Email Marketing Campaign Management

3sixty Live User Groups Gives Digital Marketers a Local Forum to Collaborate

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Amanda Berkey

ExactTarget is excited to offer 3sixty Live user group program. In the past week, ExactTarget customers from California, Ohio, Illinois, Texas, Florida, Ontario and the United Kingdom have signed up to become members or leaders in their local cities. The user group program offers a local collaboration forum for 1 to 1 marketing strategies. Go to exacttarget.com/3sixtylive to learn more about the program and register to join the user groups. We're looking for members and leaders!

As a product marketing manager at ExactTarget, I collaborate with my team all time right in our office to brainstorm solutions to everyday marketing challenges. We realize that many digital marketers using ExactTarget are working independently for their company. But you're not alone! 3sixty Live is a great opportunity to join other users in your city to share best practices and collaborate with other savvy marketers about drip marketing campaigns, CRM email integration, and social media integration. Check out our video to hear more.

Haiti Relief Text Campaign from Red Cross Emphasizes Convenience and Immediacy of SMS

Friday, January 15, 2010 by Amanda Berkey

According to the Mashable blog, by 5:30pm EST Jan 14, only two days after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the Red Cross has raised an impressive $5 million dollars from their Text campaign. If you were on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media sites this week, you may have seen the outcries to donate $10 by texting "Haiti" to the shortcode 90999. If you do the quick math, that's 500,000 mobile subscribers that have used text messaging to donate to the Haitian relief efforts led by the Red Cross. The blog post also shows an SMS message flow explaining how easy it is for a mobile subscriber to text in "Haiti" and then "Yes" to confirm their donation. In two short SMS messages, a single person is able to contribute to the larger cause from anywhere!

As the product marketing manager for the SMS portfolio at ExactTarget, I'm very impressed, but not surprised by the results of this SMS campaign. When I meet with customers who are strategizing about their 1 to 1 Marketing campaigns that include email, SMS, web, and social media, we discuss the reasons that SMS messaging to communicate with your subscribers are effective.

We are in an era when people are more likely to have a mobile phone rather than a traditional land line. And mobile phones are something that people do not leave home without. Whether you have a smart phone or standard mobile phone, SMS text plans is now considered basic communication. How many times have you ditched leaving a person you were calling a voicemail to send them a simple text message? Many people outside of the business world forgo the expensive data plans to receive email and web from their phone, but gladly pay for their SMS messaging plans.

Including text messaging in your 1 to 1 marketing strategy is a powerful way to reach your audience can have huge rewards:

SMS messaging is immediate and direct: by nature of the US standard of 160 characters, text messages are short and concise. They reach the person that needs the quick information. And responding to or reading a text message takes only seconds and it doesn't require you to shift your focus too much. You can even do it in a meeting! *Wink*
Text messaging campaigns are always available when a person is interested: savvy marketers know that it takes massive effort to get a prospect engaged in their brand. Having a text campaign that a mobile subscriber can respond to a call-to-action at the emotional high of the interest, can be the difference if they ever participate or not. Let's face it, when they get back to their computer, even a geniunely interested person is likely to forget that they wanted to sign up for your program.
SMS can augment email marketing efforts: the best example of this approach is from our customer, Pier 1 Imports, who follows up with email drip marketing from new subscribers they captured from their text sweepstakes at college bookstores. Leveraging both email and text messaging for marketing campaigns can empower you to send relevant information using both messaging channels

The recent example of a non-profit organization raising donations and enabling the general public to act is proof that SMS messaging when combined with social media and email can have incredible impact and rewards. For more thoughts about getting started with Text Messaging check out our recent webinar.

Embedded Channel - 2009 in Review

Monday, December 14, 2009 by Bryan Wade

It's been an amazing run in 2009 for the Embedded Channel at ExactTarget.   For those of you who don't know - the Embedded channel works with software companies that utilize ExactTarget's SOAP API's to go to market with their own email or sms products.

As I look back I realized we've grown the number of Embedded partners from 22 to 60 ISV's.   We have Embedded partners who offer Business to Business email marketing / campaign management software in the Print, Auto, SMB, MRM, Voice, Medical, Events, and eCommerce verticals (to name a few).   It feels like software companies are realizing that their customers want reliable and scalable email sending capabilities with the email tracking/reporting data to go along with the sending.   They've realized that building it all out is a daunting task, especially when you can partner to get to market quickly.

