ReturnPath contacted us today (and posted to their blog) to tell us and the world that Yahoo has agreed to automatically enable links and images for senders on the ReturnPath Certified whitelist (formerly known as Sender Score Certified). From the context of the emailed announcement, I believe that ReturnPath will be contacting SSC-whitelisted entities to work with them to ensure that the proper information is submitted to Yahoo to ensure that things work smoothly in this regard. For more information, view Alex Rubin's blog post on the topic.
Remember the good ‘ol college days? The days where you’d sign up for anything free because you never quite had enough money for food or books. Credit card companies would roam around campus flaunting their free t-shirts with a tempting, “All you have to do is sign up for your very own credit card and this t-shirt can be yours.” And of course, many freshmen fell for it. It was a free t-shirt, after all.Probably not the brightest idea to ruin your credit over a free t-shirt. But, let me tell you about a really cool promotion involving, yes, free stuff and college students. Except this one is much smarter – for all parties involved.
In an effort to reach a younger demographic, Pier 1 Imports partnered with Barnes & Noble to run an SMS sweepstakes. Really, the idea is genius – partnering with a bookstore and using SMS to reach college students. Seriously, if you can name one college kid who isn’t glued to their cell phone, you win!
Using ExactTarget’s mobile functionality, Pier 1 placed in-store mobile calls-to-action next to the prize – a Papasan chair – in 100 Barnes & Noble bookstores near college campuses. Consumers who text in receive a text message, automatically triggered from ExactTarget, confirming their registration in the sweepstakes and asking them to opt-in to receive promotional emails from Pier 1 Imports.
And the best part is – the campaign is keyword-specific, with a unique keyword for each store, so Pier 1 can identify the exact store each consumer texts in from.
This is truly one scenario where everybody wins. One lucky college kid takes home a Papasan chair (perfect for a dorm room) and Pier 1 collects email newsletter sign-ups and reaches the younger demographic they were after.
It’s a true example of Email + Mobile bliss. Visit 3sixty for even more resources to get the most from our Interactive Marketing Platform.
Let’s face it: the fun in getting – or winning – free stuff never goes away. Even as you get older.
Thanks to everyone who was able to attend “Designing For Your Subscribers: Tips and Tricks to Increase Email Marketing ROI” last week. We had an excellent turnout and plenty of great questions. If you weren’t able to attend the session, don’t worry! You can watch a recording of the one-hour webinar on 3sixty.
Do you have data on email clients that consumer subscribers tend to use?
While data is available, your mileage may vary. Each audience will be different, and you may see dramatically different segments in your list or even between lists, as we saw in the webinar. Fingerprint publishes an aggregate of the data collected from marketers utilizing their service. MailboxIQ provides an in-depth view of email client usage, where emails are being read, and more. Even a simple List Demographics report in ExactTarget can help you understand which email clients your subscribers might be using.
What are the default pixel dimensions for common preview panes?
Over half of subscribers use a preview pane in their email client. We measured each of the default preview pane setups on Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Yahoo, Hotmail, and Mail using a 1024x768 monitor resolution. Read the blog post here.
Do you also have data on monitor resolutions in order to determine which portion of an email might be “above the fold”?
Similar to preview pane dimensions, the dimensions for the area above the fold may vary widely since individual users can adjust the size of their preview pane and their inbox in general. Keep in mind that your users may not be viewing your email in an inbox maximized to full screen resolution. w3schools.com publishes display resolution trend information (as do many other sites), but it’s important to remember this data comes from their own website traffic. Just as with email clients, your own website’s analytics data may reveal more pertinent information about your subscribers’ screen settings.
Browser Size by Google Labs is a great tool for indentifying what portion of your email might be “below the fold” in different monitor resolutions. Keep in mind the following caveats: you must have a web-hosted version of your email (you need a URL to paste in) and the email should be left-aligned for best results.
What should be the ideal width of an email in pixels?
We continue to recommend 600px wide as a guideline. We’ve seen success with narrower and wider variations. Again, your results may vary. Generally speaking, we wouldn’t recommend going much wider than 750px.
Where did the "50% of users have images turned off" metric come from?
Many popular email clients—including Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo! and Hotmail—disable images by default, forcing the subscriber to choose to turn images on. As we saw in our discussion of email client usage, these email clients can account for 70+% on many lists. It’s important to note that images off is the default for these email clients.
When designing using ExactTarget templates, how can you edit the preheader teaser text?
Our Client Success Center would be happy to assist you. You may reach the CSC by creating a case in BackOffice, sending an email to help@exacttarget.com or calling 866-558-9823.
How do I find out what the "web safe" fonts are?
This site has a great list of web-safe fonts and matches font equivalents between a Windows and Mac environment.
Is there any way to control what content is seen on a mobile phone using CSS? How should I create a mobile friendly version?
There are ways for a website to detect a mobile device and automatically serve up appropriate content, but email currently requires a manual approach. If you’re seeing a significant number of subscribers viewing your emails on a mobile device, we’d recommend creating a simple mobile HTML version and linking to it in the upper left of your standard HTML email. This version would include web safe fonts with minor formatting (color, bold, italics), short teaser text linking to full content, and little more than a simple image (such as a logo) at the top. This creates a great foundation for a mobile-friendly program, which can certainly grow – for example, eventually you might allow subscribers to choose “mobile preferred” and send them a mobile specific email directly.
Thanks again for attending and for all the great questions!
Do you have data on email clients that consumer subscribers tend to use?
While data is available, your mileage may vary. Each audience will be different, and you may see dramatically different segments in your list or even between lists, as we saw in the webinar. Fingerprint publishes an aggregate of the data collected from marketers utilizing their service. MailboxIQ provides an in-depth view of email client usage, where emails are being read, and more. Even a simple List Demographics report in ExactTarget can help you understand which email clients your subscribers might be using.
What are the default pixel dimensions for common preview panes?
Over half of subscribers use a preview pane in their email client. We measured each of the default preview pane setups on Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Yahoo, Hotmail, and Mail using a 1024x768 monitor resolution. Read the blog post here.
Do you also have data on monitor resolutions in order to determine which portion of an email might be “above the fold”?
Similar to preview pane dimensions, the dimensions for the area above the fold may vary widely since individual users can adjust the size of their preview pane and their inbox in general. Keep in mind that your users may not be viewing your email in an inbox maximized to full screen resolution. w3schools.com publishes display resolution trend information (as do many other sites), but it’s important to remember this data comes from their own website traffic. Just as with email clients, your own website’s analytics data may reveal more pertinent information about your subscribers’ screen settings.
Browser Size by Google Labs is a great tool for indentifying what portion of your email might be “below the fold” in different monitor resolutions. Keep in mind the following caveats: you must have a web-hosted version of your email (you need a URL to paste in) and the email should be left-aligned for best results.
What should be the ideal width of an email in pixels?
We continue to recommend 600px wide as a guideline. We’ve seen success with narrower and wider variations. Again, your results may vary. Generally speaking, we wouldn’t recommend going much wider than 750px.
Where did the "50% of users have images turned off" metric come from?
Many popular email clients—including Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo! and Hotmail—disable images by default, forcing the subscriber to choose to turn images on. As we saw in our discussion of email client usage, these email clients can account for 70+% on many lists. It’s important to note that images off is the default for these email clients.
When designing using ExactTarget templates, how can you edit the preheader teaser text?
Our Client Success Center would be happy to assist you. You may reach the CSC by creating a case in BackOffice, sending an email to help@exacttarget.com or calling 866-558-9823.
How do I find out what the "web safe" fonts are?
This site has a great list of web-safe fonts and matches font equivalents between a Windows and Mac environment.
Is there any way to control what content is seen on a mobile phone using CSS? How should I create a mobile friendly version?
There are ways for a website to detect a mobile device and automatically serve up appropriate content, but email currently requires a manual approach. If you’re seeing a significant number of subscribers viewing your emails on a mobile device, we’d recommend creating a simple mobile HTML version and linking to it in the upper left of your standard HTML email. This version would include web safe fonts with minor formatting (color, bold, italics), short teaser text linking to full content, and little more than a simple image (such as a logo) at the top. This creates a great foundation for a mobile-friendly program, which can certainly grow – for example, eventually you might allow subscribers to choose “mobile preferred” and send them a mobile specific email directly.
Thanks again for attending and for all the great questions!
With the holiday rush behind us and the New Year in full swing, you might find yourself with a bit of extra time on your hands (no?!). You’ve finally made neat things called “rules” in your inbox to reduce clutter, and straightened your pencil cup, but something seems to be missing… ah yes, the feeling of accomplishment. This might be a good time to rethink your team’s quality assurance process. You want your client’s email campaigns to be successful, and in doing so, you may end up wearing a few extra hats along the way – including QA. Here are a few tips using Google docs to help facilitate a speedy yet thorough QA process.
Sign up for a free Google account (if you don’t already have one) to access the many tools Google has to offer. A handy feature (found within Google Documents) is the ability to create forms and spreadsheets.
