Sending Nodes

Unlike most hosted emails apps that the ESPs offer to their clients without effective control on sending choices, CampaignsPlus offers a unique functionality using which you can connect it with a mail service you prefer or configure it with SMTP/Mail server of your choice. Sending Node is an umbrella term that is used for the function of CampaignsPlus that you would use to connect to your mail service/server. Clicking on Add Sending Nodes will open up a page displaying the choices of Mail Services available for you to integrate and start sending. 

Connecting Mail /SMTP Server

First among the choices you have is integrating SMTP account. The feature is supported by Multi-MTA function that would help you connect multiple SMTP instances according to the mail server configuration, and later select these multiple SMTPs to send your email campaigns from.

Navigate to Add a Sending Node

Main Navigation -> Sending Nodes -> Add a Sending Node

SMTP Details

The process of connecting the SMTP consists of some mandatory and few optional selections and fields. Mandatory fields/options are marked with an asterisk. Before we mention the optional selections/fields, let note what is mandatory to connect the SMTP.

Mandatory Fields/Selections

SMTP Account Name

Since you have the ability to connect as many SMTPs as you need to manage the sending of your campaigns, it is important to assign an identity to every SMTP account to keep it separate from the others.

SMTP Group Name

SMTPs you add may belong to same server, and you may have more than one mail servers to configure your system with. Grouping will help you manage the SMTPs belonging to certain server or specific to send specific type of campaigns only, i.e. Newsletters only.  You can add a SMTP group by clicking the small plus icon that appears besides the label “SMTP Group Name”, the popup will help you add as much as 5 groups in one go.

SMTP Host

To make the function work properly between the servers, you would need to provide the host identifier for the function to communicate/access the mail server. The SMTP hostname can either be a domain or an IP address.

Sender Information Batch

In CampaignsPlus, you manage the sender or from information on different levels. A batch of sender information is added with every list you create, and here with every SMTP account you configure, you need to provide information about the sender as well. Providing this information eventually will enable every SMTP account to perform the sending operations independently having all necessary elements required to send email. From Name and Email, Reply email and Bounce is the part of Sender Information batch. All the fields are mandatory to fill with right information.

Sending Domain

The domain that you select from the dropdown will be used when sending from this SMTP selected. If you don’t have a sending domain configured yet, add one by clicking the following link. In absence of a sending domain, you won’t be able to schedule a campaign for sending.

Optional Selections/Fields

SMTP Username & Password

Not all the time SMTP is protected by a username and password, therefore both the fields are kept optional. If the SMTP is protected with username and password, provide here to grant the access, otherwise keep the fields empty. Having your SMTP protected is the good practice though.

SMTP Port

Provide opening port if you are using an alternative of 25. If you don’t provide any value, system keeps 25 as default port. Some ISPs block port 25, therefore we have kept the option open for you to provide if you are using an alternative port such as 2525, 2526 (SSL) or 587 etc.

Encryption

If mail server isn’t using encrypted communication, keep the default value selected which is “No”. Otherwise, select an appropriate type of encryption between the 2 available.

1. TLS- Transport layer security or TLS is security protocol like the SLL that encrypts the file to deliver the mail securely. If the connection to your mail server/bounce server is using TLS to provide communication security, select this option.
2. SSL- If SSL is required to connect then select this option.

Test SMTP

You have couple of ways to test the provided details.

Validate SMTP

One of the four buttons at the bottom of the page. The function offers one click operation to test SMTP settings before saving the SMTP details. Upon clicking, CampaignsPlus establishes a connection with the mail server and return successful response if provided details are correct. If the system remains unable to connect to the mail server using the provided details, you will see an error message.

Test SMP by Sending Mail

Function towards the bottom of the page will help you send a test email using the SMTP details you have provided. Provide the email address to send the test email to, and see if the SMTP is working fine and delivering the emails.

 

Save or Cancel Details/Preference

You have the following options to complete the process, cancel, save and test the provided details.

Save & Add Another

Get the current details/preferences saved to complete this process, and automatically reopen the same process with empty field values/options to make a new entry.

Save & Exit

Complete the process, get your preferences/ details saved and exit from the process.

Return

Don’t save the details and return by to View Bounce Mailbox page

 

View Sending Nodes

Sending nodes is an umbrella term that CampaignsPlus uses for all type of mail services or SMTP servers that you have used to configured the system with. The view page lists all the existing sending nodes, along with an ability to quickly add one more by clicking “Add Sending Node” from the top left area, search specific sending node with the help of search box and make use of several utility based actions to manage the existing sending nodes.

Navigate to View Sending Nodes

Before we discuss the actions that you can perform from under the tools and actions, let’s first discuss the information view table provides with regard to the available sending nodes.

Selection

Rows of the first column have checkboxes that would help selecting records of multiple rows. You can select one or multiple records by ticking the checkboxes.

Name

Name denotes to the SMTP or Sending Node name. Name was provided as mandatory field while configuring the sending node and every row of this column represents a separate sending node.

Type

Whether the specific sending node belongs to a Mail Services or an SMTP server, the rows under this column show the type of sending node.

Group

Every sending node was made part of an SMTP group as mandatory part of adding a sending node. Grouping is helpful option in the better management of the sending nodes. The rows under this column are showing which sending node belongs to which group.

Host

Host that you have provided while the configuring of the sending node, the host can be a domain i.e. mail.domain.com or IP address belonging to the mail server.

Reply to Email

Reply to Email is the part of Sender Information batch along with From Name, Email and Bounce mailbox. In case of sending from specific sending node, replies will be delivered to this email.

Status

What’s the current status of specific sending node between Active and Inactive? System only uses “Active” sending nodes to send from.

Listed

The row is part of reputation monitoring function of CampaginsPlus, a function that keeps the IPs behind the sending nodes monitored/checked, against the provided blacklists. If the IP behind specific sending node is listed on some blacklist, the row for that specific sending now will show it as listed. The row will remain occupied with “None” unless the IP get listed on some blacklist.

Actions

Edit

If you want to edit some sending node with updated information, you can take this option to reach the edit page.

Delete

Delete specific sending node from the list

Copy

Create of a copy of an existing SMTP group. The copied SMTP will keep all the details/preferences of the sending node you have copied it from.

Export to CSV

Export specific SMTP details to a .CSV file.

Tools

Apart from the actions under the Actions column, there are some actions you can perform under the tools. Most of these are the options to perform action that would affect multiple Sending Nodes.  

Bulk Delete

Make a selection of multiple records from the table and press delete to remove multiple sending nodes in one go.

Export

Export records in the table with all the columns and row to .CSV

Import

Make use of import function to import multiple Sending Nodes in one go

Activate/ Inactive

Select the sending nodes from the list and press Active to mark the status of the selected ones as Active, or Inactive to mark the status of selected ones as inactive with one click.

Test SMTPs

Above in this article we have mentioned the testing function under the heading of Validate SMTP. It is the same function with just an extra ability to select multiple nodes and test them all in one go. After the test is being done, an extra/additional column will appear in the View Sending Nodes table revealing the test status.