Triggered Email Marketing

SMS Marketing Term of the Day: MT and MO Messages

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 by Amanda Cross

When you talk about SMS marketing messages, you always talk about it in terms of the mobile device.

The term MO message (mobile-originated message) is a message that a subscriber sent from a mobile device into the ExactTarget system. Setting up your system to respond to MO messages is similar to setting up a triggered email: you create content and the system sends it out automatically whenever anyone triggers the message. In the case of SMS, people trigger the message by sending you a keyword in a MO message.

The term MT message (mobile-terminated message) refers to a message that goes out from the ExactTarget system and is received by the subscriber's mobile device. Setting up an MT message is similar to setting up a user-initiated email: you choose the content and select the subscribers, and send the message at the time you choose.

Right now, ExactTarget users with a private short code can set up their system to respond to MO message as well as send MT messages. With the next release, shared short code users will be able to send MT messages as well. Check out the SMS page on our website.

Software Term of the Day: Cloud Computing

Thursday, June 25, 2009 by Amanda Cross

Software as a Service (SaaS), also referred to as "cloud computing," refers to software that you access through a web interface, rather than having it installed on your local computer or network. The "cloud" in this case is the Internet, where the complex infrastructures that power the software are hidden from the users' view.

ExactTarget is a SaaS product, as is Salesforce.com and the technology that powers this blog, Compendium Blogware.

SaaS products are growing in popularity because of benefits such as:

Hardware and personnel cost savings from not having to install and support software on site
Flexibility to purchase on a monthly basis
Automatic version updates
Ability to access the tools from any computer anywhere
Information security, often better than you can guarantee yourself

Navigating a Triggered Send Message

Monday, June 15, 2009 by Liz Farrelly

So, a few posts ago, I was shouting the praises of ExactTarget 3sixty Notifications. I was standing on rooftops and declaring my love for 3sixty, our development team, and our triggered sends. (I am sure some of you mocked me, as we are an email company - WHY oh WHY did notifications take us so long....)

But I digress, I loved our triggered sends. I don't know if I had exposed that we were using our our Automated Interaction Management platform to get notifications running, but I am telling you now. In my head, I was only mere moments away from being able to do 1 to 1 marketing through 3sixty. We were doing exactly what we would have told our clients to do, and it was a beautiful thing.

Until I realized that if you aren't careful, you can make a dangerous mistake. We setup our triggers, and we went firing away. With every post to a wall, or answer to a question, I excitedly watched our triggered sends firing off with great satisfaction. And then, the dreaded email came - "I don't want these messages. Please unsubscribe me." No problem, right? I am all about the subscriber. Let's unsubscribe him and make him happy.

But I had made a major mistake in setting up my triggers. I classified them as transactional sends. Which is fine, and was perfectly acceptable. However, it does prevent a classic unsubscribe mechanism from working in a normal fashion. No wonder he had to send me an email.

I have told HUNDREDS of clients how the transactional message works. But in my own haste, I totally forgot. And boy, did I feel stupid. The point of this story? We all make mistakes (even us email marketers), especially when navigating some tricky technology. There are 3 things to remember if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

1. It's easy to fix, and most subscribers will take it with a grain of salt. (Even our very own Al Iverson will help you out if you really do have remorse.)

2. You'll never make the same mistake again. Ever. Trust me.

3. Before you start an ambitious new project (fingers pointing at me), you'll check ExactTarget 3sixty for the latest documentation and how-to's. The time and embarrassment that will save you is not measurable.

Happy triggering - and good luck!

Email Marketing Term of the Day: Content Detective

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 by Amanda Cross

The spam that you receive in your inbox on any given day is probably only a fraction of what is actually sent to you. This is because Internet Service Providers (ISPs) evaluate the content of the emails that are sent to you and reject many of them.

There are many different factors that an ISP can use to tell if an email is spam. Without knowing all of the criteria that the ISPs judge emails against, it's possible that you could accidentally include content in your email marketing message that causes the ISP to think it's spam.

