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There are a range of different reasons why your email might have failed a specific spam filter, and each filter will give their own explanation for why your campaign failed the test. Unfortunately (although understandably) it is not always possible to get a full reason for any given campaign failing.

How can I do it?

Adding a forward to a friend link is as simple as adding the following tag to the content of your campaign:

HTML emails

<forwardtoafriend>your link text or image here</forwardtoafriend>

Text emails

[forwardtoafriend]

When your campaign is sent, these links will automatically be converted into a custom forward to a friend link.
Add inline CSS to your forward to a friend link

By adding a style="" attribute to the forward to a friend tag, we will automatically add that inline CSS to the link for each of your recipients.

For example, let's say we want to make our forward to a friend link blue and in size 11 font. We'd use the following code:

<forwardtoafriend style="font-size:11px; color:#4fb5e9;">Forward this email to a friend</forwardtoafriend>

This will create a forward to a friend link that will look like:

<a href="http://www.forwardtoafriend.com" style="font-size:11px; color:#4fb5e9;">Forward this email to a friend</a>
How do I measure these forwards?

If you send a campaign with a forward to a friend link, a Forward to a Friend Activity Report is available in your campaign reports. This report lists all the recipients that forwarded your email, as well as how many people they forwarded it to.

Please note that this report will only be available after a recipient forwards your campaign.

After adding the recipients to your campaign you will be taken through to the 'Schedule Campaign Delivery' page; this page contains a form to allow you to set the exact time and date of campaign delivery as well as the option to send immediately.

Once you have added all your content to the template for your campaign the campaign snapshop will have a 'Define recipients' button. After adding the recipients to the campaign the option 'Test and define delivery' will become available. This section of the campaign process allows you to list up to five email addresses that a campaign 'test' will be sent to. Sending it to a select number of testers before the send proper helps identify any errors as well as differences in appearance between email clients.

Allowing your recipients to unsubscribe from your campaign with a single-click is best practice and is actually required to use this tool. To add an unsubscribe link to your campaign, you have two options:

1. Plain text emails: Add the '[unsubscribe]' tag in your email campaign.The system will automatically convert the tag into a personalized unsubscribe link.

2. HTML emails: Insert the tags '<unsubscribe>' and '</unsubscribe>' around the words you would like to become an unsubscribe link in the HTML source of your campaign. We will automatically convert the tags into a personalized unsubscribe link.

You can also customize the page that someone is redirected to when they Unsubscribe. Just click on "Unsubscribe Options" from your Subscribe list page and add the URL of your own unsubscribe page under "Redirect unsubscribers to your own confirmation page".

This page also allows you to add an unsubscribe form to your own web site. Just copy and paste the supplied HTML and you're done.
Add inline CSS to your unsubscribe link

By adding a style="" attribute to the unsubscribe tag, we will automatically add that inline CSS to the unsubscribe link for each of your recipients.

For example, let's say we want to make our unsubscribe link blue and in size 11 font. We'd use the following code:

<unsubscribe style="font-size:11px; color:#4fb5e9;">Unsubscribe</unsubscribe> from our monthly newsletter list

This will create an unsubscribe link that looks like:

<a href="http://www.unsubscribeaddress.com" style="font-size:11px; color:#4fb5e9;">Unsubscribe</a> from our monthly newsletter.

We can't help it.

We allow you to personalize the subject line and content for each campaign you send. By adding any of the following tags to your subject or campaign content, we will dynamically change these values for every recipient when sending the campaign.

First Name - [firstname,fallback=customer]

Last Name - [lastname,fallback=customer]

Full Name - [fullname,fallback=customer]

Email Address - [email]

When personalizing a recipients name, you can provide a fallback value which is displayed if that field is empty for that recipient. If you would like nothing displayed when a recipient's name field is empty, simply leave the fallback value blank (e.g. [firstname,fallback=]).

While the majority of web based email environments are slowly improving their HTML rendering capabilities, some are still pretty far behind. I'm talking to you Hotmail and Gmail! Because of this, it can be a good idea to include a having trouble reading this email, click here link in the header of your email.

If you're sending really long newsletters, this is also a good option. Some of your recipients might prefer the screen real estate afforded by a web browser as opposed to an email client. Up until now, you had to create your own web based version and link to it manually. Well, not any more.
Introducing the <webversion> tag

You can use a simple tag to generate a personalized link to a web based version of your campaign for every recipient. This means that even if they're viewing the web version, we still track how many times they checked it out, what links they clicked on, etc.

