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Triggered Email Marketing

Require a login to opt-out?

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 by Al Iverson
If you're wondering if it's OK to require that recipients must log into your website before they can unsubscribe from your emails, the answer to that is no-- it's prohibited under US Federal law.

The FTC explicitly clarified this in the May 2008 CAN-SPAM Rule Update. It's on page 104, near the bottom.

Here's what it says:

Section 316.5 Prohibition on charging a fee or imposing other requirements on recipients who wish to opt out. Neither a sender nor any person acting on behalf of a sender may require that any recipient pay any fee, provide any information other than the recipient's electronic mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any other steps except sending a reply electronic mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page, in order to: (a) Use a return electronic mail address or other Internet-based mechanism, required by 15 U.S.C. 7704(a)(3), to submit a request not to receive future commercial electronic mail messages from a sender; or (b) Have such a request honored as required by 15 U.S.C. 7704(a)(3)(B) and (a)(4).

What does that mean? Read carefully: Senders are not allowed to require recipients to "provide any information other than the recipient's electronic mail address and opt-out preferences." That means you can't require them to login to your website before continuing on to a preference center or other page. The only thing a recipient has to give you is their email address, and the opt-out preference. (i.e. do you want to opt-out from all messages, or would you like to opt-out only from certain specific lists.) The law prohibits any requirement that the recipient "take any other steps except sending a reply electronic mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page" when unsubscribing -- meaning it's not OK for it to take five clicks for somebody to unsubscribe. Interact with one page means the unsubscribe link takes them to a web page, where they are either unsubscribed automatically, or push some button on that web page to complete the unsubscribe process. (That would be interacting with that single web page.)

For more information on CAN-SPAM, visit our CAN-SPAM Information Center at http://canspam.etdeliverability.com/

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Email System Process Term of the Day: Asynchronous, Scheduled, and Real-Time

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 by Amanda Cross
Your email marketing messages don't have to be processed right away. Different timing is appropriate for different tasks, and in some cases the ExactTarget application gives you the control to choose how--and when--your system does its work.

Asynchronous
An asynchronous process is a process that runs “behind the scenes” while you continue to use the interface to perform other tasks. You receive an email or other alert that the process is complete so that you can view the results.

For example, if you start an asynchronous report, the report runs while you continue working. When the report is done, you receive an email that contains the report results.

Scheduled
A scheduled process is a process that runs automatically at the time you designate. You receive an email or other alert that the process is complete so that you can view the results.

For example, if you schedule an email send to begin at 11p.m., the system begins the send at 11p.m. and can send you an email when the process completes to give details on the success of the send.

Real-Time
A real‐time process is a process that runs in the foreground of your application. You cannot
perform other tasks while the real‐time process is running. When the process is complete, the application presents the results on your screen.
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Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Outlook 2007

Thursday, October 22, 2009 by Andrea Smith
written by David Hoang

With the move from Outlook 2003 to 2007, Microsoft made a lot of security improvements. Along with that, however, were a number of design changes. Outlook changed its engine for rendering HTML content from Internet Explorer to Microsoft Word. Before, it essentially meant that if your code looked good in Internet Explorer, it looked good in Outlook.

However, that is not the case anymore.

This is a huge impact in the way we design emails; because of the high volume of Outlook users, particularly in the Business-to-Business realm.

Here are a few key elements to consider while designing email messages in Outlook 2007 to ensure it looks sharp.

Keep your styles in-line
Though Outlook 2007 does support embedded CSS, there are certain properties that present challenges, such as margin, line-height and float/clear. Keep your styles in-line while you are designing. In addition to being an email design best practice, using style attributes in-line will help ensure that your message renders properly.

No Animated .gif files
Animated .gif files will not function in Outlook 2007. However, there is a solution for using .gif files with Outlook 2007. Since the file will not animate, you only need to make sure the first frame makes sense; as that is what will appear in Outlook 2007.

Contain Yourself, No Floating!
Outlook 2007 does not support floating or CSS positioning in any capacity. Use standard HTML tables to contain and control the layout. This will ensure that your design elements won’t go flying all over the place!

Specify Accurate Table Widths
When using HTML tables it is important to specify accurate table widths to ensure proper display in Outlook 2007. This is especially important in table structures that contain multiple columns. For example, when you have a table cell that spans two columns, the width for that cell should equal the sum of the widths of the other two cells.

Continue Using Alt Tags
As it was in Outlook 2003, it is in 2007; images will automatically be blocked. While you’re designing your email message, keep in mind of what it will look like with images disabled. Remember that Outlook will display alt tags, but they will only appear after a default security message. For a list of acceptable tags in Outlook 2007, check out this guide on Microsoft’s website.

No Forms
Outlook 2007 disables embedded forms. If you design an email with a survey or form in the content, include a direct link (hosted from a website) to the survey for your Outlook users. Indicate clearly in your design that the form is not broken, so subscribers don’t get frustrated by trying to fill out the form.

With 2010 quickly approaching, you may be wonder if there will be any major CSS/HTML changes in Outlook 2010. Right now, don’t expect major changes.

To conclude, sticking to standard HTML table design for emails should help you effectively render emails in Outlook 2007. Be sure to read our design tips in the coming weeks for rendering tips in other email clients, including our past issue: Email Rendering in Hotmail by Anna Meier. Portions of this blog, Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Outlook 2007 and more information on email rendering can be found in our white paper “Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials.”

For additional information about rendering in Outlook 2007, check out our white paper, Seven Email Marketing Design Tips for Outlook 2007.
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Live Blog: Financial Services Solution Showcase

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross
We've got quite a change of pace in the ol' developer track conference room. Chris Murray of ExactTarget is the emcee for the Financial Services Solution Showcase.

He starts by introducing the first segment:

Beyond Deliverability: Consumer Choice & Control
Authentication, Privacy, and Policy
by Craig Spiezle
https://otalliance.org

The Online Trust Alliance is concerned with security in online activity, especially financial services. Spoofed email, phishing, and online exploits are a major challenge for financial organizations that operate online.

