Account Customer Portal Manual Table of Contents Introduction Dashboard Section Reporting Section My Settings Section My Account Section Billing Section Help Section 2 4 7 15 20 25 27 1
Introduction SMTP Team is proud to present you the All-New Customer Portal for your account with us. It gives you a wide range of tools to control, analyze and manage every aspect of Email Sends and Deliverability, monitor your account vital statuses and easily get in touch with our Professional Support. With the help of your account Customer Portal, you can: View detailed Statistics on emails, that you are sending through our service. Get the visual representation of this statistical information. Export the detailed Statistics into a file using wide range of filters available. Get the detailed statistical breakdown by domain names (ISP s) you are sending emails to. Locate the emails that were delivered, bounced or are currently queued for delivery within our System. Get our System to automatically send you the necessary statistical reports for the given period at the given time. Learn how you can dramatically improve your email deliverability with SMTP DNS records, and manage them. Get interactive guides on adding our DNS records to your sending domain names, hosted on major hosting companies. Check the Settings, needed to configure your mailing applications to relay emails through your account with SMTP and get detailed step-by-step setup guides. Get access to our system API. Configure our system to send you notifications on your Account reaching your monthly email quota. View, create, delete and edit Senders within your account. Manage your company s contacts, associated with SMTP account, assign roles to them. 2
View the Billing details and statuses of your account, update payment information, learn when your billing period is ending and easily upgrade your account to a higher plan. View and export Invoices on your account. Easily get help from our Professional Support Team in single- click Live Chat. View, Log and edit existing Support Cases by directly interacting within our CRM system. Search extensive FAQ to quickly find answers to your questions. Give Feedback / Suggestions on our Services and Support for detailed review by our Team. Each account with SMTP has Customer Portal available regardless of the plan selected. From free trial accounts to a high volume sender accounts - all feature set within Customer Portal remains identical. 3
Dashboard Section Dashboard is the home page of SMTP Customer Portal. Using this page, you can quickly get access to vital features that need to be frequently monitored. 4
Live Chats A quick, intuitive way to contact our Professional 24/7 Support! and Sales Teams and get answers to any questions you might have. Statuses First feature that jumps at you when opening the Dashboard is the Status panel - a panel that lets you easily monitor the key statuses for your account, such as: Billing Status section - a section responsible for informing you on the current status of your Account s billing parameters, such as status of the last transaction and overdue balance. It informs you whether your account s billing is all good, if your attention is needed, or if your account is suspended due to lack of payments. Info Boxes A feature, that provides you with the vital information on your Next billing period start date - a date that your account will be automatically renewed and the payment is processed. It also lets you know the Emails/month plan you are currently subscribed to, the percentage of email quota used, and the option to quickly request an upgrade to a higher plan. Sending Statistics The most used and high-rated feature of Customer Portal is now available right after one-click login! It lets you view the messages sent, delivered, bounced, hard bounced (vital figure for successful email deliverability. Must be as low as 1-2%), queued and complained emails. The tool lets you filter the sending statistics by period and sender used to relay emails, view the results on an easy-to-understand graphs and quickly toggle between email statuses. It also allows you to export the sending statistics data with filters preset on statistical graph. Simply hit Export to CSV and confirm report generation. 5
Senders Feature allows you to control traffic distribution among different account senders as well as track vital statistical figures for each. This feature also allows you to interactively show the statistical details on sender s message statuses on the graph above. Simply click on the interested figure to see the chart presentation for this sender with selected time period. Note: This feature also checks the traffic sent through each specific sender for presence of necessary DNS records (SPF) in the sending domain names. In case the system identifies the domains used for sending emails as not having necessary DNS records added - it will display an error box next to the sender name. It means that your attention is needed and that the proper SPF record needs to be added to the DNS of the sending domains. 6
Feedback Section A set of tools for our Customers to easily get in touch with our Professional Support Team and to provide feedback on our services and support. Each feedback will be individually reviewed and addressed, as it does matter to us! These links are available across all Customer Portal sections. Reporting Section Reporting section allows you to easily track, manage and export sending statistics as well as view and search for the messages Queued for delivery. I. Statistical Overview On this page you are able to access your detailed sending statistics, view and filter statistical information on the charts. You are able to filter Statistical information by various methods that include date range, senders and email types. Overall, the information duplicates the one found in the Dashboard section. In the same section, you are able to view the statistical breakdown by Senders within your account. You view the detailed sending statistics for each sender and quickly toggle between numbers in the Senders section and their chart presentation. Additional tools allow you to: Quickly export the necessary statistical information by hitting Download CSV. Get one-click access to your Account Senders management page by hitting Manage Senders. Get instant help on the Overview section via Help button. 7