In your HTML code, just use the tag <webversion> and </webversion> and we'll do the rest.

For example:

Having trouble reading this email, <webversion>click here</webversion>.

Check out the pricing page for the most up to date information. However, whatever plan your on you get charged £5 for each campaign then a minimal per recipient charge e.g £5 + £0.015 x number of recipients.

The best way to reduce your costs is to buy bulk credits up front from just Half a penny each.

Thats it really, once you get going you may want to add templates, run sam tests and consultancy (see optional extras)

The bespoke package offers full on site training for the eBuild software, making sure you get the most out of your emarketing.

In addition to this you get a number of bespoke email templates designed and built for you, this means that the template used for each campaign can be more effectively chosen.

The bespoke package offers a fully formed emarketing product with professional support and guidance.

You sure can; when you put content into your template for a campaign the editor allows for easy insertion of links.

1. You have spaces in your image or folder names - if you remove the spaces from your image / folder names, update your HTML to match and reimport it, it should be fine. Some tools like MS Word and Publisher very commonly create paths with spaces in them.

2. You are using background images and testing in Outlook 07 / Gmail - these email programs just don't support background images at all. Instead, you'll want to use images in the actual HTML content.

3. Your zip file does not match up with your HTML code. For example, your HTML page might have something like this:
<img src="images/header.jpg

In that case, you need to make sure that your zip file contains both the actual 'images' folder, and inside that, the header.jpg. If you just zip up the header.jpg, when we unzip it your HTML is still looking for a folder called 'images' which does not exist.

So check where your HTML page expects to find the images, and make sure the zip file contents will match that.

Also, make sure you are actually using the zip format, rather than an alternative compression method like .rar files. eBuild only supports .zip files.

Unfortunately having multiple <tr>'s within a single <repeater> is not currently supported.
As an example, this WILL NOT work:

<repeater>
<tr>
<td><$title link='true' default='Enter your title'$></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><$description default='<p>Enter your description</p>'$></td>
</tr>
</repeater>

This however, WILL work (notice how we just wrap the table rows in its own table):

<repeater>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td><$title link='true' default='Enter your title'$></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><$description default='<p>Enter your description</p>'$></td>
</tr>
</table>
</repeater>

That's it!

A 'bounce' means that your email was sent to a specific address, but the mail server that received the email for that person has sent it back, saying it could not be delivered. There are quite a few different reasons that might happen, and we can divide them into two main categories.

A soft bounce is an email message that gets as far as the recipient's mail server (it recognizes the address) but is bounced back undelivered before it gets to the intended recipient. A soft bounce might occur because the recipient's mailbox is full, the server is down or swamped with messages, or the message is too large.

Soft bounces can also include things like auto-replies to your email.

Once an email has soft bounced 3 times without any trackable activity it will automatically be converted to a hard bounce and be removed from your list.

A hard bounce is an email message that has been returned to the sender and is permanently undeliverable. Causes include invalid addresses (domain name doesn't exist, typos, changed address, etc.) or the email recipient's mail server has blocked your server. Servers can sometimes interpret bounces differently, meaning a soft bounce on one server may be classified as a hard bounce on another.

Our email sending application automatically moves subscribers that hard bounce into a "Bounced Subscribers" category, so they don't receive future campaigns.

A 'bounce' means that your email was sent to a specific address, but the mail server that received the email for that person has sent it back, saying it could not be delivered. There are quite a few different reasons that might happen, and we can divide them into two main categories.

A soft bounce is an email message that gets as far as the recipient's mail server (it recognizes the address) but is bounced back undelivered before it gets to the intended recipient. A soft bounce might occur because the recipient's mailbox is full, the server is down or swamped with messages, or the message is too large.

Soft bounces can also include things like auto-replies to your email.

Once an email has soft bounced 3 times without any trackable activity it will automatically be converted to a hard bounce and be removed from your list.

A hard bounce is an email message that has been returned to the sender and is permanently undeliverable. Causes include invalid addresses (domain name doesn't exist, typos, changed address, etc.) or the email recipient's mail server has blocked your server. Servers can sometimes interpret bounces differently, meaning a soft bounce on one server may be classified as a hard bounce on another.

Our email sending application automatically moves subscribers that hard bounce into a "Bounced Subscribers" category, so they don't receive future campaigns.

