Best Email Programs

Email Design Tip of the Week: Social Media in Email

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Andrea Smith

Should social media be used in email? Sure! But only if it makes sense for your audience. Decide if you will link to your existing social presence, enable content sharing, or both. Let’s take a quick closer look:

Link to your existing social presence. This can include a simple text or graphic link to your Facebook page, Twitter feed or LinkedIn site, driving traffic to your social presence. As with your email program and website, you’re simply encouraging interaction with your brand.
Enable content sharing through ExactTarget’s “Social Forward” integration. In other words, share an “item” with your network. This can include sharing the entire email or just a section of content. In doing this, you are allowing your subscriber base to evangelize your brand on your behalf. In the Florida Power and Light newsletter below, you have the option to share “Cold Weather Tips”.
Plan, test, repeat! While social media can bring value to your email program, make sure you’re thinking through the bigger picture. Social media is definitely an emerging technology that will someday be a part of standard brand practices, so it makes sense to give it a chance. Be sure to plan and design with the needs of your customers and subscribers in mind, then test, evaluate and repeat!

For more design advice and thoughts on social media, add @ETDesign to your Twitter feed and check out “Design Tip of the Week: Integrating Twitter to Your Email Strategy“.

Distributed Email Marketing (Build vs. Partner series)

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 by Dennis Hall

The process of implementing or replacing an email marketing module that will be distrbuted to your customers (and even your customer's customers) can be a daunting exercise, not only due to the complexity of developing functions like list management, content editing and tracking, but also because of the importance of factors outside the bits and bytes.

For example, deliverability (the rate at which emails make it to the subscriber’s inbox) is affected by the reputation of the sender not the quality of the code. Without the right policies and people to work with the major ISPs, the value of email (no matter how beautiful) is diminished.

To help you assess the magnitude of becoming your own Email Service Provider on behalf of your customers, we’ve put together a "top-ten" list of high-level requirements that our Partners have shared with us along with a bit of color.

1.    Reliability System availability and uptime are critical issues for email. As email volume grows, so must the system behind it. System failures will occur whether the system is in-house or 3rd party so management and recovery processes are constants.
2.    Deliverability Reputation and remediation capabilities are critical to ensure consistent, timely email delivery. Managing this process is one of the most expensive elements of email. To maximize delivery, the system must support a permission based, strong opt-in model as well as private (dedicated) IPs or domains.
3.    Security In addition to data protection standards (e.g. encryption/SMTP) to keep customer data safely behind the firewall, the system must maintain data integrity across multiple hierarchies and parent-child relationships.
4.    Transactional, operational sending Many ESPs do not support this capability within the framework or API. These types of emails, from loyalty programs to notifications, have become as effective as mass marketing emails in terms of driving consumer behavior.
5.    Relevance The ability to use subscriber attributes and external data tables to deliver tailored messages, including HTML, text, hyperlinks and images, has grown as a key differentiator for email marketing systems. Dynamic content is an example of innovation in this area.
6.    Performance List processing, send execution and tracking response are key metrics to be optimized. In today’s world of social media and instant buzz, customers want to know that there emails will be delivered in near real-time.
7.    User experience This category includes usability, look and feel as well as integration with external systems. The extent of control desired often dictates the go to market approach. An open, flexible framework will allow for a phased deployment.
8.    Tracking Access to opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and conversion statistics are vital to measuring the impact of email programs. If this data is not available, it will become more difficult to justify cost from the user’s perspective.
9.    Unsubscribe options Support for campaign based or publication based management of unsubscribes is essential to building and sustaining subscriber lists.
10.    Multi-channel Though Email remains a red-hot market and will continue to be a major channel of communication (despite the NY Times opinion, marketers expect to utilize other established and emerging channels, such as SMS (Text), Voice, Landing Pages and Social networks. Supporting such channels within a single platform will enable you to satisfy demand as it grows.

Your list will no doubt be unique - containing more granular requirements on what is needed to satisfy customer demand in your market. We'd love your feedback on what features, functions and/or factors are most important to you and why...

Stay tuned for the next part of the series...The Partner Paradox.

Time to Take a break and Review Your Email Acquistion program.

