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Just squashed a rare bug involving garbled characters in Gmail email marketing campaigns

February 9, 2016, 10:52 pm
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Over the last month, a small number of users have reported garbled characters appearing in their Gmail mail merge campaigns with GMass. In most cases they reported characters like "Â" appearing randomly throughout the text of the email that is sent after clicking the GMass button. The issue tended to surface in emails containing non-English characters.

[Example of an email with garbled characters]

I've been wanting to get to the bottom of the issue for a while, but I couldn't because I couldn't actually reproduce the issue myself...until tonight.

Earlier today, I conducted a screen share session with a user that had experienced the bug and she was able to walk me through the steps to reproduce the bug. After capturing some data, and spending all evening investigating, I finally figured out the cause and solved the problem.

The problem only surfaced if the To field of a Gmail Draft contained an email address that contained a foreign character. The mere presence of a foreign character in a single email address would cause all individual emails sent to all recipients of the campaign to receive a message with garbled characters. Even if a test message was sent to just one test address containing non-foreign characters using the "Send Test Email" feature, that test would also contain garbled characters, because the To field contained an address with foreign characters when the "Send Test Email" button was clicked.

[Example of an email with an address in the To field containing an illegal foreign character]


For the technical types, the issue was related to the way Gmail encodes email messages in certain situations. While the standard encoding for both the HTML and Plain Text MIME parts of a Gmail Draft are encoded as quoted-printable, if an email address in the To field contains a foreign character, then the encoding of both MIME parts becomes "8bit" instead of "quoted-printable".

[The encoding changes to 8bit, and previously Chinese characters would be garbled]

[Now Chinese characters are handled properly in the 8bit format]

This single anomaly threw off the GMass code that disassembles a message to add open and click tracking and then reassembles it for sending. The reassemby wasn't able to output all characters in the necessary "8bit" encoding format. 

The fix was to modify how the final message is outputted so that "8bit" encoding is handled properly. This required writing to a memory stream instead of a string. I'm happy to share more details with any interested parties -- just get in touch.
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GMass Privacy Information: What data does our server store?

February 21, 2016, 7:50 pm
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Many users are concerned about the privacy of their email marketing lists and whether GMass stores their email addresses and the contents of email messages, and whether any of this data is shared with third parties. The information below is meant to address these concerns.

Overview of how GMass works

GMass works by transferring data to and from your Gmail account. Most of this data transfer occurs via numeric identifiers specific to Gmail and the Gmail API. In some cases, email addresses are transferred from the GMass server back to the Gmail interface, but in a secure manner over SSL. Gmail does not allow a third party integration like GMass to connect to account data without the use of SSL.

How are your email lists used?

In order to track opens, clicks, and provide unsubscribe functionality via the GMass unsubscribe link, our database does store the email addresses to which you are sending email. This data is stored in a database, secured by two layers of firewalls, and is never shared with any third parties. GMass is similar in this regard to well-known email marketing systems like MailChimp, where storage of email addresses is required to provide standard email marketing features.

Does GMass store the content of your email message?

No. Unlike a traditional email marketing service like MailChimp, the GMass database does not store the contents of your email marketing campaigns, except for the From Address used for each campaign.

We store the From Address because in Gmail, multiple From Addresses can be authorized for use in a single Gmail account, and by storing the From Address, we are better able to support users by being able to look up their GMass account when they tell us they sent a campaign "from" a certain address.

We do not store the content (Subject / Message) of email campaigns, but the content does pass through our server ephemerally. This is required in order to add the mechanisms to an email message that allows GMass to track opens and clicks on individual email messages. This process happens in microseconds and the content of an email message does not live on our server beyond that.

Does GMass share any of your email list information with third parties?

No. GMass is a tech product built by developers who are email marketing enthusiasts. The company behind GMass, Wordzen, Inc., is a software company in the business of creating Gmail plugins and not in the business of selling or renting data.


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Bug Discovered: Setting a different From Address in Gmail not always reflected in an email marketing campaign

March 8, 2016, 6:00 am
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Bug: Changing the From Address has no effect on a GMass email marketing campaign

A couple users have reported a bug recently where if you set a different From Address in the Compose window, and then hit the GMass button, the sent emails may not always reflect the different From Address, and they may instead default to the original From Address. Gmail allows you to authorize different From Addresses for each Gmail account, and these addresses then show up as options for the From Address when you compose an email message.

The Workaround:

The workaround for this bug is to ensure that setting the From Address isn't the last change you make to your message before hitting the GMass button. Make sure you make at least one other change to your message after setting the From Address. If you do so, then the chosen From Address will always be reflected in the individual sent emails.



