Email Software

Email + Mobile

Thursday, March 18, 2010 by Jeffrey Rohrs

Remember the good ‘ol college days? The days where you’d sign up for anything free because you never quite had enough money for food or books. Credit card companies would roam around campus flaunting their free t-shirts with a tempting, “All you have to do is sign up for your very own credit card and this t-shirt can be yours.” And of course, many freshmen fell for it. It was a free t-shirt, after all.

Probably not the brightest idea to ruin your credit over a free t-shirt. But, let me tell you about a really cool promotion involving, yes, free stuff and college students. Except this one is much smarter – for all parties involved.

In an effort to reach a younger demographic, Pier 1 Imports partnered with Barnes & Noble to run an SMS sweepstakes. Really, the idea is genius – partnering with a bookstore and using SMS to reach college students. Seriously, if you can name one college kid who isn’t glued to their cell phone, you win!

Using ExactTarget’s mobile functionality, Pier 1 placed in-store mobile calls-to-action next to the prize – a Papasan chair – in 100 Barnes & Noble bookstores near college campuses. Consumers who text in receive a text message, automatically triggered from ExactTarget, confirming their registration in the sweepstakes and asking them to opt-in to receive promotional emails from Pier 1 Imports.

And the best part is – the campaign is keyword-specific, with a unique keyword for each store, so Pier 1 can identify the exact store each consumer texts in from.
This is truly one scenario where everybody wins. One lucky college kid takes home a Papasan chair (perfect for a dorm room) and Pier 1 collects email newsletter sign-ups and reaches the younger demographic they were after.

It’s a true example of Email + Mobile bliss. Visit 3sixty for even more resources to get the most from our Interactive Marketing Platform.

Let’s face it: the fun in getting – or winning – free stuff never goes away. Even as you get older.  

Sharing The Secrets Of Email + Sites

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 by Beth Leleck

Let me guess – you think you could do so much more with your marketing program “if only you had a developer” to build out your website and help support your interactive marketing initiatives. Am I close?

Well I’m here to let you know: you don’t need a developer. In fact, at ExactTarget, we build and use our own Landing Pages all the time – with no assistance from IT or a developer.

We use Landing Pages for everything from a simple one-page list of resources to a full-blown microsite. Typically, microsites are used for larger initiatives, such as Connections, our annual user conference or other events that require more than a single page of information.

To see ExactTarget’s Landing Pages in action, check out Connections2010.com and exacttarget.com/3sixtyLive. You’ll notice that we’ve even incorporated a SmartCapture form on each of these pages so we can easily gather customer data. And the best part is that we can continue to build out the Connections2010.com microsite as we have more information to share with our customers. So, while it may start as a single “reserve your spot” Landing Page, it will eventually turn into a full-blown microsite, consisting of multiple Landing Pages with a variety of information about the event. We’ve also used Landing Pages to build a few unique interactive tools: ExactTargetInAction and The List Growth Advisor. These tools were built entirely on ExactTarget Landing Pages, allowing us to gather customer data, gain tracking visibility, and provide customers with the information they’re looking for.

Inspired? Learn more about ExactTarget Landing Pages and how you can achieve results with our integrated marketing platform.

Maine Repeals Law Restricting Data That Can Be Collected From Minors

Friday, March 12, 2010 by Al Iverson

Wendy Davis reports for MediaPost that Maine has repealed "An Act To Prevent Predatory Marketing Practices Against Minors," a 2009 law that attempted to prevent misuse of minors' medical data for marketing purposes. The law was worded in such a way to essentially apply far beyond just medical data, raising potential constitutional issues and creating a problem for some marketers advertising to individuals in Maine.

Now if they would just do something about the state's interpretation of how Maine's Freedom of Access Act applies to state-held email address data.

(Hat tip: @ddayman and @jacaldwell)

Designing For Your Subscribers: Webinar Q&A

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 by Justine Jordan

Thanks to everyone who was able to attend “Designing For Your Subscribers: Tips and Tricks to Increase Email Marketing ROI” last week. We had an excellent turnout and plenty of great questions. If you weren’t able to attend the session, don’t worry! You can watch a recording of the one-hour webinar on 3sixty.