Content Detective is a tool within ExactTarget that helps you identify spam triggers in your email content. this feature mirrors the logic used by spam-filtering software to identify words, phrases, and patterns that are likely to trigger filters. It then recommends a resolution to each identified problem. After you run the Content Detective, you can then edit the email to remove the triggers.

Typically, having just one potential trigger word or phrase will not affect your email's deliverability. However, if two or more potential triggers are found, you should remove them to improve your email's chances of being seen by the subscriber.

Relevancy = Subscriber Engagement

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 by Angela Khan

Most of the time we can build better lists by making our current ones even more effective.

Start by identifying each target audience, as well as finding behavioral patterns that change over a specific time frame. For example, note individuals who attend a webinar but don’t sign up for the newsletter, and vice versa. Once you’ve determined these patterns, you can begin planning how to increase engagement with a specific target audience using the power of ExactTarget’s technology.

Remember, when you focus on a targeted, highly engaged subscriber list, you’re bound to see substantial increases in list growth as you send more relevant email messages. Below are some Use Cases to get the creative juices flowing; along with the ExactTarget features that will help you get the job done.

Use Cases To Get You Started – B-to-B
ExactTarget Formula to Recreate: AIM (Activities, Programs, Data Extensions, and Send Classifications) + Filters, Measures & Groups

“Re-engagement” List Build a list from subscribers that clicked through a webinar email, but never registered for the event. Encourage them to register for upcoming webinars, or provide a link to slides from the webinar they missed.
“Newsletter Survey” List Query a set of subscribers who consistently open a newsletter but never click through. Send a survey asking them which topics are most important to them, ensuring relevant content as you build your one-to-one communications.
“Highly Engaged Renewal” List Segment subscribers coming from particular domains to determine which companies are most engaged in email campaigns. Target those companies for renewal strategies.

Use Cases To Get You Started – B-to-C
ExactTarget Formula to Recreate: AIM (Activities, Programs, Data Extensions, and Send Classifications) + Filters, Measures & Groups

“Second Hit” List for a Promo about to expire Schedule a program (using filters with a measure) that triggers an email to those who haven’t clicked through a promotional offer, reminding them that the offer is about to expire. By leveraging data extensions, you could further segment those that did click-through to provide a cross-sell offer. This can also be done using Live Offers.
“Up-Sell” List Leverage data extensions, activities, and programs in AIM to import subscribers who have clicked through to a previous item. Send another email featuring an up-sell item to those who have clicked through emails featuring similar items in the past.
“Message Medium” Lists Target subscribers viewing via mobile devices by looking at your open rates, singling out the percent of subscribers who clicked through an email but didn’t open the email. This can be an indicator that these subscribers view emails via mobile devices. Create more text-friendly emails for this segment and more graphic-friendly emails for this segment.

Predicted New Email Marketing Trends for the Online Circular World

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 by Angela Khan

It shouldn't be too long before we start seeing a new trend for retailers. Instead of sending product recommendations via email based on dynamic merchandising techniques from vendors such as Endeca, we'll be seeing retailers send dynamic Twitter and Facebook product recommendations via email.

ShopLocal, a provider of online SmartCircular content, recently announced a new feature for posting a tweet item onto your Twitter page from an online circular site. When "tweeted", the item posting will automatically contain the store location and item attributes, making the tweet process very seamless (see full blog posting on one-click Twitter integration).

ShopLocal is right in line with consumer demands as local news writers have begun asking local residents about their online engagement vs. use of the United States Postal Service (see full ExactTarget coverage here). This is showing signs of more and more people sticking to online completion of day to day errands.

Imagine a world where the Sunday newspapers and circulars are browsed entirely online and instead of circling the best picks for shopping that day, you are forwarding to friends via email and twittering them from your phone. Oh wait, that day is here.

Hidden but Engaged Subscribers

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 by Chip House

We have worked with a number of customers on understanding which segments of their email database are most engaged and why. As I've mentioned previously, often the unengaged portion not only are a drag to your ROI, but they can cause deliverability issues. Subscriber segments that joined your opt-in database over a year ago, but haven't opened or clicked, could be especially problematic since there is a direct correlation between complaint rates and age (time since opt-in). When complaint rates go up, deliverability rates go down.

