Friendly Automate is released in the new version 4.0! This is the biggest upgrade in Friendly’s history so far.
Background: Friendly Automate is based on Mautic, the most popular open source marketing automation software. Friendly is one of only six official partners of Mautic.
Almost a week ago, the long-awaited version 4.0 of Mautic – and therefore also of Friendly Automate – was released. In this article we present the most important new features.
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1. Create emails more easily
With our brand new email builder, you can create beautiful, responsive emails with ease while having all the options to customize your content. It’s a true drag-and-drop system and will change the way you create your emails.
Some customers will already know the editor from the newer versions of Friendly Automate 3. The version 4.0 has again many improvements and bug fixes.
2. New email templates
Friendly Automate now comes with a set of new email templates that you can use 1:1 or use as the basis for your own customized template.
Sometimes less is more. The new Truly Personal template looks like a normal, handwritten email:
And: we have a new tutorial on how you can easily create your own templates – created by our new employee Kathrin Schmid!
3. Find the best email sending time
Marketing Automation relies heavily on email sending. Now you can easily evaluate what time your emails are most likely to be opened. Just add this chart to your dashboard:
4. More flexible contact import
a) Skip existing data
When you re-imported existing contacts, fields with existing data were overwritten with the new data.
Now you can specify whether the existing data should really be replaced. If you set the corresponding option to “no”, an existing field will be skipped if it already contains data. This gives you more control over what happens to your data during import.
b) Unique fields for companies as well
So far you could set fields for contacts as “unique ID”. This means that this field acts as a key. For example, if you define email address as “unique ID”, there can’t be two contacts with the same email address. If you import a contact with the same email address again, the contacts will be merged.
Now this is also possible for companies! If you set e.g. the company name as “unique ID”, there will be no second company with the same name – and contacts will be assigned to the correct company.
c) More precise merging of contacts
You can set more than one field as “unique ID” – e.g. email address AND phone number.
Previously, contacts were merged if one of these unique IDs matched. Now you can specify that contacts are only combined if both IDs match:
5. Helpful hints
In version 4.0 you get more and better hints to avoid mistakes.
a) Hint for required fields
You can create as many custom fields as you want for contacts and businesses in Friendly Automate – and set them as required fields.
If such a field is left blank, an error message appears next to the field when saving. If the field is further down, the message was often only visible after scrolling – and it was initially unclear why saving did not work. Now, the corresponding message appears directly next to the save buttons:
b) Hint for embedded segments
For example, if you use one segment (that is a filter for contacts) as a filter in another segment, both segments must be published. Otherwise it will not work.
Previously, however, there was no warning message if you withdrew a segment from publication that was used in another segment. Now you will be alerted.
The buttons for saving contacts, workflows, emails, etc. have a more appropriate order and color scheme:
7. Getting lost can look good
Typos in a link happen again and again. Now you can define how this not found page (404 page) should look like. Just set it up in your settings!
8. Flexible tag management
Tags are an easy way to add information to contacts. This can be interests, source of acquisition or previous purchases.
Previously, it was only possible to add or remove tags from specific contacts. Also, the contacts could be filtered by tag, of course.
However, it was not possible to completely remove or rename certain tags from the system, or to display all tags as a list. Version 4.0 finally got a flexible tag management that allows exactly that:
One more thing: an App Store!
Last, but not least, Mautic respectively Friendly Automate includes an App Store! With it you will be able to install useful extensions with one click.
The feature called “Marketplace” is released in Friendly Automate 4.0 in a first version. Unfortunately, this version does not (yet) allow direct installation, but only provides an overview of the apps.
The goal is to give developers the opportunity to prepare and test their apps. In a future version, it will also be possible to install apps directly from the store.
You can find the Marketplace in Friendly Automate under Settings > Marketplace.
P.S. We will gradually roll out the new version to our customers as soon as we have tested it sufficiently. If you are already a customer and would like to be among the first to receive the new version, just get in touch with us 🙂
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