Profile

An ePriority Profile, also known as a "Delivery" Profile, allows users to specify a reusable set of attributes that can be applied to a batch. Once a new profile is created (within the "Profile Mgmt" section of our website), it can be manually selected from the ad hoc batch mailer or identified within the instruction file of a batch uploaded via FTP. Please refer to the TAR or XML Batch Service Guide for more information.

The attributes that can can be specified in a Profile fall into one of the following groups:

Metadata

Information about the profile itself: identification, description, statistics, etc.

Message Construction

Settings that affect the appearance of content in all messages contained in a batch.

Delivery

Enhanced delivery features that can be applied to a batch.

Tracking

Settings that specify the various ePriority tracking features that can be applied to a batch.

Scheduling

Settings that control message delivery timing and data file retention for a batch.

Metadata

Metadata is information about the profile itself, rather than actual batch controls. Some metadata fields are system-generated and cannot be directly altered by end users.

Name

The name is used to uniquely identify a profile within a client account. If you have access to multiple accounts, you will notice that there is already a "default" profile in each account. There can be only one profile with any given name in any account, but the same name can be used in different accounts.

The profile name may be up to 35 characters in length, may only be composed of letters (upper and lower case), numbers and underscores. It must also start with either a letter or a digit and cannot contain any spaces.

ID

All revisions of a profile have to be saved for accurate reporting. A two part ID number is displayed in some profile views to identify which version of the profile is being displayed. This number is assigned by the system and is only important or meaningful when you need to identify a particular revision of a profile. When the version being displayed is not the current version of the profile, a warning message to that effect will appear on the page.

Last Used

The "Last Used" date and time show the last time that a batch was processed using this particular profile.

Description

A description for the profile used for display purposes only. The description has a maximum length of 254 characters and is a required field.

Message Construction

Message Priority

Specifies the importance (or priority) level of a message. It can have the following values: (Highest, High, Normal, Low, Lowest). By default this setting is set to Normal. The message priority does not affect the handling of the message by ePriority, but many email readers can use it to sort and display the messages they receive.

Secure Messaging

Specifies whether or not messages are to be encrypted.

HTTP Track Domain

Specifies a custom domain to be used in HTML tracking addresses. When specified, this will be the domain that recipients see in any links that are generated for a message, otherwise the ePriority tracking domain will be used. The purpose of this is to allow the masking of ePriority tracking addresses with addresses in a users domain in order to make a message appear more unified and consistent to its recipient. In other words, it can help hide the use of ePriority as a delivery agent.

SMTP Track Domain

Specifies a custom domain to be used in in SMTP tracking addresses. When specified, this will be the domain that recipients see in any addresses that are generated for a message, otherwise the ePriority tracking domain will be used. The purpose of this is to allow the masking of ePriority tracking addresses with addresses in a users domain in order to make a message appear more unified and consistent to its recipient. In other words, it can help hide the use of ePriority as a delivery agent.

Digital Signature

Creates a digital signature, a unique header inserted into each e-mail that verifies each of our e-mails originate from ePriority. This feature helps improve delivery rates by assuring recipients and recipient e-mail servers that our e-mails are legitimate and distinguishable from junk e-mail.

Delivery

Mail Throttle

Specifies the number of emails per hour that will be delivered for a batch. This feature helps in preventing large influxes of traffic directed towards websites which could slow down website performance or effect server availability.

SMS Short Code

Specifies the short code that will be used to deliver any batches containing mobile messages. SMS Short codes are used to deliver short text messages to mobile devices. Contact ePriority support to implement a new short code for an account. For more information, see ePriority Mobile Delivery services.

Release Pending Mode

Toggles the ability to halt a batch upon generation for review. From this state, the batch can be released for delivery or aborted. See Batch Delivery Pending for details.

Tracking

Tracking features that are controlled by profiles have a uniform set of controls per feature. Tracking data is collected in the form of email messages which are logged, summarized in reports, and then discarded. Most of the controls provide options for preserving those messages for your own use or analysis.

Tracking Controls

Turns the feature on and off.

If a forwarding email address is provided, all tracking messages for this feature will be sent there.

