Sendy For Email Marketing

Sendy 3.0 is out with some neat useful features.

  • List Segmentation is here!
    list-segmentation.gif

    Research shows sending emails to targeted segments not only improves open and click through rates, revenue can increase by more than 25%. Sendy now enables you to create dynamic segments for any list. Filter subscribers from any list based on conditions you define using default fields like ‘name’ and ‘email’ or any of your custom fields. Create multiple conditions and group them using ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ for each segment. Once you’ve created your segments, you can send targeted email campaigns to these segments in addition to lists. You can even choose segments to ‘exclude’ from your sends. Sendy just got really powerful!

  • ‘Exclude list’ feature!
    exclude-lists2.gif

    You can now select which list(s) you want to exclude from your email campaign. A good use case would be - say you want to send an email campaign to your ‘Prospects’ list. However, some subscribers from the ‘Customers’ list may exist in that list as well. Now you can exclude the ‘Customers’ list so that anyone from this list that may appear in the ‘Prospects’ list will not receive your email campaign.

  • More brand user privileges!
    client-privileges.png

    You want to have full control of what your client can or cannot access, now you can. Set whether the brand user can access campaigns, templates, lists & subscribers or campaign reports.

  • The custom ‘Unsubscribe confirmation page’ URL in list settings now has a new variable %s that converts into a full ‘re-subscribe’ URL. For example if you set an ‘Unsubscribe confirmation page’ URL for your list like http://domain.com/unsubscribed/?resubscribe_url=%s, you can include a ‘Re-subscribe’ link in your page that uses the resubscribe_url GET parameter’s value as the re-subscribe URL.
  • Implemented honeypot for subscription forms to prevent spambot signups
  • The 'totals' shown on screen when selecting multiple lists in the ‘Define recipients’ page are now calculated using a MySQL query
  • Changed scheduling calendar to a new and improved date picker
  • Links that starts with ‘ftp://' are now excluded from link tracking alongside ‘mailto://', ‘tel://' and ‘sms://'.
  • Show more helpful information when all types of autoresponders have been created
  • Links that starts with ‘ftp://' are now excluded from link tracking alongside ‘mailto://', ‘tel://' and ‘sms://'.
  • If a user signs up to a double opt in list with an email address that ‘Bounced’ or ‘Marked as spam’ and attempts to signup with the same email address again, the double opt-in confirmation email will not be re-sent. The same email address will show up as ‘Bounced’ or ‘Marked as spam’ instead of ‘Unconfirmed’ in the list.
  • Added checks for ‘simplexml’ extension in server compatibility checklist
  • Display instructional error message in-app when ‘simplexml’ is not installed on the server
  • Removed the word ‘remaining’ in front of ‘X recipients’ in define recipients page if user is not using Amazon SES to send email campaigns
  • Removed ‘ENGINE=InnoDB’ from ‘CREATE TABLE’ queries as some MySQL server does not support InnoDB
 
Cannot get my Sendy working :(
After submit on the logon page, it immediately returns back to the logon page again.
 
Sounds like issue with nginx rewrites.
Sendy is installed into the root of my sub-domain.
This is what I have ...

Code:
## Start Sendy

location / {
        index index.php index.html;
        try_files $uri $uri/ $uri.php?$args;
}

location /l/ {
        rewrite ^/l/([a-zA-Z0-9/]+)$ /l.php?i=$1 last;
}

location /t/ {
        rewrite ^/t/([a-zA-Z0-9/]+)$ /t.php?i=$1 last;
}

location /w/ {
        rewrite ^/w/([a-zA-Z0-9/]+)$ /w.php?i=$1 last;
}

location /unsubscribe/ {
        rewrite ^/unsubscribe/(.*)$ /unsubscribe.php?i=$1 last;
}

location /subscribe/ {
        rewrite ^/subscribe/(.*)$ /subscribe.php?i=$1 last;
}

## End Sendy
 
That looks good to me and is what I have for a subdomain sendy install. If you want to give me access to server I can help troubleshoot.
 