Craig said that government regulations are likely to come about in the next few weeks as a result of the identity theft incidents that we've heard of recently. Craig said that the United States is actually behind other parts of the world in consumer production.

Craig discussed extended validation certificates. In order to get one of these certificates, the business must prove that it's registered with a local tax authority. While this can't verify that the business has good business practices, but it does require that the business be a real business. When a business has this certificate, it turns the address bar in your browser green when you visit their site. If the address bar isn't green, you know that it's a spoofed site.

He continued to talk about the business value of authentication. Not only does this help protect your business from being spoofed, but also improves your deliverability.

Of the top 100 financial institutions in North America, only 43% have protections in place for consumers.

Craig talked about the problem with unsubscribe: an unsubscribe link in the footer of the email is required by CAN-SPAM, but consumers are warned not to click links in emails they don't want for fear that they'll alert spammers that they're a real person. An unsubscribe header allow ISPs to render an unsubscribe link in their client so that people can unsubscribe without clicking the "report as spam" link and degrading your reputation. About this time, someone from ExactTarget piped up to mention that ExactTarget email already does this automatically.

Addressing Email Security Concerns
Matt Burton - GMAC/Ally Bank

Matt talked about Ally bank and the fact that its customers were receiving more spoof emails that were pretending to be from Ally as they were receiving from the real bank.

Ally Bank, like many places, would love for there to be a "silver bullet" that would solve the problem, but in fact the best way to protect consumers is with a combination of proactive monitoring, excellent deliverability of your legit content, and customer education.

Governance, while unpopular, is critical. If your company has multiple business units, ALL of them have to have successful security.

Some financial institutions do not include links in their emails, instead telling consumers to go to the website. This is problematic because it requires more copy and results in fewer site hits. Also, this doesn't prevent phishing emails from including links in their emails.

Security tools, such as ISP Phish Blocking and Certified Mail, are available to help prevent risk and increase confidence in your message respectively.

Education of consumers can be tricky. Sending emails that tells customers how to tell whether your email is real might make it look like you're a spoofer trying to set them up to trust fraudulent email in the future. Better to just remain consistent in your sending so that consumers become accustomed to your style and learn to identify spoofs on their own.

To wrap up, Matt recommended proactive risk diminuation rather than waiting for a problem happens and only responding then.

Technology Solution
e-statements at Nationwide
Brian Jaffe - Nationwide Insurance

Nationwide was facing a "statement challenge"--sending statements to customers on email. The address this issue, they created an elegant solution.
  • Governance - As part of this process, they codified their program for sending emails.
  • Preference management - allow customers to specify their preferences. Brian recommends double opt in.
  • Billing format - recreate view of paper statement
  • Send mode - bulk or single send. You probably batch up your bills, but some might do individual sends.
  • Data preparation - attributes or data extensions? what is the unique subscriber key? You need to understand your extremes (what happens if you have an extremely large amount of data?) and your data-display issues.
  • Deliverability - decisions about IP and Domain. Learn from your deliverability team!
  • Feedback - decisions about bounce management, reply management. If people unsubscribe and then try to sign up, you could have technical problems sending emails. Make sure you understand how your unsubscribes are managed. And be ready to monitor replies, even if you tell people not to reply to a message.
  • Inserting marketing messages into transactional emails - CAN-SPAM does allow you include marketing messages into your transactional emails under certain circumstances.
Paperless statements can create issues. For example, what if customers call in saying that they never received their statement. Customer service needs to be able to access tracking to see whether the subscriber ever opened the email and have other strategies to deal with these complaints. Customer service needs to be able to resend statements.

Nationwide includes quite a bit of personal information in their emails so that subscribers know that the email must be legit, since a phishing scam wouldn't have access to so much personal information. Watch out for links to log-in pages, since phishing emails like to send very similar emails that direct to their own "login page."

Having a protocol to deal with bounces is wise. In their case, if a subscriber soft-bounces, they put the subscriber back into the paper stream for one cycle and try paperless again for the next cycle. If they run into a hard-bounce, they put the subscriber back into the paper stream indefinitely until the subscriber re-enrolls themselves in the paperless process.

Nationwide's solution is based on the ExactTarget SOAP API. Their OMS (outbound messaging service) is a middleware layer of abstraction that actually sits behind their firewall. Between the OMS and ExactTarget much communication occurs to get the statements out to subscribers.

The content of the eStatement itself uses AMPscript to build the bill by parsing concatenated attributes and dynamically displaying content in appropriate data tables.

Michael Murdza (ExactTarget) took us through the technical aspect of the eStatement data flow. A sophisticated decision tree weave through the Nationwide database and ExactTarget application, using XML, AMPscript, and API calls.

And then the presentation wrapped up, and everyone started getting ready for the evening entertainment. I've really enjoyed live blogging the technology track for everyone today, and I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed writing it. See you between the lines :)
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Mobile Developers Solution Showcase

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross
Ratul Shah is the presenter for the first part of the solution showcase. Unlike every other presenter that's talked in this room so far today, Ratul is maneuvering through the crowd with the hand-held mic. What a showman. :)

Industry Standard Terms
  • SMS = short message service, aka text messaging. It has a 160 character limit.
  • MO = mobile originated = a message sent FROM a phone
  • MT = mobile terminated = a message sent TO a phone
  • short code = a 5- or 6-digit number that you buy from a carrier to send messages to your customers. http://www.usshortcodes.com
  • vanity short code = a short code that spells something out, such as our, ETSMS
  • random short code = a short code that doesn't intentionally spell anything. These cost slightly less.
  • private short code = only your traffic goes through this code
  • shared short code = a code that you share with other SMS users. Keywords differentiate your traffic from the traffic of other people on the shared short codes.
  • MMA = Mobile Marketing Association http://mmaglobal.com/policies. A group that creates guidelines for United States mobile marketing.
  • Aggregator = a third party company that maintains connections between the carriers and the content providers. When we provisioning a short code for you, we work with an aggregator to get you approved for all carriers.
ExactTarget SMS Architecture
You create JOIN, VOTE, HELP, UNSUBSCRIBE and other kinds of actions that subscribers use to send you MO messages to get in on your mobile messages.

