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:
<a href="%%= v(@link)=%%">%%=v(@type)=%%</a>
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:
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.
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.
With the 135 release on November 6th, 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.
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.
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.
As one of the newest members of the ExactTarget Partner organization, I am tasked with managing and growing relationships with ExactTarget’s Embedded Partners.On its surface, that sounds pretty straightforward.However, for the past several months, I have been trying to better define around what an “Embedded” partner truly is.There are multiple ways to define the topic, depending on who you ask. And, in my experience, most of the answers I have heard are right in some way or another.
However, the official definition is that ExactTarget Embedded Partners are typically ISVs that go to market with messaging as a part of their platform. As an Embedded Partner, your software product's user interface contains features and functionality that enable your customers to manage the process of creating and executing email campaigns (as well as SMS and Voice).This is about the most comprehensive and accurate description I can come up with myself.But, with the growth in popularity of “Cloud Computing”, I believe it is and will be much more than that.
Cloud computing has garnered a lot of media attention in the past year or so as the next big technological breakthrough.But, in my opinion, the concept isn’t really all that new.Companies have always looked for ways to combine technology services in a more commoditized way to drive efficiency and cost savings.Amazon.com has been doing cloud computing within the company for a long time.Essentially, that is the exact same goal for cloud computing.I think the biggest difference with cloud computing is that the concept is getting turned outward to the Internet, hence the “cloud” tagline. As more companies sign on to utilize these services, the less they will be inclined to build internal infrastructure to support corporate applications. Think of the advantages:
*No capex/low capex to get started
*Highly scalable with on-demand allocation of resources
*Reliability of multi-location architectures
So how does messaging fit into the cloud? I see integrated messaging becoming its own service or platform in the cloud.Just like clients are looking to Salesforce.com to quickly and efficiently deploy CRM as a service, why not for marketing and other communications?It even makes more sense when you look at what the future of ISVs might be.More and more we are seeing a drive towards SaaS applications.Do you think it makes sense for a CRM or Print-on-Demand application provider to build their own messaging infrastructure?Probably not for several reasons, the most obvious being, it’s not their core competency.They will continue to be focused on what pays the bills.But, will they be eager to provide a marketing communication platform to their customers….absolutely.These companies will turn to partners that are similar to them…on-demand/SaaS/Cloud Computing…whatever the tagline of the week is.Why, because it provides the same advantages to them as to their clients, mainly low/no capex, highly scalable, and reliable service.This is where ExactTarget Embedded becomes the Messaging as a Service platform for the cloud.
Obviously the push towards SaaS and Cloud Computing is real.As the industry continues to evolve, so will ExactTarget Embedded and our partners.Our robust and flexible integration capabilities will allow ExactTarget to become the industry leader in Messaging as a Service.
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.
Your email marketing messages don't have to be processed right away. Different timing is appropriate for different tasks, and in some cases the ExactTarget application gives you the control to choose how--and when--your system does its work.
Asynchronous An asynchronous process is a process that runs “behind the scenes” while you continue to use the interface to perform other tasks. You receive an email or other alert that the process is complete so that you can view the results.
For example, if you start an asynchronous report, the report runs while you continue working. When the report is done, you receive an email that contains the report results.
Scheduled A scheduled process is a process that runs automatically at the time you designate. You receive an email or other alert that the process is complete so that you can view the results.
For example, if you schedule an email send to begin at 11p.m., the system begins the send at 11p.m. and can send you an email when the process completes to give details on the success of the send.
Real-Time A real‐time process is a process that runs in the foreground of your application. You cannot perform other tasks while the real‐time process is running. When the process is complete, the application presents the results on your screen.
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.
I can hardly believe I work in a multi-national company.
I mean, I've worked in multi-national companies before--my last company had an office in Exeter, England--but I wasn't there when it happened. Back then, it just meant that I had to come into the office early to get one phone calls with them and learn to drop the serial comma when I edited their documents. Now, it means I have actual friends there who will show me around if I ever get a chance to visit.
ExactTarget expanded into England via the acquisition of Keymail Marketing, already an established partner in Europe. Our application already supported multiple character sets for your email and landing pages messages in languages other than English, as well as sending SMS and voice messages to many different countries. But with this move, ExactTarget becomes an even better partner for your multi-national marketing campaigns.
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 :)
We've got a rather thin crowd for the Best Practices for Utilizing ExactTarget's SOAP APIs session. Apparently everyone is already implementing the API in the best possible way...or think they are :)
Manager of the Product Specialist department Dale McCrory returns to the stage for this presentation and starts the session by asking people what topics they would like to see covered today. The first question was on documentation.
YAY! I love when people care about the documentation!