My team and I have created several spreadsheet checklists for our QA process, but found it laborious to manually enter in content. By incorporating forms, you can enter in the information that you are checking (as you’re checking it), submit the form, and it will automatically populate in the spreadsheet. The end result will look something like the image below. It’s handy to use and also easy to hand off to anyone new to the project.
Once you’ve submitted the form, you can quickly review your spreadsheet to make sure everything was filled out properly.
This simple QA process has increased our efficiency and accuracy exponentially. Not only are we preventing error, we also have documented our efforts to eliminate them. It may also serve as great reference material to look back on when ramping up new campaigns or brands.
Please check out our blog about more productivity tips and software here!
Sign up for a free Google account (if you don’t already have one) to access the many tools Google has to offer. A handy feature (found within Google Documents) is the ability to create forms and spreadsheets.
My team and I have created several spreadsheet checklists for our QA process, but found it laborious to manually enter in content. By incorporating forms, you can enter in the information that you are checking (as you’re checking it), submit the form, and it will automatically populate in the spreadsheet. The end result will look something like the image below. It’s handy to use and also easy to hand off to anyone new to the project.
Once you’ve submitted the form, you can quickly review your spreadsheet to make sure everything was filled out properly.
This simple QA process has increased our efficiency and accuracy exponentially. Not only are we preventing error, we also have documented our efforts to eliminate them. It may also serve as great reference material to look back on when ramping up new campaigns or brands.
Please check out our blog about more productivity tips and software here!
On Tuesday. February 16th, I have the pleasure of co-hosting a webinar that will tackle the problem of shopping cart abandonment. The webinar is titled, “The 7 Secrets to Recovering Abandoned Shopping Carts,” and will cover the strategy and technology required to implement an effective shopping cart abandonment solution. If you’re an online marketer, and shopping cart abandonment is a recurring problem, I highly recommend you register to attend this webinar! Joining me to co-host this webinar will be Charles Nicholls, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of SeeWhy. What’s great about this webinar is that we will take you “behind the scene” of the highly successful shopping cart remarketing strategy of Smiley Cookie. Smiley Cookie is using SeeWhy’s Abandonment Tracker Pro to trigger remarketing campaigns using ExactTarget’s transactional API. This provides a real-time follow up to shopping cart abandoners.
Smileycookie.com is a division of Eat’n Park Hospitality Group, which includes Eat’n Park Restaurants and Six Penn Kitchen. Eat’n Park’s mascot is “Smiley,” a walking sugar cookie with a smiley face. Eat'n Park is well-known for its Smiley Cookies, which are frosted sugar cookies with smiley faces drawn on them in icing. Last year, Eat’n Park made over 11 million Smiley Cookies.
Our Interview with Adam Golumb of Smiley Cookie
Recently, Charles Nicholls and I caught up with Adam Golomb, director of e-commerce at Smileycookie.com, to discuss their new shopping cart recovery program. Adam is responsible for the online channel — www.smileycookie.com/ — which sells Smiley Cookies and related merchandise on line.
Website Conversion: Why did you decide to start a shopping cart abandonment remarketing program?
AG: We spend a tremendous amount of money to get customers to the site, but with 60 percent abandoning the shopping cart process, remarketing represented low-hanging fruit. These customers were already interested in the brand and had placed items in their shopping cart, only to abandon, so sending follow-up emails seemed like an obvious tactic to get them back and convert them into sales.
Website Conversion: What have you learned about shopping cart recovery?
AG: It’s still the early days for Smileycookie.com, but it’s clear that it’s a good tool to recover some sales, in particular where customers thought that they’d completed their purchase, but hadn’t. Some customers have replied to the email explaining why they had abandoned their shopping cart. The cost of shipping is the number one reason given, very much in line with industry numbers. As a result, we’ve been testing a free shipping offer when they spend $40 or more. This looks promising and has helped to raise our average order value. We don’t offer any incentives yet in our current campaign, and we think this will be important in driving additional sales.
Website Conversion: What’s next in your remarketing campaign?
AG: We’re just about to roll out a multi-step version of the campaign. We started with a simple service-based follow-up email which is sent out immediately following an abandonment. This is a simple reminder email that the customer did not complete the process. Our multi-step campaign will contact them again after 24 hours, and then after 7 days, and include some incentives. We’re pretty excited about it and think it will drive additional sales.
Website Conversion: How have customers reacted?
AG: We haven’t had anyone feeling that it was ‘Big Brotherish,’ and some people have found it very helpful. In particular where the customer thought that they’d made it all the way through the shopping cart process, but hadn’t, the email is a prompt for them to contact us, often by phone. Customers are very grateful when this happens. It has also highlighted some problems with our shopping cart process on the website which we’ve now addressed.
Website Conversion: Does it matter that you don’t have a persistent cart?
AG: Definitely. We’re working on putting a persistent cart in place, although we don’t offer many SKUs. Today we provide a link in the follow-up email which takes them back to the item they placed in their cart. We’ve had customers following the link back, going directly to the website and contacting us by phone. A persistent cart should make it easier for them to complete their order online.
Website Conversion: How do you measure success?
AG: We measure success based on the number of completed orders. So we compare the sales generated by the program with spend on other marketing programs. It’s a bit manual because we get some orders coming in by phone.
Website Conversion: Can you talk about setting up the program and how complex it was to do?
AG: It took a bit longer than I thought it would. We already had an existing relationship with ExactTarget, so getting the email campaign set up and using SeeWhy to trigger emails using our existing ExactTarget account was straightforward. What took longer was tagging the site and working through our check-out process. Every time I thought we were nearly there, the IT guys seemed to have to make additional changes in order to get the detail right.
Website Conversion: How was it working with the SeeWhy team?
AG: It’s been great; they’ve been extremely responsive. When we had any issues they’ve been really proactive and very accessible. Smileycookie.com is using SeeWhy’s Abandonment Tracker Pro to trigger remarketing campaigns using ExactTarget’s transactional API. This provides a real-time follow up to shopping cart abandoners.
In email marketing it's all about Channel Preferences! So did you know there are three different ways to get ExactTarget Customer Service from our Client Success Center:
3Sixty Back Office
My favorite! If you are a member of 3sixty, you can click the Back Office Button and Sumbit a Case, Request an Update on a Case and also monitor case comments.
Email to Case
Send an email to help@exacttarget.com and a case will be automatically created in our case management system. You will get an email reply identifying your case number.
Good Old Fashioned Phone Call
Lastly, I've found alot of the answers I need in 3sixty have already been asked (and answered!) but customers and ExactTarget employees. Make sure to check out 3sixty Community!
3Sixty Back Office
My favorite! If you are a member of 3sixty, you can click the Back Office Button and Sumbit a Case, Request an Update on a Case and also monitor case comments.
Email to Case
Send an email to help@exacttarget.com and a case will be automatically created in our case management system. You will get an email reply identifying your case number.
Good Old Fashioned Phone Call
- US Customers can call 866-558-9823
- UK Customers can call +44 (0) 808 101 7081
- All other International Customers can call +44 (0) 207 291 8550
Lastly, I've found alot of the answers I need in 3sixty have already been asked (and answered!) but customers and ExactTarget employees. Make sure to check out 3sixty Community!
Twitter has revolutionized micro-blogging and ways users share content in real-time. Some believe that social media is more valuable than email, but I beg to differ, as both are powerful platforms and are different mediums of communicating. A great solution is integrating Twitter into your email campaigns to reach out to both audiences.
Why Twitter? According to Mashable, there was an estimated 18 million users on the popular micro-blogging site in 2009. Even with 60% of users quitting within the first month, there are roughly 7.2 million active users; untapped and perhaps not an email subscriber of yours. That’s a lot of people to reach out to. Twitter is a way to reach out to new users to: a) communicate with them outside the reach of email b) compel them to become an email subscriber.
Integrating Twitter to your email marketing campaigns will expand your presence and is very simple to set up. Here are a few ways to integrate Twitter in your email strategy:
Twitter integration
Twitter integration is currently an iLab feature and will be available to all ExactTarget users in the future, which will automatically post your email as a tweet to your company’s Twitter account. This is a simple and effective way to broadcast your message further; with the opportunity for your followers to re-tweet and share your email message.
Add social forwarding on your emails
The ExactTarget application provides a simple way to spread your email message beyond your lists with our social forward feature. Social forward will include buttons in your email message (Twitter is included as a ShareThis feature) which easily allows your subscribers to share your message. You will reach out to users who are not your subscribers; opportunity for new relationships.
Start a #hashtag
It’s amazing what people will do if you simply ask them. If you’re trying to reach out to your audience on Twitter, consider asking them to be an extension of your broadcast by starting a hashtag. For example, if Northern Trail Outfitters wanted to start a hashtag on Twitter, they could send an email asking subscribers to tweet with the hashtag “#NTO.” This begins a searchable discussion of content tagged “NTO.”
For a great example, check out Style Campaign’s blog post on how HBO’s True Blood used Twitter in their emails. This is a great way to utilize email to leverage your Twitter campaign.
Post content on your company Twitter account
Your presence matters. Regardless of the size of your company, start a Twitter account and open dialogue with the Twitterverse. Consider posting links, re-tweeting useful content and speaking with your followers. Set up a search and see what people are saying about your company.