I've been slacking lately on my newsletter.. I sent this on Monday night:

1502891403845.webp

I'm pretty happy, as this newsletter only had one "thread" referenced as it was somewhat of a hot topic over the past year or so. So perhaps that benefits the open count.. I'm not sure yet.
 
I've been slacking lately on my newsletter.. I sent this on Monday night:

View attachment 155901

I'm pretty happy, as this newsletter only had one "thread" referenced as it was somewhat of a hot topic over the past year or so. So perhaps that benefits the open count.. I'm not sure yet.
Impressive open rate. Can you share the template you sent?

I've done 3 email shoots to around 30,000 people so far. 1 had a 12% open rate and the most recent was only 4%. It makes me wonder if they are all being delivered. Is it possible to check delivery rates? My list is clean but not sent to much. I suspect though something is wrong but not sure how to troubleshoot. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.
 
Look at the numbers... small and likely, extremely clean and focused to those who are reading it.

There is no point sending email to 30k of email with 5% opening it. Send a few, and then export each send to find that the majority did not open any of what you sent. So remove them... you're better to send to 2k of users who want to read your email with a 60% + open rate, than 30k with a 4% open rate.

Use Amazon SES and you will get a near perfect, if not perfect, delivery rate.
 
Look at the numbers... small and likely, extremely clean and focused to those who are reading it.

There is no point sending email to 30k of email with 5% opening it. Send a few, and then export each send to find that the majority did not open any of what you sent. So remove them... you're better to send to 2k of users who want to read your email with a 60% + open rate, than 30k with a 4% open rate.

Use Amazon SES and you will get a near perfect, if not perfect, delivery rate.
Certainly. I use Amazon SES for sending. The list of 30k is from a site I've run for 10 years, the first 8 on vBulletin which sent from my server and didn't deliver well, but didn't find out until 3 years ago. I've cleaned the list, removed bounces, etc. If the delivery rate is high, low unsubscribe rate, but low open rate, what does this imply? Poorly written subject line?

I'm unsure why the open rate is so low if the delivery rate is near 100%. Any further advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.
 
People leave your site. I doubt you have 30k active membership, if that is your membership reflection. My site is 11 years old, and my newest member registered with id 44720. I have 17200 members, who actually have posted at least one message. All the rest, have been deleted for inactivity over the years.

Big difference between those two numbers.

From that 17k, the open rate was around 9%. I cleaned that list over time down to around 2500 members actively reading. That provided a 90% plus read rate each send.

People use email accounts just for online nonsense, so their real one isn't bombarded with nonsense. People move things into junk so they never see further sends. People stop using email accounts / accounts they created just for your sites registration.

Export the last 3 sends, anyone who didn't read all 3, delete them. Do that periodically. After a year you will have a super clean list with high open rate, because only those who WANT your email will be reading it.
 
Export the last 3 sends, anyone who didn't read all 3, delete them. Do that periodically. After a year you will have a super clean list with high open rate, because only those who WANT your email will be reading it.
Good advice, thanks. How exactly do you check which members didn't open all 3?
 
I'm concerned emails aren't being delivered properly, though I'm using AWS so I assume they are.

I did a bulk message send to all members a few days after the mailing I mentioned above and said write back if you didn't get the email. Many members wrote back saying they never received it. How do you recommend I troubleshoot this?
Thanks!
 
I've had some slow days over the past few weeks, with daily posts around 8-15 a day.. which is bad. I sent a newsletter on Sunday and it sparked a nice return in user activity.. I averaged about 10 more posts that night after sending, but the next day I was over 50 posts for the day.

I've struggled keeping this momentum in the past, so I will try to keep it going.. Sendy is helping drive traffic, that's for sure!

60% opened on this last newsletter, with 30% clicking links.
 
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