The most important thing that has happened in 2009 is the build out of the Embedded team within ExactTarget.   We've hired 4 new folks on the Embedded team alone and have plans to hire even more in 2010.   This gives us the people to support the Embedded program, which can be just as or more important then technology we offer.

Thanks to all for the great year and expect more from the Embedded team next year!

Bryan

54% of Marketers Caught Up in Channel Budget Battles

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

Last week, ExactTarget released a commissioned study from Forrester Consulting titled Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power. To me, the most sobering statistic is that for 54% of marketers, “each channel they use competes with each other for budget.” Another 28% provided a neutral response to the question. Leaving only 18% that disagree with the statement.

Each channel we use competes with each other for budget

That these budget competitions are occurring is not a surprise to me, but what concerns me is what this leads to—debates about the relative value of each channel for the purpose of re-allocating budgets.

Marketers look to the pseudo-science of marketing attribution to help them resolve these questions and buzz about the topic is picking up again. Shop.org recently announced the creation of a new Online Marketing Attribution group, David Baker wanted a new attribution calculator for Christmas, and Ed Henrich (appropriately) wants to make sure email is included in the attribution equation.

The idea of attribution makes sense. The hope is that by properly attributing the influence of different marketing campaigns on actual conversions will allow marketers to spend their marketing dollars more appropriately. However, the reality of marketing attribution is mired in disagreements about how it should be done. As one marketing manager interviewed in Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power shared, “Multichannel efforts are hard to track. We’ll look at a sale, but it’s hard to determine whether it was the email or the catalog that closed the deal.”

In this age of marketing accountability, have our attempts to answer John Wanamaker’s conundrum about which half of his advertising dollars are wasted gone too far? Is it really necessary to know if it was the email or the catalog that closed the deal? Or do we simply need to know that both played a role and that fewer sales would have occurred if one or the other were to be eliminated?

Would love your thoughts as I continue to ponder…

Marketers Moving More Budget to Email Marketing

Friday, September 25, 2009 by Joel Book

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.”

Tactics Used by US Marketers to Improve Marketing Effectiveness

Change in Marketing Spending for Select Media in 2009

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.

Email Summit: Karen Dayan of Microsoft Office Live Small Business

Tuesday, March 17, 2009 by Jeffrey Rohrs

So the winner for best session title here this year's Marketing Sherpa Email Summit might have to be "The New Microsoft Comic Strip: Innovating Content and Design that Resonates in Business Marketing." Microsoft? Comics? Yes, I had to attend.

Karen Davan, the Senior Marketing Manager for Microsoft Office Live Small Business, was the presenter, and she shared Microsoft's creation of "Margie" a comic strip character through whom Microsoft could explore the business problems & solutions needed by small businesses.

Here's a sample strip:

Personally, I love marketers (or, the more friendly "marketeers," if you prefer) who are willing to take risks like this. Using humor and characters in marketing--let alone email marketing efforts--can go horribly awry unless you REALLY know your audience. Fortunately, in this case, Microsoft not only new their audience, but they were also to have her share the perils of starting and running a small business.

It was this empathy that helped the strip connect with customers and prospects. As a result, Margie not only ran in Microsoft's email newsletter but also the email newsletters of affiliates who liked the comic strip so much that they wanted to share it with their subscribers.

Beyond the email newsletter, Microsoft also pushed Margie to the web and appropriate social networks to increase exposure and engagement. The net net is that Margie helped Microsoft Office Live Small Business increase awareness of their product offering within that tough-to-reach small business/entrepreneurial crowd.

So what's Karen's advice to marketers considering doing something innovative like Margie?

Thinks about creative! Break out of the mold to stand out.
Utilize a personality that customers can relate to.
Enable a variety of avenues to acquire information (email, portal, social media, PR, search, etc.)
Give your customers opportunities for interaction.
Provide a clear call-to-action.

If you'd like to learn more about this campaign, Karen has recently hung out her own shingle at Kindle Marketing Strategies, so you can reach here there.

