I'm not a Volo user myself but a friend of mine is and he's looking for a scheduling script. While he can go get one coded he's more interested in one that's already been developed by someone. Anybody got one or know someone who does? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
You can manually schedule or run "recurring" schedules (set up a campaign and have it run out to each list in sequence). I have seen one of these (actually watched it run) custom built apps that lets you schedule ADKi from CSV files. It was supposedly built to schedule the templates you build in Volo and save as well. This was a custom build so can't get you a copy but know it can be done. I have seen a second platform that is supposed to run more like an injector for Volo but have not actually seen it run like I have the above. Wish I could get you a copy, because Volo can be a pain to manage.
If it's for what I think, suggest your friend to create lot of lists (with the same data) then use the "recurring mailing" option to be scheduled on a per-list basis. So set X hours/days between scheduling. This way it will mail continuously until all the lists have been mailed. Exemple: with 30 lists with recurring scheduling wait 1 day, it will mail for 30 days (if the list isn't too big to be mailed in 1 day) If it's for a simple schedule, volo can do it easy when you make new message.
Does Volo have a API? I have a scheduling application but it's not integrated with Volo, It's more of a Offer manager that can schedule across multiple platforms.
yes - they have an API - you wanna give your script a try? I can put you in touch with my guy who needs it on Skype - lemme know brother
I've got faith in John, If there an API on Volo it'd be fairly easy for him to implement/integrate a scheduling script... without an API it's still possible just more of a hassle and harder to integrate already created code. My question is whether or not he's gonna schedule the date/time based on the local machine or the remote one .
wouldn't matter one way or the other, local or remote, as long as the user knows what the hell he's doing.
Adlinkr, MailManager (OnlineSD's), Relavence Reactor (Makiska) are all 3rd parties doing this. Of course Volo has built in scheduling aspects, choosing date/time for delivery of a specific campaign, even recurring mailings as mentioned above. I personally just re-use drafts on the fly, changing out lists, and IP space selections and then blasting them right back out. But for those wondering there is an official API that can be installed on any 4.X installation. Happy to send over the API docs to those who need it.
Chris - I don't use Volo and haven't so much as looked at it but it does strike me as a bit odd that you'd recommend a 3rd party service to handle scheduling for it. I've been told that Volo is (or can be) expensive; so to add the cost of something like AdLinkr to that doesn't make much sense to me as they are expensive as well. This doesn't seem like a complete solution when users are asking me for scripts to help in making Volo easier to use. Can you explain why Volo doesn't have advanced scheduling capabilities already built in? If it's there (functionality wise) in the API why haven't you guys just gone ahead and built it out? I mean this guy can't be the 1st person looking for better scheduling functionality can he? I'd like to understand better.
Well, first things first - Let's address the cost of Volo. Our basic license starts at 1000$ -- most expensive license is 2000$, and allows you to bind up to 4000 IP's from multiple ISP's to a single machine. So from my experience, this is quite cheap and competitive in the market. Now, regarding scheduling. Of course Volo has scheduling tools built into the software, to think otherwise is quite silly. The real question here is to what extent (which I'll elaborate on below). The problem here is that everyone is being so vague with what it is exactly they're looking for. I keep hearing "advanced scheduling" but the truth is, Volo's scheduling capabilities are quite advanced. I'm going to take you guys from top to bottom of our "New Message Page" and touch on all of the various features found for cranking out campaigns. Ready? Set? HERE WE GO....DEEP BREATH. 1. List Selection Choose from a single list, multiple lists, all your lists (with a single click), send more than one message per email address if you'd like. Advanced Selection (Found directly under your list selection)- Use this feature to filter the data you're mailing to in real time. Want to Geo-target, not a problem...want to only mail @aol.com or specific domains...not a problem. Want to save an advanced selection as a preset to use in the future...you guessed it...not a problem here either. 2. Suppression Lists MD5 or Plain text files both supported! But wait...there's more.. Use a suppression file once and toss it away (no DB import), or use a suppression list if you want to keep appending new records to the suppression list in the DB. 3. From Subject & Message Body Use multiple from lines with custom reply-to addresses. Use multiple subject lines as well. HTML/Text/Multipart support VoloMP tags are supported in both from/subject/body lines which allow you to get real fancy. (Personalization, Randomization, Content Spinning) 4. Headers and Footers Select Preset headers and footers for message body 5. Scheduling Want to send out this campaign right now? Great - blast away. Want to send this out at a specific date and time? - Queue up your entire month's worth of mailings for all we care! Want to save this as a draft to come back and edit later? Go for it. Want to save this as a template so you can send out multiple revisions of this draft?...fantastic - we got it. Want to send out recurring mailings that cycle through your lists and send out the same campaign? It's there... 6. IP space selection. Choose your IP's & Domains to mail with in groups of Domains or IP ranges. Additionally you can hand pick specific domains/ips to use and save presets of any of your selections. Way too much info here, yet barely scratching the surface of this single page of the software. Please help me help you, let me know what it is you're looking for. I'm not reading minds...yet. I'll be honest with what Volo cannot do as well. No, we cannot queue up campaigns for you without some intervention by the end user. This is quite frankly a liability. Luckily when you've set everything up in a decent format - it's no big deal. I'm able to send out premade ADK templates to different lists of data with 3 clicks of my mouse and no typing required...not bad in my opinion.
I think what people are looking for is a solution that was in Onpoint/Kobeni. You could select all of yesterdays drops, add 24 hours to the schedule and then copy the drops. Would mean that you could reschedule drops much quicker than currently possible in VOLO. my 2 cents.
Have your friend PM. I will hook him up. I have a server-side python script developed around the recurring sending of volo templates. Can pick x templates and have the script rotate through sending them. It uses the api and it is somewhat smart--it will email you an alert you if one of your campaigns is stuck or queueing too long, etc. And you get to pick the parameters for what is too long. -g