Do you have data on email clients that consumer subscribers tend to use?
While data is available, your mileage may vary. Each audience will be different, and you may see dramatically different segments in your list or even between lists, as we saw in the webinar. Fingerprint publishes an aggregate of the data collected from marketers utilizing their service. MailboxIQ provides an in-depth view of email client usage, where emails are being read, and more. Even a simple List Demographics report in ExactTarget can help you understand which email clients your subscribers might be using.

What are the default pixel dimensions for common preview panes?
Over half of subscribers use a preview pane in their email client. We measured each of the default preview pane setups on Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Yahoo, Hotmail, and Mail using a 1024x768 monitor resolution. Read the blog post here.

Do you also have data on monitor resolutions in order to determine which portion of an email might be “above the fold”?
Similar to preview pane dimensions, the dimensions for the area above the fold may vary widely since individual users can adjust the size of their preview pane and their inbox in general. Keep in mind that your users may not be viewing your email in an inbox maximized to full screen resolution. w3schools.com publishes display resolution trend information (as do many other sites), but it’s important to remember this data comes from their own website traffic. Just as with email clients, your own website’s analytics data may reveal more pertinent information about your subscribers’ screen settings.

Browser Size by Google Labs is a great tool for indentifying what portion of your email might be “below the fold” in different monitor resolutions. Keep in mind the following caveats: you must have a web-hosted version of your email (you need a URL to paste in) and the email should be left-aligned for best results.

What should be the ideal width of an email in pixels?
We continue to recommend 600px wide as a guideline. We’ve seen success with narrower and wider variations. Again, your results may vary. Generally speaking, we wouldn’t recommend going much wider than 750px.

Where did the "50% of users have images turned off" metric come from?
Many popular email clients—including Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo! and Hotmail—disable images by default, forcing the subscriber to choose to turn images on. As we saw in our discussion of email client usage, these email clients can account for 70+% on many lists. It’s important to note that images off is the default for these email clients.

When designing using ExactTarget templates, how can you edit the preheader teaser text?
Our Client Success Center would be happy to assist you. You may reach the CSC by creating a case in BackOffice, sending an email to help@exacttarget.com or calling 866-558-9823.

How do I find out what the "web safe" fonts are?
This site has a great list of web-safe fonts and matches font equivalents between a Windows and Mac environment.

Is there any way to control what content is seen on a mobile phone using CSS? How should I create a mobile friendly version?
There are ways for a website to detect a mobile device and automatically serve up appropriate content, but email currently requires a manual approach. If you’re seeing a significant number of subscribers viewing your emails on a mobile device, we’d recommend creating a simple mobile HTML version and linking to it in the upper left of your standard HTML email. This version would include web safe fonts with minor formatting (color, bold, italics), short teaser text linking to full content, and little more than a simple image (such as a logo) at the top. This creates a great foundation for a mobile-friendly program, which can certainly grow – for example, eventually you might allow subscribers to choose “mobile preferred” and send them a mobile specific email directly.

Thanks again for attending and for all the great questions!

Goodmail Confirms Yahoo Split

Monday, March 8, 2010 by Al Iverson

As I mentioned before, Yahoo is ending support for Goodmail CertifiedEmail.

Today, Goodmail confirmed this via an email notice to Goodmail clients and Goodmail partner ESPs. In the email, Goodmail says that "Goodmail and Yahoo failed to renew their service agreement. As a result, effective 3/24/10, Yahoo will no longer accept CertifiedEmail messages. We hope to restore the CertifiedEmail service at Yahoo in the not too distant future, but for now our customers are advised to plan on sending plain (non-CertifiedEmail) messages to Yahoo as of March 24."

We're already working with Yahoo to ensure a smooth transition off of Goodmail CertifiedEmail at Yahoo for any affected Goodmail-utilizing clients. I don't anticipate this being a painful process. Stay tuned; we'll be sure to post any updates as they become available.

Email, Meet Social.

Saturday, March 6, 2010 by Dawn DeVirgilio

Last week was a tremendous week here at ExactTarget with the acquisition announcement of CoTweet. This acquisition sent a lot of buzz through the press (we really have been all-a-Twitter!), Twitter and even my inbox! I couldn't be more excited about the future of interactive marketing.

I've used CoTweet since the spring of 2009 to listen and engage with ExactTarget's Twitter conversations. Honestly, after going thru multiple processes and using multiple different applications - it is the only platform truly built for businesses to manage their Twitter conversations.