Web Service API Documentation Dale brings up http://wiki.memberlandingpages.com to demonstrate all of the wonderful web service API documentation that's available there. He takes the group through a technical article on asynchronous processing, the CREATE method, an object, and a property. Bryan Wade, the embedded expert at ExactTarget and emcee of the session, asks how many people in the room have been to the wiki before, and about half of the room had already visited. I think the rest will visit before too long.
Content Management The second question is about content management and best practices for it. Dale pulls up the AMPscript page in the documentation wiki to find the HTTPGet() function. This function performs a get call against a URL and brings back the content. This tool can be used to interact with an outside system in include the content in the emails.
AMPscript also support XSLT now, so you can interact with ExactTarget with you XML content. The BuildRowSetFromXML() function extends this capability.
Slide Presentation With the two questions addressed, Bryan prods Dale to get back to the slideshow. The slides cover:
Security
Reliability
Robustness
Flexibility
Messaging content
Stats retrieval - tracking events
Security Standards-based SOAP security to support authentication
All calls transmit over an SSL connection. The API supports two forms of security:
Plain text username token. This is what everyone's using right now.
X509 certificate encryption for the username token will be available in the 135 release.
.NET, Java, and PHP work the best with our security. Perl is OK. Ruby, ColdFusion, and ASP have troubles dealing with it because they don't deal well with the standards-based security.
Reliability In this section, we're talking about synchronous versus asynchronous API processing again. Asynchronous processing adds all calls to a queue to be processed when the system is ready, which prevents API calls from being lost if the server is unavailable for any reason.
Other benefits include:
The fact that you get a sub-second response to the fact that the call has been received.
You have multiple options to receive results: HTTP post, Email, and the RETRIEVE API call.
The ConversationID concept that's used with asynch API processing allows you to resend the same call without worrying that it will actually be processed twice if the system had already queued the request.
Question from the floor: sounds like we need to improve our XML API documentation. That product hasn't been enhanced for quite a while, so the doc has gotten a little stale. There's an item for my to-do list.
Robustness Dale quotes Wikipedia: "Robustness is the quality of being able to withstand stresses, pressures, or changes in procedure or circumstance."
Triggered sends represent the quickest way to get an email sent from the ExactTarget system. Key points help decide whether to use user-initiated (list-based) sends or triggered sends:
How do you want to aggregate tracking? List based sends aggregate tracking by job. Triggered sends aggregate tracking over a time period when the triggered send was running.
How will email content be made available to the ExactTarget system?
How are unsubscribes managed? List based sends record unsubs at the list level, or at the All Subscribers level. If a person unsubscribes from a triggered send, they can be unsubscribed from all triggered sends.
How large are your lists? If you have 1.5 million subscribers, you should start with list based. If you are sending individual messages in response to customer activity, triggered sends are the way to go.
You can keep your subscriber information in lists or data extensions. To help you decide:
Are attribute sets going to be the same for all sends? If so, you can use lists because you set up attributes for all lists together. If you need different attribute sets for different subsets of clients, then you want data extensions.
Is import performance critical? If you have 1.5 million subscribers to import, you can import them into a data extension in 10 minutes versus 1-2 hours for a list (this is an approximation...the number of attributes has a big effect on performance as well).
How will unsubscribes be managed? Each list maintains its own unsubscribes. Data extensions maintain unsubscribes in publication lists.
Bonus point not in the slide: if you are a partner building an application, you probably want to build on lists if possible, because they cost less.
Flexibility This topic starts with a discussion of data extensions. Data extension are
The only way to use the API to do "rich" queries of data
The way you can add relational models of data en masse or row-by-row
Very fast
Tables in our database schema that are specific to your account
The DataExtension WS API object
Allows the use of upsert
Ties to the DataExtension by CustomerKey (called "external key" in the GUI)
Allows specification of Keys and Nulls
There's also a DataExtensionObject that you can retrieve to bring back a row in the data extension.
Messaging Content Email, images, and files, oh my!
Text-only email will be supported with 135, in addition to the HTML and HTML/Text multi-part formats.
The Portfolio object allows you to host files in ExactTarget. Images and files that you import into our system are hosted by Akamai, so when people hit these files, they are highly available and don't use your company's bandwidth.
Using AMPscript, you can attach files to your email, but you should use this feature with caution. There's a page for the documentation that's going to be published very soon that talks about best practices for attachments so that you can protect your deliverability while using this feature.
Stats Retrieval and Tracking Events We ran out of time for the stats retrieval, so we went straight to question and answer, which went by too fast for me to keep up, especially while I"m still on this documentation cloud. :)
10:58 am So excited! The ExactTarget API enables the extension of our software and some incredible functionality.Scott McCorkle is going to be speaking, along with Michael Ciancio-Bunch. They have some incredible insight. I am not technical, so I’ll do my best to convey the information presented here.