Friday, February 5, 2010 by Shelly Griffin

Ok..I admit it, I am not making a great start to the year when it comes to keeping up with my blog. It is soo easy to get bogged down in the day to day, that I find myself at the end of each week wondering where it went. Poof! Another week gone by in the blink of an eye. And we're only in the second month of the year..not a good sign of things to come.

Talking to clients, this same phenomenon easily takes hold of their email programs. All the best intentions to prep, plan, test, target, review, revamp are diminished by the need to get the email out the door. Poof! Another send gone...maybe next time. We all need to set time in our weeks for reflection and planning. We need more buffers in our schedules.

The first priority in any email marketing program should be a review of your email sign-up and email acquisition. This time of year is the perfect time to take some time to review the sign-up forms, how you request permission, the expectations and anticipated content for each email. Last week Stefan Pollard from ClickZ featured an article on "How to Improve your Process for Acquiring Subscribers". Set some time aside to read, reflect and then revamp your own email acquisition programs.

Design Tip of the Week: Email + Video: Take 2: Connections ’09 Panel Recap, Part 2 (of 3)

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 by Chris Studabaker

Last post, I discussed current support and delivery methods for email + video. This time we're going to focus on some of the benefits and concerns and finish with a few closing thoughts. As I mentioned last time, please note that this blog centers on the technological considerations around email + video—the strategy around sending video in email (or not) is another discussion!

Benefits of email + video

Strong emotional appeal
Highly engaging
Personal, even user-generated content

Video offers incredible emotional appeal and a personal, highly engaging form of communication. Online video and social media offer the additional bonus of user-generated content, an incredibly effective tool for brand recognition and even advertising when used properly. Volumes have been written on this subject, and I recommend further reading on video as an advertising medium.

Concerns regarding email + video

Development cost and time
File size and bandwidth
Frame rate inconsistencies
Deliverability

Video use does come with some concerns, the foremost being that video represents a considerable development cost and time investment. Integrating video with email requires first having the video! Creating video content then requires the same commitment to brand standards and quality that comprises the rest of your brand experience.

Moving to technical issues, browsers interpret animated .gif frame rates differently, so it's important to test and ensure your .gif appears as desired in all browsers. File sizes and bandwidth are also a concern. A typical HTML email message may be no more than 150KB, including images, but even a simple animated .gif can double the total file size. To carry this further, sending a 1 MB video to one million subscribers can demand significant resources, and adding send frequency to the equation means we must be cognizant of the effect video can have on web hosting and bandwidth. The lack of video standards also raises concerns with deliverability. ISPs and email clients have different standards when determining spam/junk/trash messages, and the lack of generally accepted practices makes testing even more important.

These concerns can certainly be addressed successfully, but these points show it's important to remember that adding video to an email program represents far more than simply a new content block to plan.

Conclusion

Remember the message's primary goal
Consider video in content hierarchy
Know your audience
Subscriber expectations

In the end, we land on a mindset you're very familiar with: Subscribers Rule! Whether it's text headlines or Hollywood-style full motion video, know your subscribers and provide relevant content. Crafting engaging calls to action, nurturing a subscriber-centric content strategy, and establishing strong subscriber relationships are still primary concerns to email marketers, and video is a powerful new tool we can begin to use in accomplishing those goals.

You can check out Part 1 of this series for info on current support and delivery methods for email + video. Part 3 will share some interesting customer experiences and discuss ExactTarget's animated and static .gif testing using Connections '09 emails.

More compelling emails are better than an incentive

Monday, January 11, 2010 by Phil Schott

I'm not a fan of offering incentives to entice folks to sign up for email programs. Why? Because you're bound to have folks sign up who are only, or more, interested in your incentive than they are in getting your email.

The subscriber signs up, gets the free swag and then they do one of the following:

1. Unsubscribe
2. Unsubscribe by hitting the "spam" button
3. Stay on your list, but don't ever open, click, or convert
4. Stay on your list and become the bestest, most engaged subscriber EVER!

One, two, and three are more likely to be the case, in my experience.

Admittedly, I don't have any data that definitively proves that incentives are a bad idea, but what I'm suggesting makes sense and I've seen incentives burn clients in the past. On more than one occasion I've seen correlation between incentivized sign up and higher than normal complaint rates.

I'm not saying that incentives are taboo or verboten, but their use should be considered carefully.

Offering incentives may be one way to help build a list, but a questionable method for building loyalty.