Technical Explanation:

The cause of this issue is a bug within Gmail's User Interface (UI). Typically when composing an email and making changes to an email, Gmail saves the message every few seconds, generating a new internal Gmail Message ID every time you make a change. For example, if you type a few new characters in your message, you'll notice the URL in the Address Bar change to reflect a new Gmail Message ID. Or if you change your Subject line, you'll also notice this. If, however, you simply choose a different From Address, then Gmail does NOT generate a new Gmail Message ID and so does NOT save this change.



Therefore, if changing the From Address is the last thing you do, then hitting the GMass button won't allow GMass to be aware of that change to the message because Gmail never saved it. If, however, you make at least one more change, in order to force Gmail to save the message and generate a new message ID, the new From Address will be a part of the Draft and then also the sent emails for the mail merge campaign.
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How to set the right From Name in your Gmail email marketing campaigns

March 9, 2016, 6:49 am
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If you're using GMass to send email marketing campaigns through your Gmail account, note that the From Name that you set in your Gmail account may not be the From Name that is used when your email campaign is sent.

While this post is about ensuring the From Name is correct, please also see our recent post about ensuring the right From Address, which is relevant if your Gmail account is configured to use multiple From Addresses.

Don't just change the From Name in Gmail Settings -- that won't work

In your Gmail Settings, you can change the From Name used when you send emails. Unfortunately this name will only be used when you use the regular Gmail Send button. Using the GMass button will not cause your set From Name to be used. GMass will always use the From Name that is tied to your overarching Google Account.

Setting a different From Name here won't take effect in your GMass campaigns.

You must change the name associated with your Google Account, not just your Gmail Settings, in order to set a different From Name for GMass campaigns.

Regular Gmail users:

Go to https://accounts.google.com and navigate to the area where you can change your name. If you change your name, it will take at least 10 minutes for this change to be reflected in your Gmail account.




Google Apps users:

Go to https://admin.google.com and navigate to the area where you can rename a user. Note the various warnings associated with changing a user's name. Also, you must be an administrator for your domain's Google Apps account to be able to change a user's name (even your own). If you change your name, it will take at least 10 minutes for this change to be reflected in your Gmail account.


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Why your Gmail signature doesn't show up when GMass launches the Compose window

March 11, 2016, 7:48 am
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If you're used to having your Gmail signature show up automatically in every email you compose or reply to, you might be perplexed as to why your signature doesn't automatically appear in certain GMass campaigns. You set your Gmail signature under your Gmail Settings, shown below:




When you click the COMPOSE button to compose a new message from scratch, the signature will always appear in the Message. You then put in your recipients, Subject, Message, and hit the GMass button if you're sending an email marketing campaign. Or, hit the regular Gmail Send button if you're not sending an email campaign.



If, however, you use one of these GMass features, the Compose window that is launched will NOT have your signature from your Gmail Settings:

1. Connect to Google Sheets
2. Build a list from search results
3. Send a follow-up campaign

These three features correspond to the three buttons GMass adds next to the Gmail search bar. The Compose window launched in these instances will contain your email list addresses in the To field, but not your Signature in the body.


The reason your Gmail signature won't appear in the Compose window when you use one of these features has to do with the nature in which the Compose window is launched. GMass uses the Gmail API for much of its functionality, and in these cases, GMass creates a blank Draft behind the scenes and then launches the Draft as a Compose window in these three cases. The Gmail API, however, does not have a method that allows GMass to retrieve a user's signature programatically. Therefore when GMass creates the blank draft with the Gmail API and sets the To addresses, there is no way for GMass to also insert your signature into the body.

When you click the COMPOSE button, it is Gmail itself that is launching the window, and Gmail obviously has access to your signature. If Gmail enhanced its API to make users' signatures available through a method call, then we could insert your signature in every Compose window, even if it's launched via the three aforementioned features. For now though, please copy/paste your signature into a Compose window if your signature doesn't already appear. The easiest way to do so is by:



1. Clicking the COMPOSE button to launch another Compose window.
2. Copy your signature from there, paste it into the GMass-initiated Compose window.
3. Then close the other window.


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New Feature: Automatic Reply Management in your Gmail Account

March 16, 2016, 10:29 pm
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We've just launched a new feature which automatically organizes replies to your Gmail email marketing campaigns. Bounces, replies, block-notifications, and other types of replies received after you send an email campaign with GMass will now be categorized for you under the "GMass Reports" label. This means that you no longer have to sift through countless bounces and replies trying to determine which responses are the important ones you need to see.

You'll notice two new sub-Labels under "GMass Reports": "Bounces" and "Replies". Based on your particular email campaigns, you may also notice sub-Labels "Blocks", "Delays", and "Over Limit".

Here are the details on each reply management category:

Bounces: Bounce notifications indicating that an email address you sent to is invalid. These are removed from your Inbox and placed under the Bounces Label. Additionally, the bounced address is added to your account's bounce list, and further attempts to send to this email address will be suppressed by GMass. This means that you no longer have to manually extract bounces from your Gmail account. (If you click the regular Gmail "Send" button, however, you can still send to bounced addresses.)

