Updates from April
(Are you proud of us for abstaining from the “It’s gonna be May” pun? We hope so.)
Filter subscribers based on UTM parameters
Who cares what UTM actually stands for (Urchin Tracking Module? ew), it’s an awesome way to collect data on how, when, and where your subscribers arrived at your newsletter. And now you can use UTM parameters to filter your subscriber list!
All you have to do is add a string to the end of your newsletter subscribe links (e.g., ?utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=klingonnewyear) and Buttondown will do the rest. Click the Customize button in your Subscribers view and add check or uncheck any UTM parameters you want.
Head over to the changelog update for more info about API implementation and example use cases.
Automatically flag and block suspicious subscriber emails
Who has three firewall tiers and abhors incoming spam? This newsletter platform!
Our new Firewall feature lets you dial your spam logging features to your liking. Go to your Settings page, click Configure next to Firewall and choose whether you’d like yours Disabled, Enabled, or Aggressive. From there, you can decide if you’d prefer that blocked addresses stay on your list for review or want them to be removed immediately.
We plan on adding more Firewall features soon—and there’s a lot of cool stuff under the hood. Read the Configurable Firewall announcement to learn more about the whole shebang.
From the blog
Not a lot of rhyme or reason to this month’s blog topics. Just a mishmash of fun, useful reads for people interested in email newsletters—like you!
If you’re a self-published author, for example, we published a roundup of ideas for book launches via newsletters. Or, for company or personal newsletters alike, you may simply want to amplify community discussions with a newsletter.
Regardless of your newsletter’s purpose, we think it’s crucial to think about how accessible your newsletters are to people who use assistive technology. We’re not experts on newsletter accessibility optimizations, so we checked with the experts to highlight how to make your newsletter accessible.
Finally, because y’all seem to love deep dives into email of the past, we took a look at what the hell happened to AMP emails (remember those?).
Other stuff
Back up your data and then back it up again and again (automatically!). Buttondown’s latest automation action lets you schedule exports of account data.
Get more insight into why a subscriber might be marked as undeliverable, from the subscriber detail view, with suspicious domain and address flags.
Quickly review and filter your subscribers’ entire history of activity with your newsletter, thanks to some new view options!