I'd be more interested in sending my email to a leaner, but more targeted, list of subscribers who are solely interested in the content rather than a list littered with subscribers who are interested in a freebie.

The goal should be to put forth an offer and content so compelling that no incentive is needed. The offer or email needs to be incentive enough for signing up.

Connections Extreme Makeover: Pier 1 Redesign

Wednesday, January 6, 2010 by Andrea Smith

Our previous blogs, Connections Extreme Makeover: AAA Ohio Redesign and Connections Extreme Makeover: MarketingExperiments Redesign covered the Design Solutions teams’ redesigns for AAA Ohio and MarketingExperiments. To finish up, we’d like to share our thoughts on our final redesign.

Pier 1 Imports is a retailer that focuses heavily on unique furniture, home décor and accessories. Based on our conversations with Pier 1, the bulk of their customer base falls around females in the 50-60 age range. High quality products are marketed through the channels of print, in-store collateral, web, and email. Though the use of email and web, Pier 1 uses these channels to drive brand recognition and encourage online browsing before driving the consumer to the store to make a purchase.   

With this in mind, the ExactTarget team took a very sophisticated and streamlined approach to the Creature Comforts email campaign, using warm, harmonious colors and existing brand elements to deliver value and increase engagement with the Pier 1 brand. Let’s break apart our strategy and check out the email:   

Preheader
Experience and testing tells us that this area of the email is very important, and can serve as a main driver to engagement. We deliver two strategic ways to view the email as a web page, forward the email, and connect via social media on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. As an added benefit, some email clients pull this teaser text into their inbox preview before the email is ever opened.   

Header
The header features the brand mark in prime email real estate and will link to the Pier 1 homepage. To the right, we’ve pulled out the three most strategic links to drive subscriber engagement based on past email performance metrics and value provided on the website. Room gallery is an important place to drive web traffic and engage the subscribers in furniture placements in different room settings. The Pier 1 Studio offers amazing design tips and ideas that will engage subscribers, and Special Values have proven to be of high interest based on past clicks and obvious savings.   

Feature
This feature uses a combination of on-brand fonts, text rendering and imagery to offer a clean look directly placed in the preview pane. This simple room shot will encourage click through to the website, focusing on a clean, simple, and sophisticated approach in line with the quality of the products offered. The design elements of line, color and quirky framing will help the Pier 1 brand stand out in the crowd.   

Body
Four products are dramatically outlined and provide a sleek way to encourage pre-shopping on the website. These products were strategically chosen from the images provided as they are highlighted in the campaign and artfully pull through the rich fall colors. Allowing subscribers to see the actual prices and pieces of furniture pulled out can help set brand expectations and encourage click through.   

Recovery Module
These three items provide even more value to the subscriber audience, giving them convenient access to savings through Pier 1 Rewards, ability to buy gift cards online, and finding a store. Metrics show that most subscribers already know where their stores are, but those that don’t can easily click through. 

 Footer
Main website navigation is important to include, but click data shows us that it does not necessarily require prime real estate in the email. Copyright, privacy, unsubscribe, and customer relations functionality are important (and some are required!) and can fall in one clean line as they are self explanatory. Disclaimers and CAN-SPAM compliant mailing address follow.

  While the results of the Makeover showed that Pier 1’s control design outperformed the redesigns in actual sales conversion, our team strove to stay true to the brand and add a new dimension to the email program that strategically reorganizes Pier 1’s offerings, allowing the true beauty and quality of the products to shine. It is highly useable and engaging, with strategic goals of boosting click-through, web traffic, and ultimately driving consumers inside the Pier 1 stores for more.

Thanks for reading some of the stories behind Extreme Makeover: The Email Design Competition! Look for more 1 to 1 marketing advice and Email Design Tips in our upcoming 2010 blogs.

NCDM 2009 Looks Like A Winner

Friday, December 4, 2009 by Joel Book

I’m really excited about the upcoming 2009 NCDM conference which kicks off Monday, December 7th in Las Vegas.

Attendance is up 20% over last year and the lineup of sessions and speakers is outstanding!

This year, the conference programming committee placed special emphasis on inviting speakers who are true practitioners of database marketing, and will share case studies of how they are using data and technology to sell and serve customers more effectively and efficiently.

