Email Service Software

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Over the next several weeks, we will be sharing guest articles from experts in the realm of content marketing. This week, Josh Miles writes.

Josh Miles is principal and founder of Miles Design, a branding firm specializing in branding and website design for professional services and software firms. Josh is the author of the new Content Marketing Institute book Bold Brand: The New Rules for Differentiating, Branding, and Marketing Your Professional Services Firm.

“It will look like you guys are on everywhere, even if you’re not.”

Our media buyer always had a way of helping our clients make the...

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Marketing automation is the intersection of many useful features and functions. It's a proven fact that marketing automation software gives marketers full visibility into aspects of the sales cycle that were previously a mystery. But the sheer number of buttons and tools can seem daunting if they're not old-hat to you just yet.

As you begin to build an effective marketing automation program, you can begin to gain a holistic view of your marketing activities. From there, you can streamline traditionally manual processes (like customer segmentation, email marketing, and campaign management).

Start ...

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October 2012 was an exciting time for ExactTarget’s partner ecosystem. Not only was the Orange Partner Network program launched at Connections, but also in front of the 4,000+ attendees, ExactTarget was excited to present the Power of ONE Reseller Partner of the Year award to our Platinum partner, C.TRAC.

C.TRAC has taken ExactTarget’s passion and unwavering commitment to client success and worked it into their own daily business practices by truly embodying ExactTarget's core values. Combined with their innovative strategy, design, integration, database management, reporting services, and...

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I’m not a big fan of country music.

I don’t mean to alienate anyone due to personal preferences, and I’m sure we can find common interests even if country is the only genre on your iPod, but country tunes are just not my favorite tunes to hear.

That being said, one of my closest friends loves country music. We were recently at a restaurant that was playing a country song called “Where I Come From.” I was poking fun at the whole situation because I’d recently heard a completely different country song also called “Where I Come From.”

Lo and behold, there are two country songs with the exact...

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Everything was going fine. You had set up your email marketing campaigns properly, all of your subscribers were double opt-in, you were sending emails on the right frequency, and your content was exactly what you had promised.

As far as you knew, people loved this stuff.....

But then, out of the blue, Gmail and the other ISPs started blocking your emails! But why? Why? Because those subscribers aren't interacting with your email anymore. They've become disinterested. They've become what are now known as 'the un-engaged.'

Just sending email to your subscribers isn't good enough

Just sending email...

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What is the easiest way to comply with ExactTarget's Anti-Spam Policy?

First things first... What is ExactTarget's Anti-Spam Policy? If you have a look at the policy, you'll find that we expect that our customers "will use our software only to send emails to customers and prospects that have directly consented (opted-in) to receive email."  In a nutshell, the answer is found in two simple words: "No surprises."

Clients often ask about the propriety of engaging in buying or renting lists, or engaging the services of an append house. All of these are against the Anti-Spam Policy.

To understand why,...

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I recently read an article on TFB (The Future Buzz) which argued against the principle of using simple communications to reach out to the mass of your customers. I must admit, I wholly agree with assuming that you have a smart base of customers! It is definitely apparent that "dumbing down" messages does not guarantee that they will be engaged with by everyone, especially in today's digital age of smart and service-focused consumers.

The same blog post argues that using generic and simple messaging can portray your brand as "cheap" and "untrustworthy." I am not a businessman, but I am sure...

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I'm excited to share that ExactTarget is expanding its award-winning Content Marketing team! We are currently hiring for the positions of Content Design Specialist and Content Development Specialist in our Indianapolis headquarters.

Content Design Specialist: Our newly created CONTENT DESIGN SPECIALIST role is custom-made for someone who can conceptualize, create, and optimize design for infographics, emails, eBooks, blog posts, presentations, interactive applications, mobile environments, and video animations. The right candidate will be a self-starter with proven design talent and an ability to...

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Each Thursday at 11am EST, marketers from around the world join the ExactTarget user community on Twitter for a conversation about trends and campaign ideas across the interactive marketing industry. We call this virtual coffee chat ExactTarget Café.

Our guest for a recent #ETCafe chat was Peter Chase (@peterrchase), Executive Vice President at Scribe Software Corporation. During the chat Peter shared his insights into leveraging data to drive more successful campaigns. This was Peter’s and his team's first time on the chat and we had some amazing conversation!

Here's a recap from our...

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I had the chance to sit down with Ben Pickering, CEO of Strutta to discuss Facebook Marketing Best Practices and Strutta!