However, the solution is not as simple as cutting or reopting subscribers in after 6 or 12 months. It could be that drastic, especially if your deliverability reputation is already in the tank. But, your actions could be as simple as reducing frequency, changing content, or finding the "hidden but engaged" segments I recently wrote about in the Email Experience blog.

As I wrote there, here's what I recommend:
"First, rather than automatically re-opting in unengaged subscribers or discarding them from your list, try reducing frequency. A recent test of ours showed we were able to get 4 times the number of subscribers to reengage by reducing from weekly to monthly mailings when compared to sending a single re-optin campaign.

Second, entice your offline-only shoppers to use a coupon or other tracking code that will help them identify themselves.

Finally, provide a number of ways that recipients can share their emails with their friends – either standard viral links or via new technologies allowing sharing with social networks."

For the latter, you might want to try our new Social Forward solution we're introducing to our customers via our Innovations Lab on May 1st, and will be rolling out in our summer release.

Email Design Tip of the Week: Using Free Tools for Photo Editing

Wednesday, April 8, 2009 by Justine Jordan

Written by Tana Babcock, Email Marketing Designer

Often, the Design Team is approached by customers who need their images resized to fit their newly designed template. Because most templates are created with width constraints, it’s important for whoever builds the email to stay true to those guidelines. Not everyone has access to Photoshop, and so keeping within these guidelines can be difficult when you don’t have the right tools to make necessary edits. A nice online tool for image editing is Adobe Photoshop Express. In order to get started you will need to sign up for a free account.

Today I’m working with a two-column template. I need to place an image into the right column that is 250px wide, and will have to resize my image down from 2295px.

Click “Upload Photo” to get started. On the left hand side is a navigation system that allows you to view your library, albums, and log into other online photo sites. Feel free to either upload from your desktop or from the "other sites" section. I will be uploading from my desktop. Select the button “Upload Photos” in the middle of your screen. > Select your photo > Choose destination on the left hand side. You can also select to upload more than one photo at a time. Select Upload, then Select Done.

You should see your newly uploaded photo(s). Select the photo by clicking on it. This will engage the navigation bar along the bottom of the window.

Once you select Edit from this menu, a new page will display. Take a look around the page as there are several important links. The options to cancel, reset, save a copy, or finish can been seen in the bottom right corner of the page. This may come in handy as you play around with the editing tools.

Basic edits
The top left corner navigation has several tools to make basic edits. Select “Resize”. Note that you can reset or cancel in the bottom right corner.

Underneath the photo on the left side you will notice that there are 5 recommended size options for each type of media/purpose. Select each one to see how it affects the image size. Note that these sizes are just an estimate of what might be a good choice for your purposes. It helps to know the size you need the finished image to be for your email. If you select “Email,” note that the image will size to 640px by 480px automatically. We do not recommend using this size of an image – even for your header. Instead, I would opt to select “custom” and change the size manually. Since the right column of my email is 250px wide, I will change the width to match. Since it’s constrained, the height will change proportionally. (Tip: If you are unhappy with your edits, there are undo [red] and redo [green] buttons/arrows underneath the bottom navigation). Now that the image has been sized to the specific width requirement, click Finish, or Save Copy.

Now you’re ready to save your photo. Select Save from the bottom navigation or hover over your photo until you see the option to click on a drop down menu. Hit Save and select your file name and location. Once you have your properly-sized image, you are free to use it in your emails.

Photoshop Express is a cost effective and easy-to-use program that puts some image editing tools at your fingertips. Use it for your next email design project when you don't have access to a more robust program.

How Marketers Should Plan for Recovery

Monday, April 6, 2009 by Amanda Cross

On HarvardBusiness.org, John Quelch has a blog post about how you, as marketers, should be preparing for when the market comes back. He talks about everything from setting your own expectations for what the new "normal" to having you plan ready so you can pull the trigger the moment your lead indicators justify it.

Read it for yourself at Harvard Business.

