M-Web Business Solutions simplifies electronic mail

M-Web Business Solutions today announced the introduction of Courier, its bulk mail and message management system that offers customers the opportunity to manage their electronic communication in a quick and cost-effective manner.

Courier allows customers to communicate marketing, promotional, technical and business information with the peace of mind that their greatest asset; their customer base, is protected.

"Courier empowers customers with one of the strongest tools in business today: that being quick, reliable and personalised communication with a permanently up-to-date customer base. Unlike many messaging solutions that are 'send and forget`, Courier provides new levels of message delivery auditing capability, enabling customers to have complete 360-degree visibility of their customer communication. Very importantly, Courier has also been designed to prevent intentional and accidental spam by means of various built-in safeguards to protect both the recipient and sender," says Gary Hart, manager, products and marketing at M-Web Business Solutions.

Powered by the mCentre Message Engine, Courier offers customers two ways of connecting and sending information to their respective customers:

Firstly, via an online graphical interface from where customers can manage and send messages from anywhere in the world. The interface allows customers full management of their e-mail lists, recipient information, message content and mail batches. It comes in a user-friendly format with a help wizard to guide the customers through the different steps and processes.

The second access method is via a direct coding interface, which allows customers who make use of their own mail management system to interface directly with mCentre message engine using XML, (whereby they only use the message engine for scheduling and sending e-mail batches to their internal or external customer bases).

Some other features included in Courier are:

Advanced delivery and failure reports: Courier incorporates advanced message tracking functionality that will provide detailed categorised reasons for every message delivery failure or problem.

Built in un-subscribed functionality: The feature allows for a system generated un-subscribe function to be automatically added to each message to ensure that only those recipients wishing to receive further correspondence will do so.

Preview and test functionality: Extensive message preview and testing functionality ensure that the messages delivered are exactly as the sender intended, avoiding the need for embarrassing message recalls.

HTML editor-online: Built into Courier is an advanced HTML message editor for the compilation of e-mail messages, which can be reverted into HTML code if required.

HTML editor-offline: Content can also be compiled and edited offline, eg via MS Front-Page and then uploaded directly onto the system.

Link tracking: Courier has the ability to report on actual ``click-through" statistics that allow customers to see how many people have clicked on links, images or banners in an email message.

Scheduler: This allows customers to schedule e-mail batches in advance in order for them to be sent on a specific date and time in the future.

Coding Interface (XML): Courier allows customers with their own email management to schedule and send their messages directly via the mCentre engine. These messages and lists are interfaces directly to the system via XML integration.

Help Wizard: which assists customers in setting up mailing lists, compiling templates and sending batches.