EmailSynergy Platform

Dear ESP Subscriber:

We regret to inform you that we will be closing down the ESP service at the end of this month.  We feel we can no longer provide the resources that can support a product worthy of our customers’ time, effort and money, so we have made the decision to shut down the service.

Those of you who wish to continue your email marketing will be forced to find a new service.  We can recommend three services that we feel are robust, reliable and currently lead the industry in email marketing innovation: iContact, Constant Contact and MailChimp.  Those of you with free ESP accounts may even find that some of these services also offer similar free subscriptions.

In order to transfer your subscriber lists from ESP to a new service, there are a couple steps you must take, described below:

Exporting lists from ESP:
The first thing you should do is export all of your subscriber lists from ESP as soon as possible.  If you do not do this before service ends on January 31, your lists may be lost!

1) Go to My Audience.
2) Click on View/Edit Lists.
3) Click the magnifying glass icon to preview recipients for a particular list.
4) At the bottom of the recipient table, click the checkbox next to the small blue arrow.  This selects all recipients in the list (not just the ones that appear on-screen).
5) Once recipients are selected, click on the small blue arrow.  This will prompt a save request, which will allow you to save the list file to your computer.
6) You must do this for each of your lists. Note that saving each file will probably not overwrite your previously-saved list files.  Your computer will simply tag each new file with a number (1, 2, etc.).  However, we recommend renaming the saved files to something that will help you identify each list properly.

Preparing lists for your new email service:
Before you upload these lists to your new email service we highly recommend editing them first.  Your new service will not know which of your recipients previously unsubscribed, bounced, etc., so you need to upload a “clean” list to the new service.  If you do not do so, you may unwittingly contact subscribers who previously unsubscribed from your list while you were using ESP!

1) Open your list file in Microsoft Excel.
2) Choose Data > Sort.
3) Sort by the data column that contains the Status of each subscriber (Contact, Do Not Contact, Bounce, etc.).
4) This will group all of your recipients by their status, allowing you to go through and delete all of the recipients who are not under the Contact status.
5) It is recommended that you save the file under a new file name, so that you still have a copy of the full list, including past recipients, for your reference.

If you are a customer who paid for a Creative Package and have a custom template design, you should go to your saved templates and download the code for your email template should you wish to use it in the future.  Also be sure to download any images used in the template (under My Settings).

Please note that all other templates and template images may not be downloaded for future use.  These images belong to either ESP or various stock agencies, and by law may not be used outside of the ESP service.

If you are a paid customer, please note that we have ended recurring billing.  You should no longer be charged for the duration of the service.

Finally, we would like to thank you for your business these last few years.  Our parent company has been in the email marketing industry for over a decade, and we tried to bring our knowledge and expertise to the general public in the form of ESP.  With your help we made that happen, at least for a time.  As we move forward we wish you all the best of luck with your businesses’ future endeavors.

-The ESP Team

We were recently made aware of an error with the ESP sign-up form code.  Due to a change made by the third party security vendor (reCaptcha), sign-up forms created by ESP stopped functioning.

If you have been using an ESP sign-up form on your site or blog prior to May 4, you will have to either make changes to the form code, or re-download the code from ESP and insert it into your site.  To simply edit the code, make the following changes:

Be sure to update your forms soon in order to not miss out on any new subscriptions to your lists!

New Easter designs are now available

We’ve added more new templates into the ESP collection.  New free designs are available, but we’ve added some for paid premium members only as well.  Based on your requests, we’re continuing to create more general layouts with more content areas, but some of these default designs have particular themes as well.  For example, you’ll find new auto and spa-inspired themes.

Also, with the next popular holiday right around the corner, we’ve included a couple of new Easter designs.  You’ll find these under the “Holiday” template category.

We get questions about ESP all time. Folks want to know anything from how to take advantage of our MarketShare program to how to add new subscribers. In response to the questions and feedback we’ve received, we created the ESP Help section, which you can find in the upper right corner of any page inside your ESP account (look for this icon: ). Even with the Help section in place, we get new questions all the time. We’d like to share some of the recent challenges our users have run into, as well as our answers in this From the Mailbox segment.

Question: Can I save my email as a new template? Where do I find it?
You can save any email you’ve created as a new template. On the Composer page (step 2 in the email creation process), you can click the Save as a Template button below the editor in order to save it for future re-use.

This template can be edited at any time down the road. Under My Content, just click View/Edit My Email Templates to see a list of your saved templates.