Replies: Human-based replies where a person clicked the "Reply" button and sent an email in response to your email marketing campaign. Replies remain in your Inbox but are also tagged with the Replies Label.

Delays: Delays are a kind of soft-bounce when Google is unable to transmit an email message but will attempt to later on. Usually delay messages are received if an email server for your recipient is temporarily down. Delays are removed from your Inbox and placed under the Delays Label.

Blocks: Blocks are a special type of bounce indicating that your message was rejected because the receiving server determined it contained spam like content. Blocks will be extremely rare since blocking of emails sent from GMass is almost non-existent. Blocks remain in your Inbox and are also tagged with the Blocks Label. If you notice blocks as a result of your email campaigns, contact our Support team so we can determine what is causing the block and how to resolve it.

Over Limit: These are special types of bounces generated by Gmail indicating that an email wasn't sent because your account is over your limit. These may occur, based on your sending patterns, but GMass also attempts to prevent you from going over your limits to begin with. Over Limit emails are removed from your Inbox and placed under the "Over Limit" Label.

Other points to note about automatic reply management:

  1. GMass's reply management system only works on replies/bounces sitting in your Inbox. If you manually move bounces/replies from your Inbox and into a separate Label, or if you delete them before the GMass reply scanner processes them, then they will not be categorized for you.
  2. It can take anywhere from a few minutes up to a couple hours to process replies in your Inbox. If you see bounces, replies, and other notifications sitting in your Inbox after sending an email campaign, please wait a couple of hours for GMass to categorize your replies.
  3. This was a difficult feature to build, and I'm especially proud of the algorithm I derived and the computational efficiencies I achieved when writing the code for this feature. GMass already excels as the most powerful email marketing platform for Gmail and Google Apps, but now GMass is the only Gmail-based email marketing solution that can automatically manage replies.

This feature also lays the groundwork for an upcoming enhancement to the follow-up campaigns feature. In addition to being able to send follow-ups to people based on whether they clicked and opened, you'll soon be able to send follow-ups based on whether an email address replied or didn't reply!

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New Feature: Send follow up campaigns based on who replied

March 22, 2016, 9:50 am
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Following our announcement a few days ago about automatic reply filtering in Gmail, you can now send follow-up campaigns based on who replied or who didn't reply to a previous campaign. GMass's reply management feature organizes replies, bounces, and other types of responses into different Gmail Labels after you send an email marketing campaign. Since that feature gives us the ability to tell who replied and who didn't reply, we have now been able to enhance the follow-up campaigns feature to allow you to also follow up based on who replied and who didn't.



Just click the follow-up campaigns button next to the Search bar, choose a past campaign, and choose from one of the new behaviors listed:

1. People who replied
2. People who didn't reply
3. People who opened but didn't reply


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Los Angeles Entrepreneur Uses GMass to Grow his Businesses

March 26, 2016, 5:14 pm
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Email Marketing Works Wonders for Gaining New and Keeping Current Customers

Russell Nohelty is an LA-based writer, director, producer, and successful businessman. With a resume like that you wonder how he also finds time to help others operate and grow their businesses. 
He's an entrepreneur who shares his experience and expertise with other aspiring writers and business owners, which is nice to see in today’s competitive business environment.

Nohelty has owned and operated cell phone companies and other businesses, and currently owns the publishing company www.wannabepress.com. He also produces a podcast series called “The Business of Art” which is available through iTunes. Russell says “the Business of Art aims to demystify business for artists and art for businessmen, though we really only do the former. Every week a new guest talks about how they run successful businesses.”

Wannabe Press occupies the bulk of Russell’s time, and he grows that company using several digital channels including email marketing and social media.

“Email marketing is an art unto itself,” Russell told us recently. “There are different approaches to different targeted customers, depending on the message and the goal.” Nohelty uses one of the large bulk-email services for sending his newsletter every month, which cultivates readers through a contact form on his website. These are usually sent to large numbers of recipients and the average open rates is about 25%.

Mr. Nohelty uses GMass for more personalized campaigns, and the number of recipients for these campaigns runs from 100 to 500 people. “GMass works great for smaller, targeted campaigns, and one of the reasons I love it is the response rate, said Russell. “Fifty to sixty percent open rates are common, which is unheard of in the email marketing business, but that’s what I see on a regular basis.”

The energetic entrepreneur uses short subject lines and keeps the messages brief as well. “The
personalization feature and the fact that the email is coming directly from me to my customer creates an intimate business connection that is effective beyond anything I would have expected,” said Russell.

