01 June 2005
Stalker Software Lines Up CommuniGate Pro Updates
Companies looking for less expensive alternatives to Microsoft Exchange and IBM Domino may want to check out Stalker Software's CommuniGate Pro. Last month, the company rolled out version 4.3 of the product, which brings new encryption and collaboration capabilities. In about a month, Stalker hopes to release the beta of version 5.0, which will bring additional voice over IP (VoIP) and "rich media" conferencing capabilities.
Stalker's CommuniGate Pro covers all the bases when it comes to messaging and groupware, and offers some cutting-edge functionality, too. The software supports the basic SMTP, POP3, and IMAP e-mail standards, features a MAPI connector (for using the CommuniGate Pro server in conjunction with Microsoft Outlook clients), works with an array of major anti-spam and anti-virus products, and runs on more operating systems than you care to shake a stick at, including Windows Server 2003.
Beyond e-mail, Stalker offers add-ons for turning CommuniGate Pro into a groupware server, enabling users to share contact information and collaborate on their calendars. Stalker also sells software that turns CommuniGate Pro into a hub for voice, video, and instant messaging, via the session initiation protocol (SIP). Connecting SIP-enabled devices, such as VoIP phones and PDAs, is an area where Stalker is dedicating a lot of its development energy for version 5.0.
CommuniGate Pro version 4.3, which became available in early May, also includes new SIP features. The release included a new Presence Server component that enables it to communicate with multiple SIP clients, and resolves a common problem that occurs when a single user has more than one SIP device, such as desktop phone and a soft client on his PC.
Having multiple SIP-enabled devices can lead to conflicts when they try to announce their user's presence simultaneously. Stalker says it has addressed the issue by basing its presence functionality on two standards: SIMPLE, which is short for SIP for Instant Messaging, and XCAP (or XML Configuration Access Protocol) standards. Together these protocols will help CommuniGate Pro maintain server-based information about SIP user agents, Stalker says.
CommuniGate Pro version 4.3 also makes it easier for users to encrypt their e-mail, while still complying with "key escrow" laws that require some businesses, government organizations, and hosting companies to enable encrypted e-mail to be intercepted by law-enforcement organizations. The new software lets users encrypt some or all of their e-mail, while designating an escrow key holder that will have access to the encrypted email.
The new encryption capability was implemented through a standard S/MIME public key infrastructure (PKI), and works with Stalker's Web client interface, with Outlook using the CommuniGate Pro MAPI client, and other e-mail clients, including Microsoft's Outlook Express, Entourage and Mozilla Thunderbird.
Originally slated for availability in early March, CommuniGate Pro 4.3 was delayed, and became available in early May. CommuniGate Pro version 5.0, which Stalker originally planned to ship in the early spring, has also been delayed, and now the beta of that product should become available towards the end of June or the beginning of July.
Stalker's CommuniGate Pro covers all the bases when it comes to messaging and groupware, and offers some cutting-edge functionality, too. The software supports the basic SMTP, POP3, and IMAP e-mail standards, features a MAPI connector (for using the CommuniGate Pro server in conjunction with Microsoft Outlook clients), works with an array of major anti-spam and anti-virus products, and runs on more operating systems than you care to shake a stick at, including Windows Server 2003.
Beyond e-mail, Stalker offers add-ons for turning CommuniGate Pro into a groupware server, enabling users to share contact information and collaborate on their calendars. Stalker also sells software that turns CommuniGate Pro into a hub for voice, video, and instant messaging, via the session initiation protocol (SIP). Connecting SIP-enabled devices, such as VoIP phones and PDAs, is an area where Stalker is dedicating a lot of its development energy for version 5.0.
CommuniGate Pro version 4.3, which became available in early May, also includes new SIP features. The release included a new Presence Server component that enables it to communicate with multiple SIP clients, and resolves a common problem that occurs when a single user has more than one SIP device, such as desktop phone and a soft client on his PC.
Having multiple SIP-enabled devices can lead to conflicts when they try to announce their user's presence simultaneously. Stalker says it has addressed the issue by basing its presence functionality on two standards: SIMPLE, which is short for SIP for Instant Messaging, and XCAP (or XML Configuration Access Protocol) standards. Together these protocols will help CommuniGate Pro maintain server-based information about SIP user agents, Stalker says.
CommuniGate Pro version 4.3 also makes it easier for users to encrypt their e-mail, while still complying with "key escrow" laws that require some businesses, government organizations, and hosting companies to enable encrypted e-mail to be intercepted by law-enforcement organizations. The new software lets users encrypt some or all of their e-mail, while designating an escrow key holder that will have access to the encrypted email.
The new encryption capability was implemented through a standard S/MIME public key infrastructure (PKI), and works with Stalker's Web client interface, with Outlook using the CommuniGate Pro MAPI client, and other e-mail clients, including Microsoft's Outlook Express, Entourage and Mozilla Thunderbird.
