Al Iverson and I spend a lot of time talking about user engagement. It's been around for a very long time, but it's now a standard for inbox delivery. How do you define engagement? Quality over quantity. Targeted email marketing. True one to one communication. But what does it really mean to you? How does it make for a more effective email marketing campaign? If permission is king, engagement is emperor.
How do you create an effective marketing campaign that keeps your customers coming back in the age of DVRs, satellite radio, and short attention spans? How do you get your customers to pay attention? This is vital now for inbox delivery. Yahoo has started measuring whether or not your recipients are spending time reading your email, whether they're looking for you in the spam folder, how vital you are to their daily lives.
I found a gentleman today who gets what it means to really engage with your customers. You can visit Bob Gilbreath over at Marketing with Meaning and download a chapter of his book, The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing with Meaning.
He gets it. This concept of engagement, and he calls it meaning. Marketing now, whether it is effective offline or effective email marketing, can no longer be interruptive to your customers' lives. Your communications with them need to be not only permission-based but need to add some value to their daily lives.
When you create email campaigns, what do you do to add value? How do your targeted email marketing campaigns add to your recipients daily lives? What do you put in your marketing campaign or to your email newsletter that drives your recipients to want to spend time with your company?
Integrations with partner products is one of the things that makes ExactTarget so dynamic and powerful. Centralizing your electronic marketing software to work with your CRM, CMS, analytics, or other packages lets you accomplish more with less time, energy, and money.Here's just a few of the new integrations available:
SeeWhy
SeeWhy, creator of the Abandonment Tracker Pro web analytics service, is now offering an integration with ExactTarget. This integration intends to optimize real-time email follow-up campaigns that can convert up to 50% of website abandoners to customers.
XMPie
XMPie, who offers "One-to-One-in-One" is now incorporating ExactTarget email service into its PersonalEffect Cross-Media and e-Media products.
Printable Technologies
Printable Technologies Inc., provider of web-to-print and marketing personalization solutions, has integrated ExactTarget email capabilities into their product MarcomCentral.
You can see many more available integrations on the Integrated Partners page on our website. Categories of integration include, but are not limited to:
- Content Management System Partners
- CRM Partners
- Deliverability Partners
- Survey Partners
- Web Analytics Partners
I'm vegetarian. At this point, some of you will stop reading because you are baffled by people like me. No hamburgers? No hot dogs? No Beef Stroganauf (yeah I don't have any idea how to spell that)? Nope.At first it was just because I ate like a bird anyway and it wasn't worth the extra effort to cook meat for myself. Then it was so easy that I never went back. And now, I just don't want anything to have to die so I can go to bed with a food baby.
My point is, we're more alike than you might think. For example, you love email marketing. And I love email marketing! Shocking, probably not, as I work for the industry-leading email marketing software company. But that actually makes me really picky about what email lists I sign up for.
One email newsletter I love is Vegetarian Times. It's both educational and entertaining. For example, I get great new recipes -- and learned that World Vegetarian Day is coming up October 1st! (first annual, I think, but it will undoubtedly take the world by storm).
That's enough for now - I think I'll go snack on some multi-seed mini rice crackers with soy sauce. I know you're jealous.
Nicole
Creative Developer
So, I thought I knew about email before this summer.
I had signed up for newsletters and fan clubs. I got the coupons from online retails and bookstores. I even thought that I sent a decent amount of email in a given day. But, I had a lot to learn.
I remember the day that I had first heard about ExactTarget at a career fair. I talked with the employees at the booth for ten minutes or so and thought it was a really interesting company. I went home and began sharing with my friends about this “email company” ExactTarget:
Friends: “So what do they do?”
Me: “They send email.”
Friends: “Spam?”
Me: “No, I don’t think so. Its email you sign up for.”
Friends: “Oh, spam.”
After spending 14 weeks working for ExactTarget, I know and can explain why we actually are driven by the opposite of spam—and fight hard against companies that want to send spam.
ExactTarget is actually focused on sending relevant, permission-based email messages to consumers in a one to one marketing model that reaches specific customers that have chosen to opt-in to the particular email message.
There are two types of email messages sent out: transactional and triggered. There is also a CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 that has set out to regulate what email needs to look like.
I now realize what a powerful email marketing software platform ExactTarget is and how it can truly help raise the ROI for a company’s marketing dollar.