Strategy Tip of the Week: Have a Content Calendar

Saturday, February 28, 2009 by Brett Brewer

Content creators for email programs perpetually suffer from one of two issues: too much to say, or not enough to say. Yet a surprising number of them don't leverage a simple resource that helps balance out the peaks and valleys in your email marketing strategy--the content or editorial calendar. While it the editorial calendar may not seem terribly flashy or strategic on the surface, it is an essential component of an email campaign management plan.

You can choose your own favorite format for your calendar (spreadsheets, calendaring programs and cocktail napkins are all popular choices) but no matter what the format most good editorial calendars share several common elements:

A timeline: You may break your own calendar out by day, by week, by month or whatever time frame fits your program. Regardless, the timeline helps organize the other elements of the program in a meaningful way.
Holidays and events: Make sure you denote holidays, buying and planning seasons, or any other time-based events that influence what you say, how you say it, or what you offer to subscribers. Great Casimir Pulaski day email marketing content is only valuable once a year, and you don't want to miss it because you didn't mark it on the calendar. (If you don't know about Casimir Pulaski day, you can learn more here.)
Other activities: Capture offline promotions, store events, product releases, webinars or other "non-email" activities that will occur within the same time frame of email creation and send. These make great content and link sources for your email program.
Featured articles or other content: Capture the title or subject of key content areas for each regularly-scheduled send. You don't need to capture the whole article in your calendar, but make sure you know the gist of what each content area is going to contain.
Key links: Capture the URL or download link for any links required for the email. If you'll need to create a landing page or destination for any links, make sure these make it into your web development plan as soon as possible.
Content creator: Content doesn't write itself, so make sure every piece of content in your plan has a clearly-defined owner. (Lots of email program owners create a macro that just plugs the word "me" into their content creator field...)

In addition to the time-based content plan, the best email programs have an element of their calendar that tracks ongoing programs liked triggered email sends, welcome streams, and other activities that are not driven by time or seasonality. The editorial calendars for email programs I've run in the past also contained an "emergency content" area that was filled with ideas that could be used anytime my content creators were on sick, got writer's block, or just played hooky on Casimir Pulaski day.

Other email content best practices you'd like to share? Post them in the comments section of this entry.

Enterprise Email Marketing Compliance and Control

Tuesday, February 17, 2009 by Chip House

The Enterprise Email Marketing whitepaper that ExactTarget first produced back in early 2004, soon after the United States CAN-SPAM Act became law focused on enterprise compliance and control of email. It armed marketers with information on best practices regarding CAN-SPAM as well as brand protection and deliverability effectiveness…not just for marketing emails, but division by division, subsidiary by subsidiary across an entire company.

CAN-SPAM made us all sit up in our seats and take notice of the array of different silos from which our organizations send email. Some questions many organizations posed at the time were: Are all of our divisions compliant with CAN-SPAM and other international email laws? How do we manage unsubscribe requests in each silo, and how do we process them in 10 business days? How do we protect our brand image and ensure we don’t spam people and destroy our deliverability reputation?

In 2009 those are still relevant and good housekeeping questions; questions that are especially important for the privacy officers and CMO’s of larger organizations to ask themselves, and to know the answers.

I’ve seen a number of recent articles citing the fact that many companies still struggle with the basics of email, and old email myths persist – especially at the C-level. This causes friction between the best practices that the privacy and email marketing manager want to pursue, and those that the business development executives believe are necessary, or standard business practices. For some reason, with regards to email, I’ve heard a number of those who rely on old media thinking say things like, “others send unsolicited email and it makes it to my inbox, so why shouldn’t I.” There is this impression that since it is “done” that it is acceptable. Legitimate brands can’t rely on spam to get it done. It won’t. In fact, it will work against them.

Friction with executives and ignorance of laws and best practices among the rank and file is why our whitepaper from 2004 is still relevant. Enterprise compliance and control is a real need. Big companies need the freedom to deploy email to ten, one-hundred or one-thousand divisions while ensuring their brands are protected from the fall-out of a just one division sending unsolicited email or from running afoul of CAN-SPAM by sending to an unsubscribed email address. Our Enterprise edition helps administrators and privacy officers breathe easier by providing a solution to these problems.

