The Mambo foundation is a volunteer, non-profit organization charged with the governance of the Mambo open source content management system.  Mambo is free software released under the GNU/General Public license and like all such projects, dealing with emails and organizational issues takes valuable time away from software development.   They use Help Desk to manage both time and resources more effectively.

Mambo developers must work in collaboration from many different locations which makes email key to their communication.   “Email is the key communication tool. The Mambo development team and the members of the Board of the Mambo Foundation are geographically distributed and work in a virtual, online environment.  All email that is not addressed to individuals is managed through the help desk.”  Directing email traffic through a central ticketing system allows multiple members to work together on the same issue if it is not specifically addressed to a particular individual.

Mambo foundation uses the knowledgebase in ActiveCampaign’s Help Desk Software to provide a central location for corporate documents that require routine turn over.  “For the management of Board affairs Help Desk has proven to be an ideal solution.  Previously, corporate documents were kept by officers of the Foundation and handed over to new officers following our annual elections of the Board. This meant that record keeping relied on the diligence of the individuals who handled those documents. Help Desk is used as a central repository and archive. By keeping all documents in the knowledgebase and keeping emails we now have accurate corporate records that are available to future Board members. This gives us confidence that we can not only meet our statutory obligations but also that institutional knowledge is retained for the future – two things that are extremely important and sometimes difficult to achieve in a volunteer environment.”     This improves efficiency and allows accountability that would otherwise be difficult to maintain.

“Volunteer, free software projects tend to have a reasonably high turnover in personnel. People work when they can, in their spare time, and often find it hard to commit their time in advance. By having a central document repository and by handling all email through the ticketing system it does not matter who is around and when. People can come into new roles and read what has happened previously and people can take leave for a few months while knowing that others can step in and take over handling of the enquiries.

“In the past, individuals took responsibility for one or more email accounts. There was no way the rest of the team could be certain that emails were being responded to in a timely manner and no way the team or Board could be certain it was receiving all information. By collecting all emails within the help desk the groups collectively have access to each email and the responses. This has made us more accountable and has improved our responsiveness to enquiries.

“Prior to installing Help Desk we also had issues due to the distributed, virtual team environment we work in. Team and Board members are located all over the world and not everyone has reliable internet connections. Some countries have high fees for bandwidth. This resulted in some Board members being reluctant to take on responsibility for handling email enquiries due to costs – especially as a lot of the email is spam. By using the helpdesk nobody needs to worry about the costs because email goes into the ticket system and is not downloaded to individual’s computers. If someone’s internet connection is down for awhile this is not a problem – responding is a collective responsibility and no longer a burden put on individuals.

“The Mambo Foundation has used SupportTrio for nine months now. The improvements in our responsiveness and productivity have been significant. Best of all, we now have more time to devote to developing the software.”

SupportTrio provides a central framework to allow Mambo Foundation address the challenge of working in an environment that requires the collaboration of volunteers working in different locations.  It also provides a means for maintaining efficiency and accountability in an environment that necessitates a high turnover rate.

Click here for more information about ActiveCampaign Help Desk Software.

Update: 1 Reason Not To Install Zend Optimizer

Since this article was published in May of 2008, ActiveCampaign has discontinued use of Zend Optimizer and Ioncube in favor of our own solutions to enhance the speed and security of our applications. Consequently, there is no longer any additional software that you need to install in order to use our products, and you now have full access to the source code of all of our software.

We believe our software can help your business to succeed. We believe this so much that we want  to give you the opportunity to try it out for free for 30 days and make your own decision:

• Click here for a free trial of Email Marketing
• Click here for a free trial of Survey Software
• Click here for a free trial of Help Desk
• Click here for a free trial of Knowledge Management
• Click here for a free trial of Live Chat

Original Instructions for Installing Zend Optimizer on Your Web Server

One of the ways that we increase the overall speed and security of our web-based software is by pre-compiling the PHP code. The tools that we use to do this are called Zend Optimizer and Ioncube. You actually only need one or the other in order to encode PHP scripts, and I’m not aware of any performance benefit that either one enjoys over the other. The only reason that we use both of these products is to provide maximum compatibility with all the different types of web hosts and servers that are out there. That’s why, when you visit the downloads page in our online help desk, you’re always asked which version of the software you’d like to download: Zend or Ioncube.

Most people who don’t produce or use a lot of web-based software have never heard of either of these products and get a little flustered when confronted with the question of which they should download. If you’re using a shared web hosting account or have an in-house server admin running your web server, then you have a simple one-step solution: pick up the phone, call the admin, and ask which one you can use

If you’re running your own server, it’s still very simple. The first thing to do is to find out if your server can already run Ioncube scripts, since if it can there are no additional steps for you. The way to find this out is to:

• download our test script
• unzip and upload it to your web directory
• and then open it up in a web browser

You’ll see something like this:

As you can see, my own local test server is not able to run Ioncube-encoded scripts without additional setup, because I’m using the latest version of PHP, which has broken dynamic loading. That’s no big deal, because I went ahead and installed the free Zend Optimizer with just a couple of clicks, and now I’ll show you how to do the same.