Kyle Schroeder
Slingshot Summer Intern
As I am looking back over the 14 weeks that I have been here this summer, one of the biggest things that has hit me is that ExactTarget is not just an email marketing company. They are not just an email service provider. They are truly a one to one marketing company that has a full line of products to help increase the marketing ROI for a company.
Yes, we do email. We actually send some of the most intelligent and customer-driven email through our dynamic content capabilities.
But what else is in our product line?
SMS: We have the ability to develop and execute powerful SMS text message campaigns to engage customers on the spot.
Voice: We have a product that can send targeted and specific messages to consumers by telephone. Adding this personal touch moves a company way beyond simple TV advertisements.
Landing Pages: These microsites enable users of ExactTarget’s already powerful email software platform the chance to call customers to action through a targeted website, designed specifically for the particular action.
When a company uses all four of these tools together, they have the ability to become a very sophisticated marketer that engages consumers in a relevant way.
Kyle Schroeder
Slingshot Summer Intern
ExactTarget has one of the industry leading email marketing software applications on the market. It has unbelievable capabilities to power massive email campaigns that intelligently reaches customers—increasing the marketer’s sophistication.
Additionally, this platform also provides detailed tracking capabilities. This allows marketers to monitor deliverability, click-through rates, and forwards—just to name a few.
As in most cases, ExactTarget didn’t stop there.
Enter: the iPhone application.
The ExactTarget iPhone application allows marketers to easily access and send tracking data easily and seamlessly. This allows you to stay connected and view all your tracking data for your email marketing campaigns in real time.
Stay connected, because your email marketing campaign doesn't stop just because you're away from your desk.
Kyle Schroeder
Slingshot Summer Intern
In case you missed it, here is the Top 5 round-up of ExactTarget's best blog posts from last week:1. Staying Connected with ExactTarget
Almost a year ago, I blogged about ExactTarget joining various social networks. I love this line: “Every day, we are learning more and more about the power of social networking.“ What a difference a year makes! Read More
2. Measuring ROI By The Square Foot
I was driving along the interstate last week when I noticed a billboard alongside the road. In big, bold letters it read: "Measure Your Advertising ROI By the Square Foot". Suddenly the difficulties of advertising in print media took on a whole new light. Read More
3 Email Design Tip of the Week: HTML for the Unique Email Landscape
As we touch on this issue time and time again, HTML for email can be very different than HTML for websites. Here are a few tips to get started, and for coding veterans, some thoughts to freshen your perspective. Read More
4. New Email Marketing Tracking Software In iLab
Improve your email marketing strategy with us! One of the newest innovations coming through ExactTarget's iLab is Impression Tracking - a new feature that allows users to track the effectiveness of different content regions generated by AMPscript or Dynamic Content. Read More
5. Email + Social Media: The Future of B-to-B Marketing?
At the recent ANA/BtoB Magazine conference in Chicago, Paul Dunay, Global Managing Director for services marketing at Avaya, and Jason Ferrara, VP Corporate Marketing at CareerBuilder.com presented a terrific session titled "How B-to-B Marketers Are Using New Media," in which they discussed how they have increased spending on new media, especially in the past year. Read More
As business in the travel industry, I have data on my customers. I know things like when they last visited, how many people joined them, where they visited, what room they stayed in, if they rented a car, and maybe where they came from.
What if there was a way to use this information to re-engage this customer base and reach out to them to provide relevant and specific information on upcoming deals?
ExactTarget has the answer.ExactTarget has a powerful, industry-leading, one-to-one email marketing application that allows companies to build specific, relevant, and professional-looking emails for their customers—those who have opted in.
From flight status to upgrade alerts for an airline, the software that ExactTarget has available can take your email marketing program to the next level. A list of case studies can demonstrate other features of our product as well.
Kyle Schroeder
Slingshot Summer Intern
One question I find that comes up all the time is: what is embedded?
To begin to answer that question, you have to first know what ExactTarget’s software does. ExactTarget is not simply an email service provider, but a One-to-One Marketing software that services permission based email marketing, SMS marketing, and voice campaigns for companies throughout the world.
So what is embedded?
In the simplest form, ExactTarget Embedded is a product integration of the power of ExactTarget’s one-to-one marketing software with an external application. Companies then build their own tools and software on top of the platform ET has created.