Bamboo Cricket Joins the Extensions Network

Tuesday, February 10, 2009 by Lauren Hertler

The ExactTarget Partnership Team is excited to announce an integrated partnership with Bamboo Cricket. Bamboo Cricket offers customer service and retention solutions through live chat technology and inbound email management.

Their integrated solution gives marketers the ability to take a ‘hands on’ approach to managing replies from ExactTarget email sends. All inbound emails are re-directed to the Bamboo Cricket application to receive human intervention based on preset rules. This provides a quick and efficient way to handle unsubscribes, change of address requests and sales inquiries while increasing customer satisfaction and retention.

Bamboo Cricket is now listed on the Extensions Network – a website showcasing certified partner integrations to ExactTarget’s application. Visit the Extensions Network to see how Bamboo Cricket and a variety of other integrated partners can extend your ExactTarget investment.

Listening to our own Voice

Friday, January 16, 2009 by RJ Talyor

When you think about ExactTarget, you may think about email. But for the past year and a half, we've expanded out to other channels, including SMS, Voice and Landing Pages. The results below will hopefully have you thinking about additional messaging mediums. . .

As the Product Marketing Manager for SMS, Voice, and Landing Pages, I'm excited to be working with the ExactTarget Marketing Team to implement multi-channel programs that leverage our newest messaging mediums. Here's one example of how we used email and voice offerings to optimize webinar attendance for the Email Intel webinar series, co-hosted with MarketingSherpa.

Our strategy: use voice as a 'reminder' to join the webinar. Typically, we send out just email reminders, but we suspected that a personalized Voice message from the webinar host would drive higher attendance than a straight email reminder campaign.

We were right. Results below:

A higher percentage of registrants attended a series of four webinars over six weeks when receiving both an email AND voice message (over just an email reminder, or just voice voice reminder)
In 2008, the appropriately-timed combo of email + voice drive a higher percentage (+14%) of registrants to the webinar series.
So far in 2009, webinar attendance is up 13% for webinar registrants receiving an email and voice message reminder.

This blogpost may remind you of a prelminary results post from the fall, written by Ashley Sales - see her ealier post here.

In 2009, the ExactTarget Marketing Team plans to continue multi-channel testing to identify the ‘sweet spot’ in terms of the communications content, timing, and medium. Stay tuned for more results!

Too Big For My Britches

Friday, January 16, 2009 by ExactTarget Marketing

Three years ago, as a Product Marketing Manager with ExactTarget, I worked extensively on our product releases and communications – which meant I also worked extensively with our application. The term “power user” comes to mind, which means I used almost every capability available in ExactTarget, and I understood our product as well as almost anyone.

I have a confession to make: these days, I can barely keep up. Granted, as the company has grown and I’ve transitioned into a management role, my job function has required me to “let go of the reigns a little” (read = control freak must relinquish control) over our use of the ExactTarget product. Now, instead of logging in every morning and spending hours working in my account, I log in a few times a month to review statistics and pull reports. The beauty of ExactTarget is that it’s so easy to use that I can continue to do so.

But ExactTarget has far outgrown me.

Over the past few years, our product and development teams have worked with such a breakneck pace that I can barely keep up (no really – I think Scott McCorkle has given me whiplash!) That’s a good problem to have. The innovation, tools, and improvements we launch in such rapid succession result in a more robust product for our users. Whether it’s sending SMS messages out of your ExactTarget account, delivering unique coupons that render on open with Live Offers, or using our propriety scripting language (come again?) to deliver “dynamic content on steroids”, ExactTarget is so much more than the product I used to live and breathe in.

With so much innovation, it can be hard to keep up – yes, even for the ExactTarget marketing team. And we figured you may be in the same boat, which is why we’re focusing on 5 Things You Don’t Know About ExactTarget…But Should.

Whether you’re just learning about ExactTarget (a.k.a. know nothing) or whether you’re a seasoned power-user (a.k.a. know-it-all), I guarantee that you’ll learn something new from our resource this month. And the best part is that all the solutions in 5 Things You Don’t Know are already available with ExactTarget – many of them included free of charge for all our clients. Which is almost as good as finding a $100 bill wadded up in that pair of pants you haven’t worn since last year. Almost.