Redesigns (especially if you are popular) Don't Always Work

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 by Liz Farrelly

A few weeks ago, I strayed from the world of ExactTarget 3sixty to discuss my thoughts on Facebook's proposed redesign, and what that made me think about my own social networking world.

Unless you have been living under a rock (or not spending lots of time on Facebook - hey, I get it!), you have probably noticed that Facebook finally made the change that they had been talking about. And guess what - they are not getting very many "warm fuzzies."

Last night, Chris Cox (Dir. of Product for Facebook) posted a blog on their corporate site explaining the impact and reasons for this latest redesign. The company has been hit with tons of opinions relating to the redesign, many of them negative.

Here's Cox' reasoning:

Live updating: One of the most common requests is the ability to see your stream update automatically. We will be adding the ability to turn on auto updating in the near future so you no longer need to refresh the page.
Photo tags: In order to surface more photos you might like to see, we'll be adding photos tagged of your friends to the stream. This will happen in the coming weeks.
More choices for applications: We've heard feedback that there is a lot of application content appearing in the stream. We will be giving you tools to control and reduce application content that your friends share into your stream.
Moving requests to the top of the right column: Friend requests and event invites will be more prominent.
Easier way to create a Friends List filter: From the filters on the left, you will be able to create a new list of friends with which to filter the stream.

I think that they have good intentions, but I think that they are missing the understanding of how their users actually function within Facebook. My previous blog mentioned the fact that Facebook was trying to be more like Twitter, but is that needed? Is that how Facebook got 175 million active users?

What do you think? It wasn't until I was knee-deep into this blog post that I realized the same information holds true for any type of marketing you are doing (social media, SMS marketing, email marketing). It all requires that you know your audience, and make changes accordingly. Yes, redesigns can be powerful and persuasive. But they still need to be attractive to your main audience, or they do absolutely no good.

Before I worked on ExactTarget 3sixty, I was in our services department. I walked hundreds of clients through template redesigns. And the number one thing I used to tell them - listen to your subscribers.

On that note, I leave you with two thoughts (which are sort of contradictory, but that's how my brain works!):

A) Facebook did a major redesign about 2 years ago that caused the same chaos over the new look. That is the design that people are now demanding back (interesting thoughts unsaid about people and change!)

B) If I were Facebook, I would consider taking my users into account a lot more before making such drastic changes! I know that the changes were probably months of work, but the users only got a week or two of exposure!

And you ExactTarget 3sixty users? No worries - you'll definitely get the inside track on any redesigns that we have in the future!

Email Marketing Term of the Day: VAWP

Monday, March 23, 2009 by Amanda Cross

Outlook 2007 displays surveys in a way that prevents subscribers from interacting with them. This is a good reason to use VAWP.

VAWP stands for View As Web Page. It can be used as a noun to refers to the link in your emails that allows subscribers to see the content of your email in a web browser or the browser view of the email itself. For example:

If the images aren't working in your email client, check the VAWP.

It can also be used as a verb, as in:

The subscribers will be able to use the survey if they VAWP.

Each email you send has a corresponding VAWP that is created and linked to automatically by the ExactTarget system. The VAWP shows the same dynamic content and personalization as the email itself.

Having an option to VAWP is important for your subscribers. It gives them the ability to see your marketing message as you designed it even if their email client doesn't support images or isn't displaying the images correctly, or when the subscriber just doesn't want to display the images in their email client.

The VAWP is also important to you. If a subscriber does not load the tracking pixel in their email client, but does in the VAWP, your system records the open, improving your open rate.

Some email clients, such as Outlook 2007, will not display surveys in a way that subscribers can interact with them. Your simplest option for getting subscribers who use one of these email clients to respond to your survey is to direct them to VAWP.

How can I mange event registration within Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM?

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 by Lauren Hertler

Creating and sending timely, relevant marketing communications can prove challenging. Managing registrations for marketing events (like an online webinar) can make communication even more complex. By taking advantage of ExactTarget’s integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, executing an event alongside an effective registration follow-up campaign becomes effortless. How? By using ExactTarget for Microsoft CRM’s Email Marketing Automation feature, marketers can create date and event based Workflows for automating their email programs…and the event communication process.

