July 2010 Summaries

We redesigned Postmark's welcome email to better reflect the tone and personality of our product and team, following the success of our Beanstalk welcome email redesign. The new design aims to showcase our brand's voice and style, with concepts and ideas similar to those in the Beanstalk email. We expect the updated email to be live within a few weeks.

Today we released a really big update to Postmark, adding the ability to track a complete history of sent emails as well as delivery problems. The new "Activity" page allows users to view each email sent along with its subject and search for specific messages using tools such as searching by email address or subject line. This feature improves record keeping and troubleshooting when it comes to delivering email. The update also includes the ability to view message status, including content, and a new status type "In Queue" which indicates if a message is waiting to be sent by Postmark. The goal of this addition is to continue opening up functionality that users would normally expect in a mail server while adding rich reporting features and an elegant interface.

The text discusses a welcome email redesign for Beanstalk, a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. The original welcome email was redesigned into two separate emails for free/trial accounts and paid signups to better communicate the brand's message and provide relevant information. The new design aims to convey the company's professional yet fun and casual tone. Testing with various email clients was a challenging but necessary step in the redesign process, which ultimately resulted in a visually appealing and functional welcome email. The redesigned emails will be launched soon on Beanstalk.

Twitter has recently changed its follow notification emails, introducing a new "preheader" that serves as an initial preview of the content. The preheader now displays more information than before, including the name of the person following, but it also loses some context about which account they are following. This subtle change may cause issues for users who manage multiple accounts and need to keep track of followings. Despite this, the redesign includes several improvements, such as a cleaner design, use of grey text for secondary content, and more member information like bio and location. The changes aim to enhance the user experience and provide better insights into the notifications.

The importance of identifying oneself clearly in an email was highlighted when the author received a mysterious email with a generic "System Update" from name and no clear indication of what it pertained to. The author notes that a simple change to the From name could have solved the issue, emphasizing the need for scrutiny and usability reviews of transactional emails, just like websites or applications.

When we launched Postmark, we prioritized email authentication with DKIM and SPF to establish a strong reputation. While some might view this as a complex process, our platform handles it for customers, providing two key options: signing messages on our own domain or adding records to their DNS to sign messages on their behalf. We recommend the former approach, as it aligns with industry trends and allows customers to build their reputation on their own domain. Additionally, we're working on improving our DKIM process by allowing customers to delegate a subdomain, making it easier for them to manage their reputation without requiring manual updates from us.