Cheers,
Ashley Sales
Manager, Marketing Communications

Take it From Us

Thursday, November 20, 2008 by ExactTarget Marketing

I Just Called…To Say….That Voice + Email is Powerful Punch

With all the buzz around channels like Voice and SMS, it can be tempting to implement new programs just for the sake of doing what’s hot. And let’s face it, that’s not so hot for your subscribers. So if you’ve been searching for a meaningful way to incorporate Voice into your own marketing campaigns, bravo!

Truth is, we’ve been looking, too. Sure, ExactTarget offers the integrated one-to-one platform to make sending Email, SMS and Voice from a single user interface a snap. But we’ve been known as a leading email company for years, and our B2B environment often lacks the promotional and urgent nature that’s so conducive for some emerging media.

So when R.J. Talyor, one of our Product Marketing Managers and Voice Expert Extraordinaire, approached us about conducting a Voice test for the Email Marketing Intelligence Webinar Series we’re hosting with MarketingSherpa, I was a little apprehensive. Would it add value for our webinar registrants? Would they be receptive to new channels of communication from ExactTarget? Can Voice make a measurable impact on the event attendance?

In short, all findings point to YES. I’m pleased to report that the Voice testing results from the first webinar were extremely positive. I hope you find the following information both useful and encouraging when considering how (and when) to add Voice into your own marketing mix.

Webinar Reminder Testing Goal: To find the ideal messaging mix to drive webinar attendance via reminders

Testing Approach
Registrant list split into three random groups to receive reminders the day of the event.

Email-Only Reminder Group
Voice-Only Reminder Group
Email + Voice Reminder Group

Test Findings

Email + Voice reminders drove the highest webinar attendance (43%)
Email-only reminder came in second (36.3%)
Voice-only reminder drove fewest attendees (29.6%)

We’ll be continuing to test Voice for the next few webinars, so sign up to see them in action and stay tuned for further results!

Cheers,
Ashley Sales
Manager, Marketing Communications

Quantifying the Payoff from Email Personalization

Wednesday, October 29, 2008 by Joel Book

I know you’ve heard me tout the value of personalizing email content hundreds of times. Still, I am amazed that many marketers don’t believe personalizing email is worth the effort! So, for those of you who still doubt the value of personalization, here’s more proof.

Writing in the October 28th issue of MediaPost’s Email Insider, Alex Madison and Lisa Harmon of email marketing agency, Smith-Harmon, note that a report put out this past summer by the Aberdeen Group found that top performing, or "Best-in-Class," organizations that collected and used data to personalize email campaigns, experienced an average order value increase of 57%.”

The report “Email Marketing: Get Personal with Your Customers” identifies the effects of email personalization on subscriber engagement. The study represents the views of more than 550 organizations and groups companies based on annual performance increases. Through their survey, Aberdeen found that top performing organizations (referred to as “Best-in-Class”) are twice as likely as “Laggards” to use the information collected within their database to personalize email campaigns.

Thomson CompuMark Believes in Personalization

Dave Wieneke, Interactive Marketing Manager at Thomson CompuMark, has proven the value of email personalization. He sends the monthly Client Times Online newsletter “on behalf” of CompuMark’s 22 account managers to attorneys who specialize in brand and copyright law. Each subscriber’s newsletter carries the photo and contact information of the CompuMark account manager with whom they work, and articles are personalized based on the defined preferences of each subscriber.

Says Wieneke, “The dynamic content tools of ExactTarget make this kind of personalization straight-forward; our marketing team implemented this without any specialized resources.”

Since Thomson CompuMark began personalizing email, the number of clickthroughs has increased by 63% and the amount of time subscribers are spending on content has gone up 41%! This is genuine subscriber engagement!

Using CRM Data to Personalize Email Content

One of the reasons Thomson CompuMark has been successful in personalizing email is because they have integrated their CRM system (Salesforce.com) with their email system (ExactTarget). To learn more about how to use CRM and Web Analytics data to personalize email content, download the ExactTarget white paper, “Integrating Email, CRM and Web Analytics”.

Offers, Discounts, Sales! Oh, where do I find them?

