Bounces and Invalid Emails
There are many reasons why an email is not delivered to the recipient.
- Auto-responses and Vacation Replies
- Email delivered to “Junk” or “Spam” folder of recipient
- General undeliverable emails with no error specified by recipient’s server
- Recipient email server is down or unreachable
- “Connection timed out”
- Recipient mail box full
- Recipient email address not found
- Temporary non-delivery (server will keep trying for a few more days)
- Your server IP is blocked by recipient’s ISP (“Relaying Denied”)
- Your server IP is blacklisted for suspected spam
And the list goes on!
That should give you an idea why email delivery is so tricky and complicated, which is what created a niche for the email delivery industry, and which is why companies like Aweber, MailChimp and GetResponse even came into existence and have thrived while charging a hefty fee for what you would think is the simple act of delivering email over the interwebs.
When you use DAP for sending out emails (whether autoresponder or broadcast emails), the “From Name” and “From Email” you set up in the DAP Config are used to send out the emails.
If you use your own web host as the “carrier”, then your web host’s email server is the one that carries the email and tries to deliver to the inbox of the recipient. And web hosts are generally not very good at the intricate science of email delivery, which is why if you’re going to use DAP, we recommend that you bypass your web host and have a third-party email system like Amazon SES deliver your emails.
Regardless of the carrier (web host, Amazon SES, AuthSMTP.com, etc), all bounced and undeliverable emails come back to the “From Email” that you have used under DAP Config.
DAP by itself does not do anything with those emails, as those emails don’t come back to DAP, but they go straight to the inbox of whatever “From Email” you have specified.
We will surely address this in the future. But for now, you will have to manually review those email bounces, see which one of them sound more serious (like, say, recipient email id not found, or domain no longer in use, etc), and then de-activate those email id’s from your DAP database.
When you use Amazon SES, Amazon by itself also monitors email id’s that have a consistent history of bouncing back, and will automatically suppress those email id’s and won’t even deliver email to those email id’s even if DAP did send the actual email to those id’s.
DAP to 1ShoppingCart List Integration
Q: How to automatically add a new user in DAP to a 1SiteAutomation.com (1SA) list (or other 1Shoppingcart – 1SC – private label)?
A: Every list in 1SA/1SC gets a unique email id – like 1sc-12345@autocontactor.com ).
Add that to the “3rd-Party Notification Email Ids” field of the DAP product (under Products > Manage > “Notifications” tab)
And make sure you set the “Direct Subscribe” field in your 1SA/1SC list to be “On”.
1
Automated Reminder Emails For Admin
In DAP, you can not only send automated pre-scheduled emails to your members (Autoresponders), but you can also set up similar pre-scheduled “Reminder” emails to be sent to you (the admin) every time a member reaches a day milestone.
Eg: Let’s say you (the admin) want DAP to send you or someone on your team a reminder email to follow up with each member by email once they reach day #7 – meaning, it’s been 7 days since they signed up for a specific product.
This is how you do it in DAP:
- Go to DAP Admin > Emails > Autoresponders
- Click on “Compose New Email“
- For subject, enter (say) “Follow Up with %%FIRST_NAME%%”
- In the body of that email, you may use merge-tags for the member – like “Be sure to email %%FIRST_NAME %%LAST_NAME%% , ask them about their progress, see how they’re doing and upsell Platinum Coaching program. Their email id is: %%EMAIL_ID%%”
- Further below on that page, in the “Send to 3rd Party (instead of member)” field, select “Yes (like admin or staff)” and you will see an additional text box show up below, where you can enter your (or your staff’s) email id where you want the reminder to be sent.
- Save the email.
- Go to the DAP Product where you want this email to be added to the sequence.
- Go to “ContentResponder” tab.
- Add this new email to the product, click on the “Edit” icon, and set it to be dripped on Day #7.
That’s it!
Now for each member that signs up for that product, regardless of when they join, every time they reach day #7, the reminder email will be sent to the 3rd party email id specified for that message (instead of being sent to member).