Link to your Twitter account on every email
Again, your presence matters. Put a link to your Twitter account on the footer of your email messages; could be a button or simple link. Let people know you are there.
I want to conclude with a few reasons to use email in your marketing campaign, that doesn’t quite work on Twitter:
- Sometimes you just need more than 140 characters.
- HTML email will allow you to send your message to your subscriber’s inbox.
- Your Twitter posts can get lost in the timeline and be bumped out of the real-time stream.
For great insights on the rise of social media and its relation to email, check out our whitepaper, Expanding the reach of email with social networks.
Follow us on Twitter at @ExactTarget and @ETDesign.
Happy Tweeting!
Way back in late 2007, I mentioned a change at Earthlink regarding bouncing addresses and how they measure subscriber inactivity. Like a lot of other ISPs nowadays, they shut off mailboxes after a period of inactivity. In this case, 90 days.
This week, a commenter asked, “How do you reactivate an account?”
If you're an Earthlink user, and you're wondering how to re-activate your mailbox, I'm not sure. I assume you would just log into it like normal, and that would re-enable it. But, I'm not 100% sure about that; you should contact Earthlink support for assistance.
If you mean that you're a list manager and you're wondering how you re-enable that address so that you can send mail to it again … you cannot. This isn't a situation you can impact. Whether or not this subscriber's address becomes valid again is up to the ISP and/or up to the end user. (See my note above to any end user wondering about this.) The chances of an address re-activating is probably pretty slim; if somebody hasn't checked their email in months, they've probably moved on to greener pastures (i.e., they've changed email addresses).
What you can do is decide if you want to keep emailing those people. It's going to be a lot better for your sending reputation if you stop mailing users whose addresses are no longer valid. The ET system handles this automatically.
It's a bit similar to engagement, in that, if your contact or campaign strategy involves weeding out recipients who are no longer responsive to your mailings, then you're already way ahead of the game. Weeding people out of your list who never read your emails (and whose addresses are invalid) means you're much more likely to enjoy successful inbox delivery.
This week, a commenter asked, “How do you reactivate an account?”
If you're an Earthlink user, and you're wondering how to re-activate your mailbox, I'm not sure. I assume you would just log into it like normal, and that would re-enable it. But, I'm not 100% sure about that; you should contact Earthlink support for assistance.
If you mean that you're a list manager and you're wondering how you re-enable that address so that you can send mail to it again … you cannot. This isn't a situation you can impact. Whether or not this subscriber's address becomes valid again is up to the ISP and/or up to the end user. (See my note above to any end user wondering about this.) The chances of an address re-activating is probably pretty slim; if somebody hasn't checked their email in months, they've probably moved on to greener pastures (i.e., they've changed email addresses).
What you can do is decide if you want to keep emailing those people. It's going to be a lot better for your sending reputation if you stop mailing users whose addresses are no longer valid. The ET system handles this automatically.
It's a bit similar to engagement, in that, if your contact or campaign strategy involves weeding out recipients who are no longer responsive to your mailings, then you're already way ahead of the game. Weeding people out of your list who never read your emails (and whose addresses are invalid) means you're much more likely to enjoy successful inbox delivery.
If you're a user of our Reputation Reporting, and you've run a report within the past few days, you may have noticed a SpamAssassin rule showing up, "FH_DATE_PAST_20XX." The rule attempts to catch spam that is dated far in the future. Unfortunately, because of a bug in this SpamAssassin rule, 2010 is considered to be far in the future.
The net result is that as of January 1st, a whole bunch of legitimate mail was much more likely to be tagged as spam by SpamAssassin users all around the world. Oooops.
We've updated the Reputation Reporting's copy of SpamAssassin to address the bug, and any tests run from this point forward should will not have this rule trigger undeservedly.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to the ExactTarget Deliverability team and we'll be happy to assist. You can reach us at deliverability AT exacttarget.com.
The net result is that as of January 1st, a whole bunch of legitimate mail was much more likely to be tagged as spam by SpamAssassin users all around the world. Oooops.
We've updated the Reputation Reporting's copy of SpamAssassin to address the bug, and any tests run from this point forward should will not have this rule trigger undeservedly.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to the ExactTarget Deliverability team and we'll be happy to assist. You can reach us at deliverability AT exacttarget.com.
One of the first things that a subscriber sees before opening an email is the subject line. This is a critical moment where your subscribers have the choice to delete or open (or dare we say it – hit this Spam button). If you want your subscribers to read your email, it’s important to have an effective subject line. Here are some tips:
Length - Most ISPs show about 60 characters in a subject line. If your subject line is longer than 60 characters make sure it makes sense when trimmed around 60 characters. It’s also a good idea to list the most important information first.
Entice - The subject line should intrigue the subscriber to know more. With that being said, also make sure the subject line doesn’t over deliver. The subject line should re-enforce what is in the email.
Separation - There should be something separating your subject line from the 100s of others in the subscriber’s inbox. One interesting way to do this is by adding Unicode characters.
Spell Check - This sounds like an obvious one, but it needs to be done.
Don’t Sell - Don’t sell in your subject line. Instead, tell the reader what is inside the email. On that same note, you should also avoid using spam trigger words. These are phrases like Free!, Click Here, Call Now, You’re a Winner, Collect, and Cash Bonus. This will also help improve your email deliverability.
Make it Personal - Making emails personal is the foundation for 1 to 1 Email Marketing. Not only should the email content be personalized, but so should the subject line. Consider adding things beyond the basics, like the subscribers name, to your subject line. For example use pervious purchase information, preferences, and other data you have about the subscriber.
Be Quite - DON’T SHOUT! All caps can be a Spam trigger. Regardless of that fact, no one wants their inbox shouting at them. It’s also a good etiquette to avoid using unnecessary exclamation points.
Name Tag - Research by Jupiter has shown that "including the company name in the subject line can increase open rates by up to 32 percent over a subject line without branding."
Compare - See what subject lines other people in your industry are using. This is a great way to get new ideas for your emails. There are many blogs out there that track the subject lines in marketing emails.
From Name & Pre-Header Text - The subject line is not the only thing the users see before deciding to open your email. Make sure you have an effective and consistent from name and pre-header text that complements your subject line.
Test, Test, Test - Something as simple as an A/B split test can identify the effectiveness of new subject lines. Try something new, but don’t forget to test it.
Somebody asked me today if we support Gmail's unsubscribe functionality (yes), so I thought it would be good to mention it here again.
Since this summer (2009), Gmail has offered an option on some email, where, if you click the "this is spam" button, the Gmail system will ask you, "Would you like to unsubscribe?" If you click yes, an unsubscribe request is sent back to the sender. In the case of ET-served emails, yes, ExactTarget handles this unsubscribe request automatically and will unsubscribe that recipient.
For more on Gmail's unsubscribe process, check out this August, 2009 Email Experience Council (EEC) article by my boss, Chip House, and this July, 2009 blog post by Laura Atkins of Word to the Wise.
Note that we can't MAKE the unsubscribe option appear on your email messages in Gmail - Gmail chooses whether or not to make this option available in response to specific email sent and whom it was sent by. It looks to me as though they tie it to sender reputation - meaning, if you're a good, clean sender, this functionality is more likely to appear.
Since this summer (2009), Gmail has offered an option on some email, where, if you click the "this is spam" button, the Gmail system will ask you, "Would you like to unsubscribe?" If you click yes, an unsubscribe request is sent back to the sender. In the case of ET-served emails, yes, ExactTarget handles this unsubscribe request automatically and will unsubscribe that recipient.
For more on Gmail's unsubscribe process, check out this August, 2009 Email Experience Council (EEC) article by my boss, Chip House, and this July, 2009 blog post by Laura Atkins of Word to the Wise.
Note that we can't MAKE the unsubscribe option appear on your email messages in Gmail - Gmail chooses whether or not to make this option available in response to specific email sent and whom it was sent by. It looks to me as though they tie it to sender reputation - meaning, if you're a good, clean sender, this functionality is more likely to appear.
Hot off the press over at AOL's Postmaster Blog, Christine highlights recent changes to AOL's enhanced whitelist. What changed? Engagement. It sounds as though they're now using it as a metric when determining who qualifies for AOL's EWL (enhanced whitelist), the bit of magic that allows your images and links to work automatically in the AOL inbox.
For good guys, I don't know that this is much of a change. Engagement has long mattered at top ISPs, including AOL. Though, it seems to me that perhaps AOL is closing a loophole -- eliminating a method for gaming one of their whitelisting mechanisms. Having a good reputation was already important, but this adds yet another data point into that specific EWL reputation calculation, helping AOL more accurately identify mail that their users care about and want to receive.
It's yet another data point that recipient engagement matters! How people interact with your email messages, and whether or not they interact with your email messages, is more important than ever before.
For good guys, I don't know that this is much of a change. Engagement has long mattered at top ISPs, including AOL. Though, it seems to me that perhaps AOL is closing a loophole -- eliminating a method for gaming one of their whitelisting mechanisms. Having a good reputation was already important, but this adds yet another data point into that specific EWL reputation calculation, helping AOL more accurately identify mail that their users care about and want to receive.