Unfortunately, you can't create keywords or actions in the API at this point. You can initiate SMS sends through the API, however.

System Terms
  • Subscriber key = unique identifier for subscribers. Allows you to identify subscribers by phone number instead of email address.
  • Publication list = contains subscribers who opt-in using their mobile device
  • Data extension = contains subscribers whom you import through the GUI or the API  
Implementing Text
  • Keyword response - text in and receive a response
  • Mobile capture - captures email address for list growth
  • Vote and check vote count - submit your vote. poll the response
  • Outbound (with opt-in) - a message from ExactTarget to the mobile device
  • Custom campaigns
Wow, Ratul goes through a lot of content fast, and a lot of these slides are very graphics heavy and difficult to translate to blog. Thankfully, everyone at the conference is supposed to be able to get the slides.

FanMail Solution

Dave DeVore - CEO FanMail marketing
Josiah Kaiser - Senior Operations and Solutions Consultant
Tim Kauble - ExactTarget product specialist and world-class AMPscript guru

FanMail Marketing is using SMS to capture email addresses. Initially they were asking subscriber to text their email addresses in this format:

krohn email@example.com to 88769

but they found that customers found this confusing and made errors that prevented the system from capturing their information. So for the next phase, they made it into a 2-stage process to make it more like a conversation. In the new setup, subscribers text in in this format:

stubbs to 88769

then the system sends back an text saying something to the effect of, "Thanks for your interest. Reply to this message with your email address to join our mailing list." When the subscriber responds with the email address, it is added to the email list. The customer gets an email immediately welcoming them to the list, and then any future mailings to that list.

The SMS message that was sent back after the first message included AMPscript to trigger the welcome email.

The first use case resulted in more errors than the second, and people weren't willing to try to sign up more than once. A limitation of both use cases is that it only captures people's email addresses, omitting other important subscriber information that would be useful for relevant messaging .

In the third phase of FanMail's SMS evolution, they integrated their SMS with landing pages to allow the capture of more subscriber information. People text in:

butter to 88769

The system responds with a message saying to respond with an email address. When the subscriber replies with the email address, the system sends them an email with a link to a landing page built with the Smart Capture feature.  People complete the Smart Capture form and now the system has information to send really personalized information. For example, this band (Hot Buttered Rum) uses the subscriber's ZIP code to let the subscriber know about upcoming concerts in their area.

What FanMail discovered was that going through this process aggregated higher quality subscribers who were more likely to be engaged with the marketing campaigns and therefore higher ROI on their marketing efforts.

The future phases of this SMS evolution may allow subscriber to provide attribute information via SMS, such as ZIP code to empower the functionality above.

Another thing that FanMail has discovered is that subscribers are willing to send you SMS messages if they're interested in what you have to offer, but they don't like for you to begin the SMS conversation.

Custom Use Case
Tim Kauble took the stage for the final portion of this presentation. Poor Tim--his phone junked out on him this morning and his data connection didn't work, so we're seeing a modified version of his presentation. Typical of technology!

Tim talked about designing a system to allow him to manage his own tasks using text messages. He wanted to accomplish the following:
  • Accept tasks
  • Assign those tasks
  • Assign priority, including deadlines
  • Expose the tasks to landing pages so that he could see them all
  • Support multiple methods of input, such a forwarding emails to an endpoint that generates a task with the content of the email.
Tim demonstrated texting in to the system to find out how many tasks he had. He had 30, by the way, plus the system also sent him a message to stop messing around with text messages and get back to work. :)

Tim also brought up the landing page where we could see his lengthy task list--such is the life of the ExactTarget employee!
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Live Blog: Best Practices for Utilizing ExactTarget's SOAP APIs

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross
We've got a rather thin crowd for the Best Practices for Utilizing ExactTarget's SOAP APIs session. Apparently everyone is already implementing the API in the best possible way...or think they are :)

Manager of the Product Specialist department Dale McCrory returns to the stage for this presentation and starts the session by asking people what topics they would like to see covered today. The first question was on documentation.

YAY! I love when people care about the documentation!

Web Service API Documentation
Dale brings up http://wiki.memberlandingpages.com to demonstrate all of the wonderful web service API documentation that's available there. He takes the group through a technical article on asynchronous processing, the CREATE method, an object, and a property. Bryan Wade, the embedded expert at ExactTarget and emcee of the session, asks how many people in the room have been to the wiki before, and about half of the room had already visited. I think the rest will visit before too long.

Content Management
The second question is about content management and best practices for it. Dale pulls up the AMPscript page in the documentation wiki to find the HTTPGet() function. This function performs a get call against a URL and brings back the content. This tool can be used to interact with an outside system in include the content in the emails.

AMPscript also support XSLT now, so you can interact with ExactTarget with you XML content. The BuildRowSetFromXML() function extends this capability.

Slide Presentation
With the two questions addressed, Bryan prods Dale to get  back to the slideshow. The slides cover:
  • Security
  • Reliability
  • Robustness
  • Flexibility
  • Messaging content
  • Stats retrieval - tracking events

Security
Standards-based SOAP security to support authentication

All calls transmit over an SSL connection. The API supports two forms of security:
  1. Plain text username token. This is what everyone's using right now.
  2. X509 certificate encryption for the username token will be available in the 135 release.
.NET, Java, and PHP work the best with our security. Perl is OK. Ruby, ColdFusion, and ASP have troubles dealing with it because they don't deal well with the standards-based security.

Reliability
In this section, we're talking about synchronous versus asynchronous API processing again. Asynchronous processing adds all calls to a queue to be processed when the system is ready, which prevents API calls from being lost if the server is unavailable for any reason.

Other benefits include:
  • The fact that you get a sub-second response to the fact that the call has been received.
  • You have multiple options to receive results: HTTP post, Email, and the RETRIEVE API call.
  • The ConversationID concept that's used with asynch API processing allows you to resend the same call without worrying that it will actually be processed twice if the system had already queued the request.
Question from the floor: sounds like we need to improve our XML API documentation. That product hasn't been enhanced for quite a while, so the doc has gotten a little stale. There's an item for my to-do list.

