Curious about the recent features and updates that are available in Communications Professional? If so, you've come to the right place.

Send Failed alert

RELEASE DATE: April 28, 2021.

Send Failed is a new feature to alert admins that a message has failed to send.

Messages that fail to send will display on the Messages > List > In-Progress list page and the message name will display in red text with SEND FAILED appended to name.

• This feature applies to scheduled and 'send now' messages.
• Functionally, the message is like any other In-Progress message and can be resent using standard Send options.

TIP: To learn more about Messages, see Manage Messages (Communications Professional).

Sender Profiles

RELEASE DATE: February 22, 2021.

Sender Profiles is a new feature that admins can use to more easily apply consistency to some aspects of their organization's messages. The consistency comes in the form of fields that are populated by your account admin with default values that are chosen by your organization.

When a Sender Profile is used with a message, the prepopulated values are automatically used. This reduces the chance of errors and it saves having to manually input, possibly often-used, values.

You can create multiple Sender Profiles and each can have distinct values for:

• Friendly From
• From Address
• Reply To Address

Benefits

• Sender Profiles will:

• speed up message creation,
• ensure a consistent experience for your Contacts, and
• eliminate errors in email addresses.

• Sender Profiles can be used by anyone at your organization who is sending a message.
• When you edit a Sender Profile, your change replaces the prior value and the new value is automatically applied when that profile is used. You won't have to notify anyone to start using the latest From Address, Friendly From, or Reply To Address.

TIP: Visit the knowledge base to learn more about Sender Profiles.

List page enhancements

RELEASE DATE: December 10, 2020.

Two enhancements were introduced in the Admin interface.

• Web Version - This new option is available in the More menu on the Messages > List > Sent page. Click a message to select it, and then click More > Web Version to see the web version of the message in a new tab.

• This also works for messages that are based on a deleted template.

• Column Resize - As an Admin, you can now click-and-drag a column divider in the list header to resize the width of the column; the new widths will remain in effect until you change/re-size them.

• This functionality is available on the Templates > List page and all five of the Messages > List pages.

Best Practice Campaign Starter Kits

RELEASE DATE: July 26, 2020.

These new starter kit campaigns simplify creating an organization's most-often used campaigns.

These ready-made campaigns take some of the guesswork out of campaign design. The pre-configured -- but completely customizable! -- campaign workflows will enable you to more quickly manage your memberships and promote your organization's activities.

Although customizable, the campaigns are pre-populated with recommended messages, decision points, and send intervals to speed up your campaign design and creation efforts. When you start the campaign-creation process, choose one of the following campaigns so that you hit the ground running.

• Welcome Campaign for your organization's new members
• Renewal Campaigns to remind current members of upcoming membership renewals
• Win Back Campaigns to target prior members and those whose membership renewal is past due by:
  • 3 to 6 months or
  • 7 to 24 months
• Promotion Campaigns to get the word out about your organization's:
  • Small & mid-sized events
  • Large events
• Fundraising Campaign to solicit donations

TIP: Visit the knowledge base to learn more about the Best Practice Campaign Starter Kits.

Auto Resend

Auto Resend is new Mailing Designer 2 (MD2) feature that enables you to easily and automatically resend a message to contacts who did not open the original message. You must configure this option while creating a (original) message; it cannot be set up after a message has been sent.

NOTE: The Auto Resend feature is currently not available for Landing Page and Campaign messages.

The Auto Resend feature is in the Send section of the Review & Send tab and is available for the Send Message Now, Schedule One-Time, and Monthly scheduling options only.

To learn all about this new feature, see Auto Resend.

Terminology updates

As we prepare for the New Admin Experience, we are making some naming convention changes.

What impact will our terminology changes have on you?

You will start to see updates to various pages. These updates will be iterative. You may see some inconsistencies across pages as we work through updating each individual page, but this will ultimately help unify your new admin experience.

What terminology will be changing?

Great question! Here's the list of the key updates you will begin to see.

• Mailing(s) will become Message(s)
• Subscriber(s) will become Contact(s)
• Virtual Inbox will become Inbox Preview
• Target Group will become Group
• Target Group Name will become Name
• System Settings will become Account Settings

NOTE: For more information, see this HUG post.