For the past several months, we have been working tirelessly to introduce a number of new features to our application. We’ve dubbed our bigger release as our “Winter Release”, and you, along with thousands of small business owners and entrepreneurs, will be using it very soon. In this post, I’ll share the exciting new product details along with videos and other information about the release.

From all of us at Infusionsoft, we’re proud to present our exciting changes and enhancements to our application. We listened to your feedback and made several changes to our application as well as our release process to ensure you have a great experience.

We will release this update in five groups to all users between January 28, 2010 and February 9 February 23, 2010. Because of our strong commitment to quality, we may hold a release if we identify anything critical that may affect your experience- while dates of the release may change without notice, it is to ensure that  everything is up to our highest standards before you see a change in your software.

UPDATE: We did have to push dates back, but we’re good now and on target to get this out to all customers by February 23, 2010. Users will be notified when their application has been upgraded.

Don’t worry though; when your application is updated, you will be notified of the change. We have a nifty tool that will send you a notice when you log into your application. After that, you will be ready to try out the new features!

You’re reading probably wondering what this whole release is about and what we’ve  included. Here we go…

Highlights & New Features Found in the Winter Release:

• New option to choose between bounce@infusionmail.com OR mailer@infusionmail.com sender header address for better readability of your email marketing messages.
• Ability to run actions when recipients open your HTML emails. Meaning, you can start/stop campaigns when people open your HTML emails.
• Improved Voice and Fax broadcast features making for a better experience for users.
• Create appointments based on custom dates. Many people have wanted this and now it’s here!
• Exciting New Advanced HTML Editor for editing email messages. We heard your feedback about TinyMCE – we’re excited to give you a more robust template editor.
• Introduction of High-Impact Email; a new email template plugin (Windows users only) that will allow you craft professional-looking email templates without needed to know Photoshop, HTML or CSS.
• Ability to import people from third parties including Aweber®, ConstantContact® and 1ShoppingCart® with ease and guidance.
• Easier importing and tagging – so easy, anyone can do it. You can also add people to companies directly from an import, too!
• Intuitive Shopping Cart Setup, including an easy to use Drag & Drop category and sub-category setup. For those who use the eCommerce features, you’ll love these changes.
• 3D-Secure, (MasterCard SecureCode®) a new secure technology to provide more assurance to consumers. This does require your merchant gateway to support this, though.
• Better Email Performance in terms of speed and deliverability – all users will greatly appreciate this. New email throttling technology will help prevent spam complaints.
• And much more — to see the full list check out the Release Notes on the Fusebox.

Now that you have an idea what to expect, this week I’ll be sharing more information and videos. They will feature our developers, discussing what they’ve been working on in this release.

Scott Martineau, our VP of Product Management, shared, “The new features in this release are evidence of Infusionsoft’s commitment to make our software more simple, polished and enjoyable for our users. After extensive feedback, we knew we had to make email authoring more streamlined. We are excited that now it will be even simpler for users to create emails, insert links, import data from other systems and automate their campaigns- all key steps to growing their business through email marketing.”

Be sure to watch the Webinar recording where we go step-by-step through new features and read the updated FAQs on the Fusebox for answers to your questions. (Marianne is a total rockstar, isn’t she?)

Your feedback has been very important to us and helped us throughout our release. If you have any questions or comments, let us know in the comments below. Thank you for your patience and support!

You might also like these blog entries:

• Highlights of our 2010 Summer Release
• Hello to the Infusionsoft Email Builder
• Product Update: New Features & Slicker Interface