Both independent software vendors (ISV) and web-based applications are prime candidates for embedding this platform into their list of tools.
Let’s say I sell a CRM tool and want an email component as well, ExactTarget can be embedded into that software and is then powered by ExactTarget.
If I am an eCommerce site that offers web-based services and want to offer email marketing in my product mix, then ExactTarget can be embedded into the platform I am already using.
In both of these examples, the end customer never knows that they are using ExactTarget because the company provides its own look and user interface on top of the ExactTarget software.
Kyle Schroeder
Try using landing pages to expand on your current engagement campaign.
What are the benefits to a landing page?1. Create – unlimited design freedom
2. Personalize – leverage dynamic content and other tools to make it subscriber-specific
3. Measure – detailed URL link tracking activity is recorded
4. Recycle – use content (images, pictures, etc.) previously created in your landing page
5. Engage – connect with subscribers and encourage online registration
6. Relevant – provide detailed information for a specific event
7. Simple – prevent your subscribers from feeling overwhelmed with content
View a simple example that ExactTarget has generated to demonstrate what a landing page looks like. Further detail about landing pages can be seen here.
The travel industry could benefit from a landing page as a follow up to an email that is sent out to their subscriber base. After a Christmas vacation hotel discount email goes out, a link to a landing page could be included to bring them to a microsite that engages them with relevant and specific data regarding this particular sale.
This is all a part of the industry-leading email marketing one to one software that ExactTarget has developed. When it comes to effective marketing campaigns focused on permission-based email, ExactTarget is the email marketing company you want to turn to.
Kyle Schroeder
Slingshot Summer Intern
Why?
These partnership strengthen the abilities of the companies we work with and allow more people to utilize the power of ExactTarget’s one-to-one marketing software through email, SMS, and voice. ExactTarget is the perfect email marketing solution for many businesses looking to send direct email marketing campaigns.
Our partner page lists who we are currently aligned with and our program guide gives you detailed description of what it means to be a partner with ExactTarget, an industry leader in 1 to 1 Email Marketing Solutions that can develop effective email marketing campaigns across industries.
Interested in learning more? Download the ET Partner Program Guide PDF.
Kyle Schroeder
Slingshot Summer Intern
Clients can now see the statistics that confirm the importance of segmenting emails based on different subscriber attributes with AMPscript or Dynamic Content. With Impression Tracking, clients can track and compare link activity within a specific region or across multiple regions. Furthermore, if one content region is used over and over, its effectiveness (and that of each link within) is available for your information. And the best part is how easy it is to use--requiring hardly any setup!
Check out iLab today in ExactTarget 3sixty to take advantage of remaining openings, or search iLab to test out other new innovations.
I’m a one-to-one marketer just like you. With every email send, I’m glued to the results to see how many opens I’m getting, and what links receive the highest clicks. When open rates on a new subject line top the charts, I get excited thinking about what I can come up with to beat those results the next time around. I learn a lot from testing elements of our communications and analyzing the results. As smart marketers, we all know the value in the numbers, and proving the execution of our strategies back to a strong ROI. I could go on and on about what our newsletter metrics have told me, but I want to go beyond the numbers. That’s right…it’s time to get personal.
After all, InSight is about you! Does this communication give you everything you need to be a successful one-to-one marketer? Does it answer your questions about deliverability and design, while keeping you up-to-date on the latest features in your account? While the numbers can tell me what’s working from what’s already included in InSight, I’m looking for your input on what’s NOT there. Please take a moment to complete the survey in this month’s newsletter and give me some InSight about you! Still have more to say? Share your feedback with me on 3sixty.
Need to know something, or want the opinion of someone that has already “been there, done that?” Head over to 3sixty Answers–you’ll find great questions that have already been asked and answered, as well as contribute your own thoughts to the conversation.
Maybe you’re the opposite and you have tons of sticky notes filled with ideas for our software. Well, we want to hear them! It’s your ideas that allow us to continue building and improving our software, becoming building blocks for everything that we do.
Now, all you have to do is log on to ExactTarget 3sixty and navigate to Ideas. This is where you can tell us all of the great enhancements you would love to see. And, with the voting technology that is tied to each idea, you can also get support from all of the ExactTarget clients around the world.