It's yet another data point that recipient engagement matters! How people interact with your email messages, and whether or not they interact with your email messages, is more important than ever before.
If you're wondering if it's OK to require that recipients must log into your website before they can unsubscribe from your emails, the answer to that is no-- it's prohibited under US Federal law.
The FTC explicitly clarified this in the May 2008 CAN-SPAM Rule Update. It's on page 104, near the bottom.
Here's what it says:
Section 316.5 Prohibition on charging a fee or imposing other requirements on recipients who wish to opt out. Neither a sender nor any person acting on behalf of a sender may require that any recipient pay any fee, provide any information other than the recipient's electronic mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any other steps except sending a reply electronic mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page, in order to: (a) Use a return electronic mail address or other Internet-based mechanism, required by 15 U.S.C. 7704(a)(3), to submit a request not to receive future commercial electronic mail messages from a sender; or (b) Have such a request honored as required by 15 U.S.C. 7704(a)(3)(B) and (a)(4).
What does that mean? Read carefully: Senders are not allowed to require recipients to "provide any information other than the recipient's electronic mail address and opt-out preferences." That means you can't require them to login to your website before continuing on to a preference center or other page. The only thing a recipient has to give you is their email address, and the opt-out preference. (i.e. do you want to opt-out from all messages, or would you like to opt-out only from certain specific lists.) The law prohibits any requirement that the recipient "take any other steps except sending a reply electronic mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page" when unsubscribing -- meaning it's not OK for it to take five clicks for somebody to unsubscribe. Interact with one page means the unsubscribe link takes them to a web page, where they are either unsubscribed automatically, or push some button on that web page to complete the unsubscribe process. (That would be interacting with that single web page.)
For more information on CAN-SPAM, visit our CAN-SPAM Information Center at http://canspam.etdeliverability.com/
The FTC explicitly clarified this in the May 2008 CAN-SPAM Rule Update. It's on page 104, near the bottom.
Here's what it says:
Section 316.5 Prohibition on charging a fee or imposing other requirements on recipients who wish to opt out. Neither a sender nor any person acting on behalf of a sender may require that any recipient pay any fee, provide any information other than the recipient's electronic mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any other steps except sending a reply electronic mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page, in order to: (a) Use a return electronic mail address or other Internet-based mechanism, required by 15 U.S.C. 7704(a)(3), to submit a request not to receive future commercial electronic mail messages from a sender; or (b) Have such a request honored as required by 15 U.S.C. 7704(a)(3)(B) and (a)(4).
What does that mean? Read carefully: Senders are not allowed to require recipients to "provide any information other than the recipient's electronic mail address and opt-out preferences." That means you can't require them to login to your website before continuing on to a preference center or other page. The only thing a recipient has to give you is their email address, and the opt-out preference. (i.e. do you want to opt-out from all messages, or would you like to opt-out only from certain specific lists.) The law prohibits any requirement that the recipient "take any other steps except sending a reply electronic mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page" when unsubscribing -- meaning it's not OK for it to take five clicks for somebody to unsubscribe. Interact with one page means the unsubscribe link takes them to a web page, where they are either unsubscribed automatically, or push some button on that web page to complete the unsubscribe process. (That would be interacting with that single web page.)
For more information on CAN-SPAM, visit our CAN-SPAM Information Center at http://canspam.etdeliverability.com/
Your email marketing messages don't have to be processed right away. Different timing is appropriate for different tasks, and in some cases the ExactTarget application gives you the control to choose how--and when--your system does its work.
Asynchronous
An asynchronous process is a process that runs “behind the scenes” while you continue to use the interface to perform other tasks. You receive an email or other alert that the process is complete so that you can view the results.
For example, if you start an asynchronous report, the report runs while you continue working. When the report is done, you receive an email that contains the report results.
Scheduled
A scheduled process is a process that runs automatically at the time you designate. You receive an email or other alert that the process is complete so that you can view the results.
For example, if you schedule an email send to begin at 11p.m., the system begins the send at 11p.m. and can send you an email when the process completes to give details on the success of the send.
Real-Time
A real‐time process is a process that runs in the foreground of your application. You cannot
perform other tasks while the real‐time process is running. When the process is complete, the application presents the results on your screen.
Asynchronous
An asynchronous process is a process that runs “behind the scenes” while you continue to use the interface to perform other tasks. You receive an email or other alert that the process is complete so that you can view the results.
For example, if you start an asynchronous report, the report runs while you continue working. When the report is done, you receive an email that contains the report results.
Scheduled
A scheduled process is a process that runs automatically at the time you designate. You receive an email or other alert that the process is complete so that you can view the results.
For example, if you schedule an email send to begin at 11p.m., the system begins the send at 11p.m. and can send you an email when the process completes to give details on the success of the send.
Real-Time
A real‐time process is a process that runs in the foreground of your application. You cannot
perform other tasks while the real‐time process is running. When the process is complete, the application presents the results on your screen.
written by David Hoang
With the move from Outlook 2003 to 2007, Microsoft made a lot of security improvements. Along with that, however, were a number of design changes. Outlook changed its engine for rendering HTML content from Internet Explorer to Microsoft Word. Before, it essentially meant that if your code looked good in Internet Explorer, it looked good in Outlook.
However, that is not the case anymore.
This is a huge impact in the way we design emails; because of the high volume of Outlook users, particularly in the Business-to-Business realm.
Here are a few key elements to consider while designing email messages in Outlook 2007 to ensure it looks sharp.
Keep your styles in-line
Though Outlook 2007 does support embedded CSS, there are certain properties that present challenges, such as margin, line-height and float/clear. Keep your styles in-line while you are designing. In addition to being an email design best practice, using style attributes in-line will help ensure that your message renders properly.
No Animated .gif files
Animated .gif files will not function in Outlook 2007. However, there is a solution for using .gif files with Outlook 2007. Since the file will not animate, you only need to make sure the first frame makes sense; as that is what will appear in Outlook 2007.
Contain Yourself, No Floating!
Outlook 2007 does not support floating or CSS positioning in any capacity. Use standard HTML tables to contain and control the layout. This will ensure that your design elements won’t go flying all over the place!
Specify Accurate Table Widths
When using HTML tables it is important to specify accurate table widths to ensure proper display in Outlook 2007. This is especially important in table structures that contain multiple columns. For example, when you have a table cell that spans two columns, the width for that cell should equal the sum of the widths of the other two cells.
Continue Using Alt Tags
As it was in Outlook 2003, it is in 2007; images will automatically be blocked. While you’re designing your email message, keep in mind of what it will look like with images disabled. Remember that Outlook will display alt tags, but they will only appear after a default security message. For a list of acceptable tags in Outlook 2007, check out this guide on Microsoft’s website.
No Forms
Outlook 2007 disables embedded forms. If you design an email with a survey or form in the content, include a direct link (hosted from a website) to the survey for your Outlook users. Indicate clearly in your design that the form is not broken, so subscribers don’t get frustrated by trying to fill out the form.
With 2010 quickly approaching, you may be wonder if there will be any major CSS/HTML changes in Outlook 2010. Right now, don’t expect major changes.
To conclude, sticking to standard HTML table design for emails should help you effectively render emails in Outlook 2007. Be sure to read our design tips in the coming weeks for rendering tips in other email clients, including our past issue: Email Rendering in Hotmail by Anna Meier. Portions of this blog, Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Outlook 2007 and more information on email rendering can be found in our white paper “Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials.”
For additional information about rendering in Outlook 2007, check out our white paper, Seven Email Marketing Design Tips for Outlook 2007.
With the move from Outlook 2003 to 2007, Microsoft made a lot of security improvements. Along with that, however, were a number of design changes. Outlook changed its engine for rendering HTML content from Internet Explorer to Microsoft Word. Before, it essentially meant that if your code looked good in Internet Explorer, it looked good in Outlook.
However, that is not the case anymore.
This is a huge impact in the way we design emails; because of the high volume of Outlook users, particularly in the Business-to-Business realm.
Here are a few key elements to consider while designing email messages in Outlook 2007 to ensure it looks sharp.
Keep your styles in-line
Though Outlook 2007 does support embedded CSS, there are certain properties that present challenges, such as margin, line-height and float/clear. Keep your styles in-line while you are designing. In addition to being an email design best practice, using style attributes in-line will help ensure that your message renders properly.
No Animated .gif files
Animated .gif files will not function in Outlook 2007. However, there is a solution for using .gif files with Outlook 2007. Since the file will not animate, you only need to make sure the first frame makes sense; as that is what will appear in Outlook 2007.
Contain Yourself, No Floating!
Outlook 2007 does not support floating or CSS positioning in any capacity. Use standard HTML tables to contain and control the layout. This will ensure that your design elements won’t go flying all over the place!
Specify Accurate Table Widths
When using HTML tables it is important to specify accurate table widths to ensure proper display in Outlook 2007. This is especially important in table structures that contain multiple columns. For example, when you have a table cell that spans two columns, the width for that cell should equal the sum of the widths of the other two cells.
