What's new in Actito?

Actito is committed to continuously improving its solution through frequent updates. On a regular basis, a new version of the platform is deployed in production, bringing in new contents, feature updates and optimizations.

Each update is announced through the notification center within the platform.

As a rule of thumb, such updates (also called 'Deployment In Production') occur every 3 weeks. However, the release schedule may be modified at the discretion of our Quality Assessment team.

Tip

Updates are released separately on each environment. They usually occur on a Tuesday for ENV-0 and ENV-1, and on the following Wednesday for ENV-3.

Let's review the latest updates deployed in the Actito platform !

June 2023

  • 'Manage imports' app

Actito gives you several options to automate data imports in your license, such as ETL synchronizations or API imports. However, setting them up requires technical knowledge, and is usually done by developers or by the Actito teams. To help marketeers visualize the synchronizations scheduled in their license, as well as past imports, you can now access the 'Manage imports' app.

This app can help you check the status of imports that finished running, or check when your next automated synchronization is due to run, for instance. It allows you to check every step of an import execution, visualize the import reports, and download the result or error files of an execution, to help you find out why some lines were not inserted.

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  • Test values for loop personalizations provided by API

At the 'Check and test' step of e-mail campaigns, it is now possible to input sample values when you test loop personalizations whose values will be provided in the API call triggering the e-mail.

May 2023

  • Facebook audiences

Actito's audience channel is evolving! To provide the immediacy that the previous app (managed by flat exports) lacked, Actito has developed a new integration with Facebook custom audiences.

After entering beta phase earlier this month, the Audiences integration is now available in your license.

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It allows you to synchronize audiences in Actito with the custom audiences. This concept, used both on Facebook and Instagram, allows you to target your social media ads to a specific group of profiles who have already shown an interest in your services.

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The profiles can be added to an audience through targetings calculated by automated audience rules, or through the scenario app.

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To connect Actito profiles with Facebook accounts, the e-mail address (or mobile phone number) must be a key of your database.

  • Additional styles options in template editor

Marketeers building their e-mail with the Actito standard templates now have additional features available in the editor.

It is now possible to define borders and change the radius of CTA buttons of your e-mails, in order to display rounder buttons.

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These button styles, as well as the padding and the borders applied to the whole blocks, can now also be updated in the 'Global styles' of the template, in order to modify all the blocks at once.

The additional styles are available in the Actito standard templates as well as blocks of the module library that contain CTA buttons.

If you want to use these features in a custom template, please contact your account manager.

  • Automated SSL certification on link domains

Actito is deploying a new solution to automatically implement and renew SSL certificates on your link domains, without requiring your intervention! These certificates allow you to secure your link domain, which is used to host your images, forms, mirror and unsubscribe links, but also the redirection that enables link tracking. Displaying a secure connection with this domain using the HTTPS protocol is important for the user experience of your profiles.

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If you want to manage your certificates yourself, you can still continue to do so using the existing process.

  • 'Manage imports' app

Actito gives you several options to automate data imports in your license, such as ETL synchronizations or API imports. However, setting them up requires technical knowledge, and is usually done by developers or by the Actito teams.

To help marketeers visualize the synchronizations scheduled in their license, as well as past imports, you can now access the 'Manage imports' app.

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This app can help you check the status of imports that finished running, or check when your next automated synchronization is due to run, for instance.

  • Push notification reporting

Actito continues improving its integrated Push notifications channel, by enabling marketeers to directly visualize the statistics of their push campaigns in their license, and to target profiles based on their latest push interaction.

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  • Push notification integrated channel

Push Notification is the new integration in Actito's multi-channel offer. With this optional module, you will be directly connected to our push notifications provider, allowing you to easily create and send these useful short real-time messages both on your website or in your mobile application.

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After setting up an integration, marketeers will be able to create scenarized push notification campaigns for web and/or apps.

These notifications can include text, images, emojis, links and even personalizations with the values stored in your Data Model.

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Once a campaign is activated, you will be able to use it in a scenario and trigger it through the various start events available in Actito. The message will be sent to all profiles who are opted-in to push notifications on one of their devices (web browser or mobile app). The subscriptions are automatically synchronized with Actito following the preferences of the profiles on your website or your app.

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If you are interested by this optional module, do not hesitate to contact your account manager!

  • Campaign type filter and export feature in the Dashboard

After adding a date filter on the Dashboard last month, we continue improving the marketeers' Actito homepage!

In addition to the one-shot e-mail campaigns, the Dashboard now provides KPIs regarding the number of interactions of scenarized and transactional campaigns over the period of your choice.

Moreover, these stats can now be exported as well, with a breakdown of all the campaigns covered by this period.

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  • Source filters in 'Deleted profiles' return flows

There is a new filter in return flows used to retrieve 'Deleted profiles', both those configured by marketeers in the interface ('Deleted profiles' incremental exports) and those implemented by technical operators through the API (webhooks and pre-setup exports).

