In this section you will read about setting up your mailing list to allow people to opt-in or opt-out on demand by sending simple messages with "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" in their subjects.
Create or Choose Existing Mailing List
To create a new mailing list, click the "New" button on the main window's toolbar, and click "Mailing List / Follow-up Machine". This opens the "Mailing List" window. Type the name for the new mailing list in the "Name" box; for example: "My Customers".
Alternatively, you can open an existing mailing list by double-clicking its icon.
Set up the Account to Download From
First, you need to configure the mailing list so that it downloads messages sent to the email address you want to use to handle opt-in and opt-out requests. This is the address your subscribers will be sending their "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" messages.
To add a new account, click the "Mail Settings" tab, click "Incoming Mail Accounts", and click "Add". Then enter the email address, server name, user name, and password (I suggest contacting your provider if you do not know any of these details).
You also need to tell the program what it should do after it downloads a message from the POP3 server; it can either remove it or leave it there for you to download it later using another email program.
Click "OK", "OK" until you get back to the "Mailing List" window you started from, and choose the account you just added using the "Account" drop-down list. Example:
You can find out more about setting up FollowUpExpert to work with an incoming mail account here: Incoming Mail.
Add a way to subscribe
Click the "Opt-In" tab, and turn on the option labeled "Enable opt-in by email".
Let's first tell the program that only messages with "subscribe" in the subject are valid opt-in requests. Click "Conditions", then click "Incoming messages that match the following conditions", turn on the "The Subject line contains specific words" option, and click the "words" link. This opens the window entitled "Subject Words".
Enter "subscribe" in the text box, and click "Add". You also need to turn on the option labeled "Message subject does not contain any other text except the above words and phrases"; this is to ensure that messages that contain anything else apart from "subscribe" in the subject (e.g. "Should I subscribe?") do not constitute a match.
This is how the window should look like after it is correctly filled out:
Click "OK" to confirm the changes, and then click "OK" again to close the "Conditions" window.
Add a way to unsubscribe
How can an existing subscriber get removed from the mailing list? Let's suppose that in order to unsubscribe she has to send a message with "unsubscribe" in the subject; the message should be sent to the mailing list's email address.
Click the "Opt-out" tab, and click "Conditions". Then Click "Incoming messages that match the following conditions", turn on the "The Subject line contains specific words" option, and click the "words" link. This opens the window entitled "Subject Words". Enter "unsubscribe" in the text box, and click "Add" and turn on the option labeled "Message subject does not contain any other text except the above words and phrases" to exclude subjects that contain anything apart from "unsubscribe".
Click "OK" to confirm the changes, and then click "OK" again to close the "Conditions" window.
Save the Changes
Click the "OK" button to save your changes, and to close the "Mailing List" window.
Note: The setup of the mailing list may be incomplete at this point; you need to choose an incoming mail account (associated with the email address you chose for this mailing list), and an outgoing mail server (to send messages through) on the "Mail Settings" tab (see Outgoing Mail).
Test
To test opt-in, send a 'subscribe' message to the mailing list's email address (the one you picked on the "Mail Settings" tab). For example, if the address of the mailing list is "mylist@mydomain.com", this is how a test message will look like in Outlook Express:
After sending the message, switch to [[APPLICATION_NAME]], wait a minute or two to make sure the message gets there, and click "Send/Receive". If all went right you should see something similar to the screenshot below on the "Status" > "Incoming Mail" panel:
To test opt-out, send a message with "unsubscribe" to the list's email address. Example:
Again, wait a minute or two and click "Send/Receive". Here is what you should expect (obviously, the addresses and so on are going to be different):
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