Direct Email 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.

Real Email Threat #3: Lax Permission

Tuesday, November 3, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

The issue of permission presents one of the greatest threats to the future of email marketing. According to data shared by Julie Katz at Connections ’09, consumers want greater control over email. They want control over SPAM, they want to be able to unsubscribe from email more easily, and they want greater control over the frequency of commercial email coming to their inboxes.

In both 2008 and 2009 we asked consumers to indicate how acceptable it was for them to be contacted via email for “Promotional messages (i.e., sale, special offers) from companies whom you regularly conduct business, but have not specifically asked for ongoing information.” As we outlined in the 2009 Channel Preference Study, consumers’ attitude toward non-permission communications from known companies is souring quickly. In 2009, 50% of consumers considered these messages with unacceptable, nearly doubled from 26% in 2008. The belief that marketers can send email to their customers based on a ‘prior existing relationship’—the premise for email appends—is dead. Customers don’t want the practice to continue.

Nevertheless, the industry continues to allow embarrassing practices like email appending and list rental. Not surprisingly, the only people that fully endorse these practices are those that profit directly from them. The rest of us squirm and manage to squeak out the words, “It can work, if you do it right.” However, few believe that it ever will be done right on a consistent basis. After all, we've been writing about this for quite a while.

There are three interrelated reasons for this. First, as I mentioned in my first post in this series, email is too easy and too cheap. It’s simply easier to do email appends and list rental incorrectly, using an opt-out model that has no regard for permission. The numbers are more impressive--and let's face it, big lists still sound better than little ones. Second, pricing models are still based on match rates and list sizes. These models favor sending to the masses, which in turn favor the opt-out model. Third, since there are still enough suckers out there who will pay to do it incorrectly, email append and list rental vendors have no incentive to change their revenue model. Given that opt-in revenue models are likely to be less lucrative, it won't change until the issue is forced.

But it may already be too late for email append and list rental companies.

While the industry has failed to police itself, two entities with the ability to make real changes have lined up with consumers. First, ISPs continue to serve the best interests of their customers by increasingly relying on reputation systems that include engagement measures such as opens and clicks to determine if messages should be routed to the spam folder (see What’s in store at the ISPs 2009-2010 from Pivotal Veracity). Second, Canadian Parliament continues to push forward Canadian Electronic Commerce Protection Bill C-27 which mandates an opt-in standard.

Comparatively, US CAN-SPAM laws are notoriously weak, making the joke that US CAN-SPAM laws say, “yes, you can spam consumers so long as they can opt-out.” Unfortunately, Unfortunately, many companies use this law to condone their continued distribution of non-permission email. In short, the US Law falls short of meeting customer expectations—again more than half of consumers believe non-permission email is unacceptable, even when it's from a known company. This doesn’t support an opt-out standard. I interpret this as, “there is no excuse for sending email without the express consent of consumers. Period.”

Interestingly, in the same comparison of opt-in promotions from 2008 to 2009, there was no change. Consumers believe permission-based email is highly acceptable. In fact, given the choice, 75% of US consumers (see the 2009 Channel Preferences Study) and 74% of UK consumers (see Strategy Meets Customer Expectations) prefer to receive permission based promotional messages through email.

It’s simply that we need to draw a hard and fast line. Opt-in permission should be the only standard by which we live. Not supporting efforts to eliminate questionable practices in our industry reflects poorly on the industry as a whole. After all, as Matt Blumberg, CEO of ReturnPath, recently wrote, “What's good for consumers is great for direct marketers. Marketing is not what it used to be, the lines between good and bad actors have been blurred, and the consumer is now in charge.” Amen!

It's time we completely honor consumers' preference for an opt-in standard. We can no longer afford to lend any support, even passively through silence, those who don't.

Are Your Subscriber's Fan's For Life?

Monday, November 2, 2009 by Lindsay Niemiec

On my drive back from Chicago last week, I noticed a large billboard towering over the interstate. Of course, many billboards crowd every interstate, but this one was different. The advertisement for the Chicago Bears, read “if you’re not a fan, you’re a tourist”. What grabbed my attention was not only to how clever I though the ad was, but how applicable it is to the ExactTarget’s Subscribers Rule! philosophy. Everyone wants to be a part of something special, and marketers want their customers to feel as if they are special too. It starts with delivering 1 to 1 direct marketing of which subscribers are a fan.