Tuesday, September 16, 2008 by ExactTarget Marketing

As the holidays approach, closing in on the last 3 months, it's amazing how quickly retailers begin to gear up on selling Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations. But where are those deals, that door buster that is going to make me block out my calendar the day after Thanksgiving to hit the sale? And where are the deals relevant to what I want to buy? Sure, I could buy the Glow in the Dark 14 foot Mummy for 10% off but why on earth would I want that when I don't even have a front yard to put it in?

I introduce to you in a very exciting way, LIVE OFFERS! I can't begin to tell you what a privilege it is to have our very astonishing Product Development Team create this "offering", no pun intended. This e-mail marketing solution is very powerful for not just the marketer but the consumer. We'll start from the consumer's point of view since I am just so excited about this. I can't wait to receive relevant offers!!

Let's start with my demographic stats (hint, hint, please send me something relevant):
•   Gen Y (29-42)
•   Married
•   No Children
•   College Educated
•   Enjoys shopping, eating out, running and reading
•   Business Professional who works 50+ hours a week
•   Brand Advocate for Jupiter Vapors shoes

So, did I mention I enjoy high end shoes that I simply can't afford? Yes, I do receive my yearly $25 birthday gift card in the mail from some Apparel & Accessory Retailers. But my husband swiftly throws any additional solicitation (I like to call them DEALS) in the trash before I even begin to sort through the pile. But, what if I were to receive an exclusive offer via e-mail that only the very savvy and efficient shoppers could cash in on? What if I were to receive an offer for a pair of limited addition shoes that only I and 300 others would have the opportunity to purchase? Now that's excitement!

So, how could a retailer create such an offering? Well, the answer is pretty simple. Live Offers allows retailers to target, predict and re-market offers. What does that mean? Let me explain.

1.) You know that I am in my late 20's or 30's. I am a business professional who enjoys shopping. Therefore, it is likely I check e-mail often, have little time to hunt for discounts and enjoy very fashionable shoes. With a targeted inventory based live offer, I can enjoy the convenience of an exclusive, relevant offer sent via e-mail that I can check from my Blackberry at any moment.

2.) Using Live Offer Redemption Reports, you can view when I opened the offer, printed it and redeemed it in the store. You even know what store location I redeemed the offer in. This enables you with the data you need to predict which offers I'll enjoy in the future.

3.) Re-market offers to new segments when existing offers didn't catch on with the initial segment. Inventory based offers allow retailers to target the entire list with an offer but only provide the offer to the first x amount of people who open the offer. If the offer was never redeemed, re-assign the offer for a more effective e-mail campaign.

Now that retailers have the opportunity to leverage truly 1-to-1 personalized offers, I'm hoping I'll get one very soon. Nothing would brighten my day better than a deal on a great pair of gold pumps for the holidays. Oh, Jupiter Vapors, please e-mail me an exclusive offer. I promise, you'll have me at open!

Angela Khan
Product Marketing Manager

How do I design for an SMS message?

Wednesday, August 20, 2008 by Design Team

Question: How do I design for an SMS message?

Answer: Designing an SMS message is very different from designing an email. By nature - SMS is a text-only communication protocol that doesn't support rich content of any kind. This includes images, audio and video.

Unlike with HTML emails, there are no font choices, sizes or colors, to choose from with SMS - all of the text will display in the same format. In other words, the visual aspect of the message gives way to pure content. With SMS, your words are the only tool at your disposal to inform and engage your subscribers.

To make things even more challenging, SMS messages are limited to only 160 characters. Spaces and punctuation factor into character count, and exceeding 160 characters may result in a delivery failure or subscriber frustration. If you send a message that exceeds the character limit it will be broken into multiple messages. Subscribers will receive a disjointed communication (and may have to pay for more than one text message).

Each message should include QUIT and HELP options as well as make mention that "Standard rates apply" or "Other rates may apply." This information may take up approximately 60 of the available characters leaving only 100 for the branding of the program and the primary message/call-to-action.

Remember to choose your words wisely when "designing" an SMS message. With only 160 characters to work with, it makes creating an engaging and compelling message even more critical.

Tim Siukola, Senior Email Campaign Manager

The API Programmer’s Guide to Handling SMS Marketers

Wednesday, August 20, 2008 by Integration Team

Prepare for it: your marketing team will come running into your office. They’ll demand that you drop everything and start programming the API calls that power an SMS program. Sound familiar?