Email Marketing Meet Social Media Marketing
What's really exciting is that this is a huge statement in one-to-one communications. Consumers are demanding marketers to send them relevelant messages, in the way they want to receive it. Your customer may want a tweet for a discount code, a text message for when their purchase has been shipped and an email for recommending new products they might like based off of what they've purchased.

Who's geeked out? I know I am!

Want to learn more? Check out http://www.exacttarget.com/Connected for more info, great data on Social Media Trends and a video from both CEOs talking about the power of ExactTarget & CoTweet.

Yahoo! Mail Announcement for CertifiedEmail senders

Friday, March 5, 2010 by Al Iverson

Carlo Catajan of Yahoo just announced via Deliverability.com that as of March 24, 2010, Yahoo is ceasing support for Goodmail CertifiedEmail, as indicated by the upcoming decomissioning of the specific MX (inbound mail) record in DNS for delivery of Goodmail-imprinted messages.

As a result, we'll be removing Yahoo and related domains from our MTA (mail transfer agents; aka our outbound mail servers) for all clients as soon as possible, to prevent any issues for clients utilizing Goodmail CertifiedEmail.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at deliverability@exacttarget.com or via our new twitter account, @etdeliv.

Your emails CAN do it all!

Friday, March 5, 2010 by Shelly Griffin

Everyone knows that I love to hear how our customers are using ExactTarget's application for their email marketing campaigns - especially when it is a great example of incorporating good design, call-to-actions, and cross sells - while still maintaining anticipated, relevant and personal content for subscribers. DineWise is a company that specializes in prepared gourmet meals delivered right to your door. They send both informational and promotional emails through ExactTarget. Check out this recent article on exactly what sets their emails apart.

Email Address Capture at Point of Sale?

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Al Iverson

According to this post on Eric Goldman's blog, it sounds like requesting an email address from a consumer at the point of sale during a credit card transaction at a brick-and-mortar retailer isn't allowed in California, according to that state's Song-Beverly Act.

The court found that the law's application to email addresses is not preempted by CAN-SPAM. It did not explicitly rule on whether the law applies to email addresses, but the law's definition of "personal identification information" (PII) is quite broad, and the court's analysis seemed to suggest it, so it would be wise to assume for now that it does count email address as PII.

The net here is that the law does seem to prohibit the offline collection of email addresses in California by brick-and-mortar retailers in the course of a credit card transaction. There may be allowable ways to collect email addresses or other information outside of the credit card transaction, but I'm not clear on what the options might be.

We're continuing to research the issue through various channels, and will be sure to share further information as it becomes available.

(Note that the Act does NOT apply to online transactions.)

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.

ESPC Call: Cloudmark and Best/Worst Practices

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 by Al Iverson

As part of Cloudmark's ongoing ESP outreach program, where they work to help spread knowledge and understanding of best practices and bad practices, Jamie Tomasello of Cloudmark spoke to the ESPC (Email Sender and Provider Coalition) group on March 2nd, 2010. ExactTarget is an ESPC member, so I listened in.

Cloudmark is a really big spam filterer, protecting over one billion mailboxes across 190 countries. Successful delivery of email to the inbox depends on passing successfully through Cloudmark filters at a lot of different receiving sites that matter, both B2C and B2B. That makes it important to understand what Cloudmark considers to be good practices and bad practices, as these perceptions are likely to drive their filtering decisions and affect your ability to get mail delivered (or not).

Jamie explained that in the eyes of end recipients of email, the definition of spam is changing. It's not so much just "do you have permission or not" as much as it is now "is the mail desired and wanted." The underlying statement there is that unclear permission, third-party permission, co-registration, etc. are not best practices, and are likely to cause deliverablity woes. As she indicated, these are mailing practices that have been defended in the past, but they're no longer defensible. ISPs and end recipients only want to let desired mail through. Is your mail desired?

Here are just a few of the Cloudmark-preferred best practices that Jamie mentioned on the call.

At a minimum, compliance with CAN-SPAM. (Keeping in mind that CAN-SPAM is a starting point, not the finish line.)
Following MAAWG Senders Best Communication Practices document.
Implementing confirmed opt-in, also known as double opt-in, obtaining explicit permission confirming that every recipient really wants to be on your email list.
Segmenting or segregating marketing mail from transactional mail. Making sure you're not trying to dilute stats or get away with something by mixing mail streams. (Spam filterers are smart and will figure you out.)
Using consistent branding in content, sending domains, call to action domains, and reverse DNS.
Sending from dedicated IP addresses.
Utilizing feedback loop data to identify and solve problems. (What intelligence can you gather from the recipient response to the campaign? Don't just listwash.)

