed with security in mind, utilizing the HTTPS protocol for accessing the system.

However, utilizing HTTPS requires that users install 3rd party SSL certificates from a Certificate Authority (CA) to validate the secure installation. The use of HTTPS and SSL certificates enables the system to negotiate a stateful connection. This process insures that the originating system is who it says it is and creates a secure connection between the server and user's browser.

SSL certificates are not free and if an organization feels that their StrongMail system has been implemented with sufficient security through architecture and procedures, they may opt not to purchase an SSL certificate from a CA.

In this case, users will be presented with warnings (see example below) from their browser that the certificate is either missing or does not match the system that they are attempting to connect to. Most users find these SSL warnings to be a nuisance. There is also the possibility that some users may be confused by the warnings, which can generate unnecessary Help Desk calls.

There is no harm in using the default certificates, but many users complain about them. Additionally, some browsers make it difficult to navigate to a site with a questionable certificate. Your IT team may want to replace the default certificate with their own, to provide a more comfortable security experience to their users.

The following procedures should be used for creating and installing a self-signed certificate for the StrongMail UI, and importing that certificate into Internet Explorer 7 to eliminate the certificate errors.

1.) Login to your StrongMail Server as root, change directory to /tmp

$ cd /tmp

======= Generating the SSL Certificate =======

2. Create a private key:


$ openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 1024
Generating RSA private key, 1024 bit long modulus
....++++++
....++++++
e is 65537 (0x10001)
Enter pass phrase for server.key:
Verifying - Enter pass phrase for server.key:


Create a Certificate Signing Request (CSR). You will be prompted to input information for key generation. The Common Name you use must match the hostname you use to connect to the StrongMail UI


******
This example has generic information, you will need to replace with your own site specific details.
******


$ openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr
Enter pass phrase for server.key:
You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
-----
Country Name (2 letter code) [GB]:US
State or Province Name (full name) [Berkshire]:State
Locality Name (eg, city) [Newbury]:City
Organization Name (eg, company) [My Company Ltd]:Business Inc.
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:Support
Common Name (eg, your name or your server's hostname) []:hostname.domain.com
Email Address []:userid@domain.com

Please enter the following 'extra' attributes to be sent with your certificate request
A challenge password []:
An optional company name []:


******
NOTE: This is an example from one of the StrongMail Inc, test systems.
******


$ openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr
Enter pass phrase for server.key:
You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
-----
Country Name (2 letter code) [GB]:US
State or Province Name (full name) [Berkshire]:California
Locality Name (eg, city) [Newbury]:Redwood Shores
Organization Name (eg, company) [My Company Ltd]:StrongMail Systems Inc.
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:Support
Common Name (eg, your name or your server's hostname) []:sup5.strongmailsystems.com
Email Address []:support@strongmailsystems.com


3.) Make a copy of your private key before you remove the pass phrase:


$ cp server.key server.key.org


4.) Remove the pass phrase from the private key:


$ openssl rsa -in server.key.org -out server.key
Enter pass phrase for server.key.org:
writing RSA key


5.) Generate the self-signed certificate:



$ openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt
Signature ok
subject=/C=US/ST=State/L=City/O=Business Inc./OU=Support/CN=hostname.domain.com/emailAddress=userid@domain.com
Getting Private key


===== Installing the Self-Signed Certificate into StrongMail =====


6.) Backup the original private key and certificate:


$ cd /data1/strongmail/thirdparty/httpd/conf/ssl/
$ cp server.key server.key.old
$ cp server.crt server.crt.old


7.) Replace the private key and certificate with the files recently created:


$ cp /tmp/server.crt .
cp: overwrite `./server.crt'? y
$ cp /tmp/server.key .
cp: overwrite `./server.key'? y


8.) Restart the StrongMail UI:


$ cd /data1/strongmail/strongmail-ui
$ ./sm-ui stop
$ ./sm-ui start


====== Installing the Certificate into Internet Explorer =======


9.) Launch Internet Explorer


10.) Browse to the StrongMail UI in Internet Explorer 7


11.) Select 'Continue to this website' when you receive the Certificate error. You should see a red Certificate Error to the right of the address bar. Click the Certificate error and select 'View certificates.'


12.) Click 'Install certificate,' then click 'Next' on the Welcome window of the Certificate Import Wizard.


13.) Click 'Next' on Certificate Store, leave the radio button on 'Automatically select...'


14.) Click 'Finish,' you may receive a pop-up to confirm that you wish to import the certificate, if so, click 'Yes'


15.) 'OK' the complete notification, and the Certificate window.


16.) Restart IE, browse to the StrongMail UI, and you should no longer receive the Certificate error. 

A common question that we get from customers is "How do I calculate the bandwidth that StrongMail is using or requires when sending messages? They typically want to see how much bandwidth is being used or are
planning to expand their email programs and want to know how much bandwidth will be needed to accommodate their new mailing volumes and schedule.