Indeed, these flows are very useful to synchronize data with your own system, but you might not need to retrieve all the deletions if the information is already coming from your CRM.

For this reason, you can now filter the sources that you want to include in your export or webhook, with a distinction between sources within Actito and external ones.

  • RSS content API

Draft e-mail campaigns with RSS content can now be updated by API with the latest items of the RSS feed. This allow technical operators to create a campaign, refresh its content with the feed, and trigger the campaign, entirely by programmed API calls.

April 2023

  • Date filter in the Dashboard

Your Actito homepage, the Dashboard, displays a selection of useful KPIs for marketeers. You can now define a date filter to choose the time period analyzed in these KPIs.

In addition to the standard last 3 months, you can display the stats for the last 6, 9 or 12 months, or even choose your own time range.

This date filter will be applied to the aggregated stats of the mass e-mail and SMS campaigns sent on this DB, and to the engagement score and the evolution of the number of profiles or subscribers.

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  • Graphical update of the 'Manage profiles' app

The interface to 'View' and 'Edit' a profile has been graphically updated to align its look and technology with other applications of Actito.

This also includes some quality of life updates, such as improving the user-friendliness of adding a subscription or a segment to a profile manually.

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  • Retrieving the public link of a campaign report

To help sharing campaign reports with persons who might not have access to your Actito license, marketeers could already access and share a URL where this report is published.

This URL can now be retrieved by technical operators through a new API call.

Archives

March 2023

  • Status page subscription

Users with the 'Admin' right now have access to a new app in the 'License configuration' platform, where they can subscribe e-mail addresses to Actito's status page, which allows you to follow important notices regarding maintenances and incidents.

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Addresses subscribed through this app will automatically receive notifications relevant to the environment on which your license is hosted, with the possibility to also subscribe to notifications for key Actito add-ons.

February 2023

  • Search bar in the side menu

The side menu is very useful to let users of the platform quickly access the main apps of Actito, such as "Manage profiles" or "Manage e-mail campaigns". But sometimes marketeers need to access some more specific apps like "Manage saved targetings" or "View e-mail reports". They do not appear in the quick menu, so you have to through the catalog.

To help you navigate through all apps, we've added a search bar to the side menu, where you can search for or scroll through all the apps available in the Actito platform. They are still grouped under main themes and therefore easily identifiable with their color schemes, but can now be found very easily (including license configuration apps, for Admin users only).

In addition, the last applications visited through the search bar are highlighted at the top, allowing you to quickly go back to them.

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  • Shorter tracking URLs

As part of our features to help you optimize the size of your e-mails to avoid message cropping in Gmail (see December updates), we have developed a new encryption method for the tracking URLs of your links. They are now shorter (especially when the link contains many URL parameters), while keeping the same level of security as before.

This new method has now been deployed for all licenses.

  • Test values for HTML personalizations provided by API

In December, we added a new feature at the 'Check and test' step of scenarized e-mails triggered by API, in order to be able to test personalization values provided in the API call.

As it is possible to push a snippet of HTML into the e-mail when it is triggered by API (if the variable is set up accordingly), is now possible to also test HTML content in the 'Check and test' step, allowing the tester to copy-paste a snippet of code that will replace the personalization in the test e-mail.

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January 2023

  • Contacting support from the interface

All Actito users now have the possibility to contact the Actito support from the "My account" side panel within your Actito license.

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This opens a form where their contact information are pre-filled and in which they can add their question.

In order to able to give the quickest answer to your question, we invite you to be as precise as possible in your comment.

Your question will be directly sent to the Actito support, who will contact you back by e-mail.

The support can of course still be contact by e-mail via the address support@actito.com!

As a matter of fact, we advise you to send an e-mail if you need to attach screenshots to describe your problem.

  • Links to the status page

Above the button allowing you to 'Contact support', we have added a direct link to our status page, which allows users to follow important notices regarding maintenances and incidents.

This link is also visible on potential error pages that would be displayed in your license, allowing you to check whether a global issue has been reported. If your problem is more specific, a button to contact the support will also be displayed.

  • Send only one e-mail by address

If the e-mail address is not unique in your database, technical operators can now activate deduplication (to send only one e-mail to the same address in mass campaigns) directly at the creation of an e-mail campaign by API, thanks to the parameter contactOnceByEmailAddress.

If several profiles have the same e-mail address in your database, only the first e-mail will be sent. As the most active profiles are targeted first thanks to the sending optimizer, if a profile is active but their duplicate is not, the active profile will therefore be targeted and all the interactions will remain on the same profile.


December 2022

  • HTML size and shorter tracking URLs

It's important to mind the size of your e-mails, because if the code of the e-mail (namely the HTML content, without images) weights more than 102 KB, it will be cropped by some webmails (such as Gmail).

In December, we've released 2 features to help you respect this constraint.