Email Marketing Automation Programs can send ExactTarget emails based on information stored in Microsoft CRM. In the scenario of event registrations, a Workflow can be created to trigger confirmation, reminder, and follow-up emails to boost attendance and solicit client feedback. Set up occurs once, and the Workflow runs at a pre-determined date without further interaction by the marketer. This allows you to stay focused on the event itself and keep peace of mind that a communication program is running simultaneously to ensure maximum results.

For more information on Email Marketing Automation Programs and ExactTarget for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, visit the Extensions Network.

Five Ways You Can Use One-to-One Marketing to Engage Families

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 by Angela Khan

Retailers have been facing the multi-channel purchase challenge for years now. How do I get customers to keep shopping in the stores? How do I track when they’ve purchased from my store or online? What are they buying online that they don’t buy in the store?

Triggered shopping cart abandonment emails and cross-sell product recommendations have helped combat these challenges, but there’s still a variety of one-to-one marketing tools that anyone can use to better engage families. 2009 introduces the multi-touch messaging challenge. Where does mom prefer her marketing messaging? When does she check her email? When do the kids check their email? Do they still use traditional Internet Service Providers (ISP) to check their email? Should we be connecting with them via email, text, or social media?

Below are five solutions to the multi-touch messaging challenge. These solutions not only target audiences by demographic sector, but provide messaging options that connect the whole family.

#1 – There’s a good chance that stay-at-home parents just went back to work. This means there’s no time for non-relevant marketing communications.

What you can do: Use Email with Live Offers and AMPScript. By creating emails with personalized offers based on past purchase history or self-selected preferences, subscribers will get offers that are relevant to only what they’ve requested offers for. And they need them now more than ever.

#2 – With less disposable income than ever before, families will be highly selective in what they spend their leisure activity budget on.

What you can do: Stop sending messages with offers that don’t engage. Use Filters and Measures to pull only segments that open and click-through (or even redeem) your prior offers. By targeting this engaged group you can offer the most compelling offer possible to encourage them to spend their budget with you.

#3 – Mom is becoming more digital than ever thought possible.

What you can do now: Start incorporating social media tools (such as ShareThis) into your emails to empower mom to become the hip trend-setter her children never thought she’d become. By making it easy for her to share your messages, you reach a wider audience in the social realm.

#4 – Teens connect much more often with text messaging than with email.

What you can do now: Use text messaging to reach teen customers and you’ll reap the benefits. With the power of text messaging, teens can forward along offers for products they want their parents to purchase for them.

#5 – Multi-lingual families and friends connect online more than any other communications medium.

What you can do now: Segment subscribers by language preference. With International Sends, emails are translated to the appropriate language of the subscriber’s Internet browser. Family and friends will be happy to know they can connect to home…wherever they are.

Finally, the parent’s age will likely determine the social media tools they use.

What you can do now: Profile parents by segment. Typically older parents will appreciate emails with product ratings and reviews while younger parents appreciate emails that connect them to other communication channels. Not every tool will be for every parent. Test, test, and retest to get the best results.

ExactTarget in Action: Demo Email, SMS, Voice, and Landing Pages

Tuesday, March 17, 2009 by Nicole Ross

If you haven't hit up the ExactTarget website lately, you're missing out. And here's why...

We just launched ExactTarget in Action, an all-in-one demo allowing you to see our email marketing, SMS marketing, voice marketing, and landing page capabilities in just a few minutes -- all from the comfort of your own cuddly laptop.

And yes, I know my screenshot's awful. Be nice. In fact, just call it just one more reason to check out the ExactTarget in Action website for yourself...

If you've ever wanted to see how 1 to 1 marketing channels can work together, now's your chance. Experience triggered emails. Try your hand at text capture. See how professional ExactTarget landing pages can look. You'll get it all.

And how does this all fit into a blog about creativity, you might ask? The ExactTarget in Action website is very well-designed, engaging, and I'll just say it -- snazzy.

So check it out -- it's like the swiss army knife of 1 to 1 marketing demos!