The other GMass features like tracking, scheduling, and automatic reply management help Nohelty manage his campaigns efficiently and while GMass is free right now, he is confident he’ll keep using the Chrome extension if they eventually do begin charging a monthly or usage fee.


“Being an entrepreneur means being aware of every tool available to help me grow, and there will always be a place in my marketing toolbox for GMass.”
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How to disconnect GMass from your Gmail account

March 31, 2016, 10:02 am
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While I hate to encourage people to remove GMass from their Gmail accounts, there are several legitimate reasons you may want to.

Phishing Attack Victim?

Over the last week, several Gmail users have been victims of a sophisticated phishing attack where the scammer obtains the username and password for a Gmail account, logs in, installs GMass, then sends a mass email containing a form that looks like a Dropbox form to all the user's contacts, and encourages the victim to log into Dropbox with his/her Gmail account credentials. Then, after obtaining more Gmail account credentials, the scammer logs into those accounts, installs GMass, and repeats the cycle.

If you are seeing mass emails sent from your Gmail account that you did not initiate, you may have unwittingly given your Gmail credentials to the scammer. To rectify this:

1. Change your username and password immediately.

2. To check if the scammer has connected GMass to your account, go to:

https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions



If GMass is listed here, and you are not a GMass user needing to send email campaigns, you can easily remove GMass.

Need to cancel a scheduled email marketing campaign?

If you are a legitimate GMass user and only wish to cancel a scheduled email marketing campaign but intend to use GMass later, then you do not need to remove GMass from your account to prevent the email from sending. Follow these instructions instead to cancel a scheduled emailing.



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GMass Gets Your Message to the Inbox – Let’s Talk About Content

April 6, 2016, 8:52 am
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Email Marketing Remains the Best Channel to Reach Customers – if it’s Done Right

You look at your email inbox, and there are 8 unread messages. Four look like spam, three are from companies you do business with, and one is from a friend. Which one gets opened first?

Pretty easy choice.

An old adage says “people do business with people they like,” and another of my favorites is “people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.” Make your customers feel good!

So, here are a few tips to help your emails get opened, read, and then hopefully converted to sales.

General Tips

1.     Don’t waste people’s time. Never send an email unless it will benefit the reader. Offer something - a discount, a freebie, even a tip that might help make them healthy, wealthy or wise.
2.    Use your name as the “from” address – it’s more personal than a company name and most people appreciate that.
3.   Personalize the email with the recipient’s first name. “Dear Bob” is better than “Mr. Smith” but don’t overdo the name in the content of the message. You don’t want to come across as creepy.
4.     Respect your reader’s time and intelligence. Keep it short, to the point, and friendly.

Subject Lines

Again, keep it short, and be different. I sent out a campaign once with the subject line “You’ll be Happy if You Open This.” It worked! Hillary Clinton once sent out an email blast inviting people to attend a $500-a-plate fundraiser and her subject line was “Lunch?” It was very successful.
Experiment, and track results.

Content

It’s a good idea to start by stating the purpose of the mail, then write 3-4 bullet points and a summation. Include a call to action, and always, always, always thank the customer!

GMass

If you’re using GMass you probably already know that personalizing is easy with the mail-merge function, and you can see who opens the emails with Tracking and then follow-up with Automatic Reply Management. We are always adding new features and functionality.


We get the message to the reader, it’s up to you after that!
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All sent email campaigns are now archived under the "Sent Copies" Gmail Label

April 6, 2016, 5:33 pm
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Want to see a record of what you sent and to whom? Want to copy/paste the content of a previous email marketing campaign into a new campaign?

Now you can!

All mass emails sent from GMass are now archived under the "Sent Copies" Label under "GMass Reports". Each archived message will show the original Subject/Message of your mail merge campaign and include the addresses in the To field. You can use the "Sent Copies" area to easily review past emails and to copy/paste a previous email marketing campaigns into a new campaign with additional email addresses.



What is not stored here?

GMass will not store your test emails (emails sent with the "Send Test Email" button) here. Also, if you reply to an email and click the GMass button, the reply won't be stored here. Only actual broadcast email campaigns where you click the GMass button are stored here.

When will a campaign show up here?

A campaign only shows here after it has begun sending. For example, if you schedule an email campaign to send tomorrow morning, the campaign won't show under "Sent Copies" until tomorrow morning.

How can you use this area?

You can copy the Subject/Message of campaigns from here and paste into a new Compose window to re-send a previous campaign to new recipients.

Why has the From Address been changed from your actual address to GMass_Sent_Copy@gmass.co?

We did this to differentiate between the individual emails that were actually sent versus the messages that show here, which are just a record of the content you've sent and to whom.

What's the difference between this "Sent Copies" area and Gmail's "Sent Mail" folder?