Robustness
Dale quotes Wikipedia: "Robustness is the quality of being able to withstand stresses, pressures, or changes in procedure or circumstance."

Triggered sends represent the quickest way to get an email sent from the ExactTarget system. Key points help decide whether to use user-initiated (list-based) sends or triggered sends:
  • How do you want to aggregate tracking?
    List based sends aggregate tracking by job. Triggered sends aggregate tracking over a time period when the triggered send was running.
  • How will email content be made available to the ExactTarget system?
  • How are unsubscribes managed?
    List based sends record unsubs at the list level, or at the All Subscribers level. If a person unsubscribes from a triggered send, they can be unsubscribed from all triggered sends.
  • How large are your lists?
    If you have 1.5 million subscribers, you should start with list based. If you are sending individual messages in response to customer activity, triggered sends are the way to go.
You can keep your subscriber information in lists or data extensions. To help you decide:
  • Are attribute sets going to be the same for all sends? 
    If so, you can use lists because you set up attributes for all lists together. If you need different attribute sets for different subsets of clients, then you want data extensions.
  • Is import performance critical?
    If you have 1.5 million subscribers to import, you can import them into a data extension in 10 minutes versus 1-2 hours for a list (this is an approximation...the number of attributes has a big effect on performance as well).
  • How will unsubscribes be managed?
    Each list maintains its own unsubscribes. Data extensions maintain unsubscribes in publication lists.
  • Bonus point not in the slide: if you are a partner building an application, you probably want to build on lists if possible, because they cost less.

Flexibility
This topic starts with a discussion of data extensions. Data extension are
  • The only way to use the API to do "rich" queries of data
  • The way you can add relational models of data en masse or row-by-row
  • Very fast
  • Tables in our database schema that are specific to your account
The DataExtension WS API object
  • Allows the use of upsert
  • Ties to the DataExtension by CustomerKey (called "external key" in the GUI)
  • Allows specification of Keys and Nulls
  • There's also a DataExtensionObject that you can retrieve to bring back a row in the data extension.
Messaging Content
Email, images, and files, oh my!

Text-only email will be supported with 135, in addition to the HTML and HTML/Text multi-part formats.

The Portfolio object allows you to host files in ExactTarget. Images and files that you import into our system are hosted by Akamai, so when people hit these files, they are highly available and don't use your company's bandwidth.

Using AMPscript, you can attach files to your email, but you should use this feature with caution. There's a page for the documentation that's going to be published very soon that talks about best practices for attachments so that you can protect your deliverability while using this feature.

Stats Retrieval and Tracking Events
We ran out of time for the stats retrieval, so we went straight to question and answer, which went by too fast for me to keep up, especially while I"m still on this documentation cloud. :)
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Brought to you LIVE: ExactTarget’s API Vision and Roadmap - Past, Present, and Future

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Caitilin Landrigan

10:58 am  So excited! The ExactTarget API enables the extension of our software and some incredible functionality.  Scott McCorkle is going to be speaking, along with Michael Ciancio-Bunch. They have some incredible insight. I am not technical, so I’ll do my best to convey the information presented here.

11:01 am Bryan Wade is introducing Michael Cianco-Bunch and Scott McCorkle.  McCorkle is speaking about our dedication to integration, improving our user experience, and how the API is key with CARBON-check it out online!

11:03 am Michael is on. We are a young company, but our API has a history. XML API (2002) was created originally only for content management. A bulk Asynchronous API was introduced in 2004.  Our SOAP API was launched in 2007—this is the foundation for our web services …

11:05 am … and actually, the Asynchronous Web Service API became available in 2008.  It seems that not many people are using it right now. Its advantages include quicker calls, better status reporting, and correlating conversation IDs. Start using!

11:07 am First thing we did in 2009 was support compression…coming your way in a release! We’re also beta testing API streaming, which helps with large packets.

11: 09 am Bryan Wade is highlighting current functionality. 

11: 10 am Michael is focusing in on streaming sends: we can send as we receive via the API, with triggered sends for example, instead of waiting until a certain number are received before sending.

11:11 am Did you know API calls are up 1.5x from last year? “This amount of use is a testament to the fact that the API is now better. More people are able to use it.”-Michael.

11:13 am What does the future of the API look like? The API is a platform to help customers and partners to integrate.  Michael is saying that there are a number of tools that allow us to integrate, extend, and embed ExactTarget.  These tools support functions not possible with just the API.  Here are a few of the tools: Programs, landing pages, AMPscript … the list goes on.

11:15 am There was a huge “Hoorah!” from someone when Michael announced the introduction of a REST API.  File based API and Authenticated Asynchronous API Results Callbacks are on the horizon as well.

11:17 am A user is asking about tracking a file that is sent with new API functionality … You could give the file a conversation or correlation ID so you don’t have to worry about re-using file names.

11:18 am Why is the Authenticated Asynchronous API Results Callback so great? You don’t have to fish for errors with queries! BIG question…what is the timeline for delivering these advancements? … Next year! Be on the lookout!

11:19 am We’re changing topics to landing pages and their use for creating Profile Centers, subscriber capture, and promotion pages. The beauty of landing pages is that they extend the user interface and can be integrated with ET.

11:23 am More on landing pages! You can embed them within your application. Sign-up forms are an example.

11:25 am ExactTarget’s API roadmap … One set of items is pre-built templates “encapsulating some application function (e.g. Send Wizard, Data Extensions, etc).” … There is so much more information to convey here …. Trying to get it all down!

11:26 am Java will be supported on landing pages.  This is great news!

11:27 am “AMPscript is the future!” says Michael … just kidding … Java is going to eventually replace it. ExactTarget also wants to introduce JavaScript activities like data transformation and user defined functions. There is a lot on this roadmap! It is clear that ET is truly focusing on product development.

11:30 am Looking now at Data Integration … We want users to be able to import from external systems and export to them as well.  Data cleansing is also on the horizon, in addition to a number of other functionalities to help users integrate data. We have our sight on breaking down barriers that keep us from being an open platform.