Does your marketing program address what your subscribers want? Or do you blast out the latest news and hope for click-throughs? Do you dynamically target the content of your emails to your subscriber's preferences? Or do you batch and blast the same email to everyone, hoping they find it relevant? As the NFL season continues and the holiday season kicks off, the relevance of your email campaign programs could be the key component in making your subscribers true fans.

If you make your subscriber a fan, then much like a Bears fan, they're in it for life. If not, then they're just a tourist on your list for now waiting for the next best thing.

Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Outlook 2007

Thursday, October 22, 2009 by Andrea Smith

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.

Real vs. Perceived Threats to Email: Part 1 - Addressing Misperceptions

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

The now infamous Wall Street Journal article announcing the death of email sparked a fire in the bellies of email marketers and social media gurus alike. The overwhelming response is that social media is not posing a significant threat to email. To date, all the signs seem to indicate that these two channels will continue to evolve together.

True, there are dissenting voices. However, I have found none that are backed by credible statistical data. Since there is no statistical validity in personal anecdotes, I don’t care (except for the value they provide in forming hypotheses to be tested in future research). I care about what well-founded research tells us about the world at large.

Here is a list of the data sources I have located that reveal the truth about the current state of email use and email marketing:

Pew Internet & American Life: Online Activities Trends

79% of Americans use the Internet
90% of online Americans use email, making it the most popular online activity
57% of Americans check email daily

MarketingSherpa

78% of users email friends a link to information they wish to share with friends over the internet.
22% share through social media
MarketingSherpa’s research directly contradicts research released earlier this year from AddToAny, which suggested people share information twice as often through Facebook as they do through email. However, there were serious issues with the AddToAny research.

USC Annenberg Digital Future Report

How Many Americans Are Using E-mail? -- Almost everyone who goes online uses e-mail (97 percent of all Internet users).
Regular Contact by E-mail -- E-mail users maintain weekly personal e-mail contact with an average of seven people in the current study, down from the peak of nine in 2006. Forty-nine percent of e-mail users said they maintain personal contact by e-mail on a weekly basis with five or more people.

Participatory Marketing Network

Email (26 percent) and text messaging (26 percent) are the activities least likely to be "given up for a week," followed by TV (15 percent), talking on phone (11 percent), visiting social networks (nine percent), reading magazines (seven percent) and visiting non social network sites (six percent).

Pontifelx / Harris Interactive Survey

96% of online adults who have actually taken the step of providing brands personal information have shared their email addresses with marketers
12% of online adults have been willing to share information like their Facebook user name or their Twitter handle with a brand in exchange for information or promotional offers

SmartBreif on Social Media

While not nationally representative, this poll is interesting in that is suggests even social media professionals are not significantly curtailing their use of email.

59% of SmartBreif on Social Media readers (likely to have a heavy disposition toward social media use) report their use of email has stayed about the same despite the growth of social networks.
28% are using slightly less often
11% are using more often
2% of these readers rarely use email

ExactTarget – Is Email Marketing Endangered?

We asked a question similar to the SmartBreif poll, however, the question excludes marketers—so it is a better representation of the population at large.

Net 25% of online consumers report using social networks more often over the past 6 months (42% using more often, 17% using less often)
Net 23% of online consumers report using email more often over the past 6 months (29% using more often, 6% using less often)
Net 21% of online consumers report using text messaging more often over the past 6 months (38% using more often, 17% using less often)
71% of smartphone owners report sending more PERSONAL email on their smartphones than BUSINESS related email—it’s not all business.

ExactTarget – 2009 Channel Preferences Study

57% of online consumers use email most often to send written messages to their friends, over text messaging (24%) and social networks (10%)
75% of online consumers prefer to receive permission-based promotional messages through email—up 3.6% from 2008—followed by 17% who prefer direct mail promotions and 4% who prefer text promotions.
More than half of online consumers have made a purchase as the direct result of and email message they received, more than any other online communication channel.

Forrester Consulting – Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power

34% of marketers believe email will become more effective over the next two years, 19% believe it will be less effective
Asked why marketers believe email will be more effective:
- 74% believe their email communications are getting more relevant
- 58% see email as an integral part of their multichannel activities
- 44% believe customers prefer email as a marketing channel

That is not to say there are not threats to the future success of email. Stay tuned for part two where I share insights from a panel I moderated at Connections last week where Julie Katz from Forrester, Rebecca Lieb from eConsultancy, and Stefan Tornquist from MarketingSherpa were asked to share their takes on the real versus perceived threats to email marketing.