Originally slated for availability in early March, CommuniGate Pro 4.3 was delayed, and became available in early May. CommuniGate Pro version 5.0, which Stalker originally planned to ship in the early spring, has also been delayed, and now the beta of that product should become available towards the end of June or the beginning of July.
Case Study: How to Beat the Spam Filters
As a marketer, you've probably experienced spam frustration. You spend hours doing research, writing an article, carefully composing your newsletter; then, you submit it for broadcast to your list. In the old days, an ordinary email newsletter could turn into thousands of dollars of sales. But the glory days of email marketing are coming to an end. Today, even if you are a legitimate marketer sending a requested opt-in email or newsletter, a spam blocker can pull your email into a spam box so that your subscriber never sees it.
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How can we as responsible marketers make sure that our newsletters get through the filters and to our customers? That's the million-dollar question we all face.
Between getting caught in spam filters or being blocked by ISPs and disappearing in the sheer volume of email that's out there, it's tough to guarantee that your newsletter actually gets into the hands of your customer.
Being one who likes a good challenge, I took on a mission to beat the spam filters. Recently, I worked with a client to improve his newsletter delivery rate by 22%. Read the following case study to see the small changes we made that made such a dramatic difference.
The Problem
Rich Fettke (www.Fettke.com) is facing declining deliverable rates on his newsletter, "The 1 Minute Climb to Success" and is seeking to improve them. His newsletter has 5,538 subscribers. In the past, Rich's undeliverable rate has run 10-40%, with an average of 22%.
Here's Rich's e-zine before the fixes. We highlighted the trouble areas in yellow so that you can spot them easily.
The Solution
To improve the delivery of Rich's e-zine, we made some simple changes. Below are three things we did to improve his delivery rates. See an improved version of his e-zine with the spam-filter-friendly changes in place. The items that we changed are marked in red and bold so you can see them easily.
Fix 1. We added a note to the top of his newsletter to have subscribers add their email address to his address book: "You are receiving this email from Fettke.com because you subscribed at our Web site. If you want to continue to receive emails from us, please add rich@fettke.com to your address book today."
Fix 2. We changed his newsletter headings and his e-zine subject line from being all caps to being both uppercase and lowercase and bold. The spam filters consider all caps as shouting, and penalize you accordingly.
Fix 3. We removed words and phrases that were triggering a flag in the spam filters. The trick to fixing such words is to add a symbol (like an apostrophe, asterisk or dash) in the middle of the word. For example, "weight" was one word that was triggering the spam filters. Changing that to wei'ght makes it spam-filter friendly.
You can always add a note to explain to readers why some of your words are appearing funny, like this: "P.S.: (~ *) characters have been added to some words to avoid triggering sp@m filters.
Here's a great free resource: www.ezinecheck.com. Paste the text of your email messages into the online form and the application offers up what to fix. The E-zine Checker helps your e-zine avoid the spam traps by checking for commonly used spam words, words in all capital letters and excessive use of words with symbols in them.
Every time an email has a word or phrase that triggers a spam-filtering flag, it adds a penalty point. If your score ranks high, your e-zine is likely to get caught in the spam filters. If your score is low or zero, your e-zine is likely to get delivered into your subscribers' inboxes. The goal is to get a spam score of one or zero.
Other Quick Tips
Get a free email account (like at Yahoo or Hotmail) and send a test to see if your e-zine gets through.
Try using a thesaurus to find alternatives for words that filters flag.
Use search and replace to find the offending words and replace them.
After you send your HTML newsletter, send a short teaser email that says where they can go to view your newsletter issue online.
Don't send email too frequently. Some spam filters flag sources that send several emails within a short period of time.
Add your complete contact information at the bottom of the broadcast.
Avoid using a listserv that is blacklisted and sends email from too many spammers. Some major providers will block anything they see broadcast from certain IP addresses that have been banned.
Our E-zine Check Spam Score Before Fixes
Note the phrases that were causing flags: click here, check, click, here, unsolicited, weight, and winner. There were also some phrases in all caps (shouting).
click here 0.1 pointscheck 1.739 pointsclick 0.405 pointsclick 0.405 pointsclick 0.405 pointsclick 0.405 pointsclick 0.405 pointshere 0.312 pointshere 0.312 pointsunsolicited 1.245 pointsweight 0.415 pointswinner 0.204 pointswinner 0.204 pointsSHOUTING 2 time(s) 0.5 Points
Total Points 7.056
Analysis: Risky. Your spam score is high enough to cause delivery problems.
If your score is too high, you should edit your copy to remove the spam triggers
E-Zine Check Score After Fixes
Look here to see all the changed we made using the suggestions from the E-zine Checker. The changes are indicated in bold and red.
Here's the score we got at E-zine Checker: 0. Excellent. Your newsletter should be delivered without any problems because you have achieved a spam penalty score of less than 1. Your e-zine is ready to send.
The Results
After sending the fixed broadcast, we checked the delivery rate tracking of Rich Fettke's newsletter. Before the spam fixes, his last newsletter was not delivered to 28% (1,550) subscribers. After the fix, all 5,538 were delivered.
