Common questions
If you have a question about eMerge, we invite you to browse through the following list of the most common questions asked by our customers, the press, the people who have downloaded our demo, and the people who haven’t.
If you still don’t find the answer you’re looking for, click to send us a message. We do not charge for e-mail technical support.
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Does eMerge work with Mac OS X? Yes... |
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Does eMerge support HTML? Yes... |
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What is spam? Spam is... |
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Is eMerge a spam program? No... |
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Is spam a legitimate way of generating business? No... |
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Where can I get a good e-mail list? Build it yourself... |
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Messages sent by the eMerge demo contain an advertisement for eMerge. Can I remove this? Yes... |
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How large can my mailing list be? This depends on... |
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Does eMerge support attachments? Yes... |
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Some messages seem to take forever to send. What’s the problem? Open Transport... |
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My computer freezes up while I’m sending messages. What can I do? Upgrade... |
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How do I add titles to eMerge’s list of titles? Here’s how... |
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How do I determine a document’s “file type” and “creator”? Here’s how... |
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Can I put variables in the message header? Yes... |
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Can I put variables within variables? Yes... |
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Why does eMerge return a User ID error? I’ve verified the address, and it appears okay. It may contain bad characters... |
Does eMerge work with Mac OS X?
You can run eMerge 1.6.5 under classic emulation, however, we are currently
working on a version of eMerge that runs under native OS X. To be added
to our list of testers, click here.
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eMerge allows you to customize and send graphically rich, HTML-only messages. For full instructions, click here.
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Spam is the epithet people on the Internet have given to unsolicited bulk e-mail. Spammers are people who send a lot of junk to a lot of people who don’t want it, more often than not promoting some questionable get-rich-quick scheme, yet another Internet sex service, or—ironically enough—a spam program you can buy yourself, complete with a list of twenty million people to whom you’re encouraged to try selling the very same package.
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Spam programs are generally crude bulk e-mailers designed to send as many messages as possible, to as many addresses as possible, as quickly as possible. They often include a function for protecting your identity and mechanisms that allow you to search the Internet for even more e-mail addresses, indiscriminately sucking them out of newsgroups, chat rooms, and web pages.
When Galleon Software first set about to develop eMerge, we had no delusions about the uses people might put it to. Instead we decided to concentrate our efforts on creating a sophisticated and powerful tool that would help people do legitimate business on the Internet.
The people who buy eMerge are not spammers. They are using eMerge to communicate with their customers, their contacts, their students, their friends. They were already sending out a lot of personalized e-mail, and now eMerge is making that job easier.
And the people who download our demo find a folder full of sample campaigns that show them the good, constructive ways they can use eMerge to help them at home, at school, and at work.
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Is spam a legitimate way of generating business?
The response on the Internet to unsolicited bulk e-mail has been extreme and overwhelmingly negative. Things have gotten to the point where legislators in the United States have proposed laws that could severely restrict such communication, or outlaw it entirely.
At Galleon, we take a more pragmatic—and less litigious—approach: Spam is stupid. It’s a stupid way of doing business, and it’s a stupid way of marketing your product. The theory behind spam is marketing at its most cynical: Just let enough people know about your product, and there will be at least a few sorry souls out there who will fall for your line.
Depending on what you are trying to sell, you’ll probably end up sending out millions and millions of messages, and pissing off thousands and thousands of people, many of whom will complain loudly to you or your Internet Service Provider. The way things stand now, you may still have the right to send out all those messages, but all these people have the equal right to send their complaints right back to you, which in turn gives you the obligation to at least take them off your mailing list, which can take a whole lot of time, wasted time.
This is not to say that direct marketing is not a legitimate way of generating business. It’s just that direct marketing on the Internet lags far behind its more convential forms, and you have to be aware of problems you could face.
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Where can I get a good e-mail list?
Most people are aware that once they subscribe to a magazine, their name is likely to be sold as part of a customer mailing list. In fact, there are firms who specialize in buying and selling these lists, and their success is based on the quality of the lists they manage. You don’t just buy a list of names from these brokers, you also buy the information you need to accurately target your direct mail campaigns. You need to know how these people live, what they are interested in buying, even how likely they are to respond to direct mail solicitations.
This sophistication has yet to come to the Internet. If you purchase an e-mail list, the chances are that about the only thing you’ll know for sure about the people on the list is that they have an e-mail address and they have the use of a computer. This kind of untargeted marketing is a waste of time and money and runs you the risk of generating a whole wad of bad will instead of sales.