Nicole
Marketing Communications Associate

Email Marketing Tips: Chris Dickey Took the Words Out of My Mouth

Tuesday, March 17, 2009 by Angela Khan

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! I stumbled upon a great article from Chris Dickey this morning. Almost, as if he were speaking directly about how to use the ExactTarget 1-to-1 communications platform - http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=135269.

He gives some great advice on how to measure engagement and trigger appropriate re-engagement campaigns, including the use of text and voice. Once you've taken a look at the article, check out the laundry list of features below that can be used to set these campaigns up. Every use case in his article can be simply executed upon with the ET application. Enjoy!

Measures & Filters - automate the set up of these for triggered email campaigns and for generating relevant engagement subscriber lists....

Emerging Messaging Mediums - Text & Voice

Automated Interaction Management (AIM) - Schedule and pre-set filters and triggered messaging including text and voice based on user behaviors...

Email Summit: Allstate Email Marketing Case Study

Monday, March 16, 2009 by Jeffrey Rohrs

John Heidrich and Joe Nettum of Allstate presented a great case study this afternoon at MarketingSherpa's Email Summit '09. Entitled "Combining List and Trigger-Based Campaigns to Fully Leverage Your Database," the session focused on how they took their email program from an inconsistent, somewhat haphazard approach to a more structured methodology that not only valued and respected email subscriber interests but also improved ROI.

An interesting point was how the team tackled what they termed "credibility gaps" between the email subscriber's experience and their desired brand experience. Through an audit of their processes, John & Joe determined:

Marketing & IT owned different pieces of email process, broadcast & delivery
Email addresses were spread across a variety of databases and were often not up-to-date
Proper value wasn't being placed on the email address let alone the communication process

This story isn't so different than many I've heard from clients over the years. And much like those situations, rather than hyperventilate, Allstate's team took a very strategic approach to the problem by:

Locking down processes around email address management
Instituting re-engagement efforts to clean up their subscriber database
Formalizing the email marketing production process
Getting marketing to collaborate to identify triggered and other automated messaging that would deliver quick wins
Sending email closer to moments of greatest customer influence in the insurance purchase/renewal process

The net effect of their efforts has been to:

Improve delivery and response rates for all email marketing communications (triggered or campaign-based)
Improve acquisition of email subscribers through agents (as they have seen real benefits from the changes and, therefore, what all of their customers/prospects in the email marketing loop)

A final interesting note, Allstate mentioned that it works with Pivotal Veracity to ensure that emails render as intended. If you haven't seen the ExactTarget's Inbox Preview powered by Pivotal Veracity be sure to contact us today!

Email Marketing Term of the Day: Triggered Emails

Monday, March 16, 2009 by Amanda Cross

A triggered email is an email that you send to a subscriber in response to a subscriber action. For example, you might use a triggered email to send a subscriber a thank you message after they sign up for your newsletter. You can capture the email addresses of people who trigger an email to include on future sends (if the subscriber opts in).

A triggered email is a response. It is motivated by the person who receives the email. By contrast, an email that is motivated by you, the email marketer, is called a user-initiated email in the ExactTarget system. For example, when you send the newsletter that the subscriber signed up for, the newsletter message is a user-initiated email because it goes to the existing subscribers you choose at the time you choose.

Triggered emails often contain transactional messages. Under the CAN-SPAM act, the term transactional describes email messages where:

The subject line is transactional in nature and non-promotional
The email body presents the "transactional content" prior to the commercial content.

Transactional emails are not required to have an unsubscribe link and can legally be sent to people who have unsubscribed from your lists. This makes sense: just because a person doesn't want to receive your weekly fliers doesn't mean they don't need a confirmation message when you receive their order.

Even so, ExactTarget provides tools you can use to allow subscribers to opt-out of transactional messages and to prevent sending transactional messages to people who have opted out.

Email Deliverability Tip of the Week: Keep Comcast Happy

Thursday, March 12, 2009 by Al Iverson

Comcast can sometimes be pretty quick to block a sender. Are you one of the unfortunate few who have had issues with Comcast blocking your mail? If so, there are a couple of things you can do that will help.