Live Blog: Financial Services Solution Showcase

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross

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.

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.

Paperless statements can create issues. For example, what if customers call in saying that they never received their statement. Customer service needs to be able to access tracking to see whether the subscriber ever opened the email and have other strategies to deal with these complaints. Customer service needs to be able to resend statements.

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 :)

Live Blog: ExactTarget's API Vision and Roadmap - Past, Present, and Future

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross

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:

2002 - XML API was introduced
2004 - Bulk asynch API was introduced
2007 - Object Oriented Web Service API
2008 - Asynchronous web service API

Michael asked how many people were using the asynch WS API, but no one was, which inspired him to go into the benefits of the asynchronous model. It takes advantage of our multiple data centers to make sure that API calls are processed, allows you to indicate the order of API calls, and prevents accidental re-processing of the same calls.

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

Currently, ExactTarget is processing 58 calls per second (150,000,000 API calls per month), including 28 triggered sends per second. The capacity and processing power of the ExactTarget infrastructure is truly difficult to conceive. It's like trying to understand how big the moon is or something.

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

API
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)

Landing Pages
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

AMPscript
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

UI Extensibility
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.

Programs
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!

Live Blog: Automation Event Triggered Sends Using SOAP API

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross

The developer track continues with Automation Event Triggered Sends Using SOAP API.

Between sessions, the intrepid staff of the Westin brought in several more chairs, effectively ensuring that no one will be sitting on the floor this time. There wouldn't be room, even if they wanted to.

Ana Ng plays over the PA system while we wait for the session to start, and with a minute to go it switches to Particle Man as the room fills up. You can tell that we're gearing up for the They Might be Giants concert tonight, after the Second City performance. Indeed, I'm already wearing my wristband :)

Automation Event Triggered Sends Using SOAP API
ExactTarget Product Specialist Manager and general super brain, Dale McCrory beings the presentation by asking how many people in the crowd have used triggered sends before. This feature is one of the most powerfully compelling and commonly implemented functionalities available in the SOAP API. Triggered emails are perfect for things like password reminders, order confirmations, and welcome emails. You can also use them together with Web Collect forms, Reply Mail Management, and other parts of the ExactTarget system that automatically send response emails to subscribers.

He continues by talking about send classifications: marketing and transactional, and the differences between then. Basically, marketing messages are subject to CAN-SPAM regulation, while transactional messages are not, since they're might actually be required to be sent to subscribers, such as receipts.

Dale puts some code up on the screen to show the anatomy of a triggered send call. He talks about how the template, content, and all the look-and-feel stuff about the email are created within the application and are controllable by marketers. The API then references the triggered send definition using the external key and doesn't have to bother with actually creating the content of the email using the API.

Next, Dale moved in to the difference between synchronous and asynchronous API. A synchronous API call goes to the server, which responds. If the server is unavailable, there's no response, and it's on the ExactTarget customer's shoulders to retry. Asynchronous calls, on the other hand, are queued up, so even if they can't be processed right away, they will get processed when the server is available. He recommends that people starting new triggered send initiatives use asynchronous API, unless development is so constrained that synchronous is all there's time for.

High priority API calls can be processed immediately, even if one of the servers is unavailable, by using our multiple data centers. There are limitations on emails that can be sent this way (they can't contain info from data extensions...stuff like that) and it incurs an additional cost per send.

Dale ran a little short of time, but he'll be presenting again later in the day.

Intuit's Notifications Service Engine: A practical approach to facilitating customer notifications
Next Intuit's Gary Rittinger directed everyone to http://connect.intuit.com to check out the implementation that he'll be talking about.

His purpose is to provide Intuit's infrastructure and offerings the ability to send, monitor, and manage the notifications they send to customers in a consistent and reliable way. To do this, Gary uses triggered sends to send welcome emails, order confirmation, shipping conversation, and other transactional messages.

Intuit finds that it's difficult to get consistent programming from across its organization, so it uses "application adapters" to normalize the input. They're using ExactTarget accounts to let each product manager get in and see the status of email sends.

As a result of implementing ExactTarget, Intuit enjoys:

Better transparency into notifications deliverability.
Reduced cost and increased efficiency of customer notifications.
Improved enterprise SOA adoption through standard web service technologies.
Fewer of redundant apps that served the same purpose.
Improve governance and compliance.