On the bad side of the practices spectrum, a few of the things that she mentioned that can damage your reputation include things like third party co-registration, email append (which consumers hate), list purchasing and mailing to inactive subscribers. She also pointed out that you're very likely to look like one of the bad guys if you're doing things like gaming reputation systems, distributing mail volume over a large number of IP addresses (also called snowshoeing), sending your mail via multiple ESPs or affiliates, or mixing non-relevant third-party mail in with relevant, permissioned messages-- a practice termed "spamouflage."

A lot of what was discussed is stuff that savvy ESPs (and savvy marketers) should know already. But, it's never a bad idea to remind folks of what the rules are, as new people and new companies enter the email space every day. I'm very glad that Jamie and Cloudmark are helping to raise the level of understanding of best practices among email marketers and their email service providers.

ExactTarget Acquires CoTweet

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 by Scott Dorsey

The below message was sent to all ExactTarget clients March 2, 2010. For additional information on the acquisition, visit www.ExactTarget.com/Connected

Email Marketing Meets Social Media - ExactTarget & CoTweet from ExactTarget on Vimeo.

Today is a historic day for ExactTarget and our clients! We are taking an enormous step forward in helping you bring together all forms of interactive communications and drive deeper customer engagement by combining the power of email marketing and social media.

I am excited to announce ExactTarget has completed the acquisition of CoTweet, the enterprise leader in helping businesses connect with customers via Twitter. CoTweet is an amazing software company that powers the Twitter campaigns of big brands like Microsoft, McDonald's, Sprint, Ford, Dell, Pepsi, Whole Foods, Intuit, Salesforce.com, USA Today and Coca-Cola. CoTweet's Web-based collaboration platform provides a single dashboard that allows multiple users to track conversations, assign roles and create follow-up tasks through workflows and simple case management. As one of the earliest Twitter pioneers, CoTweet has developed one of the closest direct relationships with Twitter and has earned the trust and admiration of the social media world.

CoTweet brings tremendous social media capabilities to ExactTarget and will operate as a business unit of ExactTarget in San Francisco focused exclusively on social media product development. CoTweet Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Jesse Engle will lead the team and report directly to me as we work to quickly invest additional resources to establish our Social Media Lab - where we'll develop new innovations to help you harness the collective power of CoTweet and ExactTarget to increase customer engagement. To learn how you can leverage the power of ExactTarget and CoTweet together, visit ExactTarget.com/Connected. Click here to start using the free beta version of CoTweet or visit CoTweet's enterprise innovator's page to learn how you can access richer analytics, conversation history and drive even higher levels of engagement with their enterprise edition.

Today's announcement is the realization of the continued evolution of interactive marketing. We look forward to working with the CoTweet team to deliver new innovations and help drive your business by bringing together the power of email marketing and social media. Thank you for your continued partnership.

Email Domain Alamedanet.net Retired

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Al Iverson

Residents of Alameda, California-based AlamedaNet, Alameda Power & Telecom's internet service have been transitioned from alamedanet.net email addresses over to comcast.net addresses, as the alamedanet.net email domain has been retired as of December 15, 2009.

It isn't possible to convert email addresses in a blanket manner from one domain to the other, as there are certain to be username collisions between the new domains. Meaning, somebody could be bob@domain1 and he can't become bob@domain2, because somebody else already has the username "bob." Also, anti-spam groups regularly point out that consent to send email is tied to specific email addresses -- meaning, it is not kosher to change someone's email address in your database without their explicit consent.

As this domain has been retired, we'll be adding it to our "List Detective" filter shortly, preventing any further email messages to any address at that domain.

New Zealand gets tough.

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Karen Balle

New Zealand has had enough of businesses and individuals not paying attention to their anti-spam laws. They had been going with educational efforts, but they're fed up now. Fines for spamming, either via email or SMS, are $200,000 for an individual or $500,000 for a business.

If you're a New Zealand resident and you're getting spam, you can file a complaint with the Department of Internal Affairs.

If you're sending to New Zealand residents, make sure you're honoring unsubscribes or it can cost you up to a cool half-million.