Download Zend Optimizer

If you find this part challenging, you probably shouldn’t be trying to run your own web server! 

What you need to do is to download the Zend Optimizer package onto your web server. You can get it from http://www.zend.com/en/products/guard/downloads, where you’ll need to select the appropriate package for your server. So first select the radio button labeled “Zend Optimizer” (not the one labeled “Zend Guard,”) and then you’ll find that the dropdown box becomes populated with a list of server types that Zend Optimizer is available for. The chances are very good that the type of server you are using is supported by Zend Optimizer. Remember, folks, you’re installing this on your web server, not on your own local computer (unless your web site is served from your local machine), so you want to be doing all this from the server, and to select the option that corresponds to the operating system running on the web server.

Before you are allowed to download, you’ll have to register for an account on zend.com on the next page. Once you’ve downloaded the software, all that is left is to install it on the server. The instructions for doing this will vary depending on the type of server that you use. If it is a Windows IIS server, just double-click on the installer .exe file and follow the instructions that appear on the screen. On any other type of system, including Mac OS X and any Linux or Unix variant, you’ll find that the installation package is compressed, so you first need to extract it.

On Linux or Unix servers

• Open up a terminal window or get yourself out to the command line. You can decompress the package by entering the following at the command line prompt:
  • gunzip -c <package name> | tar xf -
• Then, from inside the installer package directory that is created when the package is unzipped, type:
  • ./install.
• Now you’ll see a nice pretty graphical installation wizard that will walk you through setting up Zend Optimizer on your server.

On servers running Mac OS X

Installation on a server running OS X is a little more complicated that you might like it to be, but is still very doable. The most complicated part is basically just that you have to use the command line, which many OS X users are not very familiar with. However, you can find a very good tutorial for going through this process here [link removed since the article disappeared!).

Now put it to good use!

Once you’ve got Zend Optimizer installed on your server, you should be able to run Zend-encoded PHP scripts right away. So now just grab a copy of the Zend version of whichever ActiveCampaign software product you’ve purchased, and follow the installation instructions in the docs/install.txt file (you can also find the instructions in our knowledge base.)

If you run into any problems with the Zend Optimizer installation or if you get an error message saying that Zend Optimizer is not installed on your server, check the Zend website for troubleshooting tips.

A handful of Email Marketing users reported a slower archive with Email Marketing 4.7.  We tracked down the issue and 4.70.2 takes care of that along with a couple other issues.  The speed issue occured on certain systems and was often due to older installs that have been upgraded time and time again in the past.

We encourage all users to upgrade to 4.70.2 to increase the speed of the archive.  If you continue to have any issues please submit a ticket and we will assist you right away.

Tracking statistics is of central importance to users of Email Marketing email marketing. We have recently spent some time revamping our message archive so that you’ll never look at stats the same way. We started by changing the navigation and adding a tab-based menu for the archive. We then added some AJAX loading and auto-refreshing of all stats. In addition, we cleaned up how the graphs are displayed and added RSS feeds for all the major stats and improved the export capabilities. Download a copy of 4.70 to give it a try. Screenshots below:

We have been working on a large structural and design change to the Email Marketing message archive page. We plan to eliminate a lot of the common annoyances with this page and introduce a number of time saving features. It has been a while since the archive page has seen any design update. We have added features throughout the years, however these new features have lost some value by being hard to find/utilize.

Below you will see how the basic structure of the page will appear. There is still work to be done (both code and design) however the end result will be an extensive update in terms of usability and general work-flow. Viewing, analyzing, and exporting any and all relevant statistics should be quick and easy.

OLD

NEW

Do you have any feedback regarding the message archive page? Features missing, email design problems, etc..? Let us know!

As many of you may be aware – we have talked a lot about opening up some areas to allow for easier customizations along with the ability to retain certain customizations with upgrades. We have some exciting features and options coming in the future. The ability to easily upgrade without losing style and code changes is yet to come – but now you can access the majority of the source code for the public sections of Email Marketing, Help Desk, and Live Chat.

What does this mean? You now have access to the source code of the public pages / functions. You can now directly modify the subscriber add/edit functions, or work on the archive page for Email Marketing. Or you can adjust the ticket submit code in Help Desk. Or change how the Live Chat chat code works to authenticate and authorize a chat. The possibilities for customizations are endless.