Reverse Dripping
If you want to be sent this same email say 3 days before member’s access expires to that Product, then set the email to be dripped on day “-3”. (See Expiration Notifications / Renewal Reminders)
Emailing Expired Users
You can send an email broadcast to expired users of a product/level, on the DAP Admin > Email > Broadcasts page, by selecting Group #4.
The same feature works for sending emails to those who have “Cancelled” their subscription or trial.
Go to DAP Admin > Email > Broadcasts
Select Group #4.
1st drop-down: Select Product Name
2nd drop-down: Select “Have Already Expired”
3rd text field: Enter within how many days the users should’ve expired – as in, expired in the “Last X Days”
Once you’ve scheduled the broadcast, the emails will be sent out at the top of the hour when the DAP hourly cron runs.
12
Aweber To DAP Integration
Follow the documentation below on this page for Aweber-to-DAP integration, only if you’re using DAP 4.4 or later. (For DAP v4.3.1 or older, click here)
Subscriber Flow
The flow of subscriber in this model, is “FROM Aweber TO DAP“. User gets added to Aweber first, then arrives at DAP via Aweber “thank you page”, at which point she gets added to DAP.
Now, if the flow is from DAP-to-Aweber, and are using email parsing to integrate DAP and Aweber, then your Aweber list will always be double-opt-in (as per Aweber policy, nothing to do with DAP).
But if you want your Aweber list to be single-opt-in, or you want your sign ups to be added to Aweber first and then to DAP, then use this flow. HEre, you can use an Aweber signup form on your squeeze page (instead of the DAP sign-up form) and then have Aweber add users to DAP.
NOTE: You cannot use this flow for Paid members – because paid members will need to have paid first, which means DAP needs to process their payment first, and if successful, it can add them to Aweber. So for paid members and paid content, always use the other DAP-to-Aweber flow.
But for free signups (say, like when you’re trying to build a list), you can add them to Aweber first using the flow explained below, just so you can take advantage of making your Aweber list single-optin, and then have Aweber add the subscriber to DAP on the other end. So this way, DAP can then create a free account for them, email them their login/password, and give them access to the “Free” content (that is, content available only to “Registered” users, so to speak), etc.
So here are the steps…
Aweber To DAP Integration
1. Go to DAP Dashboard > Products > Manage page.
2. Note down the Product Id of the product to which you want to sign-up the users (after adding them Aweber first, of course). Let’s call this PRODUCTID
Aweber List Is Single-Optin
If your Aweber list is single-optin, then follow the steps below. If not, skip ahead to “Aweber List Is Double-Optin” flow further below.
(The old steps 3 & 4 no longer exist. To keep the image below in sync, follow the rest of the steps starting Step 5.)
5. Now login to your AWeber account.
5A) From the “Current List” drop-down, select the list that you wish to sign up users to.
5B) Click on “Web Forms” in the menu at the top.
5C) Edit existing form by clicking on the name of the list.
6. On the next page – the list form generator page – click on ‘Go to Step 2’ towards the bottom of the page.
7. On the next, page…
7A) Click on the thankyou page dropdown and select ‘Custom’.
7B) Set the thank you Page URL to http://YourSite.com/dap/signup_submit.php?productId=PRODUCTID
Replace YourSite.com with the name of your site.
Replace PRODUCTID with the Product Id of the product you noted in step 2.
So, if the Product Id of the product in DAP is 2, then the thankyou page URL will be…
http://YourSite.com/dap/signup_submit.php?productId=2
7C) Where it says “Pass Form Data”, check the check box so that Aweber can “Forward subscriber information to your thank you page” – which essentially is DAP, so that DAP can add the subscriber to your membership site.
That’s it!
Aweber List Is Double-Optin
In this flow, set up your Web Form as usual, with no DAP-specific settings required.
Only change required is in the Aweber list’s main “List Settings” page.