11:34 am Again, we have a lot of information here! I strongly recommend reaching out to some of our developers while you are here.

UI Extensibility: even more features are coming. As a user, you will have the ability to define a custom home page, add buttons, add tabs to our toolbars, and add custom fields to forms.  McCorkle talked about building a user experience in our user interface. What a concept! It will allow a great degree of customization in each user’s account.

11:38  am The Program feature is going to be further developed as well. Whoa - EXCITING: templates will also be available for programs.  For example, there will be a template for a birthday program in the user interface.   This functionality will be extremely helpful for marketers and programmers with limited resources. 

11:41 am Question time! Yes folks, the API is almost too good to be true … and yet it is!

11:43 am Now we’re talking about Enterprise 2.0. With the API you can do things in the application “on behalf” of users without exceeding their permissions.  You will also be able to access objects in multiple business units via the API in 2.0. 

11:49 am And in closing…share your ideas! Let ExactTarget know how, as a developer, we can improve 3sixty for your use. Quite a few people in the crowd here use 3sixty and some of those are members of the Developer Community.  This community needs to be more active. We have deliver 100+ ideas on 3sixty so far…let your voice be heard!

Coming to you live from Connections ’09!  Enjoy the rest of the conference!

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Live Blog: ExactTarget's API Vision and Roadmap - Past, Present, and Future

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross
As we wait to hear about the future of the ExactTarget API, 3 Par handed out a card inviting everyone to come by their booth in the vendor hall to register to win a Nintendo Wii. Too bad ExactTarget employees aren't eligible to win. :)

I can see the presenters setting up at the front of the room, and they aren't messing around with the expertise that they're bringing to the table. Our chief architect, Michael Ciancio-Bunch (known to his friends as MCB) and our CTO, Scott McCorkle are on the stage.

ExactTarget API: Past, Present, and Future
Scott begins the discussion by talking about how the Carbon initiative will lead the application to consume our own web service API. This "eating our own dog food" will ensure that the API has the entire breadth of functionality of the application.

MCB launched into the history of the API:
  • 2002 - XML API was introduced
  • 2004 - Bulk asynch API was introduced
  • 2007 - Object Oriented Web Service API
  • 2008 - Asynchronous web service API
Michael asked how many people were using the asynch WS API, but no one was, which inspired him to go into the benefits of the asynchronous model. It takes advantage of our multiple data centers to make sure that API calls are processed, allows you to indicate the order of API calls, and prevents accidental re-processing of the same calls.

Then Michael began talking about the features delivered or planned for 2009.

DISCLAIMER: all forward looking statements are subject to change. As MCB said, "we might have another John and Kate mess" and the distraction would push out development timelines.

Back to the list:
  • Support for compression (currently limited availability)
  • Streaming (in the works) - begins processing the "conversation" (collection of calls) before all of the content is received.
  • X.509 user authentication (in the works)
  • API exposed via AMPscript (already delivered)
  • Enterprise 2.0 user model - create roles, permissions, business units,  etc. (scheduled for November release)
  • Retrieve improvements
  • Round out - things like template support and more capability to manipulate content areas
Currently, ExactTarget is processing 58 calls per second (150,000,000 API calls per month), including 28 triggered sends per second. The capacity and processing power of the ExactTarget infrastructure is truly difficult to conceive. It's like trying to understand how big the moon is or something.

Michael introduced the ExactTarget Platform Integration Framework - a set of tools (much improved over what we've provided in the past) to allow developers to use the web service API to create powerful apps. Here are the tools:
  • API
  • Landing Pages
  • AMPscript
  • Data integration tools  (Import, extracts, and more to come)
  • Extensible UI
  • Programs
  • Enterprise
  • Packaging and provisioning
  • Community to support you
API
On the roadmap is:
  • A proper REST API (to be delivered sometime in 2010)
  • A file-based API, where you FTP a file that contains instructions and the ExactTarget begins processing those instructions as soon as we receive it (probably to be delivered in the spring)
  • Authenticated asynch API results callback - the ability for us to call back to you if something goes wrong in a call. Currently, you have to query for status, or have a rudimentary notification. This will be much more sophisticated and slick. (to be delivered sometime in 2010)
Landing Pages
You can use this feature to create customer-facing web pages, but you can also use it to create pages that you see within the ExactTarget application. For example, you could create your own custom wizards or customized data presentation pages. You can build them as landing pages and integrate them into our application for your ExactTarget users to see when they're logged in to the application.

Not only that, but you can embed landing pages within your own application. Landing pages can support AJAX, so you can gather information within your own app and feed it in to ExactTarget.

On the landing page roadmap:
  • Smart Page templates for common use cases, CSS, and the ability to tap into server and client side events for added customization
  • JavaScript as a server side language
  • Highly available landing pages
AMPscript
Michael made a bold statement that JavaScript will kill off AMPscript in the future (though he did suggest that we'd always support it). After that, the discussion became more about the future plans for JavaScript, such as an activity, (those things you can put in programs) for JavaScript.

I understand, but I'll be sad to see AMPscript go by the wayside. It's a really powerful scripting language.

Data Integration Tools
Roadmap items include:
  • Direct import from and extract to external systems, such as CRM, analytics, POS, etc.
  • File transformations
  • Sophisticated mapping functionality
  • Data cleansing services
  • Interfaces defined for custom integrations
  • Richer metadata around data extensions
UI Extensibility
These are some of the roadmap items:
  • The ability to define a custom home page. I think that this is already available to Enterprise 2.0 edition products.
  • Buttons can be added to toolbars and tabs can be added to the navigation bar. I've seen this demoed myself, and it's pretty cool. Really allows you to customize the experience.
  • Custom fields can be added to forms
  • Experience Builder - this is a really cool one, too. We saw some wireframes for this earlier in the conference, and it's going to be really awesome.
Programs
MCB says we're rewriting the program engine, and the new incarnation will support delays, notifications, and other stuff that's been requested. A programs dashboard and templates, along with better error reporting and error recovery, will make working with programs easier.