For starters, here's the formula for computing bandwidth:

Bandwidth in bits per second = [ (msgs/hr) x (msg size in bits) ] /
(secs/hr)

If the average size of a message is 4kb and you want to send 250K messages per hour, then the required outbound message bandwidth could be calculated as follows:

[ 250,000 msgs/hr x (4 x 1024 x 8) bits ]/ 3600 sec = 2275600 bits/sec
= 2.28 Mbps

So if you have an average message size of 4kb, you would require 2.28 Mbps of bandwidth in order to send without being constrained by your pipe.

If you want to determine how many messages you can send given the size of your current pipe, you can use the following formula to figure out the maximum number of messages that can be sent per hour. In the example
below, we will be using an available outbound pipe of 24Mbps, and the average message size is 24kb

[X msgs/hr x (24 x 1024 x 8)bits] / (3,600 sec/hr) = 24Mbps

X = [ 24 x 1024 x 1024 x 3600 ] / [24 x 1024 x 8]

X = 468,000 msgs/hr

With an average message size of 24kb and available bandwidth of 24Mbps, a maximum of 468,000 messages per hour would be expected output in an ideal scenario.

Notice that I said, "In an ideal scenario." When making these types of calculations, the formulas mentioned above assume 100% availability of the pipe, which in reality doesn't happen. To account for overhead and
network congestion, you should lop off 10-15% of the bandwidth figure (or more if your pipe is shared with other functions besides email sending) you get from the calculations in order to get a more realistic number.

Here's a handy Excel spreadsheet that can help you determine sending times with a variety of different standard pipe sizes. You just plug in the size of the message, number of messages and the utilization factor and the spreadsheet does the rest!

Bandwidth_Calc.xls

Special thanks go out to the StrongMail Support team and Luis Rojas for their assistance with this posting.

While email is obviously a mission-critical channel for all StrongMail customers, it typically is not the only channel that they use to market to customers and prospects. Online ads, affiliate programs, partner programs, and their own website are just a few examples of other methods that marketers use to communicate with subscribers, customers, prospects and the public at large.

As with StrongMail EAS and Message Studio, each of these other channels provides some level of reporting data. For the marketer, that can mean a lot of work to aggregate, view and analyze all of that data in a coherent and holistic way. Enter the web analytics products.

There are several web analytics products out there. The one's that we hear about most frequently are Omniture, Coremetrics, Google, and WebTrends, but there are others out there. For the most part, all of these products work in the same way--by attaching tracking variables to the URL that are passed to the web analytics engine when a link is clicked. That allows the click data to be captured both by the originating system and the web analytics system.

You can set up analytic tags in StrongMail or Message Studio by creating a content block file that contains the appropriate information for the analytics tag. Here are two examples:

OMNITAG {
cid=##SERIAL_NUMBER##&rid=##USERID##
}

GOOGTAG {
utm_source=email&utm_campaign=##segment##
}

In the first example, there are two parameters that would be included based on StrongMail system tokens--Serial Number and User ID. In the second example, the campaign parameter is passed a value from the mailer's data source.

Next, you just need to append the analytics tag token to each link you want track in your mailing. Here's an example:

http://www.domain.com?##OMNITAG##

If you want to include the StrongMail click tracking, you could set up the URLs like this:

##CLICKTAG##http://www.domain.com?##OMNITAG##

You can do this manually when you are creating the content or add the StrongMail clicktag token(s) automatically in Message Studio using the Add Clicktags feature. Now you will be able to see the click data in your web analytics dashboard, along with other metrics from all of the other streams that you tag. Gathering and analyzing the data in this fashion can reveal patterns and segments that may not be readily apparent when viewing the metrics of an individual stream.

To make the process of adding web analytics tracking tags even easier for Message Studio users, we are adding the ability to manage web analytics tags within the UI in an upcoming release. Message Studio users will be able to configure the system with default tracking tags, as well as have the option to utilize unique analytic tracking tags. Users will be able to select the default parameters and apply them individually or globally to all of the links in an mailing or modify the parameters for special cases (promotions, partnerships, etc) on the fly (as seen in the screen shot below)

Here's a sneak peek at the new Add Clicktags screen in Message Studio 4.1:





























Within the Add Clicktags screen, you can now apply pre-configured web analytics tags to individual or all links within the template. Message Studio also provides a way to modify the web analytics tag just for a particular link in the message. Business users now will have a flexible, easy-to-use method for inserting the appropriate tags in their email tracking links.
 

In my last post, I introduced the concept of using StrongMail's token capabilities as a way to add relevance to your messages. But as I alluded to in that post, tokens are versatile tools that in addition to inserting personalization data, can also aid in managing and modifying your content with minimal effort.

I'm going to illustrate two ways that you can use tokens, along with content blocks to minimize the amount of work you need to do to get your mailings out each time. The first one involves locking down the template and just editing the copy. The second one makes certain parts of the template reusable across multiple mailings.

