UniMailer 3 - Manual

http://www.unimailer.com
UniMailer is an ideal companion for announcing new products and services to your customers, delivering and managing newsletters, or simply staying in touch with family and friends. UniMailer will make the process effortless by managing various user groups, adding your own parameters for personalizing each mail, having various attachments. UniMailer works with full text or html text.

General Interface

Global View

UniMailer Interface

The interface is divided into 2 parts :

For working with unimailer, you must :

  1. Choose/Add a campaign or use the default one ("default") using the File menu
  2. Insert/Import your data choosing the Data tab like your customer emails and some parameters you wish for personalizing each final mail
  3. Insert/Import your Message (this is the main message) and required file attachments.
  4. Configure your SMTP account for sending the mails
  5. Use the Mailing tab for sending to your customers

You needn't to save your last operations because all is stored automatically when leaving UniMailer. Note that you must terminate the application in a standard way for maintaining all your data (Like using the Quit action from the File menu or alt-F4 under Windows environments).

All your data are stored in the directory .unimailer directory inside your HOME directory. For sample for an account name alex your data directory should be under windows c:\users\alex\.unimailer.

Menu content

Menu File

Item Meaning
New Campaign... Create a new mailing campaign. Note that this name will be converted into a folder name for storage.
Delete Campaign... Delete the current campaign. All your data for this campaign will be lost.
Import your data... Import your campaign data from an excel file (*.xls,*.xlsx) or a CSV file.
Export your data... Export your campaign data to an excel file (*.xls, *.xlsx) or a CSV file.
Quit Quit UniMailer, the user will have to confirm the operation

Menu Data

Item Meaning
Enabled all Activate all the rows
Disabled all Deactivate all the rows
Check each email syntax Check all your emails syntax.
Add a column Add a data column used for the template
Remove a column Remove the selected data column
Remove the selected rows Remove the selected rows
Fill a column Fill a column with the same value
Search for a row Search a row from a data column value

Menu Message

Item Meaning
Load your Message Import your message body (*.html, *.txt), you may have to choose your charset.
Save your Message Export your message body (*.html, *.txt), you may have to choose your charset.

Menu Mailing

Item Meaning
Start mailing Start sending mails, the user can stop after the operation.
Stop the current mailing Stop sending mails, the current one will be terminated before. UniMailer will keep in memory your last operations.
Enabled all the sent status Enabled all the sent status
Disabled all the sent status Disabled all the sent status
Previous error Go to the previous mailing error
Next error Go to the next mailing error
Change the current Email Change the select email, it avoids to go to the data grid

Menu Options

Item Meaning
Preferences... Update user preferences. Restart The application after changing
Check the last version... Check for the last release

Menu Help

Item Meaning
User Manual... Load the manual from the UniMailer site
Tip of the day... Show an Unimailer tip
Release News... This is changelog
Contact us... How to contact us
Buy online... Purchasing an activating key and receive it instantly by mail for full usage of UniMailer.
Register... Insert your Activating Key
About... General Information about UniMailer and your system.

Campaigns

Management

Add a campaign with the add a group (at the left bottom part) action. You can't use several times the same name. A campaign name is finally a folder name, that's why some characters may be rejected.
Remove a campaign with the Remove a group (at the left bottom part). Note that you can't remove the default group.

After creating some campaigns you can switch by clicking on the bound button, each piece of data is stored/restored when switching to another campaign (so you needn't to save or load anything).

Location

Each campaign is bound to a folder name containing all your data from the following rule : Home_Directory/.unimailer/projects/Campaign name

An home directory location depends on your operating system, this is in the "users/YouAccountName" directory for windows platforms and in your /home/user directory for unix compatible platforms.

This directory contains the internal unimailer database. Each group contains the following files :

Note : Since the 3.01 userdata.dat and template.dat are stored with an UTF-8 encoding.

You can copy/paste anywhere else the Home_Directory/.unimailer directory for :

Data Management

Interface

The interface contains a data grid and a toolbar :

icon meaning
Import your Data Grid from an Excel File (*.xls, *.xlsx) or a CSV File (with an UTF-8 encoding).
Export your Data Grid to an Excel File (*.xls, *.xlsx) or a CSV File (with an UTF-8 encoding).
Enabled all your rows (by checking the Use column)
Deactivate all your rows (by unchecking the User column). The deactivated rows will be ignored while the mailing.
Add a new data column
Choose an delete a data column
Remove a row
Fill a column with the same value
Search for a value inside a column.
Check all your email syntax
search field Fast search inside your data columns

The data grid contains 2 required columns :

Data info

When a row is deactivated it appears in a black line. You have also two icons (Enabled all and Enabled) for activating/deactivating all the rows.

The other parameters (columns) are the final parameters for personalizing each mail. In the previous screenshot, we have for sample three parameters :
  1. A Title : We have choosen it for composing the first part of our mailing message
  2. A Message : This is our end message part.
  3. A Link : Here a link that can be personalized too.
You can add as many parameters you wish. Adding a parameter is equal to add a column and the name of the column is the name of your parameter. Note that the uppercase/lowercase are different meaning you must match in the message part exactly this name.

Column

A column is a parameter used by the mailing step. This parameter is used after inside the mail body (Message tab).

You can add as many columns as you wish except you can't add another "Email" or "Use" columns. By default UniMailer adds for you a "User Data" column that you can remove. You can insert any data you wish even if you don't use it for the final mailing step.

Add a column : Add a column, try not to mix uppercase/lowercase and avoid too long name
Delete a column : Remove a column, you can remove the first and the second column which are required

Import/Export

The grid data can be exported using the Export grid action. You can choose between an Excel file format or a CSV file format. In this last case the file encoding is UTF-8.

Note that the activated/deactivated values are stored with a special value "true" or "false".