Gary recounted the ease and smoothness of putting this process in place. He commented that they've recently been moved from the Indy data center to the Las Vegas data center--one of the first customer to be live sending out of that data center--and the move took only 90 seconds. He also said that rolling out the process took only a couple weeks.

During the Q&A, Bryan Wade (the emcee) is talking up the documentation wiki and the API content that's available on it. This is a topic near and dear to my heart <3

Success in Honoring Subscriber Requests

Monday, October 12, 2009 by Amanda Cross

Industries have their seminal moments that affect the direction of their development from that point forward. I see one of those happening right now in email marketing: the dialog between marketer and customer about what the customer wants to receive.

Powell's Books is among the pack leaders and is reaping the benefits, as this story on InternetRetailer.com describes:

Powell’s Books has been sending shoppers e-mail newsletters recommending books on subjects the recipients told the retailer they enjoyed. The e-mails were opened 70% more than generic marketing e-mails sent by Powell’s.

The campaign, launched in February, allows consumers to choose from 10 e-newsletters on various topics, such as romance or literature, and then sends the applicable newsletter via e-mail. “The Subject newsletters are proof positive that the more focused the content, the more likely customers are to interact,” says San Whitmore, online marketing developer.

Marketing email content driven off subscriber information has been and continues to be a powerful mechanism to get personalized content into the subscriber inbox, but when it's feasible and appropriate, asking the consumer directly is even better.

The Success of Behavioral Targeting: Earning Consumer Trust

Friday, October 9, 2009 by Caitilin Landrigan

A recent study performed by the Annenberg School for Communication, University of California Berkeley School of Law, and the Annenberg Public Policy Center reports that Americans believe marketers should not advertise to them based on preferences and behavioral data…But why? In a marketplace of abundant information and almost innumerable and varied products, why don’t consumers desire some assistance to narrow down their selection? Why don’t people appreciate that marketers want to provide them with relevant advertising? If I am going to see advertisements on a website…and there is no question that I will…I would much rather see advertisements that pertain to my interests. Wouldn’t you?

The Annenberg/Berkeley study reports that 66% of Americans do not want to see website ads that are tailored to their interests. This sounds discouraging, but I believe the information provided by this study offers valuable insight for marketers seeking to capitalize on relevant, 1 to 1 marketing efforts. This study’s stats highlight consumers’ desire for control and trust—observations that can inform behavioral web and email marketing strategy.

Advertising preference is not the only metric this study provides, as eMarketer’s article “Behavioral Targeting Misses Mark” points-out. There are several other, seemingly contradictory metrics this study reports that can help us solve this puzzle. For example, close to 50% of Americans would like websites to give them discounts specific to their interests. Hmmm…So you don’t want to see the ads, but you do want the coupons presented in those ads? Puzzling…let’s dig deeper.

eMarketer highlights another Annenberg/Berkeley metric: 67% of all Americans feel that they have “lost control over how their personal information is collected and used by companies,” and at the same time 54% of Americans believe that “existing laws and organizational practices provide a reasonable level of protection for consumer privacy.”

This issue is one of trust, not necessarily the failure of behavioral marketing. Consumers like discounts, but people feel as if they have lost control over their personal information, and no one likes to feel like they have lost control. As a Catapult at ExactTarget, I spent two days in Chicago with fellow Catapults, interviewing people on their marketing preferences. Overwhelmingly, people expressed that they felt their personal information was abused by spammers and companies they had no relationship with. Yes, there are “reasonable” laws regarding consumer privacy, but consumers ask, “Why do I get so much spam?!” “How did they get my email address? My phone number?”

When asked how they felt about tracking on “websites in general,” people stated that they felt behavioral tracking was creepy and “Big Brother-like.” On the flipside, when given a concrete example, like Amazon.com’s personalized product recommendations that appear when browsing the website, interviewees’ tone changed: “Yes, I find that helpful, but they don’t send me a million emails after I buy something and pester me all the time. And, I have a relationship with them.”

Lesson learned: people want to feel safe, respected, and protected. Amazon.com is not scary, because they have a trustworthy reputation. As marketers, we cannot neglect that relationships are the foundation for business. Leverage your landing pages, emails, voicemails, and SMS organically to build trust with clients, at point of sale, for example. In your emails, provide a reminder of how clients signed-up. Provide a link in your emails to a page on your website that explains how you use subscriber information. Perhaps you should only advertise on trusted websites. Finally, don’t be abusive: be cognizant of email frequency and content.