The difference is that the original email campaign is stored here as a "template", meaning the content of the email before links are tracked, before open tracking is added, and before personalization is added. If you look in your Gmail "Sent Mail" folder, you will find the individual emails that were sent to the individual email recipients, and those copies show the detail of the tracked links, personalization, and other changes that are custom to that recipient. If you wish to use an old message for a new campaign, you should copy/paste from this area, NOT the Gmail "Sent Mail" folder, since there you will find the individual emails which have been customized for each individual recipient.

Note that in this area, your campaigns are stored with all of your recipient addresses in the To field. But do not fear, because that is not how the emails were actually sent. The emails were sent out individually, and your email list has not been exposed to your recipients.

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Bug Fix: Gmail mail merge error when connecting to certain Google Sheets

April 13, 2016, 6:32 pm
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We just deployed a bug fix that corrects an issue where you would receive an error when connecting GMass to certain Google Docs spreadsheets where an email address had more than 100 characters.

This would be the case if your spreadsheet's email address column accidentally had text that wasn't an email address or had multiple email addresses in it. If GMass detected a row in the email address column with text greater than 100 characters, you would get this "entity validation" error:


We have corrected this now by truncating the value of any email address to the first 100 characters. That way, GMass will still connect to a spreadsheet with a "bad" row and pull your email addresses and other fields, but any rows containing an email address value of more than 100 characters will be discarded in the actual sending process, since these addresses will likely be invalid.

Here is an example spreadsheet with an invalid value in the email address column. In this case, the 4th row would be truncated, resulting in an invalid address, and none of the addresses in that row would be sent to.



Note that other non-email address columns may still have values greater than 100 characters. For example, if you have a "Greeting" column, where the column stores a customized greeting sentence that is personalized to each email address, then this sentence can certainly be greater than 100 characters.

Also note that GMass auto-detects which column stores your email addresses versus columns that contain other data (like Greeting, FirstName, LastName, etc.). You won't need to tell GMass which column in your spreadsheet contains the email addresses to send to. Also, the column need not be named "EmailAddress" as shown in the example -- it can be named anything.

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New downloadable CSV reports for mail merge campaigns

April 18, 2016, 8:04 am
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A couple weeks ago we started pushing new campaign reports to the [CAMPAIGNS] Label under the "GMass Reports" Label in your Gmail account. Yesterday, we enhanced that report to include download links next to all major metrics. Now, along with seeing how many people opened, clicked, replied, bounced, and unsubscribed, you can now click the "download" link to see exactly who took each action. You even get a detailed breakdown of who clicked on what URL, if you turned on the option to track clicks in your campaign.

This is useful if you want to sync mail merge campaign data back to a CRM system like Salesforce.com or an internal database.

Here's a sample of a campaign I recently sent out to promote a new GMass feature:




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No More Fear: Preview your emails as Drafts, then send them with one click

April 18, 2016, 9:00 pm
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We just eliminated the fear of sending an email marketing campaign. Afraid that personalization won't work? Afraid your tracked links won't work? Afraid the unsubscribe link won't work? Afraid the images won't show? Fear no more!

We just launched a new capability that allows you to create all of your emails as Drafts first, and then after you've reviewed them to make sure they look okay, you can send them with one click.

GMass has always had the ability to "Just create Drafts" rather than send actual emails. The setting is in the settings box next to the main GMass button:

Choose "Just create Drafts"


Until now, however, there was no way to do anything with those Drafts. You could open up each Draft and hit the Send button manually, but that is a time-consuming process. If you didn't want to send the Drafts, and instead wanted to delete them, then you would have to select all the Drafts, and hit the Gmail Trash icon to remove them, and then go to the next page and repeat the process.

Now, after GMass creates your Drafts, you can choose to either SEND them if they look how you want, or DELETE them if you wish to start over. Either option requires simply clicking a link that GMass will send you after your Drafts are created.

First, review the Drafts to make sure you approve:

Review your Drafts to make sure they look right


Here's the email you will get if you choose the "Just create Drafts" option when using GMass. You can choose to send the Drafts or delete them if you made a mistake:

Click the SEND or DELETE link


Clicking the link to Send will take you to this page:

Confirm your decision to send


From here just hit the button, and within a few minutes, all of your Drafts will send.

