Otto user manual Print

Otto manual, v3.2.0

Settings

There are various configuration options to set here. Some are more important than others and some are only optional.

Select theme - Change this if you want to have a different look.

Months of inactivity that trims - Various actions update a contacts "last activity" setting. If you want to delete old, inactive contacts this is the tool to use. The setting is in months and can be anything from 1 to 9999 or higher. So you can set multiple years by using larger month numbers. Set it to 0 to turn it off.

Timezone - Set the time zone that you (or your contacts) have so that the messages are sent at the right time.

Lines on the Quick Add page - This lets you set the number of subscribers you can add at a time with Quick Add.

Subscriptions per page on the list - Set how many subscriptions you want to see before you need to "turn the page".

Contacts per page on the list - Set how many subscriptions you want to see before you need to "turn the page".

Login name and password - Change the default and pick your own name and password.

Optional: Google Analytics - Set name and password if you want to make use of special links in your messages and see statistics on the startpage. A VIP tag on contacts will then say Yes if they have clicked on a link in a message.

Optional: SugarCRM data import - Details used for importing data from SugarCRM. Contact us if you want to use this feature, we need to set it up.

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Sequence View

This is your Sequence control panel where you can create and edit your sequences. All current sequences are listed here and you can mouse over them to see their descriptions. You have 5 buttons to help you manage the sequences:

View Subscriptions will show you a list of all subscriptions for the sequence.

Sequence Events will let you manage sequenced events (messages & notifications).

Newsletters will let you manage newsletter style messages.

Edit Sequence Info will let you edit the sequence information.

These four views all contain a summary of the Sequence and links to the other views.

Last you have the Delete Sequence button. This will pop up a confirm window with the sequence details, as a safety, so you can be sure you are deleting the right one.

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Sequence Subscriptions

All subscriptions for the chosen sequence are listed here, sorted with the most recent sign up at the top. You can use the search box to find a specific subscriber. The edit button will let you manage the subscription and if you click a contacts name you can see/edit their details.

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Sequence Events

Here you can create and edit your sequence events. Events come in two types: Messages and Notifications.

Messages are the e-mails that you want to send to the subscribers.

Notifications are used to send an e-mail to someone other than the subscriber. You can send yourself (or someone else, like a seller) an e-mail to show when a person has received a certain point in a sequence.

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Newsletters

Newsletters are sent to all subscribers at the same time, regardless of when they signed up. For news, season greetings or anything else that you want to get out to everyone at the same time, use a Newsletter message.

Please note that if you have many subscribers, there may be a slight delay before all newsletters are sent. This is to prevent overloading the mailserver. Progress shows how many subscribers have been sent the message out of your total subscribers.

New subscribers will not receive old newsletters.

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Broadcasts

Broadcasts work similar to Newsletters with the main difference being that they are applied on a sequence wide scale. A newsletter is created specifically per sequence whereas a broadcast is created and then applied to one or many sequences at once. This feature is useful if you want to send out a sequence wide announcement to your subscribers.

Please note that if you have many subscribers, there may be a slight delay before all broadcasts are sent. This is to prevent overloading the mailserver. Progress shows how many subscribers have been sent the message out of your total subscribers.

New subscribers will not receive old broadcasts.

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Create/Edit Sequence

The name of the sequence is a quick identifier and is displayed to the Otto users as well as the subscribers.

Sign-up Confirmation. Using this will send a confirmation e-mail when people use the web site form to sign up to a sequence. Having this on helps you avoid people adding someones elses e-mail out of mistake or malice.

Notify owner on sub/unsub. This will send you an e-mail when someone joins or leaves the sequence subscription list.

Notify owner on clicked link. This will send you an e-mail once a day where it collects and tells you who has followed your Google Analytic tagged links in messages. "Only when VIP-flagged" will only report the first time a contact follows a link, "Every click" will report every link visit made and "Never" means you will never receive this daily e-mail.

Notify owner on bounced e-mail. This will send you a list of the e-mails that were removed due to being bounced.

Send events on weekends can be set to yes or no. If set to no, then any message/notification that would have been sent on a Saturday or Sunday will be pushed to Monday instead. Note that it will not push any following events though, so if you are sending messages every day, they will get three on Monday instead.

Only send events during working hours can be set to yes or no. If set to yes, then any message/notification that would have been sent outside the 8-17 time frame will be pushed until the time frame appears again.

The owner's name and e-mail is shown when anything is sent from the sequence and will receive any replies (and the sub/unsub messages if chosen).

The description field is there to let you give a longer explanation of what the sequence is about and when/how to use it, as the name alone can't say everything.

Sign Up Confirmation Page. If "Sign-up Confirmation" is used, this is what people see after they sign up through the web site form.

Confirmation Done Redirect URL. Use this if you want to send a new subscriber to a "Thank You" page. If you leave it empty a default page with "Subscription confirmed" will show.

Unsubscribe Page. This will show when people have clicked an unsubscribe link and left the sequence.

Unsubscribe Redirect URL. If used, this will replace "Unsubscribe Page". Use this if you would rather send people who unsubscribe to a "Good Bye" page on your website.