I encourage you to check out our whitepapers on building quality lists direct marketing channel preferences. Use our List Growth Advisor for custom recommendations on how to responsibly grow your subscriber lists so that you can leverage subscriber data respectfully and effectively. Behavioral tracking does not have to "miss the mark."

Indy Integrated

Wednesday, October 7, 2009 by Scott Dorsey

It’s never been clearer that the technology industry is thriving in the Hoosier state! Last week I had the opportunity to participate in Indianapolis’ annual Tech Point Innovation Summit and was elated to see the great high-tech Indiana companies ~~all~~ coming together to learn, grow and thrive as a collective team.

ExactTarget is proud to call Indiana home and partner with our fellow Indiana tech companies like Vontoo, Cantaloupe and Compendium to extend our world-class communications technology to their platforms via the ExactTarget Extensions Network. The great news is our list of Hoosier integrated partners continues to grow. Indianapolis-based FormSpring is now Extensions Network certified, making their easy-to-use web collection tools available to all ExactTarget users. The integration of FormSpring provides our clients a great way to add new subscribers and attributes directly to their ExactTarget account.

It’s great to be a part of the Indiana high-tech team and to partner to deliver technologies that are truly making a difference to clients around the globe.

Get Personal: One-to-One Marketing with Personalized Product Recommendations

Friday, October 2, 2009 by Joel Book

An article in the October issue of Internet Retailer, observes that “although the Internet makes it possible to personalize offers to shoppers, most e-retailers and other online businesses are failing to optimize web site content to improve the chances that shoppers will become buyers.”

Mike Chertudi, vice president of demand and online marketing for Omniture notes, “The majority of businesses aren’t optimizing their on-site conversion,” Omniture has teamed with Marketing Experiments to conduct the 2009 Online Conversion Benchmark Survey. The purpose of the survey, which began in June, is to help online marketers better understand best practices in onsite conversion, and know how they compare to their peers. Data is being compiled from more than 1,000 companies, of which more than half are retailers. Among the findings as of late August: About 80% of retailers don’t present personalized content based on shoppers’ interests suggested by analytics and clickstream data.

One-to-One Merchandising Works for Motorcycle Superstore

Proving that personalized product recommendations work, Motorcycle Superstore saw a 21.7% revenue increase in the first week after launching an email campaign on September 21st that incorporated personalized product recommendations.

Motorcycle Superstore uses behavioral data -- gathered with WebTrends technology combined with its e-mail marketing application from ExactTarget -- to send email messages with personalized product recommendations. These items appear as “Your Picks” in the lower part of the email and are based on the customer’s website visiting habits over the previous two weeks.

Commenting on the power of data-driven offer personalization, Erick Barney, vice president of marketing at Motorcycle Superstore, says “I believe this feature is so effective because rather than guessing at a handful of products to appeal to our entire customer base, we can merchandise products directly related to each customer’s historical interaction with our store.” Motorcycle Superstore is No. 223 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.

Learn more about combining precision one-to-one communications and comprehensive web analytics by integrating ExactTarget and Webtrends.

You will never believe who just called... Voice Marketing in the Entertainment Industry

Thursday, August 27, 2009 by Kristeen Hudson

What if your favorite artist called you personally to invite you to their upcoming show? I bet you would be a lot more likely to attend, right?! We know that popular artists are way to busy to call thousands of their fans and personally invite them to their shows. However, using 1-to-1 voice messaging an artist can record one message that can then be sent to hundreds of thousands of subscribers. After the artist is finished with their message the listener can then be directed to the ticket office where they can place an order while they are already on the phone.

Is that still not enough? Well, you can also offer a discount to the first “X” number of people who call to purchase a ticket.

Voice messaging can be easily intergraded into any one to one marketing plan. To learn more about voice marketing check out ExactTarget’s Voice Field Guide.

E-Coupons are HOT! (Even if the economy is not.)

Monday, August 24, 2009 by Joel Book

As reported in last week’s online issue of MEDIAWEEK, “8.6 million (or 8 percent) of U.S. households currently acquire coupons via text messages and/or email.” This finding is from a recent report from Scarborough Research.

The article noted that “a number of factors have contributed to the increasing use of text or e-mail coupons, such as the increased usage of cell phones and other personal communications devices, which allow consumers to access offers at the point of purchase. And because consumers must opt in to receive the coupons, they tend to be more targeted.”