When it comes time to re-use a template you’ve created, start by creating a new email as you normally would. On the very first page (Email Designer), go to the Email Category drop-down menu and select My Templates.

Question: How do I connect my ESP account to Facebook and Twitter?
You can manage your social network settings in one of two places. When you are creating an email, on the Design page (step 1 of the creation process) you will find links entitled Manage your Facebook settings and Manage your Twitter settings under Social Networks. Click on these links in order to be led through the connection process.

You can also manage these settings under My Settings > Manage ESP Settings. Check one of the boxes for Facebook or Twitter and the link will appear.

Question: How do I send a message that has already been sent to new list members?
This question was posed to us by an ESP member who had been sending emails to an existing list. She wished to add new recipients to the list and wanted to send out a copy of an email she’d already sent to the older members. The problem was: how could she send an email to the list so that only her new members would receive it?

There are two solutions for this, which we’ve laid out with step-by-step instructions in the ESP Help section. Make sure to log in and use this handy resource! And remember, if you still have questions about using ESP, feel free to contact us at support@emailsynergy.com.

New St. Patty's Day templates!

St. Patrick’s Day is around the corner, and we’ve just released a couple of new green-themed templates to celebrate the holiday.  One is free to all members, while the other is a premium template available to paid ESP customers.

Don’t forget to take advantage of our numerous holiday-themed templates and celebrate with your customers!

First, we’d like to wish you a belated Happy 2011. It’s time to let you know about all sorts of new features and updates we’ve been making to ESP. There’s a lot to get to, so without further ado…

New Templates: Better Designs are Here, with More On the Way

New templates are here!

An update to our email template designs has been long overdue, and we’re finally doing something about it. We’ve introduced some new templates, with a greater variety of looks and some more interesting base clipart for you to use (if you don’t have your own images). We’re branching out to cover more themes like travel, food, music and fitness, while still providing some general themes as well.

We’ve also got a better way to pick and preview these templates too! Now instead of just choosing from a dropdown menu with a billion options, you can select your category and view thumbnail previews of each template. It’s an easier way to decide what style you want to go with.

Finally, be ready for premium templates, coming soon. These will only be available to paid ESP users.

“Save My Template”
This new feature allows you to build out your email as you like it, and then save it as a template for future use.

Yes, We Now Have a Help Section
After getting plenty of good feedback and helpful questions from you, we’ve been able to build out our new Help section, which will be able to answer your questions about how to use ESP. We’ll continue to add more content to this, including video tutorials and images to make things even easier for you. Just look for the Help symbol at the top of every page in ESP if you get stuck.

Birthday and Anniversary AutoResponders
Want to send out a special message to your subscribers on their birthday, or perhaps thank them for joining your list on their list “anniversary” date? Now you can do so with the new Birthday and Anniversary AutoResponders.

New Survey Features: Create a Public Survey Link & Add Subscribers
Now other people can take your surveys, not just your email subscribers! We’ve introduced a function that creates a link to your survey, so you can pass it along to other folks. Best of all, you can also include an invitation in your survey that can add these new users to your list!

Believe it or not, we have more new features right around the corner, as well as a huge promotion we’ll be offering soon. Stay tuned!

And remember, we can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

We’d like to wish you all a Happy New Year a few days in advance and let you know about two new “Happy New Year” templates that are now available to ESP users.

Introducing new Happy New Year templates

Send your contacts and customers some holiday wishes for 2011 with our newest email templates!

Best wishes and Happy New Year from ESP!

We’ve just introduced some new Premium holiday email templates, just in time for you to send out your seasonal announcements and holiday greetings.

Introducing new Premium templates for your holiday emails.

To make sure you can access our new Premium holiday templates, contact an ESP sales representative at 425.822.2227 x 222.

Happy Holidays from ESP!

This is a follow-up to our previous post about creating an ESP signup form. Now you can watch as we go through the steps of creating a form in this short video.

If you’re ready to get started with ESP but are unsure how to export your contacts from Outlook, then this simple tutorial is for you!

1 ) To get started open Outlook and go to File >> Import and Export.

2) Choose the “Export to a file” option as shown below.

3) Choose the “Comma Separated Values (Windows) option.

4) Find the “Contacts” folder that you want to export.

5) Finally, choose where you want to save the file on your computer. Make sure to save it where you can find it when you’re uploading your contacts with ESP!

This tutorial was written for Outlook 2007 but most versions of Outlook are very similar. If you find that you are stuck with the version you’re using be sure to contact support and we will be more than happy to help you out!