Thursday, April 4, 2013

Upgrade your emails with vBulletin

The first step to maximizing the effectiveness of popular forum software, like vBulletin, is to enhance them through configuration with JangoSMTP or JangoMail.

vBulletin is a helpful forum software package that facilitates online community discussions related to your business. The system also sends a variety of transactional emails: new registration confirmations, topic reply notifications, PM notifications, and more.

So how can JangoSMTP improve your vBulletin account?
JangoSMTP offers more email reporting features than what you will find in vBulletin's package. JangoSMTP's email delivery and tracking capabilities ensure that your signup confirmation emails will go through the first time and be open and click tracked. It's a common issue with forum software - if a user doesn't receive their confirmation email, they can't use your forum. As a result, users need to contact your forum administrator to activate their accounts manually, which is not ideal, especially if you have a large forum.

Here's how to set it up:
1. Log into your vBulletin Admin CP
2. Go to Settings - Options - Email Options - Edit Settings
3. Scroll down to choose the following settings:

  • SMTP Email: Yes
  • SMTP Host: relay.jangosmtp.net
  • SMTP Port: either 25, 2525, 587 or 465 for SSL/TLS connections
  • SMTP Username: use your JangoSMTP username
  • SMTP Password: user your JangoSMTP password
  • SMTP Secure Connection (can be enabled if port 465 is used)

vBulletin can also be used to send mass email newsletters to your users, to keep them engaged. To do so, go to Users - Send Email to Users within your Admin CP and configure it with a JangoMail account.

As always, if you have any questions or need extra help configuring your vBulletin account with JangoSMTP, contact us at any time.