II. Email Queue This section of Customer Portal lets you access information on all emails that are currently queued with our system. Emails get queued for delivery, when our system is unable to deliver them to the recipients from the first attempt. 8
In this section, you are able to see the list of all emails queued under your account, as well as filter them by account senders, message statuses and search for a specific email within the queue. You are also able to expert the queued emails report into a convenient.csv format. Note: Emails in the queue are being resent constantly, and the queue contents are dynamically changing. III. Domain Reports Domain reports section allows you to get the statistical breakdown by the domain names you send your emails to. You are able to view Sending statistics on graph, monitor the top 10 domain names you send to by their vital statistics, and of course export the preferred data into a convenient.csv format. 9
Please note, that as on every Statistics page, the numbers in the table below are clickable and upon selection, the selected data will be presented on Graph. Tip: Always remember to check the Bounce Rate for domain names sending to. Major ISP s impose a threshold of around 5-7% hard bounced emails (invalid email addresses). In case your sending stats are over the threshold, please consider cleaning your mailing lists from invalid addresses - this will help you maintain a good sender reputation with major ISP s. IV. Campaign Tracking Campaign Tracking feature allows you to easily view the Sending Statistics breakdown by the campaigns that you are sending. Here s how it works: You are using a Mass Mailing application that supports campaigns sending (Interspire for example). Your application is tagging each email sent within a separate campaign with a proper internal tag (code). Our system tracks the campaigns you send using your application campaign tags and returns Sending Statistics on each campaign. 10
The Statistical output can then be used for checking the data from your side (within your mailing application), for convenient visual presentation of your Campaigns sending success and for detailed Statistical report exporting of selected Campaign. Note: The Campaign Tracking feature is currently under development by our team. Feature components will be released in future Customer Portal releases. V. Scheduled Reports Scheduled Reports is a feature that will help you pro-actively receive aggregated Sending Statistics reports of a specified type, to a specified email address with selected time and frequency. In order to create a scheduled statistical reports, simply hit Add Scheduled Reports and specify the following parameters: Report Frequency - how often you will be receiving an aggregated report from us (Daily / Weekly / Monthly). Report Type - aggregated report on which type of emails would you like to be receiving. Report Time - at which time of the day would you like to be receiving a report from us (UTC time zone). Email - the email address you would like to receive aggregated reports to. Report Fields - here you can specify the data to be present in scheduled reports. 11
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Tip: The Scheduled report that we highly recommend every bulk sender to have in place is the Complaints Report. Therefore, you will be receiving details on each recipient, complaint on receiving your emails. To maintain high sending reputation, each complaint recipient must be removed from all your mailing lists. VI. My Reports In this section of Customer Portal, you will be able to generate a detailed Sending Statistics report with preferred parameters and filters, to a convenient.csv format. You can also view a history of requested statistical reports and download them again, if needed. 13
To generate a Statistical Report, simply hit Add CSV Report and specify the following parameters: Report Type: Choose report on which email Status would you like to generate. Sender: Select the preferred account sender that you would like to export Sending Statistics from (if applicable). Notification: Our system can notify you via email once the requested report is ready. In can even send the requested report attached. Statistics Period: Select the preferred date range for the report to be generated. Multiple presets are available. Start / End date: Here, you can manually select the preferred date range for the statistical report. Domain: Select which account Sender to export the sending statistics for (if applicable). Campaign: Select which Campaign to export the sending statistics for (if applicable). Report Fields: Here you can specify the actual data to be present in an output report. 14
Note: In case the report for a significant date range, or containing a significant number of records is requested - it might take some time to generate it. Once the requested report is ready, please refresh the My Reports page and download the Report. 15
