Announcing ECinteractive, is.D-Force2 Version 9.1.7

This message covers the following timely topics:

What’s New In This Release?
Find Out What's Coming Soon And More

What’s New In This Release?

ECi is loading Version 9.1.7 on your live ECinteractive® and is.D-Force® 2 Web servers this weekend. The software update for this planned maintenance release will take place between 9 PM CST Saturday, March 27, and 6 AM CST Sunday, March 28.

Since this falls within ECi's Standard Weekly Data Center Maintenance timeframe
(www.DDMS.com/support/massfax/dcMtceWindow.htm), it does not require any changes to your Site Maintenance schedule.

In this release, you'll find the following software enhancements: Integrated eMarketing email campaign and Flyer Management Dashboard, smarter Contact Us form, non-branded Edit Profile page, disable Register Me option, Order History delivery status displays DDMS RouteTrak Signatures, and set credit card amount like DDMS Prepays. More detail is below:

Promote Your Deals: Integrated eMarketing Email Campaigns (3288)

What is the easiest way to stay in touch with your shoppers? Send them a colorful email advertising your news, sales, and discounts. With Integrated eMarketing, you can manage and schedule complete email campaigns from your Admin Control Panel:

• The new Flyer Maintenance menu opens the Flyer Maintenance dashboard where you can monitor your flyers, campaigns, recipient lists, and results.
• The Campaign Wizard helps you create and schedule email flyers to promote sale items to your customers.

Dynamic Distribution Lists automatically update whenever new accounts sign up or change their email addresses. Target your distribution lists for a variety of marketing purposes. A few examples:

• Import prospects and send a welcome coupon to guests (Registered = No).
• Send exclusive pricing to loyal customers (based on Created Date range).
• Send exclusive deals to top 10 high volume accounts (from Usage Reports).
• Re-engage lost accounts (based on old Last Login Date and Order Date ranges).
• Promote store overstocks (perhaps filtering to a specific location).

The HTML Email Template Editor is much like the Site Text and Messages page. New in Integrated eMarketing:

• Insert variable mail-merge "snippets" such as your logo, your contact information, the customer name and email.
• Add rows of Web catalog items, where you can tailor the product name, description, flyer price and unit of measure for each campaign. You can control whether the list price and savings amount appear. Your shoppers can easily add the items to their carts.

The automated opt-out complies with anti-spam law.

• The unsubscribe link snippet is automatically added to the bottom of every message.
• Shoppers may log in to update their preferences in the Edit Profile page.
• This system honors their preferences even if the shopper or the dealer updates the email address associated with the account.

Getting Started. To get started with Integrated eMarketing, see Setting Up & Using Integrated eMarketing (pdf) or your online help.

However, here are some important notes on implementation:

1. Anti-Spam. Integrated eMarketing sends your campaign messages from the SMTP server for the email provider you specify, and from the email address you specify. This ensures a personal touch, helps the system comply with anti-spam law, and protects your campaigns from being blacklisted in case another dealer abuses the system.
2. Email Host Settings. Contact your IT network staff, email host provider, or Internet service provider to obtain the IP address and Port for your business’ outgoing SMTP email server. Your server may require use of an SSL Encrypted Connection and an incoming POP email server IP address and Port. Tip: Ask what limits your host sets on bulk mailings (such as messages per day) that may affect your campaign distribution.
3. Email Address. You must also specify an email address for your campaign messages to use as the From and Reply-To address. Consider specifying a contact name of someone at your business that your customers will recognize. It does not have to be that person’s actual contact email, but consider operational needs when it comes to handling responses.
4. Webdemos To Be Announced. We will soon announce a series of free Webdemos on Integrated Marketing to help you get started.

Smarter Contact Us Form Automatically Sends Account Detail (9174)

Your site's Contact Us form is now smarter, making it easier for you to respond quickly to customer inquiries!

We've enhanced the logic so that when existing users submit questions or comments on the Contact Us form, the message to the dealer includes the user's account name/number, department, user name, and UserID, if applicable.

