We continue to our monthly update releases. Oempro gets better and better with every release. On this release we mainly focused on:

• Bug fixes
• Security enhancements
• MySQL query performance on certain processes
• …aaaand a long awaited feature: A way to resume creating emails if user leaves without finishing the process.

Before diving into the details, you may want to check the full change list here: v4.5.3 change log

First of all, this update includes important security enhancements and we highly recommend all old Oempro version users to upgrade their installations to v4.5.3. For upgrade instructions, please check the manual: Upgrade manual

In addition to security enhancements, there are several bug fixes are included in this release, which you can learn more in the change log. We also improved the sql query performance for clearing campaign queues from suppressed subscribers and you will see a huge performance increase during campaign delivery if you have big suppression table, and also no more automatically paused campaigns.

The new feature included Oempro v4.5.3 is ability to resume creating emails. This was popular feature request.

We will continue improving the UI implementation and also we will implement the same functionality for each type of emails, not just campaign emails.

That’s all for v4.5.3 update. We already started working on v4.5.4 and also working on v5 big update. In the mean time, please don’t hesitate to send us your feedback through Oempro forum.

For any questions or if you need assistance, feel free to get in touch with our support team via our help portal.

This is a minor version release which contains a series of bug fixes as well as some new features which can be viewed here:

http://docs.octeth.com/docs/oempro/version_log/452/

We strongly recommend Oempro owners to upgrade their version to v4.5.2 by following instructions on our upgrade manual:

http://docs.octeth.com/docs/oempro/upgrade_guide/#section-2

For any questions or if you need assistance, feel free to get in touch with our support team via our help portal.

We just released a small update for v4.5 which contains an important fix reported by one of our users on the forum. The version change log can be found here:

http://docs.octeth.com/docs/oempro/version_log/451/

Existing Oempro users can join discussions on our forums

Personally, I have special interest in the science of pricing. I read lots of books about pricing, follow blog posts related to pricing models, make lots of experiments.

We have been receiving lots of emails from our visitors regarding the pricing of Oempro. While the current pricing of Oempro seems to be at the correct level according to our experiments, we decided to make it even more affordable to reach wider user range.

Now, we are introducing Oempro monthly plan pricing. Instead of paying a one-time high license fee and annual service contract fee, now you can enjoy monthly recurring Oempro license fee. The 1-user Oempro license can be gathered for only $39/month which includes service contract (free support and access to updates) as well.

We will continue providing two pricing models (one-time license fee as well as monthly recurring fee) to our customers. You can choose the right model based on your needs.

After two months of the v4.4.1 release, we are happy to introduce the release of Oempro v4.5 update.

This update includes a series of new features which are explained below. We strongly recommend everyone to update their Oempro to this latest version for maximum stability and new features.

Global Suppression List Management

This is a new feature added for ESPs and agencies. Now, administrators can manage the global suppression list for their customers. Administrators can suppress a specific email address, or a whole domain (smart suppression such as *@hotmail.com). Administrators can also see suppression statistics of the system.

Image Embedding

You can now enable or disable this feature for the whole system. Image embedding is a heavy-load feature which may cause huge loads on the mail server and bandwidth. Therefore, it’s usually something which is not preferred by ESPs. Now you can disable this feature through the config.inc.php file.

Powerful Conditional Personalization

In previous Oempro versions, you would be able to personalize only a specific string based on conditions (ex: Dear Mr. Smith, Dear Mrs. Smith). But now, you can personalize a whole content block based on conditions. For example, you can display a BMW, Audi or Mercedes logo, picture and content based on recipient profile. You are almost limitless on customizing and personalizing your email content based on recipient profiles.

String Modifier Tags

Addition to standard personalization tags, now you can use smart string modifier tags such as;

• [TITLE:.......]
  Converts string to title case.
  Example: [TITLE:introducting oempro] will be changed to Introducing Oempro
• [UPPER:.......]
  Converts string to upper case
  Example: [UPPER:introducing oempro] will be changed to INTRODUCING OEMPRO
• [LOWER:.....]
  Converts string to lower case
  Example: [LOWER:Introducing Oempro] will be changed to introducing oempro

Brand New Media Library

User accounts can manage their media files (images, etc.) through the new media library. They can create folders and put media files inside. They can also access the media library through their control panel without the need of creating an email campaign.