Continue Using Alt Tags
As it was in Outlook 2003, it is in 2007; images will automatically be blocked. While you’re designing your email message, keep in mind of what it will look like with images disabled. Remember that Outlook will display alt tags, but they will only appear after a default security message. For a list of acceptable tags in Outlook 2007, check out this guide on Microsoft’s website.
No Forms
Outlook 2007 disables embedded forms. If you design an email with a survey or form in the content, include a direct link (hosted from a website) to the survey for your Outlook users. Indicate clearly in your design that the form is not broken, so subscribers don’t get frustrated by trying to fill out the form.
With 2010 quickly approaching, you may be wonder if there will be any major CSS/HTML changes in Outlook 2010. Right now, don’t expect major changes.
To conclude, sticking to standard HTML table design for emails should help you effectively render emails in Outlook 2007. Be sure to read our design tips in the coming weeks for rendering tips in other email clients, including our past issue: Email Rendering in Hotmail by Anna Meier. Portions of this blog, Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Outlook 2007 and more information on email rendering can be found in our white paper “Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials.”
For additional information about rendering in Outlook 2007, check out our white paper, Seven Email Marketing Design Tips for Outlook 2007.
We've got quite a change of pace in the ol' developer track conference room. Chris Murray of ExactTarget is the emcee for the Financial Services Solution Showcase.
He starts by introducing the first segment:
Beyond Deliverability: Consumer Choice & Control
Authentication, Privacy, and Policy
by Craig Spiezle
https://otalliance.org
The Online Trust Alliance is concerned with security in online activity, especially financial services. Spoofed email, phishing, and online exploits are a major challenge for financial organizations that operate online.
Craig said that government regulations are likely to come about in the next few weeks as a result of the identity theft incidents that we've heard of recently. Craig said that the United States is actually behind other parts of the world in consumer production.
Craig discussed extended validation certificates. In order to get one of these certificates, the business must prove that it's registered with a local tax authority. While this can't verify that the business has good business practices, but it does require that the business be a real business. When a business has this certificate, it turns the address bar in your browser green when you visit their site. If the address bar isn't green, you know that it's a spoofed site.
He continued to talk about the business value of authentication. Not only does this help protect your business from being spoofed, but also improves your deliverability.
Of the top 100 financial institutions in North America, only 43% have protections in place for consumers.
Craig talked about the problem with unsubscribe: an unsubscribe link in the footer of the email is required by CAN-SPAM, but consumers are warned not to click links in emails they don't want for fear that they'll alert spammers that they're a real person. An unsubscribe header allow ISPs to render an unsubscribe link in their client so that people can unsubscribe without clicking the "report as spam" link and degrading your reputation. About this time, someone from ExactTarget piped up to mention that ExactTarget email already does this automatically.
Addressing Email Security Concerns
Matt Burton - GMAC/Ally Bank
Matt talked about Ally bank and the fact that its customers were receiving more spoof emails that were pretending to be from Ally as they were receiving from the real bank.
Ally Bank, like many places, would love for there to be a "silver bullet" that would solve the problem, but in fact the best way to protect consumers is with a combination of proactive monitoring, excellent deliverability of your legit content, and customer education.
Governance, while unpopular, is critical. If your company has multiple business units, ALL of them have to have successful security.
Some financial institutions do not include links in their emails, instead telling consumers to go to the website. This is problematic because it requires more copy and results in fewer site hits. Also, this doesn't prevent phishing emails from including links in their emails.
Security tools, such as ISP Phish Blocking and Certified Mail, are available to help prevent risk and increase confidence in your message respectively.
Education of consumers can be tricky. Sending emails that tells customers how to tell whether your email is real might make it look like you're a spoofer trying to set them up to trust fraudulent email in the future. Better to just remain consistent in your sending so that consumers become accustomed to your style and learn to identify spoofs on their own.
To wrap up, Matt recommended proactive risk diminuation rather than waiting for a problem happens and only responding then.
Technology Solution
e-statements at Nationwide
Brian Jaffe - Nationwide Insurance
Nationwide was facing a "statement challenge"--sending statements to customers on email. The address this issue, they created an elegant solution.
Nationwide includes quite a bit of personal information in their emails so that subscribers know that the email must be legit, since a phishing scam wouldn't have access to so much personal information. Watch out for links to log-in pages, since phishing emails like to send very similar emails that direct to their own "login page."
Having a protocol to deal with bounces is wise. In their case, if a subscriber soft-bounces, they put the subscriber back into the paper stream for one cycle and try paperless again for the next cycle. If they run into a hard-bounce, they put the subscriber back into the paper stream indefinitely until the subscriber re-enrolls themselves in the paperless process.
Nationwide's solution is based on the ExactTarget SOAP API. Their OMS (outbound messaging service) is a middleware layer of abstraction that actually sits behind their firewall. Between the OMS and ExactTarget much communication occurs to get the statements out to subscribers.
The content of the eStatement itself uses AMPscript to build the bill by parsing concatenated attributes and dynamically displaying content in appropriate data tables.
Michael Murdza (ExactTarget) took us through the technical aspect of the eStatement data flow. A sophisticated decision tree weave through the Nationwide database and ExactTarget application, using XML, AMPscript, and API calls.
And then the presentation wrapped up, and everyone started getting ready for the evening entertainment. I've really enjoyed live blogging the technology track for everyone today, and I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed writing it. See you between the lines :)
He starts by introducing the first segment:
Beyond Deliverability: Consumer Choice & ControlAuthentication, Privacy, and Policy
by Craig Spiezle
https://otalliance.org
The Online Trust Alliance is concerned with security in online activity, especially financial services. Spoofed email, phishing, and online exploits are a major challenge for financial organizations that operate online.
Craig said that government regulations are likely to come about in the next few weeks as a result of the identity theft incidents that we've heard of recently. Craig said that the United States is actually behind other parts of the world in consumer production.
Craig discussed extended validation certificates. In order to get one of these certificates, the business must prove that it's registered with a local tax authority. While this can't verify that the business has good business practices, but it does require that the business be a real business. When a business has this certificate, it turns the address bar in your browser green when you visit their site. If the address bar isn't green, you know that it's a spoofed site.
He continued to talk about the business value of authentication. Not only does this help protect your business from being spoofed, but also improves your deliverability.
Of the top 100 financial institutions in North America, only 43% have protections in place for consumers.
Craig talked about the problem with unsubscribe: an unsubscribe link in the footer of the email is required by CAN-SPAM, but consumers are warned not to click links in emails they don't want for fear that they'll alert spammers that they're a real person. An unsubscribe header allow ISPs to render an unsubscribe link in their client so that people can unsubscribe without clicking the "report as spam" link and degrading your reputation. About this time, someone from ExactTarget piped up to mention that ExactTarget email already does this automatically.
Addressing Email Security ConcernsMatt Burton - GMAC/Ally Bank
Matt talked about Ally bank and the fact that its customers were receiving more spoof emails that were pretending to be from Ally as they were receiving from the real bank.
Ally Bank, like many places, would love for there to be a "silver bullet" that would solve the problem, but in fact the best way to protect consumers is with a combination of proactive monitoring, excellent deliverability of your legit content, and customer education.
Governance, while unpopular, is critical. If your company has multiple business units, ALL of them have to have successful security.
Some financial institutions do not include links in their emails, instead telling consumers to go to the website. This is problematic because it requires more copy and results in fewer site hits. Also, this doesn't prevent phishing emails from including links in their emails.
Security tools, such as ISP Phish Blocking and Certified Mail, are available to help prevent risk and increase confidence in your message respectively.
Education of consumers can be tricky. Sending emails that tells customers how to tell whether your email is real might make it look like you're a spoofer trying to set them up to trust fraudulent email in the future. Better to just remain consistent in your sending so that consumers become accustomed to your style and learn to identify spoofs on their own.
To wrap up, Matt recommended proactive risk diminuation rather than waiting for a problem happens and only responding then.
Technology Solutione-statements at Nationwide
Brian Jaffe - Nationwide Insurance
Nationwide was facing a "statement challenge"--sending statements to customers on email. The address this issue, they created an elegant solution.
- Governance - As part of this process, they codified their program for sending emails.
- Preference management - allow customers to specify their preferences. Brian recommends double opt in.
- Billing format - recreate view of paper statement
- Send mode - bulk or single send. You probably batch up your bills, but some might do individual sends.
- Data preparation - attributes or data extensions? what is the unique subscriber key? You need to understand your extremes (what happens if you have an extremely large amount of data?) and your data-display issues.
- Deliverability - decisions about IP and Domain. Learn from your deliverability team!
- Feedback - decisions about bounce management, reply management. If people unsubscribe and then try to sign up, you could have technical problems sending emails. Make sure you understand how your unsubscribes are managed. And be ready to monitor replies, even if you tell people not to reply to a message.
- Inserting marketing messages into transactional emails - CAN-SPAM does allow you include marketing messages into your transactional emails under certain circumstances.
Nationwide includes quite a bit of personal information in their emails so that subscribers know that the email must be legit, since a phishing scam wouldn't have access to so much personal information. Watch out for links to log-in pages, since phishing emails like to send very similar emails that direct to their own "login page."