Their urgency is appropriate – as soon as an SMS application is submitted to the wireless carriers, companies have a small window of time to ensure that SMS programs are running as soon as possible to prevent delays in the testing phase of the campaigns. Delays in the API call programming can cause delays in the testing, and thus, the launch of an SMS program.

But because you’re the technical resource on the project, you’ll want to be ready to either to meet these quick turnaround demands, or with ask the right questions to assess that they’re not ready to go yet. Here’s where you start:

Request the SMS plan or strategy. The marketing team or SMS program owner has to complete an application for a short code, including the plan and exact wording for the SMS messages. This should include JOIN, HELP and STOP messages or messaging flows. Ask for it!
Coordinate. Once in hand, program the API calls exactly as written in the application. You may identify some improvements or changes, but the smallest changes may or may not cause the wireless carriers not to decline approving the program.
Be ready for more. It seems that no matter the level of planning, you can expect a few quick change requests from the marketing team as wireless testing begins. OK, this is true of any project, not just SMS.

Likely, no amount of planning will prevent the marketing team from hovering over your shoulder as your program these API calls, but if you can ask the right questions and consider the three items above, you’ll be able to manage.

R.J. Taylor
Product Marketing Manager

ExactTarget Clients Show Why Email is the “X Factor” of Successful B-to-B Marketing

Tuesday, June 3, 2008 by Joel Book

ExactTarget’s Route 1-to-1 Seminar is serving as a terrific classroom to see first-hand how marketers are using email, CRM and web analytics technologies to automate the lead nurturing process, drive sales, and improve sales force productivity. This seminar is focused on current and future trends in digital one-to-one marketing and if you have been fortunate enough to attend one of these seminars, you know what I am talking about.

In addition to presentations from ExactTarget, speakers include executives from ExactTarget partners Omniture and Salesforce.com, as well as Jeanniey Mullen from the Email Experience Council of the DMA, Aaron Kahlow, Executive Producer of the Online Marketing Summit, and Jeanne Jennings of Jeanne Jennings.com, noted email marketing consultant and ClickZ columnist. And in special “case study” tracks devoted to B-to-B and B-to-C marketing, ExactTarget clients discuss how they use email marketing in their organizations.

We’re at the half-way mark in this year’s tour and already we have seen some pretty impressive examples of B-to-B email marketing at its best

In Atlanta, Michelle McMahon, VP of On Demand Operations for Ariba explained how Ariba uses email to provide industry-specific information and thought leadership to C-level executives regarding the company’s technology solutions that help organizations manage spending and ensure contract compliance.

In Cincinnati, Stephanie Jenkins, VP marketing Communications of Conseco and Troy Burk of Right On Interactive took attendees on a “behind the curtain” tour of Conseco’s highly successful email strategy for on-boarding new agents. The strategy uses and integrated technology solution that includes ExactTarget for email creation, delivery and tracking, Salesforce.com for customer relationship management (CRM), and 5 Buckets from Right On Interactive to automate the execution of email based on the needs of individual agents.

In Toronto, Dave Wieneke, Interactive Marketing Manager of Thomson Compumark, a global leader in data services for attorneys specializing in brand and copyright protection, described how they have accelerated click through rates by delivering content relevant to the attorney’s area of specialization and sending email “on behalf” of the client’s account executive.

And as the tour rolls into Dallas on June 10th, Nicole Buraglio of Hanley Wood Exhibitions will explain how email has become their main channel for delivering relevant information to trade show exhibitors and attendees, and in Denver on June 12th, Conrad Hall of Conrad Hall & Associates will describe how his client Worksoft has implemented an automated system for lead nurturing that has reduced lead management cost, improved marketing ROI, and led to increased sales.

If you want to see how smart marketers use permission-based email for B-to-B marketing, plan to attend one of the remaining Route 1-to-1 Seminars in your area that run through July. You won’t be disappointed.

Announcing -- New ExactTarget Website

Wednesday, April 23, 2008 by ExactTarget Marketing

ExactTarget’s marketing department is a very busy place to be these days. Not only did we kick off the ExactTarget Route 1-to-1 Seminar Series in Atlanta on April 22nd, we also launched a brand new ExactTarget website!