Tracking Features

Tracks all bounced email messages for a batch. A bounced message is one that never arrives in the recipient's inbox and is sent back, or bounced back, to the sender with an error message that indicates to the sender that the message was never successfully transmitted. Bounces generally happen one of two ways. One type of bounce is where a message has bounced back to the sender undelivered without having been accepted by the recipient's mail server. This type of bounce is generally known as a "hard" bounce. Another type of bounce is where a message has bounced back to the sender undelivered after it has already been accepted by the recipient's mail server. This type of bounce is generally known as a "soft" bounce.

When bounce tracking is on, all bounced messages for a batch will be returned back to an ePriority address where a "bounced message" event will be entered into the tracking log and the bounced message discarded. Note that ePriority treats hard and soft bounces the same. Basic bounce tracking is the only tracking feature that is turned on by default in ePriority.

Tracks all replies to a Reply-To address in the message header. The optional Reply-To field in the SMTP message header indicates the address(es) to which the author of the message suggests that replies be sent. When users reply to a message that includes a Reply-To field, the response will be sent to the address(es) in the Reply-To field.

When reply tracking is turned on, the From and Reply-To addresses for each message in the batch will be set to an ePriority tracking address. All replies to this tracking address will cause a "reply-to" track event to be entered into the tracking log and the reply message is then discarded.

Tracks return receipts for all messages in a batch. There are two types of return receipts that commonly used today, read receipts and delivery receipts.

Read receipts are "standard" return receipts and generate a read receipt when a recipient views a message. When an email client has return receipt options turned on, it should generate a read receipt, possibly prompting the user prior to sending the receipt.

Delivery receipts are "non-standard" (but widely accepted) return receipts and will generate a delivery receipt when the message has been delivered to the recipients email account. Note - the use of this option in email messages is inconsistent across different email clients and this is why they are referred to as "non-standard" return receipts. Netscape and Mozilla-based email clients will return both a delivery receipt and a read receipt when this option is used, where Eudora and Outlook email clients will only return a delivery receipt.

When receipt tracking is turned on, both read receipts and delivery receipts are attached to the outgoing message. Any receipts that are returned (both voluntary and involuntary) will cause a "return receipt" event to be entered into the tracking log and the receipt is then discarded.

Scheduling

For detailed delivery explanation, see the «ePriority Overview».

Delay Start of Delivery

Normally, messages become available for delivery as soon as they are generated. You can delay the delivery start in order to inspect the generated messages or prevent the premature release of information (such as before a press release or an SEC filing).

Delays can be combined with blackouts to set a precise time-of-day for delivery to start.

First Attempts Due

This specifies the amount of time after delivery begins that ePriority has to make at least one delivery attempt per message. Messages that are still undelivered after this time may be considered late or overdue.

Maximum Delivery Attempts

The vast majority of packages are delivered successfully the first time they are sent out. This is not true for every package, however. If the ePriority delivery agent considers the cause of a delivery failure to be a temporary situation (e.g. a network outage) it will set the message aside for the moment and try it again later. This parameter specifies the maximum number of times each package should be tried before being considered undeliverable.

Delivery Blackouts

Blackouts are blocks of hours during which delivery attempts will be suspended. For example, if you don't want your mailings distracting your recipients during the workday you could black out 9:00-17:00 Monday through Friday.

Blackouts start and end on the hour in GMT/UTC. If your recipients' time zone is not offset from UTC in whole hours (India and Australia are the biggest culprits here) the blackout enforcement will not begin and end on the hour from their perspective.

Also bear in mind that ePriority has no way of determining what time zones your recipients reside in and cannot therefore shift the blackout schedule on a per message basis. It is your responsibility to segregate your batches by recipient time zone and create a profile for each zone when it is appropriate to do so.

Cancel Undelivered Messages after ...

This specifies the amount of time to continue trying to deliver overdue messages. Any undelivered messages will be cancelled when this time runs out.

Tracking Period

Tracking data is collected on packages once delivery has started and will continue after overdue messages have been cancelled. This item specifies how long to continue collecting tracking data after the cancellation date.

Default File Retention

Specifies the time after the Tracking Period that the files for this batch will be retained and hosted by ePriority. After this time all of the batch's files will be deleted (unless certain specific files have longer retention periods).

Mail Bag File Retention

Specifies a retention time for mailbag files.

Batch File Retention

Specifies a retention time for the original batch archive file.

Tracking Log File Retention

Specifies a retention time for tracking logs.