Having a protocol to deal with bounces is wise. In their case, if a subscriber soft-bounces, they put the subscriber back into the paper stream for one cycle and try paperless again for the next cycle. If they run into a hard-bounce, they put the subscriber back into the paper stream indefinitely until the subscriber re-enrolls themselves in the paperless process.
Nationwide's solution is based on the ExactTarget SOAP API. Their OMS (outbound messaging service) is a middleware layer of abstraction that actually sits behind their firewall. Between the OMS and ExactTarget much communication occurs to get the statements out to subscribers.
The content of the eStatement itself uses AMPscript to build the bill by parsing concatenated attributes and dynamically displaying content in appropriate data tables.
Michael Murdza (ExactTarget) took us through the technical aspect of the eStatement data flow. A sophisticated decision tree weave through the Nationwide database and ExactTarget application, using XML, AMPscript, and API calls.
And then the presentation wrapped up, and everyone started getting ready for the evening entertainment. I've really enjoyed live blogging the technology track for everyone today, and I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed writing it. See you between the lines :)
Ratul Shah is the presenter for the first part of the solution showcase. Unlike every other presenter that's talked in this room so far today, Ratul is maneuvering through the crowd with the hand-held mic. What a showman. :)
Industry Standard Terms
You create JOIN, VOTE, HELP, UNSUBSCRIBE and other kinds of actions that subscribers use to send you MO messages to get in on your mobile messages.
Unfortunately, you can't create keywords or actions in the API at this point. You can initiate SMS sends through the API, however.
System Terms
FanMail Solution
Dave DeVore - CEO FanMail marketing
Josiah Kaiser - Senior Operations and Solutions Consultant
Tim Kauble - ExactTarget product specialist and world-class AMPscript guru
FanMail Marketing is using SMS to capture email addresses. Initially they were asking subscriber to text their email addresses in this format:
krohn email@example.com to 88769
but they found that customers found this confusing and made errors that prevented the system from capturing their information. So for the next phase, they made it into a 2-stage process to make it more like a conversation. In the new setup, subscribers text in in this format:
stubbs to 88769
then the system sends back an text saying something to the effect of, "Thanks for your interest. Reply to this message with your email address to join our mailing list." When the subscriber responds with the email address, it is added to the email list. The customer gets an email immediately welcoming them to the list, and then any future mailings to that list.
The SMS message that was sent back after the first message included AMPscript to trigger the welcome email.
The first use case resulted in more errors than the second, and people weren't willing to try to sign up more than once. A limitation of both use cases is that it only captures people's email addresses, omitting other important subscriber information that would be useful for relevant messaging .
In the third phase of FanMail's SMS evolution, they integrated their SMS with landing pages to allow the capture of more subscriber information. People text in:
butter to 88769
The system responds with a message saying to respond with an email address. When the subscriber replies with the email address, the system sends them an email with a link to a landing page built with the Smart Capture feature. People complete the Smart Capture form and now the system has information to send really personalized information. For example, this band (Hot Buttered Rum) uses the subscriber's ZIP code to let the subscriber know about upcoming concerts in their area.
What FanMail discovered was that going through this process aggregated higher quality subscribers who were more likely to be engaged with the marketing campaigns and therefore higher ROI on their marketing efforts.
The future phases of this SMS evolution may allow subscriber to provide attribute information via SMS, such as ZIP code to empower the functionality above.
Another thing that FanMail has discovered is that subscribers are willing to send you SMS messages if they're interested in what you have to offer, but they don't like for you to begin the SMS conversation.
Custom Use Case
Tim Kauble took the stage for the final portion of this presentation. Poor Tim--his phone junked out on him this morning and his data connection didn't work, so we're seeing a modified version of his presentation. Typical of technology!
Tim talked about designing a system to allow him to manage his own tasks using text messages. He wanted to accomplish the following:
Tim also brought up the landing page where we could see his lengthy task list--such is the life of the ExactTarget employee!
Industry Standard Terms
- SMS = short message service, aka text messaging. It has a 160 character limit.
- MO = mobile originated = a message sent FROM a phone
- MT = mobile terminated = a message sent TO a phone
- short code = a 5- or 6-digit number that you buy from a carrier to send messages to your customers. http://www.usshortcodes.com
- vanity short code = a short code that spells something out, such as our, ETSMS
- random short code = a short code that doesn't intentionally spell anything. These cost slightly less.
- private short code = only your traffic goes through this code
- shared short code = a code that you share with other SMS users. Keywords differentiate your traffic from the traffic of other people on the shared short codes.
- MMA = Mobile Marketing Association http://mmaglobal.com/policies. A group that creates guidelines for United States mobile marketing.
- Aggregator = a third party company that maintains connections between the carriers and the content providers. When we provisioning a short code for you, we work with an aggregator to get you approved for all carriers.
You create JOIN, VOTE, HELP, UNSUBSCRIBE and other kinds of actions that subscribers use to send you MO messages to get in on your mobile messages.
Unfortunately, you can't create keywords or actions in the API at this point. You can initiate SMS sends through the API, however.
System Terms
- Subscriber key = unique identifier for subscribers. Allows you to identify subscribers by phone number instead of email address.
- Publication list = contains subscribers who opt-in using their mobile device
- Data extension = contains subscribers whom you import through the GUI or the API
- Keyword response - text in and receive a response
- Mobile capture - captures email address for list growth
- Vote and check vote count - submit your vote. poll the response
- Outbound (with opt-in) - a message from ExactTarget to the mobile device
- Custom campaigns
FanMail Solution
Dave DeVore - CEO FanMail marketing
Josiah Kaiser - Senior Operations and Solutions Consultant
Tim Kauble - ExactTarget product specialist and world-class AMPscript guru
FanMail Marketing is using SMS to capture email addresses. Initially they were asking subscriber to text their email addresses in this format:
krohn email@example.com to 88769
but they found that customers found this confusing and made errors that prevented the system from capturing their information. So for the next phase, they made it into a 2-stage process to make it more like a conversation. In the new setup, subscribers text in in this format:
stubbs to 88769
then the system sends back an text saying something to the effect of, "Thanks for your interest. Reply to this message with your email address to join our mailing list." When the subscriber responds with the email address, it is added to the email list. The customer gets an email immediately welcoming them to the list, and then any future mailings to that list.
The SMS message that was sent back after the first message included AMPscript to trigger the welcome email.
The first use case resulted in more errors than the second, and people weren't willing to try to sign up more than once. A limitation of both use cases is that it only captures people's email addresses, omitting other important subscriber information that would be useful for relevant messaging .
In the third phase of FanMail's SMS evolution, they integrated their SMS with landing pages to allow the capture of more subscriber information. People text in:
butter to 88769
The system responds with a message saying to respond with an email address. When the subscriber replies with the email address, the system sends them an email with a link to a landing page built with the Smart Capture feature. People complete the Smart Capture form and now the system has information to send really personalized information. For example, this band (Hot Buttered Rum) uses the subscriber's ZIP code to let the subscriber know about upcoming concerts in their area.
What FanMail discovered was that going through this process aggregated higher quality subscribers who were more likely to be engaged with the marketing campaigns and therefore higher ROI on their marketing efforts.
The future phases of this SMS evolution may allow subscriber to provide attribute information via SMS, such as ZIP code to empower the functionality above.
Another thing that FanMail has discovered is that subscribers are willing to send you SMS messages if they're interested in what you have to offer, but they don't like for you to begin the SMS conversation.
Custom Use Case
Tim Kauble took the stage for the final portion of this presentation. Poor Tim--his phone junked out on him this morning and his data connection didn't work, so we're seeing a modified version of his presentation. Typical of technology!
Tim talked about designing a system to allow him to manage his own tasks using text messages. He wanted to accomplish the following:
- Accept tasks
- Assign those tasks
- Assign priority, including deadlines
- Expose the tasks to landing pages so that he could see them all
- Support multiple methods of input, such a forwarding emails to an endpoint that generates a task with the content of the email.
Tim also brought up the landing page where we could see his lengthy task list--such is the life of the ExactTarget employee!
We've got a rather thin crowd for the Best Practices for Utilizing ExactTarget's SOAP APIs session. Apparently everyone is already implementing the API in the best possible way...or think they are :)
Manager of the Product Specialist department Dale McCrory returns to the stage for this presentation and starts the session by asking people what topics they would like to see covered today. The first question was on documentation.
YAY! I love when people care about the documentation!
Web Service API Documentation
Dale brings up http://wiki.memberlandingpages.com to demonstrate all of the wonderful web service API documentation that's available there. He takes the group through a technical article on asynchronous processing, the CREATE method, an object, and a property. Bryan Wade, the embedded expert at ExactTarget and emcee of the session, asks how many people in the room have been to the wiki before, and about half of the room had already visited. I think the rest will visit before too long.
Content Management
The second question is about content management and best practices for it. Dale pulls up the AMPscript page in the documentation wiki to find the HTTPGet() function. This function performs a get call against a URL and brings back the content. This tool can be used to interact with an outside system in include the content in the emails.