For complete session details, download the NCDM 2009 conference brochure.

This year’s NCDM conference will feature several ExactTarget clients and partners.

Sean Mattson of Hitachi Data Systems will team with me to present a fantastic B-to-B marketing case study that describes how Hitachi uses email as the backbone of a global one-to-one marketing strategy that has made Hitachi Data Systems a world leader in data storage technology.

Dan Heimbrock of HyperDrive Interactive will discuss how Dreamfields Pasta has built a powerful and influential brand fan community of more than 400,000 consumers by using email marketing, social media, and word-of-mouth marketing to drive brand recognition and dramatically accelerate sales.

Augie MacCurrach of Customer Portfolios and Michael Enright of online gaming company, WorldWinner, will describe how WorldWinner uses customer playing behavior data to execute automated email programs that deliver personalized offers that keep players highly engaged.

For attendees looking for a practical and useful short course on techniques and best practices for effective email marketing, Jeanne Jennings of JeanneJennngs.com and I will be conducting a special pre-conference seminar on Monday titled Accelerating Email Marketing Performance and Profitability. It’s chock full of great examples of what to do, and how to do it right.

 If you are still on the fence about attending, I urge you to take advantage of a special offer which will save you $100 over the onsite price when you register in Las Vegas. You can also take advantage of this offer by registering online at http://bit.ly/3bq2aP. To redeem this offer, use code: ONSM when you register online.

  I hope to see you in Las Vegas for NCDM 2009, which promises to be one of the top conferences on tactics and techniques for data-drives sales and marketing.

AMPscript Tip: Links in a Data Extension

Friday, November 20, 2009 by Kristeen Hudson

Have you ever tried to pull a URL from a Data Extension and use it as a link in an email within the ExactTarget email application? If you have you have probably noticed that when your link is clicked it doesn’t work. Here is an example of what I’m taking about:

Note that in this example @link references a value from a Data Extension.

If you have done this then you know that instead of taking you to your URL that is stored in the Data Extension you get directed to a long URL starting with “http://cl.exct.net.”

The good news is there is an easy way to fix these links. There is an AMPscript function called RedirectTo() that must be used when referencing links in a Data Extension. So your new link would look like this:

<a href="%%=RedirectTo(@link)=%%">%%=v(@type)=%%</a>

If you want more information about the RedirectTo AMPscript function or about creating targeted emails using AMPscript there is some good documentation on the Documentation Wiki.

Drip Model Marketing– Is that a leaky faucet or your email marketing software?

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 by Kristeen Hudson

Phrases like “drip campaign”, “automated email drip”, “drip email program”, and “drip email” are thrown around ExactTarget a lot. This is because ExactTarget is in the business of sending email, especially automated email drips. However, everyone may not understand what a drip campaign is. Let me tell you a little bit about the basics of drip marketing.

Drip marketing comes from the phrase drip irrigation, which is where crops are watered in small amounts over a long period of time. This same concept is applied to marketing and is called drip model marketing. Customers or potential customers are given small amounts of information over a long period of time.

The idea behind a drip campaign is that it takes between 3 and 30 impressions of a brand to make it sink in. When creating a drip campaign its important to have a consistent brand with varying messages to help develop the reputation of your company.

Drip emails are the most common type of drip communication, however there are other ways to communicate in a drip campaign. Some other options are - voice messages, SMS messaging, and direct mail.

Drip model marketing is a good way to help avoid always trying to sell a product and a good excuse to provide content that will engage subscribers. Think of this as a great way to nurture your potential clients. Drip marketing can be used for business to consumer or business to business email marketing solutions.

The good news is ExactTarget is one of the best email marketing software providers for creating automated email integration. To learn more about ExactTarget checkout their website.

Excitement in the World of iLab

Monday, November 9, 2009 by Kyle Rechin

With the 135 release on November 6^th, iLab is rolling out new and exciting products and user interface updates. Not only does iLab let you be one of the firsts to adopt these products and features, we allow you to do so for free!!

New to iLab are the user interface updates Save Email as a Template and Streamlined Content Creation Tools. Save Email as a Template allows clients to quickly leverage their polished emails by creating reusable templates. Streamlined Content Creation Tools will simplify the ways in which templates, surveys and emails are created while maintaining the perfect balance between sophistication and ease of use.