First, try to be quicker about scrubbing bounced comcast.net addresses off of your list. Especially if the list is new, or if you're new to ExactTarget. It's worth manually setting bounced addresses to invalid after your first big send or two, and it's pretty easy to do. Contact the deliverability services team at deliverability@exacttarget.com for an easy cheat sheet that will guide you through the process. If you want, we can enable the system to do this for you automatically in the future. We don't enable that by default, because most clients seem to prefer more granularly-configured bounce processing.
Next, if you have a good history of subscriber activity (open and click data) going back for 3-6 months (or more), then consider pulling back so that you're sending mail only to comcast.net subscribers who have opened or clicked on an email within the past 3-6 months. This way, you'll leave behind a bunch of bouncing addresses, as well as people who aren't opening your emails. (People who don't open your email are more likely to complain, degrading your deliverability.)

These two steps can help to dramatically improve your sending reputation at Comcast. Comcast, like most big ISPs, blocks for two main reason: high bounces, and high spam complaints. Each of these steps help to address one of those two things.

Email Marketing Term of the Day: Bounce

Thursday, March 12, 2009 by Amanda Cross

An email bounces is when it cannot be delivered. In ExactTarget, you'll see two kinds of bounces: soft and hard.

A soft bounce is when the email cannot be delivered because of some temporary problem, usually a full inbox. When a message soft-bounces, the system keeps trying to send it for a while in case the temporary problem gets resolved. After enough soft bounces, the system considers the email address undeliverable.

A hard bounce is when the email cannot be delivered because of a permanent problem, such as the email address doesn't exist. The system doesn't bother making further attempts at delivering the mail because the email address is undeliverable.

The percentage of your emails that bounce has an impact on your deliverability. If you routinely send campaigns where a large percentage bounce, you will begin to get a reputation as a spammer. That's because people assume you will have a low bounce rate if you practice good list hygiene and only send to people who actively want your messages. If you do get this reputation, email servers may mistake your message for spam and refuse to deliver it to the subscriber's inbox.

To avoid this problem, you should proactively remove your bounced addresses before sending. The application has some features to automatically hold email based on a number of hard bounces, but you can improve your deliverability by taking an active role.

Email Marketing Term of the Day: Open Rate

Tuesday, March 10, 2009 by Amanda Cross

Email open rate is the percentage of the delivered emails in a campaign that are opened by subscribers. Open rate was one of the earliest metrics applied to email marketing, and this basic percentage is still used today.

ExactTarget counts the number of your emails that are opened by using a tracking pixel. The tracking pixel is a tiny, transparent graphic that the system automatically includes in all of your HTML emails. When the subscriber's email client renders the email, it makes a request to ExactTarget for all of the graphics in the message, including the tracking pixel. ExactTarget log the request for that graphic as an "open."

Traditional wisdom would say that the best way to improve your open rate would be to focus on creating a more compelling subject line. The time of day or day of the week that your message is delivered could possibly also impact whether a subscriber chooses to open the message.

However, the usefulness of the open rate is marred by a few obvious pitfalls:

The fact that the tracking pixel was displayed doesn't guarantee that the subscriber read your message.
Text-only emails cannot include graphics, therefore they cannot log an "open" in our system.
Many email clients block images by default, so a subscriber may actually open your email and read the content, but never show the images. In this case, our system cannot log the open either.

Because of these pitfalls, it would be possible to get some strange results. For example, it's possible that your Click Rate could be higher than your Open Rate if lots of text-email subscribers clicked on links.

ExactTarget could have chosen to infer opens from actions like clicks or conversions. For example, we could have created tracking logic that said "IF a subscriber logs a click AND the tracking pixel in the email they clicked has not been displayed THEN log an open for the email." ExactTarget decided against inferring opens because of the "muddying" effect it would have on the tracking data.

However, if you think that inferring opens would give you more useful results, then you can use the measures feature in ExactTarget to infer your own opens. A measure is a unit of subscriber behavior that you define. Contact ExactTarget for information on enabling this feature in your account.

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