AMPscript also support XSLT now, so you can interact with ExactTarget with you XML content. The BuildRowSetFromXML() function extends this capability.
Slide Presentation
With the two questions addressed, Bryan prods Dale to get back to the slideshow. The slides cover:
Security
Standards-based SOAP security to support authentication
All calls transmit over an SSL connection. The API supports two forms of security:
Reliability
In this section, we're talking about synchronous versus asynchronous API processing again. Asynchronous processing adds all calls to a queue to be processed when the system is ready, which prevents API calls from being lost if the server is unavailable for any reason.
Other benefits include:
Robustness
Dale quotes Wikipedia: "Robustness is the quality of being able to withstand stresses, pressures, or changes in procedure or circumstance."
Triggered sends represent the quickest way to get an email sent from the ExactTarget system. Key points help decide whether to use user-initiated (list-based) sends or triggered sends:
Flexibility
This topic starts with a discussion of data extensions. Data extension are
Email, images, and files, oh my!
Text-only email will be supported with 135, in addition to the HTML and HTML/Text multi-part formats.
The Portfolio object allows you to host files in ExactTarget. Images and files that you import into our system are hosted by Akamai, so when people hit these files, they are highly available and don't use your company's bandwidth.
Using AMPscript, you can attach files to your email, but you should use this feature with caution. There's a page for the documentation that's going to be published very soon that talks about best practices for attachments so that you can protect your deliverability while using this feature.
Stats Retrieval and Tracking Events
We ran out of time for the stats retrieval, so we went straight to question and answer, which went by too fast for me to keep up, especially while I"m still on this documentation cloud. :)
Manager of the Product Specialist department Dale McCrory returns to the stage for this presentation and starts the session by asking people what topics they would like to see covered today. The first question was on documentation.
YAY! I love when people care about the documentation!
Web Service API Documentation
Dale brings up http://wiki.memberlandingpages.com to demonstrate all of the wonderful web service API documentation that's available there. He takes the group through a technical article on asynchronous processing, the CREATE method, an object, and a property. Bryan Wade, the embedded expert at ExactTarget and emcee of the session, asks how many people in the room have been to the wiki before, and about half of the room had already visited. I think the rest will visit before too long.
Content Management
The second question is about content management and best practices for it. Dale pulls up the AMPscript page in the documentation wiki to find the HTTPGet() function. This function performs a get call against a URL and brings back the content. This tool can be used to interact with an outside system in include the content in the emails.
AMPscript also support XSLT now, so you can interact with ExactTarget with you XML content. The BuildRowSetFromXML() function extends this capability.
Slide Presentation
With the two questions addressed, Bryan prods Dale to get back to the slideshow. The slides cover:
- Security
- Reliability
- Robustness
- Flexibility
- Messaging content
- Stats retrieval - tracking events
Security
Standards-based SOAP security to support authentication
All calls transmit over an SSL connection. The API supports two forms of security:
- Plain text username token. This is what everyone's using right now.
- X509 certificate encryption for the username token will be available in the 135 release.
Reliability
In this section, we're talking about synchronous versus asynchronous API processing again. Asynchronous processing adds all calls to a queue to be processed when the system is ready, which prevents API calls from being lost if the server is unavailable for any reason.
Other benefits include:
- The fact that you get a sub-second response to the fact that the call has been received.
- You have multiple options to receive results: HTTP post, Email, and the RETRIEVE API call.
- The ConversationID concept that's used with asynch API processing allows you to resend the same call without worrying that it will actually be processed twice if the system had already queued the request.
Robustness
Dale quotes Wikipedia: "Robustness is the quality of being able to withstand stresses, pressures, or changes in procedure or circumstance."
Triggered sends represent the quickest way to get an email sent from the ExactTarget system. Key points help decide whether to use user-initiated (list-based) sends or triggered sends:
- How do you want to aggregate tracking?
List based sends aggregate tracking by job. Triggered sends aggregate tracking over a time period when the triggered send was running. - How will email content be made available to the ExactTarget system?
- How are unsubscribes managed?
List based sends record unsubs at the list level, or at the All Subscribers level. If a person unsubscribes from a triggered send, they can be unsubscribed from all triggered sends. - How large are your lists?
If you have 1.5 million subscribers, you should start with list based. If you are sending individual messages in response to customer activity, triggered sends are the way to go.
- Are attribute sets going to be the same for all sends?
If so, you can use lists because you set up attributes for all lists together. If you need different attribute sets for different subsets of clients, then you want data extensions. - Is import performance critical?
If you have 1.5 million subscribers to import, you can import them into a data extension in 10 minutes versus 1-2 hours for a list (this is an approximation...the number of attributes has a big effect on performance as well). - How will unsubscribes be managed?
Each list maintains its own unsubscribes. Data extensions maintain unsubscribes in publication lists. - Bonus point not in the slide: if you are a partner building an application, you probably want to build on lists if possible, because they cost less.
Flexibility
This topic starts with a discussion of data extensions. Data extension are
- The only way to use the API to do "rich" queries of data
- The way you can add relational models of data en masse or row-by-row
- Very fast
- Tables in our database schema that are specific to your account
- Allows the use of upsert
- Ties to the DataExtension by CustomerKey (called "external key" in the GUI)
- Allows specification of Keys and Nulls
- There's also a DataExtensionObject that you can retrieve to bring back a row in the data extension.
Email, images, and files, oh my!
Text-only email will be supported with 135, in addition to the HTML and HTML/Text multi-part formats.
The Portfolio object allows you to host files in ExactTarget. Images and files that you import into our system are hosted by Akamai, so when people hit these files, they are highly available and don't use your company's bandwidth.
Using AMPscript, you can attach files to your email, but you should use this feature with caution. There's a page for the documentation that's going to be published very soon that talks about best practices for attachments so that you can protect your deliverability while using this feature.
Stats Retrieval and Tracking Events
We ran out of time for the stats retrieval, so we went straight to question and answer, which went by too fast for me to keep up, especially while I"m still on this documentation cloud. :)
10:58 am So excited! The ExactTarget API enables the extension of our software and some incredible functionality. Scott McCorkle is going to be speaking, along with Michael Ciancio-Bunch. They have some incredible insight. I am not technical, so I’ll do my best to convey the information presented here.
11:01 am Bryan Wade is introducing Michael Cianco-Bunch and Scott McCorkle. McCorkle is speaking about our dedication to integration, improving our user experience, and how the API is key with CARBON-check it out online!
11:03 am Michael is on. We are a young company, but our API has a history. XML API (2002) was created originally only for content management. A bulk Asynchronous API was introduced in 2004. Our SOAP API was launched in 2007—this is the foundation for our web services …
11:05 am … and actually, the Asynchronous Web Service API became available in 2008. It seems that not many people are using it right now. Its advantages include quicker calls, better status reporting, and correlating conversation IDs. Start using!
11:07 am First thing we did in 2009 was support compression…coming your way in a release! We’re also beta testing API streaming, which helps with large packets.
11: 09 am Bryan Wade is highlighting current functionality.
11: 10 am Michael is focusing in on streaming sends: we can send as we receive via the API, with triggered sends for example, instead of waiting until a certain number are received before sending.
11:11 am Did you know API calls are up 1.5x from last year? “This amount of use is a testament to the fact that the API is now better. More people are able to use it.”-Michael.
11:13 am What does the future of the API look like? The API is a platform to help customers and partners to integrate. Michael is saying that there are a number of tools that allow us to integrate, extend, and embed ExactTarget. These tools support functions not possible with just the API. Here are a few of the tools: Programs, landing pages, AMPscript … the list goes on.
11:15 am There was a huge “Hoorah!” from someone when Michael announced the introduction of a REST API. File based API and Authenticated Asynchronous API Results Callbacks are on the horizon as well.
11:17 am A user is asking about tracking a file that is sent with new API functionality … You could give the file a conversation or correlation ID so you don’t have to worry about re-using file names.
11:18 am Why is the Authenticated Asynchronous API Results Callback so great? You don’t have to fish for errors with queries! BIG question…what is the timeline for delivering these advancements? … Next year! Be on the lookout!
11:19 am We’re changing topics to landing pages and their use for creating Profile Centers, subscriber capture, and promotion pages. The beauty of landing pages is that they extend the user interface and can be integrated with ET.
11:23 am More on landing pages! You can embed them within your application. Sign-up forms are an example.
11:25 am ExactTarget’s API roadmap … One set of items is pre-built templates “encapsulating some application function (e.g. Send Wizard, Data Extensions, etc).” … There is so much more information to convey here …. Trying to get it all down!
11:26 am Java will be supported on landing pages. This is great news!
11:27 am “AMPscript is the future!” says Michael … just kidding … Java is going to eventually replace it. ExactTarget also wants to introduce JavaScript activities like data transformation and user defined functions. There is a lot on this roadmap! It is clear that ET is truly focusing on product development.
11:30 am Looking now at Data Integration … We want users to be able to import from external systems and export to them as well. Data cleansing is also on the horizon, in addition to a number of other functionalities to help users integrate data. We have our sight on breaking down barriers that keep us from being an open platform.
11:34 am Again, we have a lot of information here! I strongly recommend reaching out to some of our developers while you are here.
