1. How to Create an Account
2. The Login Screen
3. The Main Menu
4. Managing your Campaigns
1. Create a New Campaign
2. Edit an Existing Campaign
3. Copy a Campaign
4. Delete a Campaign
5. Pause a Campaign
6. Resume a Campaign
5. The Campaign Wizard
1. Step 1: Campaign
2. Step 2: Contacts
1. Upload your Contacts
2. Enter your Contacts Manually
3. Step 3: Message
1. Email Message
2. SMS Message
4. Step 4: Send
1. Test
2. Validate
3. Launch
6. Unsubscribe
7. Bounced Messages
8. Manage your Contact Lists
9. Manage your Preferences
10. Reports

In order to use Maestro, you must first open an account. To do so, simply click on the "Not Registered Yet" link at the bottom of the login page, and enter the required information into the registration form.

We strongly recommend that you create a password that contains a minimum of 6 characters, using a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters and at least one digit. This suggested password creation method will render your password practically impossible to guess regardless of the level of sophistication of the hacking method. In addition, there is built-in security in the system that will block access to your account for a period of 24-hours after three failed login attempts, further protecting you from unauthorized access to your account.

Once all the required information is entered into the registration form, you will be able to immediately send up to 100 email messages at no cost, and with no obligation. There is no set-up fee to create a new Maestro account.

Once your session comes to an end, you should always logout by clicking the ?Logout? link at the top of the page. This logout closes your session and forces the input of a username/password for future access to Maestro for performing campaign management activities. Logging out protects you from unauthorized access from your workstation (while you are away for example).  |back to top|

To send a campaign to more than 100 contacts or to use the Wireless SMS Messaging feature of Maestro, please contact us at sales@komunik.ca.

If you forgot your password, click on the "Forgot my Password" link and we will send a new password for your account to the email address you have registered with us. This new password can be reset or modified in the ?Your Preferences? area of Maestro.

If you fail to provide a valid email and password combination three times in a row, access to your account will be blocked for a period of 24 hours. You will have to wait this 24-hour period to gain access to your account with the proper email - password combination. If it is urgent that you access your account before this period has passed, please contact our client services team at (866) 904-0710.   |back to top|

The Main Menu is Maestro's control center, providing access to nearly all the features of the platform. From the Main Menu, you can create, edit, delete or copy a campaign, pause or resume a campaign, as well as test, approve and launch a campaign.

The Main Menu also provides access to your existing contact lists. You can create a new contact list by uploading it to the server or by entering data manually into Maestro. You can also copy, edit or delete existing contact lists.   |back to top|

Maestro campaigns can be created, modified, copied, deleted, paused and resumed. All these actions can be performed directly from the main menu of the application.

To create a new campaign, simply click on the "Launch a New Campaign" button at the top of the main menu. You will be guided through the Maestro Campaign Wizard where you will be able to create your new campaign. At any time, you can simply save your work and logout. In order to continue where you left off, simply locate your campaign from the main menu and click on "edit" next to the campaign that you wish to modify.

Until a campaign has been launched, you can modify its name, description and message. However, if you have already written your message, changing the contact list will delete your message. To avoid this common problem, you should copy the contents of each portion of your message to notepad and paste it into place when you reach "Step 3: message".

If you would like to create a copy of a campaign, simply click "Copy" next to the campaign you would like to copy. You will notice that a new campaign was created with the same name and the word "(copy)" appended to it. You can then modify this new campaign's name, description, and message by clicking "Edit" next to the campaign name in the Main Menu.

If you would like to delete any campaign from your list of campaigns, simply click ?delete? next to the campaign that you wish to remove. Please note that this function will immediately delete the campaign from the database, without the possibility of restoring it.

A campaign that has been launched can be paused, provided that it has not yet sent all of the scheduled messages. However, you will not be able to modify your messages or your contact list when a campaign has been paused. If there is an issue with the campaign, it can be cancelled. The pause mechanism can be used as an "emergency break" in case you change your mind at the last second.