Gordmans’ Birthday E-Coupon is a Winner

Email is the direct marketing workhorse for Gordmans, an Omaha-based retailer of ELP (Everyday Low Price) merchandise. The company, with 65 stores throughout the Midwest, uses e-coupons to “congratulate” its customers on their birthday by sending a bar-coded coupon worth $5 off their next purchase.

Results:
70.5% Open Rate
4.3% Conversion Rate (of delivered)
6.0% Conversion Rate (of opened)

Most importantly, the average sales receipt for customers redeeming the “Happy Birthday” coupon is 33% higher than average!

Looking for Retail Marketing Horsepower?

In today’s highly competitive retail environment, it’s more important than ever to employ a multichannel marketing program that includes digital one-to-one communications—and gives customers exactly what they want, when they want it.

Whether it’s implementing Personalized E-coupon Solutions, POS Customer Data Capture for Triggered Email Promotions, or using SMS to capture new email subscribers, ExactTarget can help.

Partner Network Builds Strategic Email Marketing Relationships

Thursday, August 20, 2009 by Kyle Schroeder

ExactTarget has a highly-talented team of people working with one objective in mind: developing strategic partnerships with referral, consulting, embedded, integrated, and reseller partners.

Why?

These partnership strengthen the abilities of the companies we work with and allow more people to utilize the power of ExactTarget’s one-to-one marketing software through email, SMS, and voice. ExactTarget is the perfect email marketing solution for many businesses looking to send direct email marketing campaigns.

Our partner page lists who we are currently aligned with and our program guide gives you detailed description of what it means to be a partner with ExactTarget, an industry leader in 1 to 1 Email Marketing Solutions that can develop effective email marketing campaigns across industries.

Interested in learning more? Download the ET Partner Program Guide PDF.

Kyle Schroeder
Slingshot Summer Intern

10 Ridiculously Cool Ways to Sell More on Your E-Commerce Site Using Email

Monday, August 17, 2009 by Bob Ullery

A show of hands: who isn't already using email in their e-commerce environment?

Even if you raised your hand, chances are you're using at least one form of email communication on your e-commerce site; Payment Confirmation. Most payment processing platforms give the customer a receipt via pdf download, confirmation email, or print option.

The premise of this post is to offer some other ideas on how to use automated email in your e-commerce strategy. I encourage you to browse some of my best email marketing agnostic ideas, like those I covered in 7 Awesome Ways to Wow Your Customers Using Voice on Your e-commerce Site. Those are communications that could easily be sent by email, sms, or voice. They include:

Send-to-a-Friend
Dynamic Couponing (I'll revisit this one)
Shipping Alerts
Product In-Stock Notifications
Subscription Renewal Reminders

O.K. the title of the post says 11 cool ways and I totally just listed 5 of 'em, but I've already covered how to leverage those using voice, and as is the case with multi channel marketing the concepts remain the same - only the vehicle changes. So hang on, let's stick with the payment confirmation email and see if we can't add some spice to it...

6. Payment Confirmation Email
I haven't met a person yet who doesn't expect to be given a payment receipt after a purchase whether online or in-store. In fact, it's one interaction that the customer needs and values. It's not optional, a receipt must be given.

The disadvantage of a paper receipt in-store is that the interaction ends as soon as the clerk slides the boring little ticket across the counter to the customer. Black and white, OCR text with nothing interesting on it at all.

The advantage of an email receipt is that it can be dynamic and leverage real-time data so that you can upsell and cross-sell more product to a customer who has already chosen to buy from you.

I'll go more in-depth on exactly HOW to do this in future blog posts. But in a nut-shell you can pull in the customer's past browsing data from your analytic provider, marry it with the customer's recent purchase data and show them products that relate to the purchased products and/or the categories for which they have shown an interest in. All within ExactTarget.

We have productized integrations with many analytic providers including Omniture, Google Analytics, Coremetrics, WebTrends and others.

Really, you can use cross-sell/upsell & product recommendations in EVERY email you send. Why not? Some of these next ideas you could easily mix and match into any of your sends.

7. Couponing / Live Offers
Did you know that ExactTarget can render 25 different coupon types including Codabar, UPC, EAN and MSI? Well we can.