My Settings Section Settings Section allows you to access such vital parameters of your account as: SMTP server settings (server to connect to), settings for maximum email deliverability, API (Application Programming Interface) and system notifications. I. General Settings General Settings, as the name implies, are all about core smtp (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ) server settings to be used for email relaying through your account with SMTP. Settings are individual for each account and are required for successful email relaying and delivery. General settings include: SMTP Server: Your smtp server hostname for your mailing application to connect to. SMTP Ports: Variety of supported smtp port numbers. Encryption: connection security type. SMTP Login Credentials: credentials to authenticate and relay emails through your account. SPF Record: a Sender Policy Framework record to be added to the DNS zone of each your sending domain name 16
Note: By hitting Software & DNS Tutorials button, you will access our detailed Step-By-Step guides on setting up most common Mailing applications, Server Systems and Custom Scripts to work with above settings. In the same section, you will also access our Tutorials on adding SMTP SPF record to the DNS zones of domains hosted on major Hosting Providers. II. Deliverability Settings In this section it s all about settings that help you improve your email delivery. Add all necessary DNS records, check the current SPF statuses and get your emails into Inbox. Domain Keys DKIM or DomainKeys Identified Mail is a electronic signature that is inserted into the full header of your email to identify the origin of where the message was sent. 17
A DKIM signature positively identifies that your message came from the SMTP.com servers. Due to our good ESP reputation and agreements with the major ISP s, messages coming from us are more likely to get into your recipient s inbox. Use our tool to generate an unique DKIM key for your sending domain name and then add this key into your domain name DNS zone (you may need to refer to your domain hosting provider for extra instructions). Domain SPF Statuses Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records allow domain owners to publish a list of IP addresses or subnets that are authorized to send email on their behalf. The goal is to reduce the amount of spam and fraud by making it much harder for malicious senders to disguise their identity. The SPF record can only be added to the DNS zone of a sending domain name by it s owner and is vital for successful email deliverability. Our tool analyzes the Sending Statistics of your account, returns top 10 sending domain names (domains, used in the From field) and checks them against the needed SPF record. In case the record is added correctly it returns Valid value, otherwise - Error value. 18
SPF Domain Check As stated, Sender Policy Framework record is vital to be added to the DNS zone of every sending domain name. Our simple tool allows you to manually check any domain name for the presence of the correct SPF record (the SPF record that is unique for your account and specified in General Settings section). Tip: Always use your owned domain names in From field for sending out emails and sign each domain name with proper SPF record. The use of public domains and domains without proper SPF record added will result in poor email delivery and sending reputation worsening. III. API An application programming interface (API) is a particular set of rules ( code ) and specifications that software programs can follow to communicate with each other. It serves as an interface between different software programs and facilitates their interaction. Our client API allows you to access and export detailed Sending Statistics on your account and edit / create / delete Account Senders. In order to access our API, simply create and use the API keys available in this section. 19
More details on our client API functionality can be found in our API Documentation that is accessible by hitting API Documentation button. IV. System Notifications System Notifications section will allow you to proactively receive notices from our system on such events as bounced emails or account email quota usage. Bounce Notifications - in case this option is selected, our system will be automatically forwarding you the notifications on emails, that were bounced across whole account (all account senders) Usage Notifications - when this option is selected, you will be receiving proactive email quota alerts. For example, our system will send you an email notification once you have reached 75% of your monthly email quota; Note, that you can enable multiple triggers for usage notifications - so you can have system send you multiple notices on hitting 50 and 75% of your monthly quota. 20
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My Account Section In this section of Customer Portal, you are able to access and manage your Account Senders, Company and Contacts and Customer Portal login credentials. I. Senders Management Here, you can control your Account Senders. Account Senders are sets of separate login / password used for sending out emails. Senders have various attributes to control email traffic flow through your account and are commonly used for separating sending statistics within the account. On the Senders page you can easily view, filter, enable and disable senders under your account. You can also add new senders by hitting Add Sender button. Adding a new Sender When adding a new sender you will need to specify the key details and attributes, such as: Alias: this is the sender name - a label that the sender will have within our system. Monthly Usage Limit: a limit on the number of emails that particular sender can send monthly. Can be imposed within overall account usage limit. Authentication: selecting the method for authenticating within our system to relay emails though. Consists of two options: a SASL (default login / password combination), and by IP address (system checks the connecting IP address and allows relaying only upon connection from a listed IP). 22
