Release Notes May 2025

This month’s release includes major improvements to domain authentication, personalization tools, and contact management – plus a few behind-the-scenes upgrades for a smoother experience.

Easier Domain Authentication

What’s new: We’ve streamlined the domain authentication process so you can get started sending emails faster and with fewer errors.

What’s improved:

• We now auto-detect your DNS provider based on your domain, so you don’t need to select it manually.
• For top DNS providers, we automatically trigger the correct custom authentication flow.
• We verify that your subdomain isn’t already in use before setup, helping prevent common errors before they happen.

Why it matters: Less guesswork, faster setup, and improved deliverability from day one.

Merge Tags Now Support Fallback Values

What’s new: You can now add fallback values when inserting merge tags in the email builder.

Why it matters: If a contact is missing the personalized data you’ve selected (like first name), the fallback ensures your email still reads naturally.

Additional enhancements:

• The fallback field remembers values from previous campaigns for quick reuse.

  
  
• Email previews now display fallback values so you can see exactly what your recipients will receive.

Manually Unsubscribe Contacts

What’s new: You now have more control over your contact list with three ways to manually unsubscribe contacts—available only for those with an Active status.

Why it matters: Whether you’re honoring a manual request or syncing with another platform, unsubscribing contacts is now straightforward and flexible.

Your options:

1. Individual unsubscribe: Edit a contact record or use the kabob menu from the Contacts page.

   

2. Bulk unsubscribe: Select and unsubscribe multiple contacts directly from the list view.

   

3. Import-based unsubscribe: During the file import process, check the “Unsubscribe all contacts in the file” box to apply changes in bulk.

   

Featured Templates in the Gallery

What’s new: The template gallery now supports featured categories curated by the Benchmark team, like “New,” “Seasonal,” or “Holiday Favorites.”

Why it matters: These collections help you quickly discover high-performing or timely templates to use in your next campaign.

Behind-the-Scenes Improvements

• Google Sign-Up Flexibility: Users who sign up using Google can now update their first and last name directly in Settings—no need to rely on what’s listed in their Google account.
• Test email fix: We resolved an issue that caused links not to work in test emails sent from unauthenticated domains. You can now preview test emails with full functionality.
• Tokyo data region: Benchmark is preparing to support customer data hosting in our new Tokyo, Japan region to better serve our global user base.