The "file drop" functionality that I mentioned earlier is a kind of ad hoc program, plus activities will be created to invoke web services and HTTP based APIs, so the lines between API and programs are getting blurrier, creating a lot more power and flexibility.

Enterprise 2
  • Granular permission model
  • Run as functionality for the API - this lets you use the permission level of a user with your API calls, so that tools you build with the API will only show users what's appropriate for them.
  • Ability to define custom permissions
  • Access to objects in multiple business units via the API - For example, you could query the records in a data extension in one business unit and write them to a data extension in a different business unit.

Packaging and Provisioning
We'll be allowing you to bundle up all your custom landing pages, data extensions, folder, UI customizations, program templates, and other elements to drop them into another account. This will allow you to do cool things like pre-configure new business unit accounts. Eventually, this idea will support an app-store-type tool where people could browse your package and purchase it and install it.

Community
MCB acknowledged that developers have not been happy with how 3sixty has replaced the old Developer Community. He talked about our dedication to improve the experience. We have developers within ExactTarget to answer questions and post content. He asked that everyone submit their requests for what they'd like to see, because we do want to make it better.

Q&A
Again, documentation is getting the shout out in the question and answer. I guess people actually like to know the technical details. w00t!

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Live Blog: Automation Event Triggered Sends Using SOAP API

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross
The developer track continues with Automation Event Triggered Sends Using SOAP API. Between sessions, the intrepid staff of the Westin brought in several more chairs, effectively ensuring that no one will be sitting on the floor this time. There wouldn't be room, even if they wanted to.

Ana Ng plays over the PA system while we wait for the session to start, and with a minute to go it switches to Particle Man as the room fills up. You can tell that we're gearing up for the They Might be Giants concert tonight, after the Second City performance. Indeed, I'm already wearing my wristband :)

Automation Event Triggered Sends Using SOAP API
ExactTarget Product Specialist Manager and general super brain, Dale McCrory beings the presentation by asking how many people in the crowd have used triggered sends before. This feature is one of the most powerfully compelling and commonly implemented functionalities available in the SOAP API. Triggered emails are perfect for things like password reminders, order confirmations, and welcome emails. You can also use them together with Web Collect forms, Reply Mail Management, and other parts of the ExactTarget system that automatically send response emails to subscribers.

He continues by talking about send classifications: marketing and transactional, and the differences between then. Basically, marketing messages are subject to CAN-SPAM regulation, while transactional messages are not, since they're might actually be required to be sent to subscribers, such as receipts.

Dale puts some code up on the screen to show the anatomy of a triggered send call. He talks about how the template, content, and all the look-and-feel stuff about the email are created within the application and are controllable by marketers. The API then references the triggered send definition using the external key and doesn't have to bother with actually creating the content  of the email using the API.

Next, Dale moved in to the difference between synchronous and asynchronous API. A synchronous API call goes to the server, which responds. If the server is unavailable, there's no response, and it's on the ExactTarget customer's shoulders to retry. Asynchronous calls, on the other hand, are queued up, so even if they can't be processed right away, they will get processed when the server is available. He recommends that people starting new triggered send initiatives use asynchronous API, unless development is so constrained that synchronous is all there's time for.

High priority API calls can be processed immediately, even if one of the servers is unavailable, by using our multiple data centers. There are limitations on emails that can be sent this way (they can't contain info from data extensions...stuff like that) and it incurs an additional cost per send.

Dale ran a little short of time, but he'll be presenting again later in the day.

Intuit's Notifications Service Engine: A practical approach to facilitating customer notifications
Next Intuit's Gary Rittinger directed everyone to http://connect.intuit.com to check out the implementation that he'll be talking about.



His purpose is to provide Intuit's infrastructure and offerings the ability to send, monitor, and manage the notifications they send to customers in a consistent and reliable way.  To do this, Gary uses triggered sends to send welcome emails, order confirmation, shipping conversation, and other transactional messages.

Intuit finds that it's difficult to get consistent programming from across its organization, so it uses "application adapters" to normalize the input. They're using ExactTarget accounts to let each product manager get in and see the status of email sends.

As a result of implementing ExactTarget, Intuit enjoys:
  • Better transparency into notifications deliverability.
  • Reduced cost and increased efficiency of customer notifications.
  • Improved enterprise SOA adoption through standard web service technologies.
  • Fewer of redundant apps that served the same purpose.
  • Improve governance and compliance.
Gary recounted the ease and smoothness of putting this process in place. He commented that they've recently been moved from the Indy data center to the Las Vegas data center--one of the first customer to be live sending out of that data center--and the move took only 90 seconds. He also said that rolling out the process took only a couple weeks.

During the Q&A, Bryan Wade (the emcee) is talking up the documentation wiki and the API content that's available on it. This is a topic near and dear to my heart <3

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Electronic Marketing Term of the Day: Content Syndication

Friday, October 9, 2009 by Amanda Cross
Content syndication is when you get some or all of your email content from an external source. For example, you might grab a product description for a marketing email promoting that product from your corporate website.

Content syndication is sometimes referred to as HTTPGet, after the command you use in the email itself to tell the system to get something from an HTTP site. Content syndication is also, more colloquially, called "screen scraping."

Content syndication is a simple form of email automation in that it allows you to systematically reuse content from your website in your emails. Content syndication has long been available in the ExactTarget application, but now it is available to be powered by AMPscript, our dynamic scripting language that powers some of the most sophisticated automatic email in the world.
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Email + Surveys

Wednesday, October 7, 2009 by Scott Roth
At ExactTarget, we often talk about honoring subscriber preferences in regards to permission, frequency, content and channel. In my last post on Email + Web Analytics I wrote about the value that web analytics brings to the table by allowing you to sense behavior and then respond with appropriate offers.

Here's my buzz-word free advice for today. Instead of just observing behavior and reacting, why not also ask your subscribers what they are looking for? It may seem like a no-brainer, but not that many people do it, or do it well. This is where preference centers, lead capture forms, and surveys come into play. By leveraging surveys both on your website and within emails, you can gradually accumulate more and more information about your subscribers that will help you target them with more timely and relevant one-to-one communications.

