Email Send-Time Bug Fix and Other Corrections

Greetings everyone!

An unreliable bug in the timezone code was causing emails to be sent at incorrect times. It got complicated but the gist of it is that the timezone offset for an email was adding or subtracting incorrectly to the actual send time, and other logic was causing the email to still send in the correct 12-hour block, so emails were being sent out correctly OR up to 6 hours off of when they should be. Very unreliable, I believe it has been fixed and have tested with emails of my own.

Emails are  sending at whatever they were set to previously, to take advantage of the new fix:

  1. Edit an email
  2. Correct the Time field (it WILL show incorrectly the first time, it will not even be the time the email is currently sending at)
  3. Save

I also fixed a bug in the Email Retrieval tool on the site. In some cases it was retrieving emails that had been cancelled or otherwise expired and these emails just led to an error page. No good! The Retrieval Tool now correctly only sends you emails that are active.

Please let me know if you find anything that is acting up.

Thanks!

SendRecurring

Edit Bug Fixed, and Updates

Many of you have contacted me regarding a bug when attempting to save an edited email. This was an error following some recent updates that were implemented in the past week and has been resolved. You can again edit your scheduled messages. My apologies for any inconvenience.

Other updates:

  • Timezones can now be manually selected. SendRecurring will still auto-select it’s “best guess” as to what timezone you are in (based on your browser’s system time) but you can override that with the dropdown now
  • Daily recurring emails can no be scheduled to send on a 1 through 40 day cycle. Previously you could only select between 1 and 5 days for a cycle. This adds extra functionality and flexibility to the system
  • Various tooltip and position changes

That’s all for now. Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.

SendRecurring has sent over 100,000 emails now. Unbeleivable!

Happy Sending

Conrad F.

Development Update – Continually Better

Development has been steadily continuing on Sendrecurring.com, allowing everyone to send free recurring emails to get their stuff done. Over the past months I have made continual tweaks to the email processing side of the service, when emails are sent after being edited, special circumstances for sending daily emails vs weekly and monthly emails. For example if you edit a daily email it should resend that same day, if you edit a weekly or monthly one it will not, keeping it in line with the desired level of reminding (I hope).

Updating the service has been fun and good, and I enjoy it. However what I have really enjoyed is seeing how many people are using SendRecurring. While the site doesn’t get a whole lot of visitors (only about 400 unique visitors a month), they seem to ALL create recurring emails, a huge percentage. The email traffic is HUGE.

There are regularly over 1000 emails sent every day via SendRecurring. And it is growing of course.

I love seeing it getting used!

What has also been great is that I have had the chance to help and assist people in adding people to emails, removing people, editing emails etc and they are always so thankful for both my assistance and the service in general.

So please, ask me for help, send me a email, let me know how it is going, it is great to hear from people using the service and it inspires me to continue development.

In the next few month, time permitting, I have a few updates planned:

  • a site overhaul using Twitter’s Bootstrap framework and some moving around of the interface. I am hoping to make it easier and easier to use the site.
  • Accounts, logging in and being able to see all of your distributions instead of solely email based
  • Easier addition and removal of contacts from new and scheduled emails
  • Open rates included in emails (this will be a rough implementation but I have some good ideas)

So there is a quick update for SendRecurring.com.

Recur on!

-Conrad

 

Edit Links Included in Recurring Emails

I added a new feature to SendRecurring.com in the midst of fixing bugs:

Optional Links to Edit

Some of you may have noticed this new little checkbox by the recurring options when setting up a recurring email (or when editing one):

Checking the Edit Link box places a link in the footer of your recurring email:

Clicking this link takes you straight to the distribution editing page! Careful, whoever has access to this has full control of the scheduled recurring email, including cancelling it!

I use this in all my own scheduled recurring emails. The email you see here is actually a snippet of the one that I use to track development on SendRecurrring. I have others that are sent to groups of people and it is handy to have the link there as well so that many people can edit the contents of the email.

Of course…. If you don’t want people to edit the email do not check the box!

Enjoy!

Fixed Bug Preventing New Email Distributions

It came to my attention twenty minutes ago that there was a bug preventing new recurring email distributions from being created. This was fixed immediately upon being brought to my attention (ask my wife!).  I want to apologize to anyone that has been attempting to create an email since it was found.

I don’t create new email distributions everyday; most of my interaction with SendRecurring is with half a dozen or so already-created distributions that I edit and update, a feature that was not affected by the glitch. I realized that I need to create a new distribution every now and then to make sure any recent edits have not neutered the most important functionality of the site.

In other news, I have updates planned that I will detail in a later news announcement! Please do not hesitate to contact me at conrad@sendrecurring.com if you have any other problems, or want a feature implemented, or just want to chat.

Why People Respond Negatively to Reminders and How to Avoid It

Hi all,

I don’t like to be nagged. I don’t think anyone likes to be nagged. I also don’t enjoy being the Nagger (I own this word now FYI). To nag is to essentially remind continually – often in an obnoxious fashion. Whether you are the reminder or the reminded,  it can be emotionally taxing, and is definitely not something to look forward to. This does not have to be the case, there are ways to get around it.

I think reminders are annoying for two main reasons:

  1. We know we should have done the thing they are nagging us about
  2. We take the nag as a personal assault on our ability to remember and perform tasks

Anytime I am reminded to do something, whether at work or at home, it is almost always something that I have previously committed to doing. It could be some spreadsheet I was assigned to complete at the office or a random chore that I agreed to do at home. The fact is that at one point or another, I agreed to do this thing.

You agreed to do this thing.

The fact that you are being reminded about it implies that you forgot to do it, or that the other person has some reason to suspect that it will not get done.

This hurts! Oh, geez, this person doesn’t think I am capable of remembering to do this. And maybe the fact is that they are correct. Ouch.

On the other hand, it can be stressful to be the Nagger/Reminder too. It can often feel like you are a barking boss, or that the person will be defensive when you remind them. And this can be true!

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could remind people, and still get all the positive outcomes without any of the negative feelings?

This is where SendRecurring shines. SendRecurring will allow you to setup a recurring email that will neutrally remind the recipient(s) of a task, upcoming appointment, or other message. People aren’t as intimidated by a request sent over email, because they can read it at their leisure, in their own mind/voice, and with a pleasant connotation. As the person setting up a reminder, you only have to write the message once, and set it on autopilot until the task is complete and the person no longer needs reminding. At that point, you simply turn off the message and it is done. No immediate response or action is required at the receipt of the email, which makes the recurring reminder less intimidating.

In short, use SendRecurring.com for all of your passive-reminding needs, and let your personal relationships with those you nag flourish!

Getting in Front of SendRecurring

Hi, my name is Conrad Frame, I am the owner, creator, maintainer, whatever of SendRecurring.com.

I am opening up this blog in the hopes that allows me to connect with more people who are interested in the continued development of SendRecurring.com, and who are also interested in it’s various uses. It has been nine months since the service launched, over 4000 emails have been sent, and I personally use it for reminder lists to myself almost every day. I consider that a success and I want to continue to make the service better.

Previously to this point I did not state my name or even refer to myself in the first person in the written portions of the site that the public can read. I used “we” and “us” as if I was referring to some large team that I was hiding behind. I will no longer do that, this is my project, and I am available now at any time to talk about it, email me at conrad@sendrecurring.com with anything you want to discuss.

I will be looking into a bug or feature tracker, possibly for this wordpress portion of the site, that users can use to give me more feedback so that I can make it better.

Stay in touch!

Conrad Frame