We are also very excited to have released Twitter Integration on November 6th. This innovation allows clients to extend the reach of their one-to-one marketing programs to Twitter. With a single send, you will be able to reinforce email messages with a coordinating Twitter status or execute a Twitter campaign alongside an email program. The Twitter integration is the next messaging channel in ExactTarget’s expanding capabilities across email, mobile, social and sites. We are now recruiting current ExactTarget clients to help us test the all-new Twitter Integration, but do not delay because spots will be filled by November 11th.

Check out iLab today in ExactTarget’s 3Sixty to take advantage of all these new features, or search iLab to adopt other new innovations. Also make sure to join the iLab group on 3Sixty to get real time updates on what’s coming next.

Real Email Threat #2: The Specter of “Inbox Clutter”

Monday, November 2, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

There is a lot of talk about the sheer volume of email consumers receive. According to Forrester, 60% of consumers believe they receive too many email offers and promotions (Forrester, December 2008). Thus, it should also be no surprise Forrester also found 64% of consumers say they delete most email advertising without reading it and for them to conclude that consumers find marketing emails a burden.

According to MarketingSherpa, 32% of marketers see general inbox clutter as the biggest challenge to their success in email marketing (MarketingSherpa, Email Marketing Benchmark Survey, September 2008). In Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power, Forrester found that 90% of marketers who believe email will be less effective in 2 years believe the reason for this decline is “too much clutter in consumer inboxes,” while 59% believe “SPAM” will drive this decline.

Yes, inbox clutter is impacting the industry-wide success of email marketing. In fact, at the beginning of this year I the following prediction in our 2009 Marketing Almanac: “On average, we expect open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates will decline in 2009 as subscribers’ inboxes are flooded with bad email from marketers trying to stay afloat.”

The latest DMA figures suggesting that the ROI from email marketing slipped again this year, down 3% from last year to $43,62, support this prediction. However, recently release open rate benchmarks from Epsilon suggest my prediction was wrong. They say open rates have increased slightly in each of the past 4 quarters. From Q2 2008 to Q2 2009 they report an increase from 18.8% to 22.2%. That’s an increase of 18%!

Okay, so the DMA says ROI is down 3% and Epsilon says open rates are up 18% over the past year. At the end of the day, all this suggests is that even if inbox clutter is having a negative impact, it isn’t having much of one on individual marketers.

Consider the following information presented by MarketingSherpa. 31% of consumers indicate that one of the reasons they unsubscribe or disengage from emails is related to inbox clutter. However, this is the third most common reason identified in this survey. The relevance and frequency of YOUR emails are much more important.

Thus, I call this threat the specter of ‘inbox clutter’. It's simply another myth that your emails are being crowded out by junk. Unless you plan on running an average or below average email program, none of this matters for you! If your program delivers value, your program will continue to thrive. The problem is not “out there” as the specter of inbox clutter suggests. More and more, the challenge is to create an above average program.

Real Email Threats #1 – It's Too Easy and Too Cheap

Thursday, October 29, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

Last week I addressed several misperceptions about the future of email and provided a list of recent statistics showing that the future of email looks bright. I also mentioned that there are real threats to the future of email.

I had the honor of moderating a panel at Connections titled “Research Survey Says!” On the panel were three of the smartest folks one could have the pleasure of working with: Julie Katz from Forrester, Rebecca Lieb from eConsultancy, and Stefan Tornquist from MarketingSherpa. With the assignment of presenting “relevant research” and a stacked deck of panelists, my job was simply not to mess it up. My strategy? Leave the topic really loose. I asked two simply questions, “What are the perceived threats to email?” and “What are the real threats to email?”

To my surprise, there was nearly unanimous consensus about the real challenges facing email. In summary, email is so easy and so cheap that even when used ineffectively, it still gets results. And that is a big, big problem since it makes it easy to send bad email.

According to research shared by Stefan Tornquist, email programs that do not follow best practices (e.g., batch-and-blast) are becoming less and less effective. In fact, these programs were half as effective in 2008 as they were in 2002. In contrast, programs that do follow best practices (e.g., segmentation, personalization) are slightly more effective today than they were five years ago.