As well as using the built in bounce handling features, here are some quick tips on ways you can reduce bounces even further:

1. Keep your subscriber lists clean
We will automatically remove invalid email addresses as you add them, but when new subscribers sign up via a subscribe form, they may enter the wrong address. Check each list for incorrectly formatted addresses, invalid domains and typos.

2. Use double opt-in:
When creating a subscriber list, set it as double opt-in, allowing each address to be validated by the subscriber before it can be added to your list.

3. Monitor Delivery Rates By Domain:
Track your open and bounces rates by major domain, such as AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, Earthlink and others. If one is significantly different than the others, or your experience a sudden change, your campaign may be getting caught by spam filters.

4. Test Your Emails:
Prior to sending your campaign to your entire list, send a test to yourself and others. Make sure you try and include all the major types of email clients used by members of your list when testing.

Even double opt-in lists can experience high bounce levels the first time they are used. The first mailing to an opt-in list typically experiences a 20% bounce back rate, so don't be alarmed if yours is in that range.

If you have a significantly higher bounce rate, we recommend you look more deeply into how the list was gathered, how frequently it has been used and how bounces and unsubscribes have been handled in the past.

We take care of this for you by permanently removing the subscriber from your account automatically. This is a standard industry practice and it saves you from accidentally adding this subscriber to your list and inviting another spam complaint.

There are many email clients on the market and so the process will vary slightly for each of them. In general:

1) Look for the 'export' option in one of the main menu's

2) You should then offer a number of formats that the addresses can be exported as, choose .csv (comma separated values

3) Name the file and choose where to save it

4) This file is the file that the 'import subscribers from file' option inside the manage subscribers section of eBuildmail requires you to upload

5) Once this file is uploaded eBuildmail will scan it and separate out the address and name columns for you approval

Done!

There are two primary reasons why your unsubscribe rate may be high.

1. You may not be targeting your audience correctly. For example, if you are sending a "how to" newsletter to subscribers who said they were interested in receiving coupons or other promotions, they may see your email as being of no value to them and may no longer want to receive it. Targeting based on interests is key to keeping your subscribers interested and reducing your unsubscribe rate.

2. You might be over communicating. The general rule of thumb is to send no more than one email every 10-15 days. Of course, this depends on the business you are in and the expectations you have set with your subscribers. If you are emailing more than once every 10 days, you may want to consider reducing the frequency of your emails.

If you have a list of email addresses in Excel that you want to import into your account as a CSV file, follow the steps below:

1. Open Excel and open your file.
2. Go to File > Save as. A dialog box pops up.
3. Go to "Save as type" and select "CSV (comma delimited)" from the drop-down menu.
4. Click Save.
5. If you get error messages, click "yes" or "ok" through the error messages.
6. Close the file and exit from Excel.

The .csv Excel created is now ready to import into your account.

Sometimes it can be useful to move an unsubscribed email address back to subscribed or active status. Here's how you can do this from within your account.

From your list management page, click the "Unsubscribed" link.
Now, choose which subscribers you wish to move back to "active" status and click "Move".

Provided you have obtained the correct permission from your susbcribers, importing your subscriber list into your account is a really simple and straight-forward process. To get started, your subscribers need to be in a comma or tab delimited text file. This is a standard format for storing data and is supported by most applications, including Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, ACT! and GoldMine.

Here's an example of the way a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file needs to be formatted before importing it into your account:

Ren Stichardson, rens@abcwidgets.com, Surfing
Sharon Greiner, sharong@abcwidgets.com, Skateboarding
Joseph Hockey, joeh@abcwidgets.com, Reading

Each field is separated by a comma, and each subscriber is on a new line.
Step One:

Select the list you wish to add subscribers to from the "Manage Subscribers". Next, click the "Add Subscribers" button on the right sidebar.

Step Two:

Select the "Importing from a file" tab. Your subscribers must adhere to our strict permission policy. If you cannot adhere to the 3 list requirements on this page, you cannot import that list into your account. If your list does meet all requirements, check each requirement and click the "Proceed with the import" button.

Step Three:

Click the "Browse" button and browse to the location of the Subscriber text file on your computer or network. After you have selected the file, click the "Import these Subscribers" button.

Step Four:

If your file is in the correct format (.txt or .csv), you will be asked to match the columns in your file with your Subscriber List fields. You can even create new custom fields for your list for each column as you go. Once you're done, click the "Next >" button.

Step Five:

If any errors were found in your file, you will be presented with the Subscriber Import Report, which displays all of the errors founds and gives you the option of either fixing each invalid email address, or ignoring them. If you choose to fix them, you can do so from within your account.