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Changing sender parameters and attributes You can easily edit and modify sender parameters by simply clicking on the Sender name. Once there, you will be able to change default sender parameters (Alias, Quota, Login/ Password) and additional parameters such as Notifications parameters. Changing Sender Notifications Here, you can setup our system to send you over Push-type notifications on various events for this specific sender. Push notifications are delivered in real time over HTTP to your Hosted Web Application. We provide 3 types of notifications: successful deliveries, bounces (including suppressed emails and invalid recipients) and spam complaints. 24
Events which happened in short time range are grouped into array and delivered in a batch, for convenience and increased performance. You can also setup original complaint message forwarding to your mailbox. HTTP notifications are delivered in JSON format. II. Company and Contacts As its name implies, this section is where you can manage every aspect for contacting your company by our Team: from your Company name to assigning different user roles to your Contacts. Everything is pretty straightforward and in a few clicks you are able to change the needed fields of your Account Contacts. We are also introducing Contact Roles to you - an option to let us know which areas of your account the Contact is responsible for: Primary Contact: a contact created by default during account setup process and the one all Support communications will go to. Billing Contact: a contact, that all communications from our billing system will go to. Backup Contact: a contact that will only be used in a case when we were unable to reach you using both above Contacts. 25
III. CP login Credentials On this page you can easily change your Customer Portal access credentials. Billing Section In this section, you are able to take control over the Billing aspects of your account - update your Payment Source information, view the current Billing plan, quickly Upgrade and download necessary Invoices. 26
I. Billing Information Here, you are able to view the current Payment Source used for automatic renewal of your account, learn when will your next Billing Period start and how many emails you have used over the current Billing Period. Please note, that we do support various Payment Methods and right after the changes have been saved - your Payment Method details are safely stored within our Billing System. In case you face any issues or have any concerns, please con act our Professional Support straight away.! 27
II. Invoices Invoices section gives you the opportunity to view, sort and download Invoices for your account. Simply filter the listed invoices by Date or by Amount and hit the Download button to get the Invoice File. Help Section This Section is all about helping you get acquainted with the Customer Portal and it s features, Easily Contact and get help from our Professional Support Team. I. Contact Us A tool that help you easily get in touch with our Support Team, around-the- clock. Simply drop us a line and you will a professional response in no time! 28
II. API Documentation Our detailed Public API Documentation for your reference, containing both calls overview and actual Code samples. Our client API allows you to access and export your account detailed Sending Statistics and edit / create / delete Account Senders. In order to access our API, simply create and use the API keys available in Settings section. III. Tutorials Having troubles configuring your Mailing Application with provided SMTP relaying settings? Don t know how to add proper SPF record to the DNS zone of your domain names? This section can help you answer these questions by providing you with extensive Stepby-Step guidelines with screenshots following each step. Simply choose your Mailing Application or Domain Hosting Provider from the list and get detailed guides on how to set them up just right. 29
Note: In case you don t see your Mailing Application or Hosting Provider in the list, please feel free to refer to our Support Team for details on setup and to post your suggestion to add your Application (Hosting Provider) to the list via Feedback option. 30
IV. FAQ Frequently Asked Questions is the section that helps you get answers to most common questions on Customer Portal and is being regularly updated with new topics by our Support Team. Simply select the Customer Portal section in question and get answers! You can also search for specific keywords and suggest your question for review and further addition to the list. 31
V. Support Cases Management This feature is available across all Help section pages and allows you to control, log and close Support Tickets (Cases), get instant Solutions from our extensive database and always stay on top of what s new in your Support Case. Easily log a Case and directly specify the Case Reason and Service Area which your request falls under. Hit Submit and our Support Team will instantly get a case created and respond in no time. 32
View your currently Open Cases and recent Updates on them. Quickly access your old, Closed Cases with Solutions. Easily find a Solution to your Issue / Question by navigating around Solutions section. Enter the preferred keywords and get instant help. Wrapping Up, this is the Base feature set for your Account Customer Portal that allows you to manage most aspects of your email life. Yet, there is more to come in the upcoming Customer Portal Releases. 33