While email experts have been talking about relevance for a long time, I have not seen it presented in a way that makes it this clear. It is not enough to send email. It is imperative for marketers to deliver authentic value to subscribers--and that is not easy!

This point is further supported by consumer-oriented research:

58% of consumers say the primary reason they unsubscribed or simply stopped reading emails from businesses is because “emails were not relevant to me,” followed by 44% who said they “Received too many emails from the sender” (MarketingSherpa, Consumer Media Survey, Sept 2008)
54% say most of the email ads they receive don’t offer them anything of interest (Forrester, “Winning Email Subscribers in a Down Economy” Dec 2008)

Earlier this year, I asked a professional triathelete to coach me in preparation for a half-marathon (we'll see how that goes before I sign up for a full marathon). In that time I have learned that while nearly everyone can run, the majority of people do not run well. I find myself cringing at the sight of people clodding around my neighborhood and placing unnecessary stress on their feet and knees. Only six months ago, that was me.

Email marketing is similar. Since nearly everyone who tries it sees some degree of success, many mistakenly believe they have it figured out. "Why bother with all that stuff the 'experts' preach?" Because if you don't listen and apply what they say, your glory days are behind you. Your email program will grow less and less effective. It's all downhill from here.

This does not need to be the case. The success of your program is in your control. Commit your program to constant and never-ending improvement. Keep learning. Keep modifying. Keep delivering content your subscribers find valuable (not what you think is valuable). Do this and the value derived from your email program will continue to grow.

Time for your Halloween email...I mean Holiday Email Program

Monday, October 26, 2009 by Shelly Griffin

I don't know about you, but I like to enjoy each holiday on its own and in order. Especially in the Fall when the three big holidays come hurtling at you back to back from the dark days of Fall: Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don't put out Halloween decorations until October, I don't buy a turkey until November and I don't really start planning for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. I definitely do not shop for Christmas presents in July! Who really does that anyway?

Unfortunately in the world of email marketing, you need to start planning your holiday email program now - today - Yesterday! You need to ensure that your emails are planned, designed, tested, scheduled and ready for delivery. The holiday season is when the inbox gets the most congested and without advance planning, your emails may be lost in the crowd. In addition to driving for results, you want to ensure that you are not one of those marketers that over do it - sending a different offer everyday. After just a few of these emails, your subscribers will start ignoring (and deleting) your emails. Chip House spoke to this very subject in a blog post from last year "High Holiday Frequency Drives the Ignore Rate to New Heights".

You also don't want to be one of those marketers that make no significant change or improvement in your email campaign. Those emails seem uninspiring at a time of year when you should be grabbing the attention of your subscribers. Make sure to check out our design tips and tricks at Email Marketing Design blog. Then on top of everything else, there are deliverability challenges at the holidays.

Where will your email program land?

Design Tip of the Week: Links & Text Decoration

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 by Chris Studabaker

Blue, underlined text = link. It's an internet gold standard. More than that, linking is the fundamental component of hypertext. Over time, web and email users have learned that any underlined text usually means a link, and we've learned to expect other visual clues indicating a link, too. Using text in a navigation bar, changing text color, or highlighting text on mouse hover, for example, can all be used to imply that text is linked to a page or action. When it comes to underlining links (or not) in your email program, the style should match your brand guidelines - or at least mirror the styles used in your website.

Email clients are typically going to underline links by default. You can remove the underline, but to do so you'll need to apply the following inline style to each link (<a> tag) in your code:

<a href="http://blog.exacttarget.com/blog/the-exacttarget-blog" style="text-decoration: none; color: #e39312;">The ExactTarget Blog</a>

However, even if you want links to be underlined it's important to explicitly state the text decoration to achieve consistent results. A few email clients (such as Hotmail) don't underline links unless you specify this value. To force link underlining in all email clients, use the following inline style on each link:

<a href="http://blog.exacttarget.com/blog/the-exacttarget-blog" style="text-decoration: underline; color: #e39312;">The ExactTarget Blog</a>

Underlined or not, assigning a text-decoration style to your links goes back to the basics of your online branding and helps subscribers immediately identify the linked calls-to-action in your emails.

How Can I Link ExactTarget with My Web Analytics Provider?

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 by Dawn DeVirgilio

When looking for ways to drive successful email campaigns, clients often ask us, “What are the ways ExtactTarget can integrate with my web analytics provider?”