Countries all over the world are fed up. ET handles your unsubs for you, so if you're sending through us, no worries. Just make sure that if you're a new customer you've imported your previously unsubscribed customers as unsubscribed or that you don't upload them as Active subscribers.

Email Design Tip of the Week: Social Media in Email

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Andrea Smith

Should social media be used in email? Sure! But only if it makes sense for your audience. Decide if you will link to your existing social presence, enable content sharing, or both. Let’s take a quick closer look:

Link to your existing social presence. This can include a simple text or graphic link to your Facebook page, Twitter feed or LinkedIn site, driving traffic to your social presence. As with your email program and website, you’re simply encouraging interaction with your brand.
Enable content sharing through ExactTarget’s “Social Forward” integration. In other words, share an “item” with your network. This can include sharing the entire email or just a section of content. In doing this, you are allowing your subscriber base to evangelize your brand on your behalf. In the Florida Power and Light newsletter below, you have the option to share “Cold Weather Tips”.
Plan, test, repeat! While social media can bring value to your email program, make sure you’re thinking through the bigger picture. Social media is definitely an emerging technology that will someday be a part of standard brand practices, so it makes sense to give it a chance. Be sure to plan and design with the needs of your customers and subscribers in mind, then test, evaluate and repeat!

For more design advice and thoughts on social media, add @ETDesign to your Twitter feed and check out “Design Tip of the Week: Integrating Twitter to Your Email Strategy“.

Start the month with ExactTarget 3sixty (and maybe a gift....)

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Liz Farrelly

The beginning of the week always feels like a new start – a blank slate to fill with projects and meetings. The first of the month also feels that way for me…like the opportunity for success, change, and new ideas is just waiting in the next 31 days.

Since today is March 1st, I took a few moments to reflect on the state of 3sixty. And I couldn’t believe what I saw! ExactTarget 3sixty is thisclose to have 20,000 members in the site. Pretty exciting and impressive for a little closed network that we launched 18 months ago!

I couldn’t let this milestone pass without a little excitement (as is the ExactTarget way!). So, to all of you (our fabulous blog readers) a challenge. If you aren’t in 3sixty yet, get in there. Encourage your fellow co-workers and team members to create their profiles. New to ExactTarget? Login into 3sixty right now!

Why the urgency you ask? Because I will personally be sending an orange 16GB iPod nano to the 20,000 person to join ExactTarget 3sixty! That’s right – a call to all of our current clients! Sign up now, create your profile, and start using the site. Of course, the chance of winning the iPod is phenomenal, but I think that the resources for 1 to 1 marketing, email best practices, and ExactTarget tutorials (and more!) will pay off long after the iPod is loaded with all your favorite tunes.

It’s the beginning of the month – a new, fresh start. Why not kick it off like a lion?

*This contest is only open to ExactTarget customers due to the nature of ExactTarget 3sixty permissions and access.

B2B Contact Databases Are Poor List Growth Sources

Friday, February 26, 2010 by Al Iverson

This morning, I took one of the numerous bits of B2B spam that I received, and I replied to the sender. This time around, it was a staffing services company, looking to help me with all of my staffing needs. He's ready and willing to help me with all of my staffing needs in the aerospace, transportation, and defense verticals, just to name a few.

In my reply, I asked him where he got my email address. "Through the company website," he replied. That's odd, I thought. My email address isn't published on our website. So I replied, saying exactly that. He replied with, "Have you ever heard of Zoominfo?" Sure, I've heard of Zoominfo. I've previously blogged here that it's a bad idea to grow your list by working with companies like Zoominfo, Jigsaw and Netprospex.

Why? Let's use me as an example. If this guy really did get my email address from Zoominfo, he bought a useless record. I'm not a hiring manager, I don't buy from spam, and I spend a lot of time tracking spam and spammers. I can't be the only one in that Zoominfo contact database who has no interest in receiving exciting, valuable unsolicited offers for help with my staffing needs.

After I informed the guy that if he bought my address from Zoominfo, he ought to try to get his money back, he changed his story. Now he's quoting my online bio at me as if this is somehow proof of an opt-in (buh?), and saying he's going to report me for harassment.

So, it's hard to say if this data really came from Zoominfo or not, as this guy keeps changing his story. But I get an awful lot of B2B spam, and people have to be getting my email address from somewhere. What do you think, dear reader?

