Last week I wrote about setting up Saved Searches in Email Center Pro, and how they’ll save you valuable time.

But if you want to be super efficient, you’ll combine your Saved Searches with Alerts.

First, a few words about Alerts. You set up alerts so you don’t have to constantly check countless mailboxes. Determine what you want to be informed about  — all mail, unread mail, mail assigned to you, which mailbox you’re interested in, and how often you want to be notified. Then set up as many alerts as you’d like. When mail comes in meeting your criteria, Email Center Pro sends an email to the contact email address you’ve listed for your account, on the time schedule you’ve chosen.

In other words, you’ve got your biff@yourcompany.com email address that you’re in and out of all day long. And then you’ve got your sales@, help@, info@ addresses coming into ECP. You don’t want to spend any unnecessary time hopping from inbox to inbox, but you do want to know what’s going on in all those mailboxes.

So you set up some alerts to go to your biff@ address. Maybe you want to be notified hourly when there’s unread mail in your sales@ box, and three times a day when there’s mail assigned to you in info@. Set up takes a few seconds.

Just click the Accounts & Tools link at the top of your screen, and click on the Alerts tab. You’ll see all sorts of options there, such as how often to be notified, what kind of mail you want to know about, and so on.

At this point, think back to last week’s post about Saved Searches. We discussed a hypothetical search for mail sent by Bob, assigned to Janet, tagged Newsletter, and unread. Now let’s say we saved that search and called it Sent by Bob. One way to use it would be to periodically go into ECP and run the search. Or…

We can set up an alert to let us know when mail fulfilling all our Saved Search arrives. In the Sent by Bob search, it’s possible that there are only three or four messages a month that meet all the criteria. Yet you need to know about them as soon as possible. In this case, simply click the “Mailbox” field in your Alerts and scroll down until you see the Saved Searches at the bottom of the list – and click the Sent by Bob saved search.

Your Saved Search + Alert allows you to concentrate on all your other tasks, secure in the knowledge that as soon as that Sent by Bob message hits ECP, you’ll be alerted and be able to deal with it — without having to stalk your inboxes waiting for it to happen.

Tags: ECP, ECP Power Users, ecp update
Posted on January 15th, 2010 | No Comments »

Saved Searches saved my life.

Well, not really. But when you have email you want to keep track of but you don’t want to check 15 mailboxes throughout the day, you’ll feel like Saved Searches are a dream come true.

You have a lot of options in using Email Center Pro Saves Searches. You can search for mail by date, sender, subject, tag, and about 15 other criteria. And you can combine criteria, so you can look for mail sent by Bob between January 1 and January 15. Or mail sent by Bob and tagged Follow Up. Or mail sent by Bob, assigned to Janet, tagged Newsletter, and unread. You get the idea…

Now, there are two ways to use this. There’s the one time search, where you just really need to find that one email. You can put together a saved search, but not save it. Find what you’re looking for, and then just move on.

Or you can create the searches that you’re going to use time after time. For instance, I have saved searches created to show me all the mail my supervisor sent related to certain products (by tag and by subject line) . By defining the search criteria and saving the search,  I can easily look at all the mail I want to see.

Once created and saved, you have the option of sharing your search. So if it’s a personal one that nobody else really needs access to, fine. It’s only available to you. But if you want your team members to use the search to track the particulars as you’ve described them, then you just click the Share box, and your search will show up in everyone’s list.

Now, here’s the coolest part: You can create an alert to tell you when there’s mail that meets the criteria of your Saved Search! Check out my next post for details on setting up the alerts you need to make your life even easier.

Tags: ECP, ECP Power Users, ecp update, news
Posted on January 7th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Don’t you hate it when you send a customer or client an email, only to hear back from them that they didn’t receive it? You have to ask them if they checked their spam folder, and are embarrassed to hear that indeed, your message has been tagged with that scarlet (pinkish?) letter.

This is not good.

Since Email Center Pro is sending mail on behalf of your domain, some servers are going to think this is suspicious behavior, which is why your message may end up with the Viagra ads and real estate offers.

But if you set up a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record, essentially telling your domain that ECP is allowed to send for you, you’ll find that your emails will get through much more reliably.

ECP help provides detailed instructions for setting up the SPF record. All you need is access to your domain’s control panel, and you should be in business.

Tags: ECP, ECP Power Users, ecp update, technical
Posted on December 8th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Among all the widgets available on your Email Center Pro dashboard, there’s one that’s very near and dear to my heart. It’s the ECP Updates widget, which will let you know every time I write another scintillating blog post. If you were looking at it right now, you’d be seeing this whole paragraph in the preview! It would look like this:

Since I haven’t actually been taking advantage of the connection between this blog and the ECP dashboard until now, I thought it might be a good time to link back to some recent posts you might have missed.

First, let’s talk about managing contacts. Most email programs have some version of contact management, but they don’t usually cross over to functions outside of email. Check out 3,2,1 Contact… How Do You Keep Track to find out how much more Email Center Pro has to offer.

Learning how to control your email is a common thread on this blog. The recent Who’s the Boss post addressed some outdated ways to gain the upper hand, and suggests alternatives to the same-old same-old approach.