If you are thinking about buying a list of e-mail address, find out first how it was obtained. If the typical profile of the people on the list is too general or if it doesn’t match the market you are targeting, then don’t buy it.
Your best bet, still, is to gather your own lists. Search for people and organizations who might be interested in your product or create a page on your website where people can join your mailing list. For instance, we at Galleon Software have built our own lists including people who have written books on Internet marketing, journalists who cover e-mail applications, and user groups who might be interested in eMerge. We also register everyone who downloads the demo version of our software and advise them when we release new versions or offer special promotions.
We do not sell our mailing lists, and if someone asks to be taken off one of our lists, we do so right away.
To help you with building your own mailing, eMerge includes a function we call “dredging” that searches through a file (or a whole folder of files) looking for e-mail addresses and other specific information. These files might be e-mail messages you’ve saved, notes you’ve made, or forms you’ve received from your website. eMerge does not log onto the Internet and dredge newsgroups or chat rooms or any of the other places typical spam programs go looking for e-mail addresses. It assumes that you have made some effort to target your market.
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Messages sent by the eMerge demo contain an advertisement for eMerge. Can I remove this?
Yes. If you buy the full version of eMerge, your messages will not have our little advertisement tacked onto the end.
We’ve only included the advertisement in the demo version to help get the good word out.
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How large can my mailing list be?
This depends on the amount of memory you’ve assigned to the eMerge application. With 8 MB of memory, we’ve worked with lists of more than 10,000 names, with no appreciable decrease in speed.
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Does eMerge support attachments?
Yes. You can attach any number of files to the messages you send. Each person receives the same attachment, and eMerge does warn you before sending particularly large attachments.
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Some messages seem to take forever to send. What’s the problem?
Open Transport can wait for up to five minutes before finally deciding that it cannot reach a particular mail server.This is a problem with Open Transport not eMerge.
We are working on a solution to this, but in the meantime, if you find that this happens too often, you may want to send your messages through your mail server and not directly.
If you get stuck waiting and you want to stop sending, click Pause in the Progress window and wait for the response from the current message.
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My computer freezes up while I’m sending messages. What can I do?
This problem occurred in version 1.0 of eMerge and has been fixed. Upgrade to the latest version of eMerge, and make sure you’re using Open Transport version 1.1.1 or later.
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How do I add titles to eMerge’s list of titles?
eMerge stores a list of acceptable titles in an STR# resource, so you’ll need ResEdit to add to this list. To add a title to eMerge’s list of titles, follow these steps:
1) Drag-and-drop the eMerge application onto ResEdit.
2) Double-click on the STR# icon.
3) Scroll to the end of the list.
4) Click on the number at the end of the list.
5) From the menu bar, choose Resource -> Insert New Field(s).
6) Enter the title that you want eMerge to recognize.
7) From the menu bar, choose File -> Save.
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How do I determine a document’s “file type” and “creator”?
Although generic text files are accepted by most Macintosh applications, eMerge lets you restrict imports to a particular file type or files from a specific application. You can also define the file type and creator for the files you export from eMerge. Here are some typical file types and creators:
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Application | Creator | File type |
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SimpleText | ttxt | TEXT |
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Tex-Edit | TBB6 | TEXT |
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BBEdit Lite | R*ch | TEXT |
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Microsoft Word | MSWD | TEXT,WDBN |
With File Buddy, all you need to do is drag-and-drop a typical document onto the File Buddy icon, and up pops everything you need to know about that document.
ResEdit, on the other hand, is not really recommended for non-technical users; but if you know how to use it, it can also tell you what you need to know.
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Can I put variables in the message header?
Yes, you can insert variables into any of the fields in the message header.
Just make sure to enclose the variable name in two sets of angled brackets. (Use the greater-than and less-than characters.)
Also make sure that you spell the variable names correctly. You should verify this in the preview before you send the campaign.
Finally, if you insert variables into Your Internet Address, make sure that each of the values for this field is correct. If not, people may not be able to respond to your message.
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Can I put variables within variables?
Yes you can, but only if the the position in the variable list of the variable you are inserting is after the variable you are inserting it into. For example, with the following variables:
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Amount Extended = We owe you <<Amount>> |
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Amount = $23.10 |
This form can be useful when you have a variable sentence in your form letter that you may have to change depending on the contents of another variable.
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Why does eMerge return a User ID error? I’ve verified the address, and it appears okay.
It may contain bad characters that you cannot see, such as tabs or a carriage return.
If you are sure that you have the correct address, delete the entire contents of the Internet Address field and re-enter the address from scratch.
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