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.

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.

6. More logical buttons

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

Der Beitrag Friendly Automate 4.0 Released: Here Are the 8 Most Important New Features erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

After already being a guest in episode 18, our Joey was invited again by host Ekke Gümbel. In episode 24, Joey talks to our friends from idea2 and hartmut.io about the new email editor in Friendly Automate / Mautic and other trends in marketing automation:

Der Beitrag Our New Email Editor and Trends in Marketing Automation: Joey Keller on Mauticast, Episode 24 erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

Note: this article first appeared in the official blog of the open source software Mautic, on which Friendly Automate is based.

DIY and recipe blogs visits skyrocketed, and I also found myself listening to podcasts discussing how to make the most of the quarantine times.

While researching how to use the time the best, it came up that this wasn’t the first time civilization hit the pause button. I’m sure you also heard, Shakespeare wrote King Lear in 1592 when he was quarantined during the great London plague. In another version of the story he wrote Antony and Cleopatra and Macbeth as well during his lockdown times.

What a tryhard.

Turning To Translation

It is a consensus that keeping a tight, colorful schedule with recurring tasks helps you to survive the time in quarantine. With all the time on my hands and no talent in dramatical writing, I turned to the next coolest thing: translating. I used to translate movies and games into Hungarian for living years ago.

Being a daily user of Mautic and working for an agency that builds Mautic-based solutions for clients, my first thought was to translate it into Hungarian. By opening it to a new market, new developers could join the effort and contribute to the success by bringing their fresh ideas to the table. A benefit for everyone.

You see, there are a couple of countries on this planet that suffer from island mentality. Japan would be one of them, and that is because they are on an actual island. You can be sure that no product can be successful unless it’s translated into Japanese.

Hungarians are similar (and not only because we write the last name first as Japanese people do), they have one of the worst foreign language knowledge in all Europe. It is like a cultural island.

An international movie in Hungary won’t be ever successful without being dubbed, and Mautic cannot be successful without being translated. The issue is not with my talented developer countrymates’ language knowledge, but with the average marketing person who is the end user of Mautic, or the contacts who want to see the unsubscribe text in Hungarian.

I was thinking, if I have to do something every day not to go crazy, why not translate Mautic in the next 3 weeks?

Getting Started With Translating Mautic

The whole text was 4616 strings long and a couple hundred were done already. I ran through those, and realized that I might have to re-translate some of that as well. If I wanted to finish in 21 days, that makes it around 200 strings per day. That is not so bad!

I would never think it is so much fun to translate this software, which is partially made possible thanks to Transiflex, the translation tool. The whole text is broken up into bundles, which makes it digestible. You feel great after completing a bundle. You can filter by topics and dates, which gives you the ability to choose the area you want to progress with. You can always see how long a bundle is, so you can choose one according to the time available.

There is a gamification side of the tool as well. You see the progress on a leaderboard, and every day you pass another country, you feel good about yourself! At least if you are as competitive as me!

One day I completed 500 strings, just because I wanted to pass another country on the list. I was up until 2am! Bye, Finland!

When I started, I went for the oldest strings, which opened up the history books: I learned all the failed ideas of Mautic, witnessed by those long obsolete strings about chat and other abandoned features.

Once the ancient times were passed I reached a point in time, where someone must have realized that help text is really important, and suddenly every single button and function was explained. Translating those felt like getting a free training in Mautic. I would recommend it to everyone who wants to learn this software seriously.

I managed to keep myself to the schedule, and it took me around 3 weeks to finish everything.

4616 strings are actually 16,000 words. That is an equivalent of a short novel. It makes me no Shakespeare, but if I managed to spark an interest in Hungary, that results in great plugins, and amazing contributions, then my effort already made sense.

And that Shakespeare story. Turned out to be a hoax!

Der Beitrag 4,616 Sentences in 21 Days: How I Translated Mautic Into Hungarian During the Lockdown erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

In episode 18, our Joey Keller shares his extensive knowledge of e-mail marketing. The episode is worthwhile for anyone who wants to learn more about how good e-mail campaigns should be designed.

The podcast hosts also praised the blog post of our partner René Petry from the agency Sichtbar about lead generation with countdown banners.

Listen To Podcast Episode

Here you can listen to the episode:

Subscribe To Podcast

If you like the content, you can subscribe to the Mauticast here:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Mit anderem Podcast-Player (RSS)

Der Beitrag Our Joey Keller Speaks in the Mauticast, the Most Important Podcast on Mautic erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

Der Beitrag Friendly Becomes Main Sponsor of Mautic, the Most Popular Open Source Software for Marketing Automation erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

Today we publish the backlog of Friendly Automate. With it, our customers and interested parties can see in a transparent way what we are currently working on and what improvements will be made.

Already public are our revenues and our website analytics.

Der Beitrag Backlog of Friendly Automate Published erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

Only the external costs for sending the SMS are incurred. We support Twilio as sending gateway. The billing is done directly via Twilio.

Soon we will also support sending via WhatsApp – also at no additional cost.

Der Beitrag Friendly Automate Supports SMS erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

Like Friendly Analytics, the product made it to the homepage after only a short time, but could not achieve the same positioning.

It ended the day in 31st place with 50 votes. The result: 48 website visits via Product Hunt – and a new trial subscription.

Der Beitrag Friendly Automate Launches on ProductHunt erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

On the one hand, the need for a privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative such as Friendly Analytics was less than expected.

Despite much approval and compliments, I had not yet acquired any paying customers.

On the other hand, it became increasingly clear to me how great the potential of marketing automation is, and the room for improvement.

In contrast to Friendly Analytics, I first published Friendly Automate to my personal network and in the newsletter of Wortspiel.

This allowed me to collect and implement feedback before the launch on the big platforms like ProductHunt.

However, even the “small” launch was a complete success. The day ended with a first trial with a credit card on file and two appointments for demos.

Der Beitrag Friendly Automate Published erschien zuerst auf Friendly.