No More ECi Brands on Edit Profile Page (8281)

The Edit Profile page no longer refers specifically to ECi brands. This makes it easier for dealers to maintain their own brand voice

The page is available from the MyAccount menu, and is automatically presented to a user who has logged into ECinteractive or is.D-Force 2 for the first time after being converted from DDMS legacy Web storefronts including Dealer Station and is.D-Force.

Control Whether Shoppers See Register Me Link (10269)

Not all dealers want to give their customers the ability to self-register. Now you can disable the Register Me link that is usually shown in the My Account section of your Web Storefront.

In the Admin Control Panel's Global Settings menu, click Site Preferences, and then click Edit. Under Allow Customer Registration, you have a new option: Do Not Display Registration Option.

Order History Shows DDMS® RouteTrak™ Proof of Delivery (10725)

For dealers running ECi DDMS® back-end systems, we have enhanced the end-user's Order History Summary Web page to display the RouteTrak™ proof of delivery details.

When the shopper hovers the cursor over the status icon for an order, a Current Status popup box now displays the delivery information, including the signature.

Set Credit Card Amount like DDMS Prepay (10503)

Instead of having to pay an entire order total at Checkout, certain customers can pay a certain amount down, based on their back-end account settings.

We enhanced the logic used when the system creates an account to comply with Prepay codes assigned to the customer account in DDMS back-end systems. This controls the amount the shopper must pay for credit card orders before the order is shipped: Z to set the prepay amount to zero; A to specify that the customer prepay for all the merchandise on the order; P to specify that the customer pay the percentage amount set in the Default Prepay Due As Percent Of Backorders field in the (LG5) Additional Order Entry Parameters screen. Previously, the backend prepay flag was automatically set to A.

Other Changes:

• 10484: Corrected so the Display Multiple PO's option appears in the list of Checkout settings on the Administrative Customer Management page. Previously when viewing customer information and clicking the "i" icon to view Checkout setting details, the Display Multiple POs option was not displaying in the list of settings.
• 7349: Corrected so when the Over Budget Requires Approval check box on the Administrative Web site is selected for a shopper, the system properly sends orders through the approval process.
• 7592: Corrected the Account Location Management page to display the account name, along with the account number when accounts are added, or when multiple accounts are assigned to a user. Previously, the system was unable to display a name when the back-office Department Name field was blank; however, the back-office Department Description field is often used for this purpose.
• 10824: Corrected issues with Automatic Substitute items. If the back office system returned a different item prefix for the item, the system was not allowing the item to be ordered. This has been corrected to allow ordering the substitute item.
• 10847: Corrected so the system displays the proper Product Detail for the selected item when using the SP Richards Enhanced Content feature. Previously when the shopper added item ABC to the cart and clicked to view the item's detail, the system displayed detail for item XYZ.
• 10450: Corrected so the Department drop down list box which displays on the Check Out page functions in the same way as the Department box on the Select Account Web page.
• 10793: Corrected so when using the Advanced Search feature to display custom catalog information, the manufacturers properly display.
• 10269: Enhanced by adding the Administrative ability to disable or remove the Register Me link on the My Account section of the shopper's Web page.
• 7675: Enhanced the Remit A/R and Order History pages so that they do not wrap long end user account numbers longer than 6 characters to the next line in Internet Explorer 7 or Opera browsers.
• 10510: Corrected the RouteTrak logic to present the date and time stamp, if there is a problem uploading the signature file during the sync process.

For more details about your Web storefront, see also ECinteractive FAQs
(www.DDMS.com/support/doc/ecInteractive.htm).

Find Out What's Coming Soon And More

In the next few months, the ECinteractive team has an aggressive schedule to release more hot priority features to make your Web presence more competitive and efficient. We have made significant strides in implementing advancements vendors make in content. We continue working with our trading partners, our mutual goal being a better experience in searching and shopping for your customers. Log into your Admin Control Panel for more details on the Home page.

To find out more about the ECinteractive family of products, see our ECinteractive Product Information (www.ecisolutions.com/products/ecomm/ecinteractive), where you can access a demo site, marketing tools, and color themes.

Sincerely,

ECi Product Management & Technical Support