If you rely on Emma to communicate with your customers, supporters or colleagues, I'm here to say thanks. We love being your email partner. And we know that relying on Emma means when the system isn't performing, you're losing valuable time and resources.

In the past few weeks, many members of the Emma community have experienced intermittent bouts of page load slowness and delayed mailings. I want to provide a little insight on the problem and share how we're improving overall performance in the short term while moving forward with the implementation of a newly architected system platform that will allow us to scale our service (and add some cool features along the way) without compromising the in-account experience.

What's causing the slowness?

As we add new customers and send and track more mail, our current databases are feeling the effects of the added load. While the system is stable, and all of your data is securely backed up, spikes in volume (usually from very large mailings) are putting a strain on the system, and that affects page loads in Emma and causes mailing delays.

What are you doing to fix it?

We've seen this problem before, and in the past, we've solved performance and speed issues with the build-out of additional databases and a rebalancing of the load. While we have a more long term solution in the works (more on that in a moment), that's exactly how we're going to mitigate the slowness in the short term. Our tech team has just built an additional relief database, which is being tested right now and will take on some of the large processes starting this week.

Will we see more slowness when the new database gets full?

We know we can't continue building new databases every time Emma experiences a growth spurt, so we're also planning for long term expansion. Over the past eight months, our platform developers have been re-architecting a new Emma platform, and by the end of the year we will have moved all of our customer accounts onto this speedier, more robust system. Effortless scaling is just one of the perks of migrating to a newer system, but it's arguably the most important because it affects every Emma user and ensures the speedy account experience that we're dedicated to providing.

What are the other perks of migrating to a new platform?

A shiny new platform means more than just speedy page loads and zippy mailings. See, the new system comes with a versatile API (read more about it on Emma Tech) that empowers our developers and the wider tech community to build integrations and features that will help you make smart marketing decisions and add value to your existing account. Features already in the works for the new system include:

• A/B/C split testing of subject lines, from details and send times
• Automatic notifications when new subscribers join your audience or complete a survey
• In-account posting of your campaign to Facebook and Twitter
• Two-way integration with Salesforce

We'll share more details as those features get closer to being released. In the meantime, I'm sorry if Emma's caused some frustration lately, and we all look forward to providing a better experience very soon.