Some Technical Details for High Volume Senders
  1. If you enter a value for "Send when" other than "Now" and select "Just create Drafts", then the schedule will be honored and your Drafts won't be created until the specified time.
  2. When you send normally, without choosing "Just create Drafts", GMass has a number of features to distribute large campaigns over multiple days and prevent your account from sending beyond its allowed limits. These same rules apply to when you choose "Just create Drafts". Only the allowed number of Drafts will be created,  based on how many emails you've sent in the last 24 hours, while the rest will be scheduled for creation on subsequent days.
  3. When you click the SEND THESE DRAFTS NOW button, all Drafts for the campaign, regardless of number or schedule, will attempt to send. For example, if you initiate a campaign to 3,600 recipients from a Google Apps account, and you distribute it at 1,800 emails/day, then 1,800 Drafts will be created the first day and 1,800 Drafts will be created the second day. If you don't use the "SEND THESE DRAFTS NOW" button between the first and the second  day, and only click it after the second day, GMass will attempt to send all 3,600 Drafts, and this will result in you exceeding your Gmail account limits.
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New Feature: Global Unsubscribes and Bounces for Google Apps Users

April 19, 2016, 10:16 pm
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Today we launched a new feature that allows Google Apps users of a single organization to use the unsubscribe and bounce lists of each user in the organization. This eases the pain felt by multi-user organizations where if a particular recipient unsubscribes to one user, that recipient may get angry if he then gets another email from a different user in the same company, since GMass Unsubscribe lists are particular to each Google App account.

For example, your organization has the following five users:

ben@company.com
joe@company.com
sarah@company.com
kim@company.com
matt@company.com

All five are using GMass, and there may be some email addresses that are common to a couple of the users. Let's say ben@company.com and joe@company.com both send emails to leads and therefore sometimes send to recipients in common with each other.

Normally, if a recipient unsubscribes from ben@company.com's emailings, the recipient could still potentially receive emails from joe@company.com. With the Global Unsubscribe feature turned on for company.com, the subscriber would not receive emails from joe@company.com or any other user @company.com. The unsubscribe list for each user would be used to suppress addresses for every user in the organization.

Similarly, you may also want to turn on Global Bounce suppression. If a particular email address bounces for ben@company.com, then it benefits joe@company.com from an email deliverability perspective to avoid sending to the same invalid email address. Normally, an attempt by joe@company.com to send to that address would result in a send and then a bounce. With Global Bounces activated, the attempted send to that address by joe@company.com would be suppressed by GMass.

This feature was written for a particular GMass power user, so there is currently no user interface to control Global Unsubscribes and Bounces for your domain. I can manually turn this feature on for your domain though.

If you would like me to turn on Global Unsubscribes, Global Bounces, or both (recommended) for your domain, just email me at support@gmass.zendesk.com and specify your domain and whether you'd like just Global Unsubscribes, just Global Bounces, or both, and I'll make the change in GMass's system.

Sample Message to support@gmass.zendesk.com:

Subject: Global Unsubscribes and Bounces for uber.com

Message:

Please enable. Thanks!


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New Feature: Load Content Easily from a Previous Gmail Email Campaign

April 22, 2016, 10:04 am
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I just launched a GMass enhancement that I've been needing for my own purposes for a while -- the ability to easily load a Subject and Message into the Gmail Compose window from a previous mail merge campaign, without having to copy/paste.

Choose Your Content

In the GMass Settings box, you'll notice a new "Load Content" dropdown. All of your past campaigns will appear here. Just choose one, and watch the magic happen. The Subject/Message will be filled out for you.

The Subject/Message have been pulled from a previous email campaign.

In this example, I'm loading the content from the last GMass feature announcement, regarding CSV reports. The content is pulled straight from your own Gmail account. Note that a couple weeks ago, GMass started saving all of your sent email campaigns under the "Sent Copies" Label under "GMass Reports". When you choose an old campaign from this dropdown, the content is pulled from that "Sent Copies" area.

Don't see the "Load Content" dropdown?

Just reload Gmail in Chrome and GMass will be automatically updated.
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Who Uses GMass?

April 26, 2016, 12:08 pm
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Powerful Mail Merge Tool Works for Small Businesses, Students, Everyone!

GMass is a new email marketing extension that works with any Gmail account. It was designed by a talented programmer and email expert who wanted to something with email marketing that was different than all the other programs, something that would get real results for users.

Many people have a negative feeling about email marketing because of one word: SPAM. A survey asking people what they hate the most put SPAM in third place after robo-calls and traffic.

GMass is geared toward sending targeted e-mail designed to reach people with a personal message about a business, event, or personal message. While it is designed to send large numbers of email messages at the same time, we encourage our users to use personal greetings and include an opt-out button so people can stop receiving messages if they choose.

We asked some of our regular users why GMass works for them, and we received a wide range of responses.

A Student from Berkeley, California told us he loves GMass because it’s fast and easy to set up a campaign, and he gets great response. “I use GMass for communicating with all the members of a club I organized,” business student Fred told us. “I love being able to build my list of members in Excel, then I just add it to my personalized message, and push send.”
Fred uses tracking to see who responds and he loves being able to follow up quickly and easily.