Summary
Don't toss in the towel. E-zines are still a powerful marketing tool for business. It's now critical that we be a bit smarter in our newsletter-delivery strategies. I hope you will take a second look at your e-zine.
New Premium Member Benefits
Thought Leader Summit on Blogs
Benchmark ReportsExclusive Articles Each Week Access to our Best Archived Articles A lot less advertising, and more.. MarketingProfs readers also found these similar articles helpful
How can we as responsible marketers make sure that our newsletters get through the filters and to our customers? That's the million-dollar question we all face.
Between getting caught in spam filters or being blocked by ISPs and disappearing in the sheer volume of email that's out there, it's tough to guarantee that your newsletter actually gets into the hands of your customer.
Being one who likes a good challenge, I took on a mission to beat the spam filters. Recently, I worked with a client to improve his newsletter delivery rate by 22%. Read the following case study to see the small changes we made that made such a dramatic difference.
The Problem
Rich Fettke (www.Fettke.com) is facing declining deliverable rates on his newsletter, "The 1 Minute Climb to Success" and is seeking to improve them. His newsletter has 5,538 subscribers. In the past, Rich's undeliverable rate has run 10-40%, with an average of 22%.
Here's Rich's e-zine before the fixes. We highlighted the trouble areas in yellow so that you can spot them easily.
The Solution
To improve the delivery of Rich's e-zine, we made some simple changes. Below are three things we did to improve his delivery rates. See an improved version of his e-zine with the spam-filter-friendly changes in place. The items that we changed are marked in red and bold so you can see them easily.
Fix 1. We added a note to the top of his newsletter to have subscribers add their email address to his address book: "You are receiving this email from Fettke.com because you subscribed at our Web site. If you want to continue to receive emails from us, please add rich@fettke.com to your address book today."
Fix 2. We changed his newsletter headings and his e-zine subject line from being all caps to being both uppercase and lowercase and bold. The spam filters consider all caps as shouting, and penalize you accordingly.
Fix 3. We removed words and phrases that were triggering a flag in the spam filters. The trick to fixing such words is to add a symbol (like an apostrophe, asterisk or dash) in the middle of the word. For example, "weight" was one word that was triggering the spam filters. Changing that to wei'ght makes it spam-filter friendly.
You can always add a note to explain to readers why some of your words are appearing funny, like this: "P.S.: (~ *) characters have been added to some words to avoid triggering sp@m filters.
Here's a great free resource: www.ezinecheck.com. Paste the text of your email messages into the online form and the application offers up what to fix. The E-zine Checker helps your e-zine avoid the spam traps by checking for commonly used spam words, words in all capital letters and excessive use of words with symbols in them.
Every time an email has a word or phrase that triggers a spam-filtering flag, it adds a penalty point. If your score ranks high, your e-zine is likely to get caught in the spam filters. If your score is low or zero, your e-zine is likely to get delivered into your subscribers' inboxes. The goal is to get a spam score of one or zero.
Other Quick Tips
Get a free email account (like at Yahoo or Hotmail) and send a test to see if your e-zine gets through.
Try using a thesaurus to find alternatives for words that filters flag.
Use search and replace to find the offending words and replace them.
After you send your HTML newsletter, send a short teaser email that says where they can go to view your newsletter issue online.
Don't send email too frequently. Some spam filters flag sources that send several emails within a short period of time.
Add your complete contact information at the bottom of the broadcast.
Avoid using a listserv that is blacklisted and sends email from too many spammers. Some major providers will block anything they see broadcast from certain IP addresses that have been banned.
Our E-zine Check Spam Score Before Fixes
Note the phrases that were causing flags: click here, check, click, here, unsolicited, weight, and winner. There were also some phrases in all caps (shouting).
click here 0.1 pointscheck 1.739 pointsclick 0.405 pointsclick 0.405 pointsclick 0.405 pointsclick 0.405 pointsclick 0.405 pointshere 0.312 pointshere 0.312 pointsunsolicited 1.245 pointsweight 0.415 pointswinner 0.204 pointswinner 0.204 pointsSHOUTING 2 time(s) 0.5 Points
Total Points 7.056
Analysis: Risky. Your spam score is high enough to cause delivery problems.
If your score is too high, you should edit your copy to remove the spam triggers
E-Zine Check Score After Fixes
Look here to see all the changed we made using the suggestions from the E-zine Checker. The changes are indicated in bold and red.
Here's the score we got at E-zine Checker: 0. Excellent. Your newsletter should be delivered without any problems because you have achieved a spam penalty score of less than 1. Your e-zine is ready to send.
The Results
After sending the fixed broadcast, we checked the delivery rate tracking of Rich Fettke's newsletter. Before the spam fixes, his last newsletter was not delivered to 28% (1,550) subscribers. After the fix, all 5,538 were delivered.
Summary
Don't toss in the towel. E-zines are still a powerful marketing tool for business. It's now critical that we be a bit smarter in our newsletter-delivery strategies. I hope you will take a second look at your e-zine.