Our Product Managers actually use these ideas to help build out our product roadmap and develop new features to meet your needs. There is nothing that we like more than getting to tell someone that their idea has been delivered.
Can’t wait to see you in ExactTarget 3sixty!
I was eating dinner this week in a local fast food restaurant in Anderson, IN and they had a giant box sitting on the counter that encouraged customers to sign-up for their email list.
Since I work for an email marketing company: they got me.
I signed up.
What was good about this?
1. Subscribers are opting-in to the communication.
2. The database is going to be subscribers who want regular communication.
How could this be improved?
1. Convert from paper to SMS. Instead of having me fill out a slip of paper with my contact information, have me opt in by text message.
2. Follow-up and engage immediately. I still have yet to receive any communication and it has been 3 days later. By the time I receive their first “welcome email”, will I still want communication?
This type of SMS campaign can be developed through the email marketing software powered by ExactTarget. SMS campaigns can instantly capture and engage subscribers by simply texting a keyword to a short code. The system replies with a confirmation text and then can ask for an email address in step 2.
You have now grabbed my cell phone number and my email address, two valuable pieces of information that can build a bigger and stronger email marketing program.
Have you considered ExactTarget?
Kyle Schroeder
Slingshot Summer Intern
Innovations that are set to become available soon include SMS solutions 1) Global Text and 2) Outbound Text Messaging with a Shared Short Code as well as new tracking capabilities with 1) Impression Tracking for Dynamic Content and 2) Impression Tracking for AMPscript. Login to iLab today or join the iLab group in 3sixty to stay up-to-date with the latest and greatest features!
Hey all. Today I'll be discussing how to strengthen your e-commerce kung-fu by utilizing ExactTarget's Landing Page technology.As you might have realized from browsing some of the other posts on our blog, targeted email marketing is only part of the story. A question to ponder is: 'Why personalize a customer's email only to send them to a non-personalized web page?'.
There often seems to be a disconnect in the minds of marketers when it comes to the partnership between email and their website. If you harness the power of one to one marketing for email shouldn't your website also present content to the user in a one to one manner? You've taken meticulous care to present precise product offerings in your email (driven by analytic data, purchase data, engagement data, etc), but when a subscriber clicks through they're shown the same content as everyone else. What?
The gap is apparent, but the remedy isn't always so easy. Each site is unique in both hardware and software, and implementing a true one to one strategy with customized content isn't always an option. There could be high development costs or long production runs associated with integrating this strategy into your current site.
But what if there was a middleware that could be skinned to look exactly like your site and could serve customized content as a stand-alone page or be embedded into your existing pages? Obviously there is or I wouldn't be writing about it:
Enter ExactTarget Landing Pages.
Landing pages are an easy way to spin up dynamic behavioral and/or profile driven web pages tailored to the individual. Often these can be spun up by marketers without involving their IT crew, and since they function as middleware you can consider them platform agnostic.
They can leverage the same Dynamic Content and AMPScript driven content areas that you already use in your emails, including those pre-created and stored in the system. You can even drag and drop them into the page when creating it just like when you create your emails in ExactTarget.
There's also a new(er) Smart Capture tool designed specifically for landing pages. With it, you can easily create forms that talk directly to your ExactTarget data, and optionally, your Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Salesforce.com data as well. You can visually create forms that add users to lists, send triggered emails, modify data extensions, and many other tasks. All of the HTML and required AMPScript is generated for you. All you have to do is drag and drop it into your page.
Landing pages can harness ExactTarget Live Content including Live Offers. With Live Offers, you can serve generic or subscriber specific promotional codes AND track the redemption of those codes so that they can/can't be shared or expire after a certain time.
ExactTarget has a productized Google Ad Manager integration that can also be leveraged within landing pages as well. Integrations like this help bridge the gap between your real site and your landing pages. You could show the same ads on your landing pages that you do on your site, simply by dragging them in, while your impression and click tracking stays intact. This integration can even show different ads based on profile attributes. Talk about a value ad to your advertisers! Real targeting!