Did you also know that we can manage your coupon redemption on a global or a per subscriber scale with data provided directly from your payment system? What that means is that we can make it impossible to redeem a coupon more than once if your concerned about sharing, OR, using our social network capabilities help make a single coupon viral.

8. CRM Integration
We have productized CRM integrations with Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM that not only allow you to send to reports generated in the CRM platform but allow you to pull in real-time data from the CRM vendor at time-of-send. That means you can pull in purchase data or account data (past due invoices, CRM campaign data) and show content according based on the subscriber.

These integrations have exposed AMPScript functions that you can use directly in the content of your emails to CRUD your CRM data.

9. Follow Up Email Drip Campaigns
With ExactTarget, you can automatically send an email (with dynamic content, product upsells, coupons, etc) on a set number days AFTER a purchase or notable site event. Some ways to leverage this capability are to ask for product reviews, checkout feedback, or to offer a coupon or promo code to return to the site and buy something else.

10. Abandoned Shopping Cart
Another powerful automated email that your ExactTarget system can send on-the-fly is the time tested abandoned shopping cart email. It goes something like this: 'we noticed that you put the following items in your cart, but didn't checkout. Was there a problem with your checkout experience? Click here to finish your checkout with an additional 10% off all the products that were left in your cart.'

There's More
E-commerce sites are perfect candidates for black-belt database marketing because of the amount of transactional and behavioral data they collect. Do you have any ideas on how e-commerce sites can use email in their marketing strategies? Post them in the comments below or come chat with me at our Connections User Conference this fall.

One to One Marketing is My Kung Fu - and It is Strong (Thanks to Landing Pages)

Friday, August 14, 2009 by Bob Ullery

One to One Marketing Kung Fu with Landing Pages

Hey all. Today I'll be discussing how to strengthen your e-commerce kung-fu by utilizing ExactTarget's Landing Page technology.

As you might have realized from browsing some of the other posts on our blog, targeted email marketing is only part of the story. A question to ponder is: 'Why personalize a customer's email only to send them to a non-personalized web page?'.

There often seems to be a disconnect in the minds of marketers when it comes to the partnership between email and their website. If you harness the power of one to one marketing for email shouldn't your website also present content to the user in a one to one manner? You've taken meticulous care to present precise product offerings in your email (driven by analytic data, purchase data, engagement data, etc), but when a subscriber clicks through they're shown the same content as everyone else. What?

The gap is apparent, but the remedy isn't always so easy. Each site is unique in both hardware and software, and implementing a true one to one strategy with customized content isn't always an option. There could be high development costs or long production runs associated with integrating this strategy into your current site.

But what if there was a middleware that could be skinned to look exactly like your site and could serve customized content as a stand-alone page or be embedded into your existing pages? Obviously there is or I wouldn't be writing about it:

Enter ExactTarget Landing Pages.

Landing pages are an easy way to spin up dynamic behavioral and/or profile driven web pages tailored to the individual. Often these can be spun up by marketers without involving their IT crew, and since they function as middleware you can consider them platform agnostic.

They can leverage the same Dynamic Content and AMPScript driven content areas that you already use in your emails, including those pre-created and stored in the system. You can even drag and drop them into the page when creating it just like when you create your emails in ExactTarget.

There's also a new(er) Smart Capture tool designed specifically for landing pages. With it, you can easily create forms that talk directly to your ExactTarget data, and optionally, your Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Salesforce.com data as well. You can visually create forms that add users to lists, send triggered emails, modify data extensions, and many other tasks. All of the HTML and required AMPScript is generated for you. All you have to do is drag and drop it into your page.

Landing pages can harness ExactTarget Live Content including Live Offers. With Live Offers, you can serve generic or subscriber specific promotional codes AND track the redemption of those codes so that they can/can't be shared or expire after a certain time.

ExactTarget has a productized Google Ad Manager integration that can also be leveraged within landing pages as well. Integrations like this help bridge the gap between your real site and your landing pages. You could show the same ads on your landing pages that you do on your site, simply by dragging them in, while your impression and click tracking stays intact. This integration can even show different ads based on profile attributes. Talk about a value ad to your advertisers! Real targeting!

Landing Pages as Mini-Apps

The beauty behind landing pages is that the entire ExactTarget platform is at your disposal. Think of a landing page as a mini application that can do almost anything that you can manually do in the system. Not only can you customize layout and content on-the-fly based on who the subscriber is, but using AMPScript and data extensions you could:

Create an out-of-stock reminder system
Interact with a user using SMS and/or Voice
Create a CMS application
Create a shopping cart with checkout system
Develop a user commenting system

Use your imagination. Literally, you could build nearly anything that you could on your own server. Data extensions are the databases and AMPScript is the programming language. Programs are the cron jobs that run your interactions.