Linda, a florist in Chicago uses GMass to tell customers what flowers and plants are in season, and to offer discounts on seasonal plants. “Every customer who comes in to my shop is invited to fill out a card for a chance to win a dozen roses,” Linda told us. “Who doesn’t love roses?” People write down their email address and then Linda adds them to her customer list. “I make my messages very personal, with tips on how to keep their homes bright with flowers even in the dead of winter, and I get great feedback. People love it.” Linda has built her customer email list from 24 to over 1200 in just two years. “There is no doubt that email marketing has boosted my business.”

The travel agent business is a tough one these days, with most travelers using the Internet to book their trips. But Arlene, a travel agent in Boca Raton, Florida knows that many people still like the personal touch of a travel professional. “I respect my customer’s time and their privacy,” said Arleen. “I ask them upfront if they will permit me to send them occasional emails about really special packages that I become aware of,” and if they opt out of my monthly campaigns, I delete them from my list, but that rarely happens.”

A pastor in Mobil, Alabama uses GMass to deliver his monthly newsletter to recipients and he loves it because it’s easy to quickly set up a new massage and easy to merge with his congregation list. “I’m not a very technical person, so I need something that’s easy to use,” he told us recently. “I like the fact that the mails are personalized and come right from my personal email address. People like that.”

GMass is rated ★★★★★ on the Chrome Web Store

GMass is easy to install, easy to use, and is getting rave reviews from users across the country and around the world. A YouTube video shows you how to get started, and the GMass website and Twitter account keep you up-to-date with the latest features.
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Coming soon - auto detect the first name from an email address

April 28, 2016, 7:06 am
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Yesterday I tested a new algorithm we just wrote that intelligently determines someone's first name from just their email address. The algorithm is purely an analysis of the email address characters and doesn't query any APIs that provide demographic data on email addresses.

I ran my test on an actual campaign to GMass users announcing a couple new features (but not the first-name detection feature). Here's a screen shot from my Sent Mail of my own Gmail account (click the image to see it bigger):

The green rows indicate rows where the first name was correctly determined, while the red ones indicate an incorrect guess.
As the above screen shot shows, the algorithm guessed the recipient's first name in most cases. Only 5 out of this sampling of 50 produced an incorrect guess, and the unmarked rows are ones where the first name was impossible to guess because it wasn't present in the email address.

Over the coming days, I'm going to fine-tune the algorithm and then make it available to all GMass users.
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User's Guide to the GMass Settings Box

May 8, 2016, 4:14 pm
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Below is detailed explanation of each item in the GMass Settings box, which is accessible by clicking the "up" arrow next to the GMass button.

Send Test: Pretty self explanatory, but this option sends a test email to the address of your choice. Whatever is currently in the Subject/Message will be sent as a test email. Additionally, the test email message will include personalization if there is personalization information available for the test email address. Meaning, if you're connecting to a Google Sheets spreadsheet to do a mail merge, and the test address is one of the addresses in the spreadsheet, then the test email will include personalization. Or, if the test address is a Gmail contact, and the address is part of the To field already in your Composed message, then sending a test to the address will include First/Last name personalization.

Load Content: This dropdown shows your past GMass campaigns (but not "test" emails). Choose a past campaign by its Subject and the Subject/Message of your Compose window will be set to that of your chosen email campaign.

Personalize: These buttons insert personalization variables into your Message. Note that you can also insert personalization variables into the Subject, but not by using the buttons. You have to copy/paste the personalization variables into the Subject.

Google Sheets Personalize: These buttons will display only if you've connected to a Google Sheets spreadsheet to send this campaign, and has the same effect as the other personalization buttons described above.

Unsubscribe Link: Inserts an unsubscribe link into your message, wherever the cursor is. The language of the unsubscribe link can be customized, but the actual URL should remain unaltered. For example, if you want to change the language to:

Please unsubscribe if you wish to never hear from us again

You can do that, but just link the appropriate words to this URL:

https://www.gmass.co/gmass/u?u=OUTBOUND

Track: Choose whether you'd like to track opens and/or clicks. By default, both are selected. If you choose tracking options, you can view who opened or clicked an email by accessing the GMass reports after you send your campaign. Just drill down into the "GMass Reports" Label on the left-side of Gmail.

Compose as: New messages vs. Replies. The default choice is "New Messages", which means that your email marketing campaign will send as a new email thread. If you choose "Replies", your message will be tacked onto the last thread you had with each recipient. If you have never emailed a particular recipient in the past and therefore have no prior conversation, then the email will go out as a new thread.

Action: Send vs Just Create Drafts. By default, clicking the GMass button will send your campaign, one email to each address in the To field. However, if you want to spot check your messages before they are sent, you can choose "Just Create Drafts". Only Drafts will be created, and no emails will be sent. You can then review them in your Drafts folder, and GMass will email you a link to click to either send or delete the drafts.

Spread out: If you want to space your email sends over a number of days rather than sending them all at once, you may do so here. You must use a minimum value of 50. If left blank, which is the default, GMass will send as many emails as your account allows and save the rest for future days.