METHOD 1: Locking Down the Template

Many of you out there have invested heavily in your email template(s). You've had designers re-do the layout and spent countless hours and dollars getting the design just the way you want it. All that remains for each mailing is plugging in the content specific to each mailing.

Now, you can edit the whole template for each mailing, which can introduce rendering issues and/or template breakage or you can identify which parts of the template change for each mailing and tokenize them. Then all you have to do is upload the part that has changed as a content block and reference it using tokens.

This keeps the layout HTML stable while letting you or your copy editors fiddle with the copy as much as you want. When you are done, just upload the content block file and send a test email to see how it all gets assembled. Using this method, you could even have multiple people working on different parts of the copy without having to worry about one person over-writing another.

This method does take a little extra effort to compartmentalize the template and set up the token/content block schema, but that's a one-time cost and moving to this method can greatly improve your content editing process, especially if your template has a lot of moving parts.

METHOD 2: Reusable Pieces

Maybe you don't have a single template that you use for all of your mailings, but you do have parts that get re-used over and over in different mailing. Things like the mast head or side bar or unsubscribe text. If that's the case, you can start tokenizing the elements that get reused from mailing to mailing.

There are two ways to approach tokenizing the content elements. The first involves creating a single content block file that has all of the reusable elements in it. This option has the benefit of keeping things simple; there's only one one file to keep track of and everything is all in one place. The trade-off is that when a change needs to be made to one element in the content block, you have to edit the file that has ALL of the elements, which could increase the risk of unintentionally modifying one of the other elements.

The second option involves putting each reusable element into its own content block file. Going this route protects you against accidentally corrupting other elements and also lets you use the individual files as building blocks, but it also means keeping track of more files for each mailing.

Once you select how you want to manage the reusable elements, you can easily call those assets from the content block(s) using tokens and then, as in method 1 above, focus on the parts of the email template that change from mailing to mailing.

Whichever method you use, the goal is to make executing your mailings easier, while providing flexibility and control over your content. If you need more information about how to use tokens and content blocks, take a look at Chapter 6, Customizing a Mailing, in the StrongMail System Administrator's Manual.

Many email marketers want to encourage their subscribers to reach out to people that they know and encourage them to either subscribe to the newsletter or go to the website. This can be accomplished two ways--the recipient uses the forward feature of their email software to send a copy of the email to others or they click on a link in the email which sends another email to the address(es) that the original recipient enters.

The first method is certainly the easiest for both the marketer and the recipient, but it has several shortcomings:

• No tracking
  Every click on the forwarded email looks like a click from the original recipient
  
  
• Lack of control over the offer
  If you are segmenting your list, recipients may be receiving content or offers that are not matched to their preferences or for which they are not eligible
  
  
• Unintentional unsubscribes
  When a recipient forwards their email to another person, the links for the original recipient remain in the email, which could lead to the unintentional removal (or profile change if there is a subscription management link in the email) of the original recipient if one of the forwardees accidentally or intentionally clicks on the unsubscribe link
  
  
• Broken templates
  While using the forward function of an email application is fine for sending primarily text correspondence, it can wreak havoc with the design and layout of commercial HTML email, which doesn't present your message or your brand in the best light

What marketers want is the second option--an easy way for their recipients to initiate a new message to be sent to people they know that will increase the opportunity that the new recipient will either sign up to receive future communications or make a purchase on a website. This is commonly referred to as Forward to a Friend (FTAF). The StrongMail Transactional Server can be used to facilitate FTAF capabilities in concert with a standard mailing sent via either StrongMail Server or Message Studio. Here's a high level view of how it would work:

1. Set up a standard mailing in Message Studio or StrongMail Server
2. Set up a mailing on the StrongMail Transactional Server with the same template/header (or a different one if you want to send a separate mail to FTAF recipients) 
3. Create the following web pages and host them on a web server:
   1. FTAF landing page with form elements to collect information on who to forward the email to
   2. Confirmation page to notify the sender that their FTAF email was successfully sent
   3. Error page to notify the sender that there was a problem with sending the FTAF email 
4. Configure the form on FTAF landing page to send an API call to the Transactional Server to send the transactional mailing to the recipient(s) indicated in the form
5. Place a link in the standard mailing template that takes recipients to the FTAF landing page
   

In addition to the standard setup described above, there are a number of variables that you could modify to enhance how the FTAF works:

• Control the number of FTAF recipients permitted from a single FTAF request to reduce abuse and spam complaints
  
• Determine whether the same FTAF landing page could be used for multiple mailings (reduces the effort required to execute FTAF mailings)
  
• Design the FTAF landing page and the forwarded email to permit the original recipient to include a comment to the FTAF recipient
  
• Decide whether the FTAF recipient receives an identical or modified version of the email
  

There are many ways to configure FTAF using the StrongMail Transactional Server. Identify what you want to accomplish with your FTAF program and then choose the option that best suits your needs.