Landing Pages as Mini-Apps
The beauty behind landing pages is that the entire ExactTarget platform is at your disposal. Think of a landing page as a mini application that can do almost anything that you can manually do in the system. Not only can you customize layout and content on-the-fly based on who the subscriber is, but using AMPScript and data extensions you could:
- Create an out-of-stock reminder system
- Interact with a user using SMS and/or Voice
- Create a CMS application
- Create a shopping cart with checkout system
- Develop a user commenting system
Flexibility
The true power behind landing pages is that they can stand alone or be embedded via an iframe into your current site. I've even created AMPScript-only landing pages that I'll ping via ajax to do some processing for me and are completely hidden to everyone else. It's a way other than our API to do some really robust tasks and is useful when used client-side.
FYI, I built the ExactTarget Extensions Network entirely on Landing Pages.
Kung FuLike I said in the title of this post 'One to One Marketing is My Kung Fu - and It is Strong'. Now your Kung Fu can be strong too by using landing pages to bridge the gap between your emails and website to reach true one to one marketing nirvana.
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Follow me on Twitter: @bobbr
ExactTarget has a great tool incorporated into their powerful email marketing software that features voice messaging.
From promotional messages to appointment reminders, emergency notifications to direct marketing campaign follow-ups, Voice has emerged as a powerful addition to your one-to-one communication arsenal.
So as an airline, I might want to create a promotional campaign that pulls in the “pilot of the year”. A message could be recorded from him that encourages all the passengers that flew last year around the holidays to book their flights early. By using the code this message provides, the customer could receive a 15% discount.
The delivery and personalization of this message is unlike a TV commercial or flyer in the mail. It’s a direct message that is targeted toward previous customers.
There are also powerful tracking reports that can be generated with these campaigns. Comprehensive data tracking—including actual call receipt, ideal call times, number and duration of received calls, and call-to-action transfers—are recorded for your analysis.
The Tennis Championships that were held in Indianapolis this summer chose to use ExactTarget to use voice to connect with fans.
Have you considered incorporating the power of voice into your one-to-one marketing campaign?
Kyle Schroeder
Slingshot Summer Intern
So try appealing to the IT group from the start by incorporating these ideas into your next newsletter or prospecting send:
1. The most highly anticipated feature from a 2009 ExactTarget release was Social Forward. Why not create a technology-centric blog page, Twitter page, and/or Facebook page to engage in tech talk? Technology folks love talking about code on social networks. Prove you’ve got what it takes to support an organization’s technology group with smooth sailing integrations—and more.
2. Flaunt your ROI through the power of application performance. ExactTarget sends billions of messages per month on behalf of subscribers—and we’re proud of it! Without telling the world the intricacies of your application architecture, you can convey what’s needed to build confidence in your products and services right out of the gate. Consider including an ROI calculator. Akamai has a great one on their site:
But what if you don’t sell software? Perhaps you’re offering packaged goods, a service, or some other tangible product. No matter what you’re selling, think about how your product saves your users’ money. Maybe you’ve packaged your product more effectively to improve shelf space, and that knowledge will appeal to the operations team’s bottom line. Find out the person within the organization who benefits the most from your product, and appeal to him or her from the start. More money left in your customer’s pocket means more money in yours.
We've all been there. You have a deadline that is 10 minutes away, but you are still working on the creative. 9 minutes and 30 seconds later you are miraculously done with the email creative in time and you send it out into the world. A big sigh of relief, and then the sudden feel of dread. Did you remember to change the link, update the copy in the third paragraph, and update the subject line?Last week I received a few emails with common mistakes. Whether it was a misspelling in the headline or they left a word out in the subject line, I sympathize with the person who hit send on that email newsletter. Every email marketer has been there at one point, and if they haven’t – they will be.
When we (the email marketers of the world) spend endless hours with a communication, we are more likely to see what should be there instead of what is really there. And there is nothing more frustrating than spending that time with an email communication and something being off – even if we are the only ones who notice it.
So the next time you’re about to hit send on an email communication, check the links one more time and read the copy just one more time before you hit send and your work of art is out in the world. I’ve also been known to ask anyone who happens to be walking by my desk to read over it once before I hit send to get another set of eyes on it, you know someone who hasn’t been looking at the html of the email for the last 4 hours straight.
I may (or may not) have been the victim of not double checking everything in the past, but I can tell you that I triple check everything now. So be sure to check things twice before you hit the send button. Not only will you no longer feverishly check everything after you've hit send hoping you didn't forget anything, your subscribers will appreciate the extra effort.
For more tips on creating great one to one marketing emails, check out Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials.
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