Customisable Message-ID

This was one of the most requested features in the past few months. We added an option to the config.inc.php to change the domain of the message-id email header.

Addition to this new features, there are lots of improvements and some bug fixes. For the detailed change log, please take a look at Oempro v4.5 change log page.

When I take a look at our Oempro version release log, we have released an update every two months this year. And now, we are going to focus on Oempro v5 development and we will do our best to release it before the end of 2012. In the meantime, we will continue maintaining Oempro v4.5 release.

Thanks for all those valuable feedback received from our customers.

Oempro is a powerful, full featured email marketing software which can be used for all kind of email marketing activities and for building successful ESP businesses. It’s great to see hundreds of ESPs all around the world using Oempro to make money and provide high-quality email marketing software to their customers.

We will continue to keep Oempro #1 in this market and make it even more powerful for your needs.

Hi Everyone,

It’s been long time since our last blog post which shows that we are not good at blogging :(

Anyway, we are working diligently on the new Oempro v4.5 release which is scheduled for August. This new version will include a series of new features such as smart conditional personalization, advanced global suppression list for administrator and better media library.

We will be releasing this new update in August.

In the meantime, we are also working on Oempro v5 development branch which is scheduled to be released before the end of this year. Some cool new features are on the way.

We always appreciate feedback and new feature requests from our customers, if you have any, jump to our forums and join discussions.

To take a look at our Oempro version release log, please click here

By the way, have I mentioned that we are also working on moving our online user documentation to a better service for a better customer experience :)

We are excited to announce the release of Oempro v4.4 update which includes bug fixes as well as new features.

The change log of v4.4 release can be found here

Some new features in v4.4 are;

• SendGrid service integration. You can now send your email campaigns through Sendgrid.com service and track bounces/spam complaints/unsubscriptions.
• “Save” button in email campaign content editor
• Deployable SpamAssassin spam filtering system
• Reduced Ioncube encrypted files. 99% of Oempro source code is now open for customization

With the release of Oempro v4.4, the 30-day trial version can be downloaded from our website as well.

Thanks for your support by providing valuable feedback.

Designing an email,which will be shown same on all popular email clients is a difficult, and time taking process. Making a change on your email design and testing it across all email clients.

To make this process easy and straight forward, PreviewMyEmail.com offers a unique service. You can test your email on 44+ email clients (including Hotmail, Gmail, iPhone and many more) within a minute. You will save your valuable time.

The good news is, Oempro is fully integrated with PreviewMyEmail. You can integrate your PreviewMyEmail account with Oempro and run email design tests within Oempro. When creating your Oempro campaign, you can pass your email from PreviewMyEmail’s email design testing service with a single click .

There are many use cases for Oempro and PreviewMyEmail integration:

For email marketing service providers;

• Offer email design testing service to your Oempro users
• Charge them for extra fee to use this feature
• Provide free access to this feature to differentiate your self from competitors

For email marketers;

• Save your time when previewing and testing your email on different email clients
• Get screen shots of your email on different email clients within a few minutes, with a single click
• Optimize your email design to be compatible with all popular email clients

How Oempro and PreviewMyEmail integration work?

Quite straight forward. Visit PreviewMyEmail.com sign-up page and open a free account. Your account will be ready in a few seconds. Then login to your PreviewMyEmail account.

On the top right, click “Plan Information” link:

On the account plan subscription page, scroll down to “Oempro” section and click the big yellow Subscribe button:

Once you complete the plan subscription payment process, your API key will be generated for you. This API key can be gathered from your Account Information page:

Copy your API key:

Now, login to your Oempro admin area and click “Settings” link on the top right:

Click “Integration” settings option on the left side:

Paste your PreviewMyEmail API key and hit the update button:

Once you enter and save your PreviewMyEmail integration settings, a hidden feature will be unlocked. Your users will see “Design Test” button when creating a new email campaign (in review step). Once they click that link, Oempro will pass the email through PreviewMyEmail in the backend and display real screen shots taken from 40+ email clients.

Watch the following video to see how email design testing process works:

To activate this unique feature, simply head over to PreviewMyEmail.com and sign-up for an account.