5. Now login to your AWeber account.
6. From the “Current List” drop-down, select the list that you wish to sign up users to.
7. Go to My Lists > List Settings
8. Go to “Confirmed Opt-In” tab
9. Scroll down to “3: Success Page“.
9A) Set the “Confirmation Success Page URL” to http://YourSite.com/dap/signup_submit.php?productId=PRODUCTID
Replace YourSite.com with the name of your site.
Replace PRODUCTID with the Product Id of the product you noted in step 2.
So, if the Product Id of the product in DAP is 2, then the thankyou page URL will be…
http://YourSite.com/dap/signup_submit.php?productId=2
9B) Check the check-box that says “Pass subscriber info for personalizing this page”. Ignore the comment that says “Not recommended for WordPress users”, because this is going to point to a DAP script, and not a WordPress page.
9C) Click on “Save Settings”.
That’s it!
Using Custom Redirect URL
If you want the user to be logged in automatically (either after single-optin or double-optin) and instead of being logged into the member’s area, you want the user to be redirect to your own custom URL, then your thank-you URL should be:
http://YourSite.com/dap/signup_submit.php?productId=PRODUCTID&redirect=http://yoursite.com/your-custom-thankyou-page
OR
http://YourSite.com/dap/signup_submit.php?productId=PRODUCTID&redirect=/your-custom-thankyou-page
Additional Notes
Now that you’ve set up DAP to integrate with your Aweber list (single- or double-optin), you may use the Aweber web form directly on your squeeze page for signing up subscribers
(instead of DAP’s “Direct Signup Form”).
Now, every time a subscriber signs up via the Aweber form, they will automatically be added to DAP.
If your list is single-optin, then the subscriber will be added to DAP instantly after sign-up.
If your list is double-optin, then the subscriber will be added to DAP only AFTER they’ve clicked on the Aweber double-optin confirmation link.
In both cases, if they’re a new user to DAP, they will be auto-logged in to the member’s area.
You may also configure the DAP Product’s “Welcome Email” to send out the DAP email and password via DAP itself.
-OR-
You can leave the Welcome Email in DAP Product page as blank. And then configure DAP to generate a default password (DAP Admin > Setup > Config > Default Password) as shown below, and then enter that same pre-chosen password in to your very first Aweber follow up email that goes out to your subscribers, so that they can receive their dap id/password details directly from your Aweber list.
For more details about this default password, please see this post.
PRODUCTID
Expiration Notifications / Renewal Reminders
We have a new feature starting DAP v4.4: “Reverse Dripping”
This is where you can drip emails “X” days (where “X” is a number of your choice) before the access to a product ends for a member. So this is what you would use to send expiration notification / renewal reminder emails to your members.
To setup a renewal reminder email, you would set up the email as usual, and drip it as a negative day. So if you set up the email to drip on Day “-1”, then it means the email will be sent out 1 day prior to product expiry (for that product).
If you set it up to drip on “-3”, it will be sent out 3 days prior to access end date.
If you set it up to drip on “-7”, it will be sent out 1 week prior to access end date.
Renewal Reminder Email Setup
Warning: This is something you should set up only for recurring products that require manual renewal. Do not set up these emails to go out for automated subscription products, because the members will be charged automatically on the designated day every month, and asking them to renew will only confuse them.
- Create a new Autoresponder email with the product expiration notice, at Email > Autoresponders. In this email, you would say something like “Hey, your subscription is expiring in 1 week, so click on this link to renew… (followed by link to renewal page)”.
- Create another email that says “Hey, your subscription is expiring tomorrow…”.
- Go to Products > Manage and choose product for which you wish to set up renewal reminder.
- Switch to “Autoresponder” tab.
- Select the 7-day renewal reminder email from step 1 and add it to the product.
- Then click on the “Edit” link and set the drip day as -7
- Do the same for the 1-day reminder email as well, and this time set the dripping to be “-1”.
That’s it!
4
Affiliate Notification On Leads And Sales
Starting DAP v4.4, you can notify your affiliates with an automated instant email when they earn a commission for a lead and a sale.