SM: So what exactly is Strutta? 
BP: Strutta is software that helps marketers create, build and launch promotions on Facebook. Our tools are self-service and allow brands to build and engage their audience through social media, identify top influencers and measure campaign effectiveness.

SM: That sounds impressive! Does your platform work with ExactTarget?
BP: We have partnered with ExactTarget and SocialPages to make it easy for customers to develop fully-branded contests and...

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Few assets are more valuable than a company’s customer base.  

Yet, most companies are more systematic about managing their office supplies than their customers.  Research continues to show the majority of companies don’t know enough about their customer’s preferences and needs, what products or services they use, if they are satisfied, or if they are thinking about defecting to the competition, and why.

The problem is NOT the lack of customer data. Rather, pockets of customer data exist throughout the company. The problem is that none of it is integrates to create “one version of the truth”...

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You are in the final stages of choosing ExactTarget as you new email service provider (ESP) and the realization that the task of either migrating your existing campaigns, or integrating a new ESP into your back-end system comes into focus. Whether you are using the services provided by ExactTarget or a consulting partner, here are the top 5 tips that we give clients to ease the burden on your team at the same time as speeding up the implementation. 

1. Define your marketing objectives and goals
   
   Prior to engaging with your assigned services team or partner agency, it is critical that you have...

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Each Thursday at 11am EDT, marketers from around the world join the ExactTarget Nexus  partner ecosystem on Twitter for a conversation about trends and campaign ideas across the interactive marketing industry.  We call the virtual coffee chat the Nexus Café.

We hosted guest, RapidBuyr, a B2B daily deals site for small-to-medium businesses. They offer discounted offerings for software, hardware, web development and design services, IT outsourcing, events, SaaS offerings, and more. During our #NexusCafe Twitter chat, the RapidBuyr team and our chat participants discussed strategies for...Read More »

I had the opportunity last week to sit down with Matt Hunckler, the Director of Marketing at Slingshot SEO, and talk with him about Search Engine Optimization and how organizations are incorporating it into their marketing mix. Here’s a bit of our conversation:

Colby: What is SEO? It seems a little abstract – like alchemy – can you get us up to speed on this topic?

Matt: No problem. It's a fairly complex practice, but I'll see if I can break it down a bit.

From the perspective of the search engines, search is about providing the best...

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As marketers, it's difficult to push engaging, relevant, timely content in every single email you send. When you start to see those open and click rates dip, it may be time to wake them up with a re-engagement campaign.

After pouring through various marketing email examples, we've compiled a few of the reoccurring tactics marketers use to get a subscriber's attention.

Education:
The main message of this tactic is to encourage subscribers to make the most of their subscription. Give instructions on how subscribers can get the most value from your emails. Unengagement may mean they have a lack of...Read More »

Howdy,

I'm Brian McGreer.  I'm a software developer here at ExactTarget and, when I'm not working to further protect our customers from internet evil-doers, I get to serve as a member of the ExactImpact committee--the philanthropic wing of ExactTarget.  I thought I'd take quick break from writing code to tell you about some fun I had at our recent Habitat for Humanity event.
 

If you don't know already, Habitat for Humanity is a charity that is dedicated to providing decent, safe, and economical housing to those who need it.  They do this by (surprise) building houses.  It's not a giveaway...

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What a historic day for ExactTarget!  Ten years ago today, we filed ExactTarget LLC with the state of Indiana.  Chris Baggott, Peter McCormick and I had a vision to help marketers leverage data to connect with their customers via email.  We were convinced that this emerging channel would help businesses of all sizes deepen customer relationships through targeted and relevant communications.  Starting a web-based software company in late 2000 seemed crazy to many - the internet bubble had burst, the economy was struggling and the three of us were first time software entrepreneurs.  Long odds...Read More »

Not that long ago while working for a web analytics company, I went on a joint sales call with our founder Peter McCormick who was a partner of mine at the time. While neither of us were technically sales people, here we were in the boardroom of a Fortune 100 client pitching the benefits of a lead nurture campaign. For their part the client had very realistic expectations, after all they had believed most of what they had been told by their vendors.

The client wanted three basic things:

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There only can be one number one. The best. Número uno. That is the newly stated goal of Indianapolis based email service provider, ExactTarget - to be #1. CEO, Scott Dorsey, stated that ExactTarget's goal for 2011 is to be best in breed for email, social, SMS and mobile services. This news sent the a conference room of over 2,000 ExactTarget user attendees buzzing with Twitter tweets, text messages, Facebook fan posts and, of course, old-school email messages.

A demo of ExactTarget's new Interactive Marketing Hub followed with new software tools and toys that will be released in beta...Read More »