Auto Follow Up: Have reminder emails sent at designated intervals to those people that don't reply to the message you're sending right now. Choose the interval, and the reminder text that should appear at the top of the original email. Detailed information on the auto follow-up feature.

Schedule: Choose whether to send this current email NOW or at some time in the future.

This is a living document and is updated when new features are added to the Settings box.
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New Feature: Automatic follow-up emails until you get a reply

May 9, 2016, 9:14 pm
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The original email plus the automatic follow-ups that were sent 1 day, and 5 days after.


We just launched a powerful feature and the only of its kind integrated completely with Gmail. You can now set automatic follow-up email campaigns to be sent after an email campaign is sent, to dramatically increase your response rates. Reminders will be sent to your recipients in stages, until you get a reply (or an open).

Reload Gmail in Chrome now to get the update.

An example: you send an email campaign to 100 warm leads from a trade show offering to set up a demo of your product. When you send that campaign, you set it so that two days later, a reminder is sent to anyone that hasn't replied, and three days after that, another reminder is sent, and a few days after that, a final email is sent asking for a reply.

It's easy to use, and you can try it right now using the standard follow-up language we've come up with. Just check the box next to each "stage" you want sent, make any adjustments to the timing and language, and hit the GMass button to send.

The GMass Settings box, where you can configure auto follow-ups.


Important points to know

  1. You can use this feature for both mass emails and individual emails. If you've been using another Gmail tool for follow-ups to your individual person-to-person emails, you can use GMass instead.
  2. You can choose whether the automatic follow-up is based on recipients opening or replying. If you choose "Didn't Open" as your follow-up action, fewer follow-ups will be sent, because you will almost always have more Opens than you will Replies. If you choose "Didn't Reply" as your action, more follow-ups will be sent.
  3. Use the power of this feature sparingly. You likely don't want to configure auto follow-ups with every campaign you send. This will cause your recipients to get additional emails from you, and you should only use this feature on emails to people where you genuinely want a reply.
  4. You can customize the message in the reminder emails that are sent. Each reminder will include your original email beneath it. You can specify the reminder message as text in the GMass Settings, which will suffice for most users. If you want a more customized reminder email, where perhaps the reminder message contains formatting or links, you can choose custom content instead of freehand text. Custom content is based on a past sent GMass campaign. A future tutorial on this feature will explain how to create more complex follow-up content.
  5. You can also personalize the reminder email with personalization variables, as shown in the screenshot below.
  6. After you've launched a campaign with automatic follow-ups, you can edit the auto follow-up settings using the red "Follow-up Campaigns" (@) button near the Search bar. You can also add auto follow-ups to a campaign after the fact if you forgot to do so when you originally sent it, but be careful. Changing the settings to an already-sent campaign can trigger an immediate batch of reminder emails to be sent, if you're not careful with the settings.
    Click the "follow up" icon next to the search bar to manage follow-up settings.
  7. You can use this feature with or without Google Sheets. If you use it with Google Sheets you can personalize your emails based on much more than just First and Last Name.

How the timing works

The timing of the reminder emails is based on the time that each individual email of a campaign was sent, not when the campaign was launched. Example scenarios:
  1. If you create your campaign on Monday, but schedule it to be sent on Wednesday with the first stage follow-up sending two days later, then the first follow-up to the non-responder will be sent two days from Wednesday, meaning Friday.
  2. If you create a campaign on Monday and use the "spread out" feature to send 100 emails/day for three days, and you include a first stage follow-up going 2 days later, then each non-responder will get his first follow-up two days after his original email. So for the 100 emails on Monday, the follow-ups will be sent Wednesday. For the 100 emails sent on Tuesday, the follow-ups will be sent Thursday, and so on.
  3. If you use the "Just create drafts" option on your campaign on a Monday, but then wait to click the link to have the drafts sent until Tuesday, the timing of the automatic follow-ups will be based on Tuesday because that is when the Drafts were sent.
What you see, and what your recipient sees

Your recipient will see your reminder emails on top of the original and part of the same conversational thread.

You will see the reminder emails as part of the same sent email thread, and each consecutive reminder will include the original and any previous reminders below.

The idea is that it looks just as if you had found the original email from your Sent Mail, hit Reply, and then typed a reminder on top.

Reports

You will get Reporting on each follow-up stage just like you would any other sent mail merge campaign. The follow-up campaigns that are sent to non-responders will be labeled slightly differently so you an easily identify a regular email campaign versus an automatically sent follow-up email campaign:

Coming soon! Stay tuned to the GMass blog for more information about automatic follow-ups, including example scenarios in which auto follow-ups can save you hours, a tutorial on how to use custom content as the reminder message, and why GMass's auto follow-up feature is better than competing solutions.

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