One of our certified ExactTarget Extensions Network survey partners is SurveyGizmo. SurveyGizmo provides a seamless integration to include intelligent surveys in your emails, leverage existing subscriber data in surveys, and automatically update ExactTarget subscriber records with survey responses.

You can learn more about SurveyGizmo by visiting their listing on the ExactTarget Extensions Network.

Or, if you are going to be in Indianapolis for Connections on Tuesday, October 13th you can stop by their user meet-up happy hour from 5:00-7:00. Click here for more information.
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Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Hotmail

Friday, September 25, 2009 by Anna Meier
We know by now that all email clients are not created equal. Your email campaign will not render the same in Outlook 2007 as it does in Yahoo, Gmail or Lotus Notes. This week we’re focusing on email rendering in Hotmail. Look for design tips for other email clients in weeks to come. Below are six important topics to consider when building your email campaign in order to create the best experience possible for Hotmail subscribers.

Preview Pane
Hotmail users have the option of viewing their email in a vertical or horizontal preview pane. Be sure to consider the content of your top left email real estate to ensure your primary message is received. Read Considering the Preview Pane for more information.

Image Blocking - Alt Tags
Images are blocked by default in Hotmail. Hotmail also uses gray rectangles in place of blocked images and does not display “alt” tags. While there is no way to force Hotmail to display “alt” tags, we recommend including them for other email clients that do render them when images are blocked by default.

Images
When a subscriber uses a Firefox browser to view email in Hotmail, the subscriber may see extra white space under images, severely impacting email rendering. Avoid this problem by placing a “display: block” style in image tags: <img src=“image.jpg” style=“display: block;”>. This workaround could potentially cause rendering issues with other email clients, so be certain to test.
Hotmail: images on and off
*View in Hotmail with images on and off.
Links
Hotmail automatically displays all links without an underline, and the underline only appears when the mouse hovers over a link. If underlined links are desired, you will need to set the “text-decoration” property to underline with inline CSS in the <a> tag of every individual link. For instructions, read last week’s Design Tip of the Week.

Non-Black Default Font Color
Hotmail will set any text without a specific font color to dark gray. To ensure colors maintain brand standards and display as intended, assign a specific color (even if it’s black) to all text in your message.

Avoid Forms
Hotmail will render forms properly, but disables the submit button—so forms will not function as intended. Encourage subscribers to view the email as a webpage or drive them to a website where the form can be rendered properly.

Be sure to read our design tips in the coming weeks for rendering tips in other email clients. Portions of this blog, Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Hotmail, and more information on email rendering can be found in our whitepaper “Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials”.
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Decision 2009: Email Testing and Optimization

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 by Colby Cavanaugh
Here at ExactTarget, we love the idea of testing and optimizing emails.  Not only are you striving to provide the best email content you possibly can to your subscribers – but you’re giving them a vote on what that content is!

Omniture Test&Target gives marketers a platform for testing creative elements across their web properties.  It provides tools to perform A/B testing or more complex multivariate tests (MVT) on your website – allowing you to test creative elements, target specific segments, and automatically optimize content.  ExactTarget is now able to integrate this technology into its own messaging capabilities, meaning YOU can do the same with your email sends! This integration allows marketers to optimize long-running or recurring campaigns based on subscriber response.   The testing platform can now be part of a multichannel marketing campaign, designed to test the best performing creative across email and web site offers.

The great part about this technology?   Ideas for your email content can come from anywhere – and you don’t have to argue internally about whether or not to include them.  Instead, you can choose to test different ideas and allow your subscribers to decide!  (For those of you who experience heated debates over “red button” vs. “green button” - you know what I’m talking about…)

Test&Target A/B testing
 
 
Getting started is easy - come up with a few simple hypotheses about single sends or recurring sends (ideas that you think could have an impact on performance) and try them out in the context of your email. It doesn’t have to be a huge project, involving all creative elements across all campaigns.  Start small, think big. 

You know what else is easy?  Sampling the integration!  If you’re an existing ExactTarget customer who also uses Omniture Test&Target for your website, check out our Innovations Lab listing on ExactTarget 3Sixty.  We’re currently offering a limited beta test of the integration for those who want to give it a try and who would be willing to share their experiences in the form of a use case or customer story. Check out 3Sixty for more information!

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How Can I Link ExactTarget with My Web Analytics Provider?

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 by Dawn DeVirgilio
When looking for ways to drive successful email campaigns, clients often ask us, “What are the ways ExtactTarget can integrate with my web analytics provider?”

They’re in luck!  By leveraging existing technology, ExactTarget is able to offer customized integrations through partnerships with leading analytics vendors.
 
Thanks to these partnerships, there are three ways for ExactTarget to integrate with your web analytics provider:

Web Analytics Connector
The Web Analytics Connector allows you to send information to your web analytics tool through links in the ExactTarget email application. If you are currently using a web analytics system, your web analytics tool stores the URL used to call individual pages whenever your website is displayed in a browser. To connect this data with ExactTarget, you can include attributes in the target URL of the links in your emails.  For example, if you included a campaign ID in the target URL of your links, you could identify the web traffic generated by that campaign.

Exporting Tracking Data
A second way to integrate is by exporting tracking data from ExactTarget into your web analytics package.  By extracting email tracking data - such as opens, clicks and bounces - and pushing the data back to your analytics package, you capture a 360-degree snapshot of email performance.  Both link performance and overall email performance data can be extracted from ExactTarget.  These extractions allow you to assess the impact of email campaigns with online activity, where you can facilitate data exchange to consolidate reporting.

Automating a Behavior Marketing Campaign
Segmenting messages based on email and web analytics data is possible through our third form of integration.   ExactTarget has the capability to automate a behavior marketing campaign for you, which begins with importing web behavior data into the ExactTarget application.  (Typically, the data you will be importing will relate to products viewed, products purchased and cart abandonment information.)  This data can be queried to allow deeper segmentation, thereby allowing you to create more personalized and targeted email.   By automating the daily feeds of individual web data to trigger emails, you ensure timely, relevant emails to your subscribers.

For more information on how you can integrate ExactTarget with your web analytics provider, contact us via email at info@exacttarget.com or at 1.866.558.9834. 