The ExactTarget website includes new functionality including the ability to research information about one-to-one technologies that are relevant to a particular industry, business challenge, or technology requirement. The “by business challenge” section is my personal favorite. We all have a list of “if I could only figure out how to use email marketing to do xyz” questions and this area of the website provides information and solutions pertinent to your challenge!

With the development of the new website, we empowered our marketing department to manage content and calls to action with robust technology. The deployment of Ektron as our content management system enables our team to proactively add new pages, new content and edit existing content without requiring the assistance of a technical resource. Ryan Oldfather, our Internet Marketing Manager, is particularly excited about the Ektron implementation and also the deployment of Omniture Site Catalyst for our web analytics. With Omniture, Ryan will have the data to make changes to the website based on user behavior and website traffic.

There are many folks to thank within ExactTarget for their assistance with the new website including our Marketing Communications team, Marketing Operations team, our System Administrators and the Solutions Consulting team. We would also like to thank Optiem for their assistance with the technical development of the website!

What are you waiting for – check out the new ExactTarget website!!

Erin Howe
Director, Marketing Programs

What do my subscribers see in the preview pane?

Thursday, March 13, 2008 by Design Team

The number of people using a preview pane to view their email has grown in recent years. So considering what your readers see in that preview pane has become an increasingly important aspect of planning an email campaign.

The challenge of not knowing whether readers are using a vertical or horizontal preview pane makes the information placed in the upper left region (which will be visible in either layout) of an email vitally important. Combining the viewable area of horizontal and vertical preview panes at common sizes, we find there is a square of overlap that will be visible to most preview pane users. That’s good news.

As a quick rule of thumb, a square of approximately 4-5 inches (288-360 pixels) is a safe size to plan for this commonly viewable area. This space should be used to quickly establish the brand and primary call to action alongside standard email strategies, such as accounting for image blocking by using HTML text and ALT tags.

Optimizing for the preview pane in this way helps ensure readers will see the most important parts of your message immediately and will engage further by opening your email.

What’s the best way to integrate multi-media and video into my email program?

While support for various HTML and CSS features varies widely across email clients, their stance on video and Flash media in email remains surprisingly unanimous – and that answer is “not supported.”

Only one email client, Mail (Mac), will even display this kind of media at all. Every other client will either strip out the video as if it was never there, or treat it as a blocked image that can never be displayed.

It is possible to introduce a small amount of motion or animation to email with animated .gifs, but even these images aren’t fully supported by some major clients, such as Outlook 2007 (which will only display the first frame of the animation).

With this information in mind, the best way to integrate multi-media content into your email program is not to embed the media in an email, but rather to link to a web-based version that’s hosted outside the email.

Chris Studabaker
Email Campaign Manager

Avoid getting blacklisted—let them unsubscribe.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008 by ExactTarget Marketing

If you're like me, you have as many email addresses as pairs of shoes. Just keeping the inbox clean can be a daily challenge. To help manage them I find myself constantly unsubscribing from email lists that at one time filled a need but now just serve as clutter. After all, I can always subscribe again . No worries, right?

So, what does letting your audience unsubscribe have to do with staying off an Internet Service Provider's (ISP) blacklist? Glad you asked! Just the other day I tried to unsubscribe from a large corporation's email list but, to my surprise and chagrin, there was no way to do so. But of course there was a nice "Subscribe" link prominently displayed in the header. So, now my choices are either A), continue receiving email I don't want or B), mark it as SPAM. Hmmm? What to do? What to do?

Just imagine if this were your email campaign and others wanted off your mailing list. Every recipient that marks your message as SPAM pushes you ever closer to dreaded blacklist. Ouch! Avoid this potential painful lesson and stay compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act by having a "visible and operable unsubscribe mechanism" present in every email. It doesn't have to be the most prominent part of your message but it does need to be accessible.

Besides, do you really want to keep members on your email lists against their will? You're now paying good money to send an email to someone who is most likely going to delete it unread. Do the right thing. Let them unsubscribe. For more info on how to stay CAN-SPAM compliant read our free email marketing whitepaper Enterprise Email: Managing Risks and Liabilities.

Ryan Oldfather
Internet Marketing Manager

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