On October 28th 2011, we started a big discount on our 1-user Oempro license. The regular Oempro price of this license type was $299 and we reduced it to $29. Yes, we made a big discount. It was a big risk for our sales revenue. Even though 1-user license sales have a small impact on our Oempro revenue stream, it was still a big risk.

When making this decision, we were inspired from Atlassian’s JIRA pricing model where they have $10 10-user license. To those who don’t know JIRA, it’s a well-known enterprise level issue tracking software. We decided to give it a try and started the big discount on 28th October. The discount period ended at the end of November 2011, which means it last for around ~34 days.

In this period, we sold 25x more Oempro 1-user licences. In just 34 days, we gained new customers whom were being gained in 10 months. It was a big success from customer-base and sales quantity side. However, was it really a success?

This was the first time we were reducing our enterprise level email marketing software to a low price level. There were some risks such as;

• Damaging Oempro’s brand. Selling a software with a low price may cause to position it on a “Personal” category instead of a “Professional” or an “Enterprise”.
• Acquiring customers who don’t believe in our product. When you keep the entrance barrier low, anyone can purchase easily which means your product will loose its value on customer’s side.
• Loosing the customer feedback. When you purchase a product, which is cheap, you tend to provide feedback to developers less likely. You see it as a time loss.
• Loosing the customer loyalty. They purchase it almost free. So, they can easily switch to an alternative solution, because their loss will be nothing. Just $29.

These were the main risks involved in our big discount period. However, we wanted to give it a try, because it was working well for Atlassian and many other successful software companies.

In the beginning everything was great. We were making lots of 1-user Oempro sales and our charts hit the ceiling. We were selling tens of 1-user Oempro licenses every day. We were getting tens of new customers every day. We were quite happy and believed that this pricing model was working.

However, a few weeks have passed and we were measuring our success (or failure), we noticed something weird. Even though our customer base was increasing dramatically, the numbers of provided feedbacks were decreasing. The numbers of support requests were decreasing. We decided to wait a week more to see the big picture. On the third week of November, we started to analyze every single parameter and noticed a few things;

• Our 1-user Oempro sales volume has increased dramatically. We sold almost 25x more 1-user licenses compared to previous periods.
• Other Oempro license sales decreased a lot. 1-user license sale was great, but our high profit licenses such as 10-user and unlimited-user licenses were going down. Everyone was purchasing our 1-user license, which was $29, but they were not purchasing $699 or $1979 licenses.
• Numbers of feedback shared with us through our community forums and support desk didn’t increase just like our customer base and sales volume. This was pointing to a warning, because softwares cannot live without feedback provided by users.
• Our revenue didn’t increase a lot. Even though the number of units sold increased, our revenue had no valuable change.
• Support requests didn’t increase. This seems to be good in the beginning (considering customer maintenance costs), however support means questions and questions means feedback for the future of the software. We were loosing this advantage.

So, this “easy entrance barrier” pricing model didn’t work for our software and we decided to stop the big discount at the end of November.

1-User Oempro license is now $299 again just like before the discount. We also have higher licenses with the following prices:

• 5-User Oempro License – $499
• 10-User Oempro License – $699
• 20-User Oempro License – $1099
• Unlimited User Oempro License – $1979

We are still not happy with our pricing. Oempro is one of the best and most powerful email-marketing software designed for ESPs mainly. With Oempro, anyone can build a new ESP business. And it’s the only ESP software which is being used by its developers to run another successful ESP business; Sendloop.com. We believe that we are leaving money on the table.

We are now working on a new pricing model on Oempro. We will announce new pricing in following months but until then we will continue experimenting and measuring.

I want to learn your thoughts. What kind of pricing model do you apply and how do you measure your success. Feel free to share by posting comments below.

The special BIG Oempro discount is about to end at the end of November’11. You have still time and you can get Oempro 1-user license for $29 instead of $299.

Click here to purchase Oempro 1-user license for $29 now

This is a special opportunity to get Oempro with such a big discount. Hurry up and do not loose this opportunity.

By the way, this special discount is available for almost 5 weeks. During 5 weeks, we have sold hundreds of Oempro 1-user licenses and gained a lot of experience about distributing an enterprise level software with such a low pricing level. We will share our experiences and observations about this pricing strategy on a separate blog post in coming weeks.

Hurry up, promotion is about to expire!

Happy Thanksgiving!