UI Extensibility: even more features are coming. As a user, you will have the ability to define a custom home page, add buttons, add tabs to our toolbars, and add custom fields to forms. McCorkle talked about building a user experience in our user interface. What a concept! It will allow a great degree of customization in each user’s account.
11:38 am The Program feature is going to be further developed as well. Whoa - EXCITING: templates will also be available for programs. For example, there will be a template for a birthday program in the user interface. This functionality will be extremely helpful for marketers and programmers with limited resources.
11:41 am Question time! Yes folks, the API is almost too good to be true … and yet it is!
11:43 am Now we’re talking about Enterprise 2.0. With the API you can do things in the application “on behalf” of users without exceeding their permissions. You will also be able to access objects in multiple business units via the API in 2.0.
11:49 am And in closing…share your ideas! Let ExactTarget know how, as a developer, we can improve 3sixty for your use. Quite a few people in the crowd here use 3sixty and some of those are members of the Developer Community. This community needs to be more active. We have deliver 100+ ideas on 3sixty so far…let your voice be heard!
Coming to you live from Connections ’09! Enjoy the rest of the conference!
As we wait to hear about the future of the ExactTarget API, 3 Par handed out a card inviting everyone to come by their booth in the vendor hall to register to win a Nintendo Wii. Too bad ExactTarget employees aren't eligible to win. :)
I can see the presenters setting up at the front of the room, and they aren't messing around with the expertise that they're bringing to the table. Our chief architect, Michael Ciancio-Bunch (known to his friends as MCB) and our CTO, Scott McCorkle are on the stage.
ExactTarget API: Past, Present, and Future
Scott begins the discussion by talking about how the Carbon initiative will lead the application to consume our own web service API. This "eating our own dog food" will ensure that the API has the entire breadth of functionality of the application.
MCB launched into the history of the API:
Then Michael began talking about the features delivered or planned for 2009.
DISCLAIMER: all forward looking statements are subject to change. As MCB said, "we might have another John and Kate mess" and the distraction would push out development timelines.
Back to the list:
Michael introduced the ExactTarget Platform Integration Framework - a set of tools (much improved over what we've provided in the past) to allow developers to use the web service API to create powerful apps. Here are the tools:
On the roadmap is:
You can use this feature to create customer-facing web pages, but you can also use it to create pages that you see within the ExactTarget application. For example, you could create your own custom wizards or customized data presentation pages. You can build them as landing pages and integrate them into our application for your ExactTarget users to see when they're logged in to the application.
Not only that, but you can embed landing pages within your own application. Landing pages can support AJAX, so you can gather information within your own app and feed it in to ExactTarget.
On the landing page roadmap:
Michael made a bold statement that JavaScript will kill off AMPscript in the future (though he did suggest that we'd always support it). After that, the discussion became more about the future plans for JavaScript, such as an activity, (those things you can put in programs) for JavaScript.
I understand, but I'll be sad to see AMPscript go by the wayside. It's a really powerful scripting language.
Data Integration Tools
Roadmap items include:
These are some of the roadmap items:
MCB says we're rewriting the program engine, and the new incarnation will support delays, notifications, and other stuff that's been requested. A programs dashboard and templates, along with better error reporting and error recovery, will make working with programs easier.
The "file drop" functionality that I mentioned earlier is a kind of ad hoc program, plus activities will be created to invoke web services and HTTP based APIs, so the lines between API and programs are getting blurrier, creating a lot more power and flexibility.
Enterprise 2
Packaging and Provisioning
We'll be allowing you to bundle up all your custom landing pages, data extensions, folder, UI customizations, program templates, and other elements to drop them into another account. This will allow you to do cool things like pre-configure new business unit accounts. Eventually, this idea will support an app-store-type tool where people could browse your package and purchase it and install it.
Community
MCB acknowledged that developers have not been happy with how 3sixty has replaced the old Developer Community. He talked about our dedication to improve the experience. We have developers within ExactTarget to answer questions and post content. He asked that everyone submit their requests for what they'd like to see, because we do want to make it better.
Q&A
Again, documentation is getting the shout out in the question and answer. I guess people actually like to know the technical details. w00t!
I can see the presenters setting up at the front of the room, and they aren't messing around with the expertise that they're bringing to the table. Our chief architect, Michael Ciancio-Bunch (known to his friends as MCB) and our CTO, Scott McCorkle are on the stage.
ExactTarget API: Past, Present, and Future
Scott begins the discussion by talking about how the Carbon initiative will lead the application to consume our own web service API. This "eating our own dog food" will ensure that the API has the entire breadth of functionality of the application.
MCB launched into the history of the API:
- 2002 - XML API was introduced
- 2004 - Bulk asynch API was introduced
- 2007 - Object Oriented Web Service API
- 2008 - Asynchronous web service API
Then Michael began talking about the features delivered or planned for 2009.
DISCLAIMER: all forward looking statements are subject to change. As MCB said, "we might have another John and Kate mess" and the distraction would push out development timelines.
Back to the list:
- Support for compression (currently limited availability)
- Streaming (in the works) - begins processing the "conversation" (collection of calls) before all of the content is received.
- X.509 user authentication (in the works)
- API exposed via AMPscript (already delivered)
- Enterprise 2.0 user model - create roles, permissions, business units, etc. (scheduled for November release)
- Retrieve improvements
- Round out - things like template support and more capability to manipulate content areas
Michael introduced the ExactTarget Platform Integration Framework - a set of tools (much improved over what we've provided in the past) to allow developers to use the web service API to create powerful apps. Here are the tools:
- API
- Landing Pages
- AMPscript
- Data integration tools (Import, extracts, and more to come)
- Extensible UI
- Programs
- Enterprise
- Packaging and provisioning
- Community to support you
On the roadmap is:
- A proper REST API (to be delivered sometime in 2010)
- A file-based API, where you FTP a file that contains instructions and the ExactTarget begins processing those instructions as soon as we receive it (probably to be delivered in the spring)
- Authenticated asynch API results callback - the ability for us to call back to you if something goes wrong in a call. Currently, you have to query for status, or have a rudimentary notification. This will be much more sophisticated and slick. (to be delivered sometime in 2010)
You can use this feature to create customer-facing web pages, but you can also use it to create pages that you see within the ExactTarget application. For example, you could create your own custom wizards or customized data presentation pages. You can build them as landing pages and integrate them into our application for your ExactTarget users to see when they're logged in to the application.
Not only that, but you can embed landing pages within your own application. Landing pages can support AJAX, so you can gather information within your own app and feed it in to ExactTarget.
On the landing page roadmap:
- Smart Page templates for common use cases, CSS, and the ability to tap into server and client side events for added customization
- JavaScript as a server side language
- Highly available landing pages
Michael made a bold statement that JavaScript will kill off AMPscript in the future (though he did suggest that we'd always support it). After that, the discussion became more about the future plans for JavaScript, such as an activity, (those things you can put in programs) for JavaScript.
I understand, but I'll be sad to see AMPscript go by the wayside. It's a really powerful scripting language.
Data Integration Tools
Roadmap items include:
- Direct import from and extract to external systems, such as CRM, analytics, POS, etc.
- File transformations
- Sophisticated mapping functionality
- Data cleansing services
- Interfaces defined for custom integrations
- Richer metadata around data extensions
These are some of the roadmap items:
- The ability to define a custom home page. I think that this is already available to Enterprise 2.0 edition products.
- Buttons can be added to toolbars and tabs can be added to the navigation bar. I've seen this demoed myself, and it's pretty cool. Really allows you to customize the experience.
- Custom fields can be added to forms
- Experience Builder - this is a really cool one, too. We saw some wireframes for this earlier in the conference, and it's going to be really awesome.
MCB says we're rewriting the program engine, and the new incarnation will support delays, notifications, and other stuff that's been requested. A programs dashboard and templates, along with better error reporting and error recovery, will make working with programs easier.
The "file drop" functionality that I mentioned earlier is a kind of ad hoc program, plus activities will be created to invoke web services and HTTP based APIs, so the lines between API and programs are getting blurrier, creating a lot more power and flexibility.
Enterprise 2
- Granular permission model
- Run as functionality for the API - this lets you use the permission level of a user with your API calls, so that tools you build with the API will only show users what's appropriate for them.
- Ability to define custom permissions
- Access to objects in multiple business units via the API - For example, you could query the records in a data extension in one business unit and write them to a data extension in a different business unit.
Packaging and Provisioning
We'll be allowing you to bundle up all your custom landing pages, data extensions, folder, UI customizations, program templates, and other elements to drop them into another account. This will allow you to do cool things like pre-configure new business unit accounts. Eventually, this idea will support an app-store-type tool where people could browse your package and purchase it and install it.
Community
MCB acknowledged that developers have not been happy with how 3sixty has replaced the old Developer Community. He talked about our dedication to improve the experience. We have developers within ExactTarget to answer questions and post content. He asked that everyone submit their requests for what they'd like to see, because we do want to make it better.
Q&A
Again, documentation is getting the shout out in the question and answer. I guess people actually like to know the technical details. w00t!
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