A change has been made to the way a click on a link to an external Web site is recorded in the reporting system. Prior to this system change, a click on a link on the microsite leading to another Web site that was tracked through a redirected link would appear in the reporting system as a click from email. This change only affects users who have turned on the external link tracking feature on their micro-site (which has been in Beta testing) and that have a significant number of users clicking these links within the micro-site.

The result of this change is that some users may see a decrease in the reported number of clicks from email and an increase in the reported number of micro-site visits. The clicks on external links on the microsite will now be tracked as microsite visits instead of clicks. This provides a more accurate representation of the number of people clicking on an email and excludes clicks that might come from other places.

Prior to sending an email that includes personalization tokens and display rules, the system will now validate the syntax of the tokens and rules to make sure they will be interpreted correctly by the mailer. If there is a problem, the user will be notified and the mail job will not be sent.

The "Language Encoding" setting in the Publishing Options area now also effects the encoding of the Subject Line and the From Name of outgoing email messages. It is now possible to choose any of the available encoding formats and enter text in any of these supported languages.

Additionally, there is a new setting under Publishing Options called "Character Encoding" that determines what method of character encoding will be used when structuring the Subject and From Name. For most situations, the "Base 64" option should be used, but another option, "Quoted Printable" is offered for greater flexibility. There is also a "None" option if you do not wish the Subject or From Name to be encoded at all.

The combination of Language Encoding and Character Encoding that you should use will depend upon the nature of your audience and the types of email systems most frequently used within the region that they live.

Prior to this fix a 'Limit to this Topic' option was in the element properties for the 'Topic List' element. This would actually clear out the list and not show any topics. The element now functions as it should. The Topic List will only show the topic designated in the option.