They’re in luck! By leveraging existing technology, ExactTarget is able to offer customized integrations through partnerships with leading analytics vendors.

Thanks to these partnerships, there are three ways for ExactTarget to integrate with your web analytics provider:

Web Analytics Connector
The Web Analytics Connector allows you to send information to your web analytics tool through links in the ExactTarget email application. If you are currently using a web analytics system, your web analytics tool stores the URL used to call individual pages whenever your website is displayed in a browser. To connect this data with ExactTarget, you can include attributes in the target URL of the links in your emails. For example, if you included a campaign ID in the target URL of your links, you could identify the web traffic generated by that campaign.

Exporting Tracking Data
A second way to integrate is by exporting tracking data from ExactTarget into your web analytics package. By extracting email tracking data - such as opens, clicks and bounces - and pushing the data back to your analytics package, you capture a 360-degree snapshot of email performance. Both link performance and overall email performance data can be extracted from ExactTarget. These extractions allow you to assess the impact of email campaigns with online activity, where you can facilitate data exchange to consolidate reporting.

Automating a Behavior Marketing Campaign
Segmenting messages based on email and web analytics data is possible through our third form of integration. ExactTarget has the capability to automate a behavior marketing campaign for you, which begins with importing web behavior data into the ExactTarget application. (Typically, the data you will be importing will relate to products viewed, products purchased and cart abandonment information.) This data can be queried to allow deeper segmentation, thereby allowing you to create more personalized and targeted email. By automating the daily feeds of individual web data to trigger emails, you ensure timely, relevant emails to your subscribers.

For more information on how you can integrate ExactTarget with your web analytics provider, contact us via email at info@exacttarget.com or at 1.866.558.9834.

Till next time,
Patty Rayl

Design Tip of the Week: Don’t miss out on Connections '09

Thursday, September 10, 2009 by Tana Babcock

Time is closing in for the Connections 2009 registration – it’s a little over a month away! If you haven’t registered yet, you should, as this is the largest one-to-one marketing conference in the world. With this year’s theme being “Success By Design” it’s no wonder the Design Solutions team will be fully involved. Several email design experts will be available for quick email critiques and questions regarding your email program. Stop by our booth in the Expo Hall, say hello, find out our exciting news and pick up some Design Solutions schwag too!

Still want more from the design team? Take a closer look at this intense breakout session agenda bringing you insight from some of the sharpest marketers in the industry! Let me just point out a few places you’re likely to run into a designer…

On Wednesday October 14th, join two of our top designers for the Designed By Success panel (noted in the Content Track) as they discuss the current landscape of email creative.

Better still, check out the Email + Video: Take 2 panel (noted in the Optimization Track) for a solid perspective on how video can work for your program, tips on usage, and other insights.

FINALLY, please make sure that you check out Extreme Makeover: The Email Design Competition! Thursday morning starts off with a bang with a design face-off between Mighty Interactive, Smith-Harmon, and yours truly, ExactTarget. Two months have been devoted to building the best email designs for MarketingExperiments, AAA, and Pier 1. The results of the competition, based on actual success metrics, will be revealed for the first time in this session. Be sure to join us for the unveiling and get your chance to vote for which email design you like best.

Check out our Flickr account for a great visual representation of the fun we had last year. And don’t forget to check out this star-studded list of events for further entertainment!

Time for some Email Marketing Homework

Friday, August 28, 2009 by Shelly Griffin

Back to School brings back many wonderful memories...crisp autumn air, new clothes, and football. It also brings back memories of homework. Homework methodology varies from student to student. There are the procrastinators that wait until the very last second to complete their homework. Many live by the "all-nighter" rule whether prepping for exams or writing a thesis on "Great Expectations". Then there are those that are completely organized. They have their #2 pencil and pink pearl eraser ready to tackle each and every assignment in precise order - starting at the top of the list of subjects with Physics or Calculus.

For many, email marketing programs seem to follow similar methodologies. There are those that come in to work realizing that they forgot to schedule their email for that day. They scramble to get the content written and the audience prepped. There is no time for testing. As long as the email has been sent on time, the job is done. Homework handed in on time! If a teacher were grading, we would see tons of red pen marks all over this paper - noting every error along the way. Grade for this program? Probably a C.

