Speed and Deliverability

You may not have noticed many changes, but the things we have rolled out behind the scenes here at MNB over the last month have been massive.  Unfortunately, technical infrastructure changes on this scale come with growing pains. Thank you for sticking with us through the bugs some of you have experienced.  You should immediately notice a significantly faster site with slightly improved deliverability.

We are in the final testing phase of our new mail sending backend which will solve a few more major deliverability hurdles.  It will also add some new features that you have been asking for like the ability to send email from your own email address and have it be fully DMARC compliant.  If you would like to get a sneak peak of the new system, please contact support and ask to be a beta tester.

Mobile compatible layouts now available

MNB is now rolling out initial support for mobile compatible (also referred to as responsive) layouts for Genie newsletters. Newsletters made with these new layouts will automatically tailor layout blocks when displayed on small format devices such as mobile phones in order to provide a more pleasant viewing experience for your audience. (No more squinting and zooming all over the place!)

This system, though rigorously tested, is still unvetted by our most discerning resource available - you, our users! We invite you to use a mobile compatible layout for your next newsletter (especially if you find that you have a large mobile audience) and let us know what you think of them. We’re offering a subset of our current layouts and will expand the offering and create an even more flexible layout selection going forward.

Segment Your Lists!

MNB is excited to offer list segmentation from report metrics. Getting started with segmenting your lists is really simple!


1. There is now a Segment option from the Subscriber Lists page.

Create a new segment

2. Clicking Segment will bring up a dialog for creating a new Segment.

Here you can select which lists you’d like to include in your segment as well as configure options offered by segmentation.
Name of New List: The first time you segment a list or set of lists a new list will be created. You can customize the name of that list here.
Segment Type: Currently you can select from two reporting metrics to segment with: opens or clicks.
Opens/Clicks in the Last: This lets you select how far back you’d like to get subscribers from your reports.
Automatically Update: If this is checked when you create the segment then the new list will be periodically updated to include new subscribers. Old subscribers that haven’t been active with your sends will eventually be removed from your segment based upon the “Opens/Clicks in the Last” option.

Segmentation management dialog

3. That’s it!
It can take a few minutes for your new segmented list to be made, but you can check the status of it under “Batch Activity” on the Subscriber Lists page.

Finished!

Alternatively…
You can bring the Action options down from an individual list and create a segment with that list already selected.

Alternative

Critical changes to the way we send emails

Edited: October 15, 2015

We made some changes to the way we send email. We are doing this to improve our reputation, authentication, and overall deliverability.

1. MNB.EMAIL

The first change is that we are changing the domain for our sending servers. If you have our domain white-listed, have MNB in your SPF record, or want to have MNB in your SPF record, you need to know that our sending domain is now mnb.email.

ASIDE: we recommend (now) that you do add MNB to your SPF record. You can google how to do it but the gist of it looks like this:
v=spf1 include:mnb.email ?all

2. DMARC compliance revisted

The second change - which is also now live - is that we are adding DMARC compliance back to our platform. We highly recommend using our DMARC compliant sending domain (mnb.email) for your newsletters. Very recently, Yahoo has made changes to their platform that require nearly all emails to be DMARC compliant (sending or receiving).

By default, the FROM EMAIL address in your newsletters are [now] DMARC compliant. You can change them if you like; we don’t recommend it. The display and format of the email address will “show” your email address at our domain.

For example, the FROM EMAIL address for my MNB account would look like this: steve+gomnb.com@mnb.email.

Please note, your FROM NAME, REPLY TO NAME, and REPLY TO EMAIL address will not change (unless you change them).

Further, if you do use our DMARC compliant address (@mnb.email), you do not need to concern yourself with SPF (from 1 above).

Thanks for your patience and understanding whilst we improve our systems and sending.

The Migration Plan

It is time to upgrade; our latest and greatest version of MNB (v6 for those that care to know) is fully featured and ready to handle the workload (easier and faster). If you haven’t had the chance to play around in it, you will soon. We will be moving all accounts to the new version using the schedule below.

If you don’t know if you are using the latest and greatest version - there is an easy way to tell.

  • If the nav bar is light and the logo is on the top left - you are using the new version
  • If the nav bars are dark and “MNB” is on the top right - you are using the old version

February 20th
All Enterprise Accounts and their Sub-Accounts
All Content clients - we use the enterprise to distribute content
(if you are uncertain if you fall into this category, just ask support)

February 27th
Username starts with letters A-F

March 6th
Username starts with letters G-L

March 13th
Username starts with letters M-R

March 20th
Username starts with letters S-Z

One last note: we will still provide access to the old version of MNB for a few months. You will be able to switch back and forth UNLESS you fall into the first group of accounts that are being moved. Limitations to our enterprise system REQUIRE all enterprise and sub-accounts be on the same version of MNB.


Helpful Links:
Review the new system
The New Dashboard
Newsletters
Reports
Subscribers Search