In DAP > Setup > Config > (Affiliate Module) you can separately configure which emails to send (Lead, Sale):
And then on DAP > Setup > Templates page, you can configure the Subject and Body for both emails.
Troubleshooting Amazon SES Integration
DAP’s Amazon SES integration has been heavily tested, and we use it ourselves at DigitalAccessPass.com . So you can rest assured that there are no “bugs” of any kind.
Here are some troubleshooting steps if SES integration is not working even after you’ve followed the documentation exactly.
Troubleshooting SES
- MOST COMMON MISTAKE: Have you whitelisted the DAP “From” email in Amazon? And have you used exact same “case” for the email id in both places (DAP and Amazon)? Double-check spelling and case in both DAP and Amazon – they must be EXACTLY the same. For eg., you@yoursite.com is NOT the same as You@YourSite.com as far as Amazon is concerned. So if you’ve set the “From Email” in DAP to be you@yoursite.com, then you must whitelist exactly the same email id you@yoursite.com within your Amazon SES account as well. If you are not sure, delete the whitelisted email in your SES account, then COPY the from-email from DAP config (be sure to copy, and not re-type) and then PASTE the exact from-email into your Amazon SES account and whitelist it again.
- IMPORTANT: Have you requested Amazon for “Production Access” to your SES account? Being in “Sandbox” mode has its disadvantages (you can only send “from” and “to” whitelisted” emails ONLY). So your account MUST, MUST, MUST be in “Production” mode before Amazon SES lets you send emails to your customers.
- Are you using the exact ports as mentioned in our documentation? Ignore the port #s that Amazon recommends.
- IMPORTANT: Double-check with your web host to make sure that they actually allow a plugin like DAP to connect to a third-party server like Amazon SES to send out emails. Some hosts don’t even allow that to begin with (like BlueHost, for eg.)
- Turn on the logs by setting DAP > Setup > Config > Log Level to “Log All Activity”.
- Then go to System > Logs and clear the logs. Then go to one of your test accounts, and edit the user.
- On the “User Edit” page, click on “Resend Login/Password”.
- Check the email inbox to see if you got the email. If you didn’t, go to System > Logs and take the entire logs shown there, and paste it into a support ticket, and don’t forget to give us your WP login info and FTP info (and if possible, Amazon login info as well), and we’ll troubleshoot it.
1
Automated Email Dripping
In dap 4.4, we have added a new feature where when you setup content for dripping, dap will automatically setup an email auto-responder to drip corresponding to each dripped content. The autoresponder drip setting will match the content drip setting. When you enable the automated dripping, an email will automatically get dripped ( you will find it in dap products page -> autoresponder tab) for every content you have dripped. An automated email alert will get sent to your participants and you can configure what you want in that email in the dap setup->templates section.
You can configure/customize the email you want sent automatically when any content is dripped and the email will automatically get sent at the top of the hour (when dap hourly cron runs).
But there are a few things that it does not support :
1) You cannot control what type of content should result in automated dripping (post/page/files etc). It will apply to all dripped content.
2) If you have content already dripped before you install the autodrip module, then when you install the autodrip, it will get a list of ALL of your dripped content .. even the ones you had dripped in past (and not just the ones you drip from that point onwards).
And it will set up an automated email to drip for each of your post/page regardless of when it was actually created. in this release, you CANNOT set a point in time to make the autodrip apply to posts created only after that point in time.
3) When automated dripping is configured, it will apply to all products. You cannot configure it at product level. It’s a global setting. So any post/page you drip under any product.. an automated email will get setup for that page/post. If you have product A and B, then you cannot have the autodrip only apply to say product A. It will automatically apply to both products – A and B.
4) You cannot use it if you are ALSO using SSS/ Credit Store. It’s not compatible currently.
Here’s how it works :
If you have a content set to drip day 10 as shown below:, then an automated email will get setup and it will get sent to users that’s on day 10 of their membership. If you have new users that just joined, they will not receive the email until they reach day 10.