Flexibility

The true power behind landing pages is that they can stand alone or be embedded via an iframe into your current site. I've even created AMPScript-only landing pages that I'll ping via ajax to do some processing for me and are completely hidden to everyone else. It's a way other than our API to do some really robust tasks and is useful when used client-side.

FYI, I built the ExactTarget Extensions Network entirely on Landing Pages.

Kung Fu
Like I said in the title of this post 'One to One Marketing is My Kung Fu - and It is Strong'. Now your Kung Fu can be strong too by using landing pages to bridge the gap between your emails and website to reach true one to one marketing nirvana.

--------------

Follow me on Twitter: @bobbr

“This is Your Captain Speaking” Voice Marketing Campaigns

Thursday, August 13, 2009 by Kyle Schroeder

ExactTarget has a great tool incorporated into their powerful email marketing software that features voice messaging.

From promotional messages to appointment reminders, emergency notifications to direct marketing campaign follow-ups, Voice has emerged as a powerful addition to your one-to-one communication arsenal.

So as an airline, I might want to create a promotional campaign that pulls in the “pilot of the year”. A message could be recorded from him that encourages all the passengers that flew last year around the holidays to book their flights early. By using the code this message provides, the customer could receive a 15% discount.

The delivery and personalization of this message is unlike a TV commercial or flyer in the mail. It’s a direct message that is targeted toward previous customers.

There are also powerful tracking reports that can be generated with these campaigns. Comprehensive data tracking—including actual call receipt, ideal call times, number and duration of received calls, and call-to-action transfers—are recorded for your analysis.

The Tennis Championships that were held in Indianapolis this summer chose to use ExactTarget to use voice to connect with fans.

Have you considered incorporating the power of voice into your one-to-one marketing campaign?

Kyle Schroeder

Slingshot Summer Intern

Social Media Use on the Rise Among B-to-B Marketers

Friday, August 7, 2009 by Joel Book

A new report being unveiled this week at The B-to-B and ANA Conference in Chicago shows significant increases social media use by B-to-B marketers.

According to an exclusive survey of B-to-B and B-to-C marketing professionals conducted by BtoB Magazine and the Association of National Advertisers, more B-to-B marketers are getting on the social media bus. Here are some highlights:

57% of B-to-B marketers are now using social media channels, compared to just 15% in 2007.
Among newer media tactics for social networking, blogs top the list.
81% of B-to-B marketers are currently using LinkedIn compared to 25% in B-to-C.
Twitter use ranked highest among B-to-B marketers at 70%.
Facebook is still the most used social media site (74%). Among the B-to-B marketers, 60% use Facebook.

How B-to-B Marketers are Leveraging Social Media

Tactically speaking, Social Media Marketing (SMM) is primarily a public relations tool, but it is fast becoming very effective for generating new business leads, either directly or through referral. While Facebook is the dominant social networking site for B-to-C marketers, LinkedIn – as the study revealed – is the preferred watering hole among B-to-B marketers.

Another big way in which marketers are leveraging social media is for email list growth. According to the recent ExactTarget 2009 Email List Growth Study, Social Forwarding is projected to be the most frequently adopted new list growth tactic in 2009. Social Forwarding uses ShareThis to make it easy for email subscribers to share email content directly with friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and many other online communities.

Are you LinkedIn?

If you want to learn how to best leverage the networking and lead generating potential of LinkedIn, my friend and social media expert extraordinaire, Jason Baer, of Convince and Convert, has a great presentation on using LinkedIn to build your reputation and generate leads.

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Indy Integrated

Get Personal: One-to-One Marketing with Personalized Product Recommendations

You will never believe who just called... Voice Marketing in the Entertainment Industry

E-Coupons are HOT! (Even if the economy is not.)

Partner Network Builds Strategic Email Marketing Relationships

10 Ridiculously Cool Ways to Sell More on Your E-Commerce Site Using Email

One to One Marketing is My Kung Fu - and It is Strong (Thanks to Landing Pages)

“This is Your Captain Speaking” Voice Marketing Campaigns

Social Media Use on the Rise Among B-to-B Marketers

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