  • E-mail size warning

At the 'Check and test' step of your e-mail campaigns definition, you are now informed of the size of each test e-mail. The color scheme helps you see directly if your e-mail risks getting cropped: green (all good), orange (just below the limit) or red (above 102 KB).

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  • Shorter tracking URL

All the links of your e-mails follow an encrypted redirection through your link domain, to allow for click tracking. We've realized that this encryption could stretch out the length of your URLs, especially when they contain many additional parameters (UTM, Goals,...).

And longer URLs mean more HTML code, which means more risks to go over the 102 KB limit if you have many links...

For this reason, we have changed the encryption method of tracking URLs. They are now shorter (especially when the link contains many URL parameters), while keeping the same level of security as before.

  • Test values for personalizations provided by API

Many campaigns (especially transactional ones) are triggered through API calls, and personalization values can be provided through these API calls.

Testing these campaigns could be tricky for the marketeer, as tests would be blank without the intervention of a technical operator.

If you have "Provided by API' personalizations, a new button is displayed at the 'Check and test' step of your e-mail and SMS campaigns. It allows you to provide mock values for the personalizations that will be provided by the API call that triggers your real e-mail.

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  • Environment names

Important notices regarding maintenances and incidents are posted on Actito's status page, which is divided between the 3 production environments. But do you know on which one your license is hosted ?

The information is now displayed on the login page (after typing your license name) and in the platform, in the 'My Account' pannel.

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  • Optional files in ETL synchronizations

When defining a multi-file ETL synchronization, it is now possible to flag a file as 'non required', which means that the synchronization will be executed even if an optional file is missing.

This is useful if, for instance, you synchronize your profiles and your orders every day but your repository of products only when there are new references : you can set-up a multi-file ETL to synchronize all tables at once, and the synchronization will run even when the product file is not pushed.

Learn more about how to synchronize your data with Actito through ETLs.

November 2022

  • Robot clicks filter

Screening bots are a hurdle for analyzing campaigns stats, especially in a B2B context. Companies often have additional security measures on their corporate mailbox, such as these bots that go through every link of the received e-mails... which generate false clicks (and openings).

After a first update last year to filter clicks based on a database of screening bots signatures, we realized this was not enough as many of such robots hide their identity to pass as legitimate users.

Test - learn - iterate is the Actito way, so we've released a new filter, now based on click behavior and validated by 3 months of data analysis: when we detect a burst of clicks, or many clicks in quick succession, the interactions will be filtered. When the real profile later clicks in the e-mail, the interaction will be recorded as normal.

The new robot click filter can currently be activated on demand (by e-mail to support@actito.com).

  • One shot ETL output on remote locations

One shot ETLs are used to relaunch a failed synchronization, or to do a one-time synchronization by providing a file, either on a remote location or directly in the call (in the latter case, it works exactly as a bulk API import).

When defining a one shot ETL, technical users can now choose to automatically drop the output files (such as the errors or result file) on a remote location (such as an FTPS server or the transferbox)

October 2022

  • Filter on event source in subscription exports

The 'subscription updates' incremental export is very useful to synchronize (un-)subscriptions that happen in Actito with your own systems. But not all sources hold the same interest in that regard: for example, subscription changes from data imports might not need to be synchronized with your CRM if that's already where the data is coming from.

For this reason, you can now filter the sources that you want to include in your export, with a distinction between sources within Actito and external ones.

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  • Additional information in e-mail exports

Speaking of exports, you can now export the 'campaign group' and the 'campaign display name' in incremental e-mail activities exports, as well as the 'campaign group' in one shot e-mail interactions exports.

  • Predefined segmentation rules based on the Activation Matrix

The Activation Matrix is a useful tool to analyze the repartition of your profiles according to the monetary value, the frequency and the recency of their interactions (stored in an Interaction custom table such as "Purchases", "Orders", ...).

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When an Activation Matrix is set up in a license, 4 segmentations (corresponding to the main categories: New, VIP, Passive & At risk) are now automatically created and updated.

They do not have to be maintained through segmentation rules, but are automatically updated when the matrix is re-calculated daily.

If you are interested in the Activation Matrix feature, please contact you account manager.

  • Transactional e-mail with attachments

Mandatory e-ticketing is a new challenge faced by French retailers starting 2023, but many other sectors and countries might be interested to dematerialize their tickets, bills or reports.

To this purpose, Actito has added the possibility to send attachments when triggering transactional e-mails by API calls.

This allows to send up to 10 attachments, with support for various extensions (csv, doc, docx, gif, html, jpeg, jpg, pdf, png, xls and xlsx), through a dedicated API route (separate from the usual call to trigger transactional e-mails without attachments).


  • Filter on event source in subscription exports and webhooks

Like for exports defined in the User Interface (see above), technical users can now filter the (un-)subscription sources that they want to include when they pre set up an export by API or when they define a subscription update webhook.

  • Defining pre-headers by API

An API call to set up a preheader in an e-mail draft has been added to the Actito public API, so that the same parameters as in the User Interface can be defined by API.