If you have content set to drip day 1 as shown below:
Then an automated email will get setup (as shown below) and it will ONLY get sent to users that’s on day 1 of their membership. If you have new users that are on day 2 or more, they will never receive the email as they are already past that drip day.
Setup Instructions :
Just like the hourly dap cron (dap-cron.php), you will have to configure another cron for autodripping.
The name of this cron script is /dap/dap-autodrip.php. You can configure it to run once every 1/2 hour. This way it will pick up any new posts added in the 1/2 hour and create autodrip entries for it.
Say your cron command for the hourly dap cron (dap-cron.php) in your webhost cpanel -> cron tab is :
/usr/bin/php /var/html/wordpress/dap/dap-cron.php
Then for autodrip, the command will be:
/usr/bin/php /var/html/wordpress/dap/dap-autodrip.php
Set it up in your webhost cpanel -> cron tab to run once every 1/2 hour. Everything for this cron will mirror the dap-cron.php except the name and it will run once every 1/ 2 hour instead of once every hour like dap-cron.php.
Here’s how can test this feature :
1) Lets say you have a NEW product
2) Now add a new user to that product via dap admin -> add users page
3) Now say you dripped testpost1 under that product. Set drip start day = 1
4) Now go to autoresponder tab and make sure there are NO automated emails set for drip
5) Now either wait for the dap-autodrip.php cron to run (depending on whether you set it to run once every 1/2 hour or 1 hour)
OR
For testing purpose, you can run the cron manually by visiting this URL in a browser:
http://YOURSITE.com/dap/dap-autodrip.php
6) After you run it manually or after it runs via cron, if you go and check the Email Autoresponder tab for that product, you shd see a new AUTOMATED autoresponder email dripped for that testpost.
7) Now wait for the main dap cron job to run. It will run once every hour.
When it runs the email will get sent. To make sure email got sent, go check dap system -> job queue. See if you find the email there with “completed successfully” status. If yes, the email got sent and you are all set.
NOTE: If you dont want to wait that long and want to quickly test it, then just run dap-cron.php manually by visiting this URL in a browser:
http://YOURSITE.com/dap/dap-cron.php
3
AuthSMTP Integration
If you’re having email delivery issues on your host, you can connect DAP to 3rd-party email systems like Amazon SES and AuthSMTP.
In this article, you’ll see how to integrate DAP with AuthSMTP.
- Signup for an account at AuthSMTP
- Log in to your AuthSMTP account
- Go to Registered From Address tab
- Take the email id from DAP Admin > Setup > Config > From-Email Id and enter that email here and register it here (basically, you’re whitelisting your DAP Admin email id as a registered sender – if you don’t do this, AuthSMTP will reject and discard all emails sent via DAP). You will need to “Confirm” the registration by clicking on an activation link that they will be sending you.
- In your AuthSMTP account, go to SMTP Details tab.
- Make a note of the SMTP Server (usually mail.authsmtp.com), SMTP Username, SMTP Password.
- Now log in to DAP Admin, and go to Email > SMTP
- On this screen, use the section Add a New SMTP Server to create a new SMTP row as follows:
Description: AuthSMTP
Server: mail.authsmtp.com (or from Step 6 above)
Port: 2525 (must be exactly that)
SSL: N (must be exactly that)
User Id: Your AuthSMTP Username (from Step 6 above)
Password: Your AuthSMTP Password (from Step 6 above)
Email Sending Limit Per Hour: 500
(Max 500 if on shared server. Max 2000 if VPS or dedicated server)
Activated: Y - Click on the “Add” button to create and save the new AuthSMTP server setting.
- And now you should see two rows under Manage Existing SMTP Servers: One for “Local Web Host” and another for “AuthSMTP”.
- For the “Local Web Host” row, be sure to set “Active” to “N” – because now that you have set up AuthSMTP, you want all instant welcome emails, autoresponder and broadcast emails to be sent out through AuthSMTP, and not your web host’s email server.
That’s it!