Changes to Lycos spam filtering.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 by Karen Balle

Lycos is migrating their customers onto a new mail system. This new system uses a different type of spam filtering than their old system. It's an adaptive spam filter that will let their users be able to decide what is and is not spam, adjusting its settings for each individual user.

What's an adaptive spam filter? It's a bit like the spam filter used in Thunderbird or Mac OS X Mail. Similar to Bayesian spam filters, they learn based on what each individual person's preferences are rather than on a group's determination (complaints and user engagement models). Each time a person clicks on spam or not spam, the system learns a little more about what types of emails that subscriber thinks is spam and what is not. It gets smarter about the next piece of email that comes in.

So what's that mean in practical terms?

Subscribers Rule!

Distributed Email Marketing (Build vs. Partner series)

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 by Dennis Hall

The process of implementing or replacing an email marketing module that will be distrbuted to your customers (and even your customer's customers) can be a daunting exercise, not only due to the complexity of developing functions like list management, content editing and tracking, but also because of the importance of factors outside the bits and bytes.

For example, deliverability (the rate at which emails make it to the subscriber’s inbox) is affected by the reputation of the sender not the quality of the code. Without the right policies and people to work with the major ISPs, the value of email (no matter how beautiful) is diminished.

To help you assess the magnitude of becoming your own Email Service Provider on behalf of your customers, we’ve put together a "top-ten" list of high-level requirements that our Partners have shared with us along with a bit of color.

1.    Reliability System availability and uptime are critical issues for email. As email volume grows, so must the system behind it. System failures will occur whether the system is in-house or 3rd party so management and recovery processes are constants.
2.    Deliverability Reputation and remediation capabilities are critical to ensure consistent, timely email delivery. Managing this process is one of the most expensive elements of email. To maximize delivery, the system must support a permission based, strong opt-in model as well as private (dedicated) IPs or domains.
3.    Security In addition to data protection standards (e.g. encryption/SMTP) to keep customer data safely behind the firewall, the system must maintain data integrity across multiple hierarchies and parent-child relationships.
4.    Transactional, operational sending Many ESPs do not support this capability within the framework or API. These types of emails, from loyalty programs to notifications, have become as effective as mass marketing emails in terms of driving consumer behavior.
5.    Relevance The ability to use subscriber attributes and external data tables to deliver tailored messages, including HTML, text, hyperlinks and images, has grown as a key differentiator for email marketing systems. Dynamic content is an example of innovation in this area.
6.    Performance List processing, send execution and tracking response are key metrics to be optimized. In today’s world of social media and instant buzz, customers want to know that there emails will be delivered in near real-time.
7.    User experience This category includes usability, look and feel as well as integration with external systems. The extent of control desired often dictates the go to market approach. An open, flexible framework will allow for a phased deployment.
8.    Tracking Access to opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and conversion statistics are vital to measuring the impact of email programs. If this data is not available, it will become more difficult to justify cost from the user’s perspective.
9.    Unsubscribe options Support for campaign based or publication based management of unsubscribes is essential to building and sustaining subscriber lists.
10.    Multi-channel Though Email remains a red-hot market and will continue to be a major channel of communication (despite the NY Times opinion, marketers expect to utilize other established and emerging channels, such as SMS (Text), Voice, Landing Pages and Social networks. Supporting such channels within a single platform will enable you to satisfy demand as it grows.

Your list will no doubt be unique - containing more granular requirements on what is needed to satisfy customer demand in your market. We'd love your feedback on what features, functions and/or factors are most important to you and why...

Stay tuned for the next part of the series...The Partner Paradox.

Did You Know? Three Ways to get ExactTarget Customer Service

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 by Dawn DeVirgilio

In email marketing it's all about Channel Preferences! So did you know there are three different ways to get ExactTarget Customer Service from our Client Success Center:

3Sixty Back Office
My favorite! If you are a member of 3sixty, you can click the Back Office Button and Sumbit a Case, Request an Update on a Case and also monitor case comments.

Email to Case
Send an email to help@exacttarget.com and a case will be automatically created in our case management system. You will get an email reply identifying your case number.

Good Old Fashioned Phone Call

US Customers can call 866-558-9823
UK Customers can call +44 (0) 808 101 7081
All other International Customers can call +44 (0) 207 291 8550

Lastly, I've found alot of the answers I need in 3sixty have already been asked (and answered!) but customers and ExactTarget employees. Make sure to check out 3sixty Community!

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