The import operation is done with Import data grid. UniMailer will search for a @ character for detected your Email column. If it doesn't detect this character inside your first line, then it will use this line as your column names. If you use a CSV file format your file encoding must be in UTF-8. You can use a ";" or "," separator.

Each import/export operations are also available from the File menu.

Here a sample of file for the import operation in a CSV file format.

Email;Enabled;First;Last;Phone;Address;City;Postal
aaa@hotmail.com;true;Sarah;McRTYe;11111;#555 28 Helene Street North;Mississauga;REZA
bbb@operamzz.com;true;Arthur;Hanli;22222;"16 Hogarth Ave;";Toronto;TYUE
ccc@utorozz.ca;true;Johanna;John;44444;10 Bay St. Suite 1110;Toronto;HYRE

Note that the column separator is the ';' . It is better to put a value 'true' for the Use column or to not put this column.

You can enable (if the Use column value is missing or has a 'false' value) all your imported lines using the action enabled all

Message

Interface

Template info

This interface is similar to known mail editors. It contains from the top part to the bottom part :

Note : UniMailer detects you have an HTML document by searching a content "<html". So you must have this html tag for your HTML documents.

When importing your message body, UniMailer will store in memory your message file path. When using an HTML content, you may have some images with relative paths, so UniMailer will need to find each image starting from your message path. You can update this image location from this icon :

Here a sample of HTML content with an image :

<html>
<body>
Dear Customer
<img src="hello.jpg">
</body>
</html>

We have an image "hello.jpg" which is located at the same location path of our imported document, so UniMailer will keep in memory this path because it will need to get and send this image for the mailing part.

Parameters

A parameter is a way to personalize each mail. A parameter is available in a plain text or HTML document under the following format : ${parameter_name}. A parameter_name is provided by the Data grid (the first tab) and is bound to a data column. For sample if I have a data column called "title" then I can use a parameter ${title} anywhere in the final message. Note that you must check for lowercase/uppercase for matching exactly the parameter name.

When editing your mail message using your favorite HTML editor, you must insert yourself while editing the parameters. By editing a plain text, you can insert a parameter using the following action Insert a parameter. You can check your parameters (controlling they are valid ones) by clicking on the Check parameters action.

While sending a mail, each parameter is replaced by the real value from the data grid (the first tab), if an error occurs (a wrong parameter name), the mailing process is stopped and you can fix your message body.

Note also that you can control your parameter inside an HTML preview tab, this part will replace each parameter by a default value.

You can use parameters for any fields of the message tab (including the CC, BCC, header).

Editing

The message body contains also a simple editor. This editor has the following actions :

icon mearning
Import a plain text or an HTML document. You may have to choose a valid encoding inside the file chooser dialog
Export your message body. You may have to choose a valid encoding inside the file chooser dialog
Undo
Redo
Cut the selection
Copy the selection
Paste the selection
Search and/or Replace
Add a data column value. This is choosen from the data grid columns.
Check your data column value.

This is only a plain text editor meaning you will see your HTML source but not in a wysiwyg way, you must use an external HTML editor for this purpose and import it inside the message (look at the parameters/import export sections for more information).

A preview is available for the plain text and HTML 3.2, this preview resolved each parameter with a default value. Note that this preview is a limited solution because there're a lot of difference between the mail tools (depending the version of the tool and the operating system).

When inserting a parameter in your mail message, the parameter is in a blue color :

Parameters

Each parameter matches a column name from the data grid.

Configuration

interface

smtp config unimailer

The role of the configuration is to set your SMTP server, this server is a standard way to send mails. If you don't know this server, you must ask to your internet provider or to your network administrator. Mostly, you just need to insert the location of your SMTP server but you may also insert a login and password. Most of the time this server host start by smtp.YourHost.. If you don't know how to find this information, look at the properties of your favorite mail manager (like outlook), this is bound to an account or mail account.

The test email field must contain an email account for checking that unimailer can send mails without problem, use for this test the send button.

The last part will set particular options like the message encoding (let DEFAULT if you don't know) and a wait option useful when you provider doesn't accept too many mails for a delay.

A configuration is per campaign, however you can import any SMTP configuration from another campaign using this icon :

Mailing

Testing

After checking your SMTP configuration, it is important to test your final mail as your customer using your Test tab. In this tab, you just have to specify a valid mail for checking the result. UniMailer will notify any problems inside the Result field.

Note : UniMailer will insert the following footer if you use it as a non registered user. After activating your version, this message will disappear.

This message has been sent with the evaluation version of Unimailer (http://www.unimailer.com)

Interface

Mailer info

There're two parts for the mailing tab :
Mailer toolbar

The top table contains all your data grid but only with one shared column which is the final email. Two columns has been added :
  1. The sent status,  this is an important way to avoid duplicate sending, each time you send a mail this flag is activated. You can disable it manually for retrying sending
  2. The error message. Each time an error is detected the line is drawn with a red background and an error message is added.

Mailing

For mailing your current campaign, you must activate the following action Run mailing. This action is available in the mailing menu too. The goal of this action is to start the mailing process. So UniMailer will get each data row and will send the result mail.

This action will navigate inside your data grid ignoring disabled items (in black) AND already sent items (when this is sent several times). Each time a row is processed the sent flag is set.

After sending, you may interrupt at any moment the current mailing using the Stop action. This action cannot interrupt the current mail and it will interrupt the mailing processing for the next mail. Note that after stopping you can retry with the Start mailing action which will restart from the first non sent mail. UniMailer doesn't send the same mail several times for one user target.

If you meet errors, it can be a normal case so check the following cases :

Note : Some SMTP servers/providers may limit the number of mails for a period (avoiding spams), so you may retry several times before sending all your mails.

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