To view a specific list of files/folders that have been unencoded click on one of the following links:

• Unencoded files in Email Marketing
• Unencoded files in Help Desk
• Unencoded files in Live Chat

As mentioned above – this is only the start of a number of new changes coming to our entire product line. Just let us know if you have any questions, comments, or feedback along the way!

How often to send mailings is a question that every email marketer asks at some point. You may feel hesitant about sending too often because you are fearful of irritating your subscribers. Your first consideration should be to establish regularity. Having regularly scheduled mailings is important for effective email marketing. As a rule of thumb you want to establish a frequency of no less than once a month. If you mail less than a month you risk being forgotten about by your subscribers. How often you send mailings also depends on the content that you are using. Why are you doing this? Are you promoting goods, updating clients, disseminating propaganda for special interests, selling a politician or a political party, etc.? Ask what’s in it for your readers. How often does your newsletter’s content change and how long do your readers take to react. The email A/B split add-on is a good tool for segmenting your audience to see what content your subscribers respond to. The A/B split add on sends out two separate versions of a mailing which you can use to measure what gets a better response. Furthermore, you may want to segment your audience based on frequency. Some of your audience may respond to more frequency while others are more comfortable with a monthly mailing. This underscores what we have been talking about all along, know your audience.

You can let readers decide for themselves what they feel most comfortable with. Some newsletters give readers the option to opt-in for daily or weekly delivery during sign up. Which brings up the next question you need to ask yourself. What can you handle? A daily newsletter is very resource dependent when compared to a monthly. It may be best to start with a monthly newsletter and work from there. You do not want to rush out poorly written daily material when a monthly newsletter that is well written is more likely to captivate your audience. Are you mindful of the latest trends? This is where it becomes important to look at statistical tracking in your message archive. Check to see that your open reads haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. Or, that your unsubscribes haven’t gone through the roof. There are many considerations when choosing a frequency. Remember to use your audience as a guide and the rest should follow.

Be sure to read our email marketing guide for more tips on email marketing.

With version 4.53.10 of Email Marketing we have added the capability to share message reports. This is a great enhancement to our reporting capabilites as you can now share all statistical data with anyone without the need to setup a username just for report viewing. You can find this feature by going to the message archive, selecting a mailing, and clicking on share report. Below you will find some screenshots of how sharing works.

Link to share & email sharing capabilities

The shared report

ActiveCampaign Email Marketing 4.53.9 introduced an exiting new feature that improves the reporting capabilites of the Email Marketing Software.

On the message archive page you are used to seeing the link stats, read stats, etc… Along with the graphing options. Up until now it was hard to judge link stats positions in the message. You may know that link abc.com had 13 clicks and def.com only had 2. But to visualize the position and whether the position in the newsletter had something to do with teh link tracking you would have to manually look back and forth from the archive to the link stats.

Our new message overlay feature solves this problem.

When you turn the overlay on you will notice a + sign by any link that is being tracked. Links that have been clicked on will show up as blue. Links that have not been clicked on will show up as grey. Here is an example:

As you can see there is a small graph by each link as well to give you a quick overall statistic view.

Clicking on a blue icon will present the additional link stats information.

As always – we are looking to improve our current feature set. We have plans to take the message overlay further in future updates.

Should you have any suggestions and/or feedback please let us know.

Shawn Collins has Ten Christmas Tips for affiliates.  Some of these have no relevance to ActiveCampaign affiliates but it makes for an interesting read nevertheless and is quite useful for members that belong to other affiliate programs.  There’s no shipping involved and you are not likely to sway site visitors to buy ActiveCampaign Email Marketing as a substitute gift idea for that next generation game console or mp3 player.  You can however use the holiday season to generate interest in your affiliate program.  Who doesn’t expect an end of the year discount or promotion?  Currently, we have 20% off specials for all our products if clients switch over from a competitor. That is our way of generating excitement for the holidays. You too can find creative ways of using the holiday season to generate excitement for use with your affiliate program.

Here are some ideas that you can apply directly to your affiliate program:

• Include ActiveCampaign product as part of your suggestion page.  ActiveCampaign products have a lot of practical real world applications that will boost productivity for the upcoming year.  Everyone looks at the end of the year as a measure of productivity.  It is also a time to begin planning for even more success next year.
• Inspire holiday impulse buying.  Everyone is in a spending mood at the end of the year. Our products can generate excitement by making next year a much more efficient year for their business. You can use holiday email templates to help enhance the holiday spirit.
• Make your Affiliate program more visible.  Remember that out of sight is out of mind. If you want to generate conversions you need to make your program’s presence known.  Draw your site visitor’s attention to the affiliate link.
• Support your Affiliate program.  Your site visitors trust products that include contact information, reference commonly asked questions, and vendor information.
• The best view is the long view.  Use ActiveCampaign Email Marketing Software for all your future email marketing endeavors.

Happy Holidays.

Here’s to another year of successful affiliate marketing!