There are those that prep to the Nth degree following each and every step as declared by industry experts as the "have-to-do's" for a successful email campaign: sending to test lists, analyzing each response, modifying content and re-testing, ensuring proper optimization in each and every email client, and so on and so forth. They are so prepared that they have a hard time actually hitting the send button for the actual email campaign. The grade for this program might be an A for effort, but an F for execution.

My recommendation - make sure your email marketing program is somewhere in between. Don't wait until the last minute but don't prepare so much that nothing gets done. Your homework assignment for this week is to take a few minutes and grade your own email program.

PS - Connections 09 is the perfect study group!

Email Design Tip of the Week: A Designer’s Take on “Presenting Data and Information”, a Seminar by Edward Tufte

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 by Andrea Smith

Several of my colleagues and the Design Solutions team had the opportunity to attend a fantastic seminar in Indianapolis this week given by Edward Tufte. Without diving into the full breadth of his rich background and teachings, Edward Tufte is an influential writer, analytical designer, and landscape sculpture artist. Through his work, he has provided amazing thought leadership into how to effectively display information and content.

This fresh insight begs the question, how can we create better, more effective presentations based on Tufte’s strategy for success? Or in an email marketer’s case, how can we create better emails? Here is what we gleaned:

1. Better Content

If what you have needs improvement or is not working, simply get better content. Make useful comparisons and show them. It’s vastly important to have solid evidence and content before you can begin to develop a great email program.
All presentations (or email programs) stand or fall based on the quality and integrity of the content presented.

2. Effective Presentation

Be as effective as possible in a given space and respect the unique landscape of email. Don’t cloud what you have to say – keep it simple.
Look to your audience for cues. Feel free to teach them or present new information, but respect their time and interests.

3. Redesign

If your communications are cluttered or confusing, redesign them!

As always, check out "Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials" for more design tips and recommendations.

Test ExactTarget’s New Innovations

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 by Jeff Cunning

3sixty iLab is the perfect place to enhance your one-to-one marketing efforts. We release our newest ExactTarget features to iLab first where clients can access them in exchange for providing us with valuable feedback. iLab is located in ExactTarget’s 3Sixty user community—clients can log on to iLab to view current, former, and future innovations and sign up to have available features automatically enabled. During the test process, clients will also be able to complete a short survey and phone interview to help influence future product enhancements.

Customers are taking advantage of our newest innovations in order to stay on the cutting edge of our application. Take it from ExactTarget Partner, Mighty Interactive. "We love being able to offer our clients new functionality that’s only available in ExactTarget's iLab. Because we're offering new opportunities not yet generally available, it gives us an opportunity to inject new life into their email program. The best part? It's simple — just sign up through 3sixty to get started!" David Hibbs, Customer Lifecycle Manager at Mighty Interactive.

A couple examples of recent innovations are Live Images and Simplified Landing Pages. Live Images allow you to change image content in emails after they’re already sent. Simplified Landing Pages offers the ability to create a Landing Page in just minutes by boiling the process down to a few simple steps.

New innovations will continue to arrive and become available to any user—although spaces are limited and offered on a first come, first serve basis. Log on to iLab today or join the iLab Group in 3sixty to stay up-to-date with the latest and greatest features!

The Invention Known as Email: Today (2009) and Yesterday (1971)

Friday, August 14, 2009 by Kyle Schroeder

So, I am no history expert, but I am interested in the history of the communication source I use all the time: Email.

A quick browse across the internet has led me to the year 1971.

“In 1971, Ray Tomlinson developed the first ARPANET email application…he chose the "commercial at" symbol to combine the user and host names, providing the naturally meaningful notation "user@host" that is the standard for email…”

1971 was 16 years before I was born.

What happened in 1971?

· End of the Gold Standard for American Currency

· Bangladesh is created

· Disney World Opens

· Voting Age Lowered To 18

· Debut of Southwest Airlines

· A new stock market index called the NASDAQ

I guess email should be added to the list.

We have been seeing email out there for a long time now. Granted, it has changed a little bit since day 1.

Today, ExactTarget has a powerful, industry-leading, one-to-one email marketing application that allows companies to build specific, relevant, and professional-looking emails for their customers—those who have opted in.

Kyle Schroeder

Slingshot Summer Intern

The ExactTarget Blog

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