11:01 am Bryan Wade is introducing Michael Cianco-Bunch and Scott McCorkle.McCorkle is speaking about our dedication to integration, improving our user experience, and how the API is key with CARBON-check it out online!
11:03 am Michael is on. We are a young company, but our API has a history. XML API (2002) was created originally only for content management. A bulk Asynchronous API was introduced in 2004.Our SOAP API was launched in 2007—this is the foundation for our web services …
11:05 am … and actually, the Asynchronous Web Service API became available in 2008. It seems that not many people are using it right now. Its advantages include quicker calls, better status reporting, and correlating conversation IDs. Start using!
11:07 am First thing we did in 2009 was support compression…coming your way in a release! We’re also beta testing API streaming, which helps with large packets.
11: 09 am Bryan Wade is highlighting current functionality.
11: 10 am Michael is focusing in on streaming sends: we can send as we receive via the API, with triggered sends for example, instead of waiting until a certain number are received before sending.
11:11 am Did you know API calls are up 1.5x from last year? “This amount of use is a testament to the fact that the API is now better. More people are able to use it.”-Michael.
11:13 am What does the future of the API look like? The API is a platform to help customers and partners to integrate.Michael is saying that there are a number of tools that allow us to integrate, extend, and embed ExactTarget.These tools support functions not possible with just the API.Here are a few of the tools: Programs, landing pages, AMPscript … the list goes on.
11:15 am There was a huge “Hoorah!” from someone when Michael announced the introduction of a REST API. File based API and Authenticated Asynchronous API Results Callbacks are on the horizon as well.
11:17 am A user is asking about tracking a file that is sent with new API functionality … You could give the file a conversation or correlation ID so you don’t have to worry about re-using file names.
11:18 am Why is the Authenticated Asynchronous API Results Callback so great? You don’t have to fish for errors with queries! BIG question…what is the timeline for delivering these advancements? … Next year! Be on the lookout!
11:19 am We’re changing topics to landing pages and their use for creating Profile Centers, subscriber capture, and promotion pages. The beauty of landing pages is that they extend the user interface and can be integrated with ET.
11:23 am More on landing pages! You can embed them within your application. Sign-up forms are an example.
11:25 am ExactTarget’s API roadmap … One set of items is pre-built templates “encapsulating some application function (e.g. Send Wizard, Data Extensions, etc).” … There is so much more information to convey here …. Trying to get it all down!
11:26 am Java will be supported on landing pages.This is great news!
11:27 am “AMPscript is the future!” says Michael … just kidding … Java is going to eventually replace it. ExactTarget also wants to introduce JavaScript activities like data transformation and user defined functions. There is a lot on this roadmap! It is clear that ET is truly focusing on product development.
11:30 am Looking now at Data Integration … We want users to be able to import from external systems and export to them as well.Data cleansing is also on the horizon, in addition to a number of other functionalities to help users integrate data. We have our sight on breaking down barriers that keep us from being an open platform.
11:34 am Again, we have a lot of information here! I strongly recommend reaching out to some of our developers while you are here.
UI Extensibility: even more features are coming. As a user, you will have the ability to define a custom home page, add buttons, add tabs to our toolbars, and add custom fields to forms. McCorkle talked about building a user experience in our user interface. What a concept! It will allow a great degree of customization in each user’s account.
11:38 am The Program feature is going to be further developed as well. Whoa - EXCITING: templates will also be available for programs.For example, there will be a template for a birthday program in the user interface.This functionality will be extremely helpful for marketers and programmers with limited resources.
11:41 am Question time! Yes folks, the API is almost too good to be true … and yet it is!
11:43 am Now we’re talking about Enterprise 2.0. With the API you can do things in the application “on behalf” of users without exceeding their permissions.You will also be able to access objects in multiple business units via the API in 2.0.
11:49 am And in closing…share your ideas! Let ExactTarget know how, as a developer, we can improve 3sixty for your use. Quite a few people in the crowd here use 3sixty and some of those are members of the Developer Community.This community needs to be more active. We have deliver 100+ ideas on 3sixty so far…let your voice be heard!
Coming to you live from Connections ’09!Enjoy the rest of the conference!
As we wait to hear about the future of the ExactTarget API, 3 Par handed out a card inviting everyone to come by their booth in the vendor hall to register to win a Nintendo Wii. Too bad ExactTarget employees aren't eligible to win. :)
I can see the presenters setting up at the front of the room, and they aren't messing around with the expertise that they're bringing to the table. Our chief architect, Michael Ciancio-Bunch (known to his friends as MCB) and our CTO, Scott McCorkle are on the stage.
ExactTarget API: Past, Present, and Future Scott begins the discussion by talking about how the Carbon initiative will lead the application to consume our own web service API. This "eating our own dog food" will ensure that the API has the entire breadth of functionality of the application.