You can resume a paused campaign. It will continue sending messages where it left off when it was paused. If you do not wish to resume sending messages, please click the ?cancel? button to stop sending messages.

Maestro's Campaign Wizard assists users with the planning, creation, validation, test, launch and performance measurements of their campaigns. The Wizard takes you through a series of simple steps that will help you provide an appropriate name and description for your campaign, create a contact list, create a personalized message, test your campaign for various set-ups, launch your campaign and measure its performance with real-time reports and drill-down charts.   |back to top|

The first step of creating a campaign is also the easiest. This is where you provide a name and description for your campaign. For example, a weekly newsletter could be named: newsletter, 01-01-2001 - 01-08-2001, while its description could be: ?Weekly newsletter, this week: our new president, our annual corporate picnic, feedback, and layoff rumours??  |back to top|

Every Maestro campaign requires a contact list. In order to communicate with people, you will need at least an email address or a wireless phone number. You must then transfer this list to Maestro using one of the following methods:

• select an existing Maestro contact list
• upload a new contact list to Maestro
• enter your contacts manually, one at a time, in Maestro.

Of course, if no contact list has been previously created in Maestro, you will not be able to select an existing contact list.   |back to top|

1. Upload a Contact List, in CSV Format (comma separated values):
   You first need to export your contact list, or perform a ?save as?, from your contact management software (ACT, Access, Excel, Outlook, Onyx, Maximizer, etc) to create a CSV file. This file can then be saved to your system or network, so it can later be uploaded into Maestro. CSV format is widely supported by contact management tools and should not be very easy to create from most applications. However, if your company uses a sophisticated contact management applications (ex: ERP or CRM systems) that is hosted on servers instead of on your workstation, it may be necessary to ask a technical resource to help you with this exporting step. In either case, it will be necessary to identify the fields that contain the email address and/or the wireless phone number for SMS messaging.
2. Once the contact list has been uploaded and is hosted on our servers, we will ask you to check the fields that you wish to use to reach your contacts. If you wish to reach your contacts using email, check the email field, and if you wish to reach your contacts using wireless SMS messaging, check the wireless (mobile) phone number field.
3. You will also have the ability to identify which fields should be used to perform searches. Searching for contacts allows you to pin-point a specific contact to view or edit his/her specific information. You can also delete this contact from your list.
4. Please note that the fields used to search your contacts cannot be encrypted in the database. Information such as Credit Card Numbers, Social Insurance Numbers or any other such sensitive information should always be encrypted. Hence, such information should never be made searchable.
5. Field names can also be modified. Be aware that although modifying field names may make fields more easily understandable to humans, if you wish to re-import this information into your enterprise contact database the fields will no longer have the same names, requiring the fields to be re-edited prior to merging them with your other contacts.

This procedure is extremely simple. Once select to option of entering contacts manually, the system will ask you to select the type of campaign you want to run. The options available include:

• Email Only Campaign
• SMS Only Campaign
• Email and SMS Campaign
• Email Only Campaign, No Searchable Fields. (this method is the safest and the least flexible. All the information will be encrypted in the database, hence no contact searching will be allowed.)

After contacts have been entered, you can then simply provide a name for your list, and enter the available information into the available fields. The only mandatory fields are the email and/or SMS fields.

Please note that if you wish to personalize your message, the fields that will be used for personalization must all contain data. If there isn?t currently data for all fields, please contact us (support@komunik.ca) to learn how to configure the data to allow you to write alternative text for those contacts that have incomplete profiles.

This step allows you to define your message, as well as all required parameters prior to launching a campaign. One of Maestro's greatest features is the ease of message personalization. Every field supports some form of personalization and the process of personalizing is relatively simple.  |back to top|

However, if the recipient's email software can read HTML, as is the case for more than 87% of the world's email users (see http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/email-client-summary.htm), your HTML message will appear in all its splendour and you will typically obtain a much higher click-thru rate than you would had you used a text only message.   |back to top|

Komunik has accumulated unparalleled expertise with HTML email design and encoding, as well as with rich media email campaigns. Do not hesitate to ask us for help.