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Create/Edit Sequence Message

The Message Subject is the first thing the subscribers will see when they get the e-mail in their inbox, so name it well.

Look at the "Tag Reference" link at the top right to see which tags you can use in the subject and in your message. The unsub tag should always be used at the end of a message.

"Body: Html Version" - When writing your html-message use the toolbar if you want to format the text. To make a link, mark the text you want to link and click the little chain. If you want to see and edit the message directly in html, click the HTML-button. If you have written something in Word and want to paste it in, use the "Paste from Word"-button.

"Body: Text Version" - You can also make a separate text version of the message, but if you leave it blank it will be auto-generated from the html-version. Note that if you edit the html version and you are using the auto-generated text version, you need to clear the text version window so that it can update.

Sequential timing is the key to how a sequence works. Here you enter how long after the subscription is added you want the message to be sent. If you want the message to go out 1 day after they subscribe you put "1" in the days column. If you want the second message to go out 1 week after they subscribe you put "1" in the week column.

Absolute timing can be used if you want to control exactly what day and time a message is sent. This is applied after the time set in Sequential timing has passed. If Sequential timing is set to 3 weeks and Absolute timing to Tuesday, Otto will first wait 3 weeks and then wait for the next Tuesday before sending your message.

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Create/Edit Sequence Notification

The Notification Subject is the first thing the recipient will see when they get the e-mail in their inbox, so name it well.

Look at the "Tag Reference" link at the top right to see which tags you can use in the subject and in your notification.

E-mail to send notification to is the key to notifications. This is the person you want to notify when a subscriber reaches a certain point in a sequence. The Sequence Owner E-mail will appear here, just change it if you want to send the notification elsewhere.

Add Subscriber Details. If the person recieving the notification is going to conact the subscriber in anyway, you can use this button to automaticly fill in tags for the subscribers contact information.

"Body: Html Version" - When writing your html-message use the toolbar if you want to format the text. To make a link, mark the text you want to link and click the little chain. If you want to see and edit the message directly in html, click the HTML-button. If you have written something in Word and want to paste it in, use the "Paste from Word"-button.

"Body: Text Version" - You can also make a separate text version of the message, but if you leave it blank it will be auto-generated from the html-version. Note that if you edit the html version and you are using the auto-generated text version, you need to clear the text version window so that it can update.

Sequential timing is the key to how a sequence works. Here you enter how long after the subscription is added you want the message to be sent. If you want the message to go out 1 day after they subscribe you put "1" in the days column. If you want the second message to go out 1 week after they subscribe you put "1" in the week column.

Absolute timing can be used if you want to control exactly what day and time a message is sent. This is applied after the time set in Sequential timing has passed. If Sequential timing is set to 3 weeks and Absolute timing to Tuesday, Otto will first wait 3 weeks and then wait for the next Tuesday before sending your message.

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Create/Edit newsletter

The Newsletter Subject is the first thing the recipient will see when they get the e-mail in their inbox, so name it well.

Look at the "Tag Reference" link at the top right to see which tags you can use in the subject and in your newsletter.

"Body: Html Version" - When writing your html-message use the toolbar if you want to format the text. To make a link, mark the text you want to link and click the little chain. If you want to see and edit the message directly in html, click the HTML-button. If you have written something in Word and want to paste it in, use the "Paste from Word"-button.

"Body: Text Version" - You can also make a separate text version of the message, but if you leave it blank it will be auto-generated for you from the html-version. Note that if you edit the html version and you are using the auto-generated text version, you need to clear the text version window so that it can update.

At the bottom you set what time you want the newsletter to go out. "Start sending on" means that the newsletter will start going out at this time, but if you have a lot of subscribers it will take some time before everyone receives it.

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Create/Edit broadcast

The Broadcast Subject is the first thing the recipient will see when they get the e-mail in their inbox, so name it well.

Look at the "Tag Reference" link at the top right to see which tags you can use in the subject and in your broadcast.

"Body: Html Version" - When writing your html-message use the toolbar if you want to format the text. To make a link, mark the text you want to link and click the little chain. If you want to see and edit the message directly in html, click the HTML-button. If you have written something in Word and want to paste it in, use the "Paste from Word"-button.

"Body: Text Version" - You can also make a separate text version of the message, but if you leave it blank it will be auto-generated for you from the html-version. Note that if you edit the html version and you are using the auto-generated text version, you need to clear the text version window so that it can update.

Next up you have the sequence selection list. Here you can select which sequences should receive the broadcast. You can select/deselect multiple sequences using Ctrl + Mouse Click.

At the bottom you set what time you want the broadcast to go out. "Start sending on" means that the broadcast will start going out at this time, but if you have a lot of subscribers it will take some time before everyone receives it.

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Edit Subscription

Everything to do with a subscription is shown here along with the tools you need to edit it. Changing name or e-mail will also change the contact information.

IP Adress will only show when people sign up through the website code form. Referral Source shows how they were added. Unique Code is used to identify the subscription.

If the Confirmed box is empty, the subscriber has not clicked accept in their confirmation e-mail. You may click to re-send the confirmation e-mail. If they are confirmed, the box will be ticked and you may instead send out the unsubscribe e-mail.