MCB launched into the history of the API:
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!
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
The Developer Track is packed this morning to see Advanced Dynamic Messaging and Smart Capture. The room looks like it seats about 100, and all the seats are full with several standing or sitting (like me--tough to type while standing!) around the perimeter of the room.
Centric Consulting The presentation begin with Centric Consulting talking about its extensive experience using the advanced ExactTarget tools. As I type this, Dave Lemons from Centric Consulting is introducing the basic terms: microsites, data extensions, AMPscript...stuff like that. Bryan Wade, ExactTarget embedded expert and emcee of the event, has been interjecting as well, probably trying to help bring the sophisticated technical content to the attendees, who are certainly of various levels of technical experience, especially with the ExactTarget tools.
Centric has built a landing page that displays the results of a query activity on a data extension. Centric is a third-party developer, and the functionality that they're displaying here is not just an example of what other people can also do, but could eventually become the kind of app that we've been talking about all conference long that could be made available to ExactTarget customers everywhere.
Best Buy Eric Brousseasu, Best Buy Jim Murphey, technology solutions manager
The second part of the session is a case study of some of the cool things that Best Buy has implemented.
Eric and Jim started the presentation basic with their dynamic content that they're using in their emails. The dynamic content is based on attributes in a data extension, so it sounds like they're basing dynamic content on more than just subscriber attributes. They're also including AMPscript in the emails for simple things like proper capitalization as well as for building rowsets to include the message. You can do things like include a purchase history using this functionality. I think that in this case they're sending emails to alert customers when a product comes back in stock.
As they moved in to the advanced dynamic content discussion, they talk about using Content Syndication ("screen scrape," as it's called in the vernacular) to grab content from their website to include in the email. It sounds like they're transforming the XML from the site using AMPscript before including it in the body of the message. By combining the subscriber's wish list content (from the website) with the emails, they're creating truly personalized, truly 1-to-1 communication. This is a really cool implementation.
They were running out of time for the last part of their talk, so we rushed through the delayed surveys (the "how was the shopping experience" email that came out a few days after the purchase, the ability of customers to cancel their own orders through the website, and the ability to see which SKUs were selling best--all using the ExactTarget application.
A very cool presentation with some very cool functionality. Also very cool: now the people are filing out and I get can a seat. Maybe my foot won't be asleep for the whole day after all!
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 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.
Content syndication is when you get some or all of your email content from an external source. For example, you might grab a product description for a marketing email promoting that product from your corporate website.
Content syndication is sometimes referred to as HTTPGet, after the command you use in the email itself to tell the system to get something from an HTTP site. Content syndication is also, more colloquially, called "screen scraping."
Content syndication is a simple form of email automation in that it allows you to systematically reuse content from your website in your emails. Content syndication has long been available in the ExactTarget application, but now it is available to be powered by AMPscript, our dynamic scripting language that powers some of the most sophisticated automatic email in the world.
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.
Two recent studies provide compelling evidence that marketers are turning to digital marketing – and specifically email marketing – to improve marketing effectiveness.
According to the “2009 ANA/MMA Marketing Accountability Survey” from the Association of National Advertisers and Marketing Management Analytics, “The No. 1 strategy for marketers who wanted to improve effectiveness without spending more, according to the June 2009 poll, was shifting from traditional to digital media. More than one-half of respondents also reported shifting spending away from brand-building initiatives, and 38% were putting more spending into lower-cost media.”
And as more marketers shift to digital media, the tactic that is seeing the largest increase in spending is email.
According to the “2009 Media Survey Results & Analysis” study conducted by Round2, “40% of US Marketers reported that they had increased spending on email marketing in 2009.
What This Means for Marketers
Increased dependency on email marketing means three things:
1. Email is no longer optional. It has firmly established itself as the #1 tactic for 1to1 marketing. And email has become the “go to” tactic for word-of-mouth marketing as brands empower email subscribers to “share” email messages and offers with their friends on Facebook, their followers on Twitter, and their connections on LinkedIn.
2. Email marketing will become more sophisticated as marketers move aggressively to integrate email with other tactics and technologies – like CRM, SMS, POS, Websites, and Social Networks -- that are used to keep customers connected to the brand. The cornerstones of effective email marketing will be Integration, Automation and Optimization.
3. ESP (Email Service Provider) selection will become a more strategic decision. Marketers must evaluate and select an ESP by their ability to provide “industrial strength” application functionality plus consulting services including 1to1 marketing strategy, email and landing page design, email deliverability, and application integration.
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:
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.
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? 
I can hardly believe I work in a multi-national company.
Beyond Deliverability: Consumer Choice & Control
Addressing Email Security Concerns
Technology Solution
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.
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.
Best Buy
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