beta MNB
Published 20 May 2014
MNB developers have been hard at work developing a completely new user interface - building something easy, useful, intuitive, and responsive. The new beta MNB (done using bootstrap) is responsive and usable on any mobile device. Folks, don’t get me wrong when I write this - don’t build a newsletter in Genie on your cell phone. I did it but you shouldn’t. If you do, please don’t contact support for help. Got it?
To get started, log in to MNB to find your dashboard, just as you would in the current system. There you’ll find the same useful summary of your account. You might notice that the new dashboard looks much prettier.
As you can see, we have simplified our navigation and tools. Navigation is now simply our core components: Newsletters, Subscribers, and Reports. I say this quite often but, build a newsletter, send it to your subscribers, and count your metrics (reports). It is an oversimplified view of email marketing but it gets the job done.
If you’ve read enough, already heard our chatter about the new beta, and are ready to begin, this is how you switch to use beta.
1. Log in to your MNB account
2. From your dashboard, create a new “Favorite” link
3. You can name it anything, I called mine “Switch”
4. Add the following URL to that favorite: /my/use_beta.php
5. Check over your shoulder, whisper “Building the Future,” and complete the secret handshake with our security guards, then proceed to enter Beta (by clicking the link you just made).
From beta, you can switch back by clicking on your username in the top-right and selecting “Switch to Live” from the drop-down.
Why use beta MNB?
First and foremost, it’s cool. Second, it’s fast - quite a bit faster than the existing site. We’re basically going through a complete rewrite of the system on current and futuristic technology.
I’ll go over each of these features in-brief as things are going to change as we get closer to a complete feature set (and beta2).
Newsletters
Currently, the only features missing from Newsletters (and existing site) are:
1. Import Newsletters (which won’t ever make a come back as it currently exists)
2. Building and editing Snippets
3. Auto-series
This is pretty much the newsletters page. You can use text-based filters to QUICKLY find your newsletters; the days of clicking next-page, next-page, next-page to find an older newsletter are gone. The “View” feature is the same as existing and the drop-down action items for the newsletter are clearly identifiable.
Quick Tips:
If you want to jump right to the Genie (template editor), click the drop-down and select Edit.
If you want to edit the newsletter properties (name, subject, header stuff), click on the newsletter name.
If you want to clear the text-filter, click on the “x” on the far right of the box.
Subscribers
We’ve simplified some items for Subscribers and appropriately renamed the lists to “Lists”.
We’ve added text-based searches for Lists (in case you have lots of lists; yes, lots of clients have lots of lists). We took all our customized forms, confirmation emails, preferences, sign-up forms and what-nots and hid/buried them in “Forms”.
Quick Tips:
If you are importing a list, think Import.
If you are adding a bunch of names via copy and paste, think Add.
Search on the Subscriber Lists page will look through all of your subscriber lists (currently by email address only).
When you click INTO a subscriber list, you will see a list-specific search feature.
Reports
Our greatest improvements have been along the lines of reporting. We’ve implemented a completely new backbone for reporting and metrics. This version of the beta doesn’t showcase what we will be doing, but it sets the tone.
In adding the text-based filter to reports, if you name your campaigns properly, you can pull a quick view/report of a specific campaign and see how you have been fairing.
Then, click onto a newsletter name and get the full details of the report.
Soon (enough) the Email Client Usage, Operating System Usage, and Geographic Usage elements will be clickable to get a list of the email addresses that are identified / segmented. This will allow you to segment by usability and location.
As always, all metrics (actual numbers) can be clicked to get the list of addresses that opened, clicked, bounced, subscribed, unsubscribed, etc.
Summary
That is the gist of it, folks. Thanks for taking a look, and as you develop feedback, please email me directly, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Here is a list of the things that are not available in this version of beta:
Auto-Series - available now
Import newsletters
Snippets - available now
Enterprise - available now
Plan Changes - available now
Billing Changes - available now
Change Password - available now
Here is a list of the things we’ve removed (might be indefinitely):
Auto-responders - this is being rebuilt from scratch as a real, functioning auto-responder
Surveys - Survey Monkey and SurveyGizmo have this niche sealed up, use them, please
Rewards - our Affiliate System was a terrible implementation and we are re-imagining this