Time started shows you when the subscription began. Reset Timestamp will change Time started to now and start the sequence over from the beginning again.

The Resend Message drop down lists which messages has been sent already. Choosing one message, or all sent messages, will re-send it/them as soon as possible. Resend Notification works in the same way.

NOTE: Reset Timestamp will over rule any Resend command.

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Contacts

This is your contact overview. The list shows name, e-mail and organisation of the contacts in Otto. The list is sorted to display the most recent active contact at the top. Use the search box to find a specific contact or a selection of contacts. Click the edit/delete icons to edit or delete a contact.

Hover your mouse pointer over the Globe Icon to view GeoIP data such as Continent, Country, Organisation, ISP etc for your contacts. Otto gathers this information when they use the sign-up form.

Note that manually added contacts in Otto will not have any GeoIP data as well as contacts that were added before the existence of this feature.

You have three options for adding new contacts - Quick Add, Add Single and Add Multiple: Quick Add is handy if you just want to add (and/or subscribe) a few contacts quickly. Add Single is for adding people that you want to enter a lot of details for. Add Multiple will let you add or import a lot of contacts at once.

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Quick Add

Quick add is ideal if you just want to add people and subscriptions fast.

Here you just have e-mail, name and a drop down for choosing sequence. You can add more information later by editing the contact. If an e-mail already exists, the contact name will not be overwritten, but the subscription will still be added.

You can change how many contacts you can add at a time under Settings, the default is five.

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Add Single

Add Single gives you the option of adding a lot of data to a contact right away if you wish.

Here you can fill in any field information you want for the contact, as much or little as you want. At the bottom you can add your first note. You can also add subscriptions by selecting sequence names before you save. Hold down the "Ctrl"-button while you click to select several sequences or to deselect.

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Add Multiple

You can add several contacts in one go by either uploading a CSV file or by entering a list of e-mails. If you want to do both at once, that's fine too!

You can choose a sequence in the drop down at the bottom if you want to start subscriptions for everyone you are adding. This is optional only, leaving the drop down at "No sequence" will not add any subscriptions.

CSV: To add people through a CSV-file, click "download template" to see how the file should be set up to make it work. Once you have prepared the file you can upload it.

If there are duplicate e-mail addresses they will not be added, but you will be able to download a file which lists them so that you can look them over. If you chose to "overwrite existing data", then any contact with an identical e-mail address will instead be overwritten with the new information, but any subscriptions will remain.

List: Add one or several e-mail addresses separated by commas. If an e-mails already exists, the subscription will still be added. This means that you can also use this window to add a subscription to multiple existing contact.

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View/Edit Contact

The Contact Summary is always at the top, but under that you can switch between the three views Contact details, Subscriptions and Notes.

Contact Summary displays name, e-mail and organisation for easy identification. Last activity shows the last time anything happened to this contact and Time joined is when the contact was created. VIP is only used if you are using Google Analytics with Otto. It will show Yes if the contact has clicked a link in a message.

Contact Details shares a very similar look to Add Single and has the basic information that you can look at and edit.

Subscriptions lets you start subscriptions for any sequence not already subscribed to. A list below shows all current subscriptions so that you can edit or delete any of them.

Notes lets you add notes to the contact. All notes are marked with the time they were created and are shown in a list at the bottom. You can edit any note, but you can't change the time it was created.

GeoIP shows the geographical data that Otto gathered during sign-up.

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Website Code

This is code for a subscription form that you can put on your website, so that people can sign up to your sequences. The look of the form is shown at the top and the code to copy is shown beneath it.

The form shown is the one you chose in the drop down. To get the code for a different sequence, you need to select that sequence in the drop down list and then click the button.

You can currently choose between Simple Form or Extended Form. The Simple Form is small and you only fill in name and e-mail. The Extended Form is bigger and contains many fields that can be filled in.

The forms have very little formatting, so if you know html you can edit the look yourself. You can even edit which fields you want to show on the sign up form, but be very careful not to break the code.

Subscriptions started by filling in the website form will send a confirmation letter if you have set the Sequence option "Sign-up Confirmation" to Yes. This confirmation e-mail is to prevent people from adding someones elses e-mail out of mistake or malice.

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Blacklist

A contact with a blacklisted e-mail address can't subscribe to any sequences at all. When an e-mail address is added, any current subscriptions will be removed.

If someone is repeatedly getting added to a sequence against his/her will or if someone has asked not to be sent anything from you, it is a good time to use blacklist.

You can also add someone to the blacklist if you for some reason want to block them from being able to see your sequences.

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Bouncer

A bouncer handles the removal of e-mail that has been automatically returned to your inbox due not being able to reach the desired destination/recipient. This can be for several reasons, but the most common one is the mistyping of the recipient e-mail address.

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Activity Log

The Activity Log lists your sent messages/notifications ordered by time. A tooltip will show the subject of the message/notification.

Support

If you need assistance or have any questions, please visit http://www.sonician.com for more information.

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Custom modifications

Custom changes or additions to this application are available. Visit http://www.sonician.com for more information.

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The End...

That's the end of this descriptive manual. If you need help go to:
Sonicians support!