Finally, we see the frequent articles and blog posts about the demise of email at the hands  social media and we just don’t agree. Don’t Believe the Hype offers a counter argument to the currently popular “email is dead” chorus.

Tags: ecp update, news
Posted on November 10th, 2009 | No Comments »

Have you noticed that your Email Center Pro account is running faster and more smoothly? Our developers have.

Meet Alex and Evan, two of the dedicated ECP programmers who used to get woken up at 2:00 in the morning with alerts that the servers were struggling to handle all of your mail. These days, they’re a lot more rested.

The most recent improvements to Email Center Pro are largely behind-the-scenes upgrades that help you serve your customers faster and more reliably.

More helpful Search results

One change you can actually see is in the Search function. We noticed that a lot of our users were using search for “names@domain”, rather than opening the Contacts tab to look specifically for people.

You’ll see that the Search box on the top right of your Email Center Pro screen now contains an arrow. Click the arrow next time you’re using the search, and use the drop-down menu to focus your search results on emails, contacts, templates, or tagged conversations.

Tags: collaborative email, ecp update, Email Center Pro, team, Tips and Tricks
Posted on August 21st, 2009 | 2 Comments »

From time to time, Email Center Pro users will ask us if it is possible to set Email Center Pro as the default handler for mailto links in the browser, so that clicking on the link prompts for a new message in Email Center Pro instead of a traditional desktop client such as Outlook.  Luckily, if you’re using Firefox 3, the answer is YES!  Follow the step by step guide below to configure your browser to use ECP to handle mailto links. (more…)

Tags: ecp update, integration, technical
Posted on July 7th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Feeling chatty? Or maybe you’re ready to set out on a full email marketing campaign? Email Center Pro can keep you in the loop every step of the way, with integration of enterprise-level software right from within your Email Center Pro Dashboard.

Email Marketing Campaigns
Our partners at VerticalResponse help you grow your business with targeted email marketing campaigns. With a single click, you can now automatically create lists for your email marketing campaigns from any group of Email Center Pro Contacts. Then, track your lists and campaigns in a dedicated VerticalResponse Dashboard widget.

Live Chatting
With the growth of online interaction, more and more customers expect live online chat capabilities as part of the customer experience. In addition to real-time tracking of email conversations, users with a Velaro chat account can now see live online chat details in the new Velaro Dashboard widget. Log in and view chat transcripts, send customers a record of the chat from your Email Center Pro address for future reference, or even look up other email conversations with that customer, all with a single click!

Dazzle them with your speed!
Paid accounts can now add a Response Time Badge to their websites, announcing to the world how fast your customer response time is for any mailbox in your account. Whether you want to intimidate the competition or just applaud your customer service team, the Response Time Badge shows that you understand the value of your customers’ time.

Tags: ecp update
Posted on June 12th, 2009 | No Comments »

Here at Palo Alto Software, we were frustrated with customer emails that didn’t contain all the information we needed. We’d have to reply back with a request for more information, and wait for a response, all of which delayed our ability to help our customers as quickly and well as we could.

Our solution was an online form which prompts customers for each bit of information we need in order to solve their problem or meet their needs on THEIR timeframe – ASAP. Of course, as a software company, we have a full-time staff of Web-savvy programmers, but now this sort of innovation is available even for very small businesses.

This week, Email Center Pro has released an update which includes a new Dashboard widget for tracking results of your online forms from FormSpring. FormSpring allows businesses and organizations an easy way to build any type of online form, integrate it with their website and begin collecting data in digital format.

To see the new widget:

1. Open your Email Center Pro Dashboard
2. Click Add More Widgets at the top left of the screen
3. Scroll through the list and find the FormSpring widget
4. Click Add This Widget

If you already have a FormSpring account, just enter your API key to log in and see your responses. If you don’t have an account yet, you can sign up right in the widget. Isn’t it nice to get your customer interactions in their best form ever?

Tags: collaborative email, ecp update, Email Center Pro
Posted on April 21st, 2009 | 1 Comment »

To give your customers the best experience, you need to manage your email campaigns from building the list, to tracking clicks, to following up with one-on-one interactions with prospects and customers.

Palo Alto Software is pleased to announce that we are now one step closer to closing that email loop, with the integration of a new widget which lets Email Center Pro users access key data from their VerticalResponse email campaigns, right in the Email Center Pro Dashboard.

To see the new widget:

1. Open your Email Center Pro Dashboard
2. Click Add More Widgets at the top left of the screen
3. Scroll through the list and find the VerticalResponse widget
4. Click Add This Widget 

Once added, you will need to log in with your VerticalResponse email address to see summaries of your mailing lists and campaigns.

If you don’t yet have a VerticalResponse account, you can sign up directly from the widget, and get 250 free email credits and 50 free survey credits.

You can learn more about VerticalResponse and how they can help you manage your email campaigns at the VerticalResponse website.

Tags: ecp update
Posted on April 13th, 2009 | No Comments »

You can click on the column headers in any message listing to sort conversations by subject or date.

1. Open any mailbox or Saved Search
2. Click the Subject or Date column
3. You can click again to reverse the sort order
4. Scroll through the list to find a specific message
5. Click the message to open that conversation

Tags: ecp update
Posted on March 31st, 2009 | No Comments »