An SMS message will be sent to users on their Mobile Phones. In North America, this message is limited to one-way communication, as users cannot reply, or click on a link. In addition, North American recipients will be charged a small fee for each message that they receive, hence receiving your messages will cost your contacts money. This is why we insist that you obtain each contact's informed consent prior to sending them SMS messages with Maestro.

If you wish to send SMS messages, please contact us at sales@komunik.ca   |back to top|

In order to avoid public relations disasters with your contacts, Maestro will force users to follow a validation process for all outbound messages. As part of this process, Maestro will first get a certain number of random contacts from your contact list, package each contact's message and send it off to a your email address as if the messages were going out to your real contacts. You can create as many test messages as you want, and you can conduct this test step as many times as necessary.

We suggest you validate the following elements:

- all personalization elements

- HTML message formats - if you send out HTML messages how your message will look in different email software: Outlook for PC and Mac, Outlook Express for PC and Mac, Eudora for PC and Mac, Lotus Notes for PC and Mac, AOL for PC and Mac, Netscape Messenger for PC and Mac, Pegasus Mail for PC and Mac, and other combinations.

- Rich media plug-in support - if you send out Rich Media email, test with the same set-ups as above, both with and without the required plug-ins. Komunik has unparalleled experience with email campaign quality assurance testing and has a dedicated QA Lab set-up for testing campaigns. If you would like more information about our QA Laboratory services, contact us at sales@komunik.ca.

Once your testing cycle ends, you will have to approve your campaign before you can launch it. The confirmation consists of a series of statements that you must read and agree to before proceeding with the campaign. You will have to check off each statement to indicate your agreement before the campaign can be approved for launch.   |back to top|

Once a campaign has been approved, it can be launched. A launched campaign can be paused and resumed, but campaigns typically process very rapidly. It is best not to rely on the pause function to fix mistakes, because it is highly likely that by the time you realize your error, it may be too late to pause the campaign.  |back to top|

Every message contains a link at the very end that will enable your contacts to opt-out, or unsubscribe from your contact list. Once a contact has asked to be removed from your list, you will not be able to send this user any more messages using Maestro, even if you upload a new contact list to Maestro. This feature is in place to prevent abuse and to demonstrate to your contacts your commitment to permission marketing. An important premise of permission marketing is the ability for anyone to opt-out from your lists at any given time, and Maestro handles this very elegantly.  |back to top|

When a message bounces (bad email address), Maestro will flag the address as bounced. You will then be able to delete it or edit it for the next campaign.  |back to top|

You can create a new contact list

You can edit the contact list name.

You can add contacts to your contact list with Maestro's interface.

You can also look for contacts using their email address, their phone number, their last name, first name, or any field which has been designated as indexed for searching in Maestro.

Once you have located the contact, you can edit its information or delete it.

You can also simply read the available information on each contact. You will also be able to see additional information relating to the contact's interactions with your company since the first time you used Maestro : opened messages, detail of all links that were followed, unsubscribe requests, bad email address.   |back to top|

You can modify your preferences at any time. These include personal profile information, information about your company, information about your preferences, your location, and your security preferences. Please note that the language you select here will not only affect Maestro's interfaces but also the language used when Komunik contacts you.  |back to top|

You can also modify your password. Security experts suggest that you change your password regularly and that you use at least six characters with a combination of letters and numbers for enhanced security.

Maestro provides online reports that showcase campaign activities. These reports will allow you to evaluate the impact that your campaign is having and will keep you updated at a glance of the activity it is generating. The report metrics include the following and are update each time you load the report:

• Messages Sent
• Messages Opened
• Click Thru Rate
• Detailed Click Thru Rate for Each Link
• Bounced Messages (invalid email addresses)
• Unsubscribe Requests

For each of these metrics, a simple click allows you to see which contacts took part in each measured action. For example, if you click on the bounced email bar chart, a list of all bounced email addresses will appear, along with links to edit each one or delete it from your list.

Komunik can also create custom reports that can be viewed online or delivered to designated contacts by email. For more information about our custom report services, please contact  |sales@komunik.ca |