Dear Lovely Simplerista

I've just finished a feature that I've been sitting on for a while, and which I'm sure a lot of you are going to love: Automations.

Automations let you create sequences of steps that happen automatically in response to some user activity. Okay, that sounded pretty abstract.

You probably know about auto-responses already. These are emails that are sent automatically over time in response to people purchasing a product or subscribing to a list. With automations you can do the same, and much much more.

Instead of just sending email, you can use any of the actions that you know from triggers, please a few new ones:

• add them to a list
• remove them from a list
• add a tag
• remove a tag
• send text message
• wait for a period
• and much more.

And we'll be adding more actions and more flexibility over time.

Check out a video I recorded about the new feature here.

Getting Started with Simplero

If you've signed up for a Simplero trial account but haven't quite gotten started yet, maybe these new QuickStart videos that I just recorded will be helpful to you.

The first covers products and content.

The second covers lists and contacts and emails, including adding an opt-in form to your website, and how to move your contacts over from another system.

The third shows you how you can start making money even if you don't have a website.

New Features in Simplero

In addition to Automation, a couple of important supporting features also dropped in the past week:

Triggers on auto-responses allows you to have an introductory sequence that new subscribers are taken through, and only after that sequence is through will they start receiving your regular newsletter. But you can use it for many other things as well.

Triggers on links can be used to tag people who are interested in a topic, and expresses it by clicking a link. You can tag them, add them to another list, and many other things. 

You can also capture people who have not clicked a link, by adding a tag to the group in a trigger on the auto-response, and then removing the tag when they click the link.

In the smaller fixes department, I finally managed to nail the bug that caused "fit width" of headlines to not always work. Turns out it was because we fit the text before the fonts were finished loading. Pretty obvious in hindsight, but it took me a while to figure out.

I've also added a new "Need help" page to the marketing site. It's a good place to start if you're needing help.

In spaces, clicking the search menu will immediately focus the search input field.

And finally, from now on, your subscribers only need to confirm their email once per account. Any additional subscription can be made without confirming, even if confirmation is required for the list.

Random Links from around the Interwebs

Obama singing Amazing Grace really touched my heart. I was already crying from watching a sad and beautiful movie, and then this showed up in my news feed and really pushed me over the edge.

Fred Wilson writes about profit vs. growth. I'm mostly in the profits camp.

I'm fascinated by fame and how it's generated. In that respect, it was interesting to see the top 100 twitter accounts based on number of followers. Had not expected this number one.

Lots of love,
-Calvin