Till next time,
Patty Rayl 

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It Pays to Be Like Mike

Friday, September 4, 2009 by Joel Book

Mike’s Express Carwash is a chain of 37 carwashes located across Indiana and Ohio.  They recently announced that their email marketing program had enabled the company to boost online sales in June by more than 60 percent over June 2008 totals. 

Email gives us a way to reward our loyal customers,” said Sally Grant, marketing director of Mike’s Express Carwash.  “We’ve also been able to build a great list of highly-engaged customers and send them special offers and discounts to thank them for their loyalty and drive increased sales.”

What I really like about Mike’s is how they invite the customer to become an email subscriber.

Customers are invited to participate in the email campaign when they purchase a car wash.  Every receipt includes a unique offer code and provides a link to the survey site (www.talktomikes.com). Customers log on to the Website, enter the unique receipt code and their email address and then complete a two-question survey.  Once the survey is submitted, the data is immediately sent to ExactTarget’s Application Program Interface (API) which automatically triggers an email to the customer that includes a bar-coded coupon for a free car wash.  To prevent multiple uses of the same coupon, the company uses ExactTarget’s Live Content feature to automatically generate a new bar-code for every coupon.  Data from each coupon barcode is automatically uploaded to Mike’s Express’ point of sale system to ensure the code is only recognized once.

Does this email opt-in strategy work? You bet it does!

In August, Mike’s Car Wash ran a “Back To School” campaign that offered customers a free carwash in exchange for completing an online customer satisfaction survey and subscribing to its email marketing program.  The 10-day campaign added more than 40,000 new customers to the company’s email subscriber list!

You Can Be Like Mike 

Whether it’s implementing Triggered Email Promotions based on POS Customer Data Capture, or using SMS text messaging to capture new email subscribers, marketers like Mike’s Car Wash are proving that email marketing is smart. And successful email marketing begins with a well-planned subscriber acquisition strategy.

If you want to be like Mike, gives us a call. We'll be happy to help.

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Summer Reflections from an Intern at an Email Marketing Company

Thursday, August 27, 2009 by Kyle Schroeder

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

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Mike's Express Carwash Leverages Email to Grow Business

Tuesday, August 25, 2009 by Shelly Griffin
Increase Online Sales with Email CouponsOne of my goals for this blog was to share email marketing success stories from some of our small-to-medium size business customers.  In keeping with last week's "Back to School" theme, I especially love stories where success was derived from getting back to basics. 

A recent story comes from Mike's Express Carwash which boosted their online sales 60% through email.  They did a very nice job of leveraging a quick survey to help grow their list, and then a triggered email that included a unique coupon for a free carwash.  The really cool thing about this program is that although this particular email campaign was done leveraging some of our more sophisticated applications (Live Content, Triggered Emails, Surveys and API), any business could easily enact a similar email marketing program by leveraging segmentation/groups and tracking.

Learn More about Dynamic Content for Email Marketing.
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E-Coupons are HOT! (Even if the economy is not.)

Monday, August 24, 2009 by Joel Book
As reported in last week’s online issue of MEDIAWEEK, “8.6 million (or 8 percent) of U.S. households currently acquire coupons via text messages and/or email.” This finding is from a recent report from Scarborough Research.

The article noted that “a number of factors have contributed to the increasing use of text or e-mail coupons, such as the increased usage of cell phones and other personal communications devices, which allow consumers to access offers at the point of purchase. And because consumers must opt in to receive the coupons, they tend to be more targeted.”

Gordmans’ Birthday E-Coupon is a Winner

Gordmans' Birthday E-Coupon

Email is the direct marketing workhorse for Gordmans, an Omaha-based retailer of ELP (Everyday Low Price) merchandise. The company, with 65 stores throughout the Midwest, uses e-coupons to “congratulate” its customers on their birthday by sending a bar-coded coupon worth $5 off their next purchase.

Results:
70.5% Open Rate
4.3% Conversion Rate (of delivered)
6.0% Conversion Rate (of opened)

Most importantly, the average sales receipt for customers redeeming the “Happy Birthday” coupon is 33% higher than average!

Looking for Retail Marketing Horsepower?

In today’s highly competitive retail environment, it’s more important than ever to employ a multichannel marketing program that includes digital one-to-one communications—and gives customers exactly what they want, when they want it. 

Whether it’s implementing Personalized E-coupon Solutions, POS Customer Data Capture for Triggered Email Promotions, or using SMS to capture new email subscribers, ExactTarget can help.
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Test ExactTarget’s New Innovations

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 by Jeff Cunning
3sixty iLab is the perfect place to enhance your one-to-one marketing efforts. We release our newest ExactTarget features to iLab first where clients can access them in exchange for providing us with valuable feedback. iLab is located in ExactTarget’s 3Sixty user community—clients can log on to iLab to view current, former, and future innovations and sign up to have available features automatically enabled. During the test process, clients will also be able to complete a short survey and phone interview to help influence future product enhancements.

Customers are taking advantage of our newest innovations in order to stay on the cutting edge of our application. Take it from ExactTarget Partner, Mighty Interactive. "We love being able to offer our clients new functionality that’s only available in ExactTarget's iLab. Because we're offering new opportunities not yet generally available, it gives us an opportunity to inject new life into their email program. The best part? It's simple — just sign up through 3sixty to get started!" David Hibbs, Customer Lifecycle Manager at Mighty Interactive.

A couple examples of recent innovations are Live Images and Simplified Landing Pages.  Live Images allow you to change image content in emails after they’re already sent. Simplified Landing Pages offers the ability to create a Landing Page in just minutes by boiling the process down to a few simple steps.  

New innovations will continue to arrive and become available to any user—although spaces are limited and offered on a first come, first serve basis. Log on to iLab today or join the iLab Group in 3sixty to stay up-to-date with the latest and greatest features!
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Email Design Tip of the Week: HTML for the Unique Email Landscape

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 by Andrea Smith
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.

Coding HTML for a Custom Template or an HTML Paste EmailEmail Marketing Design
The creative is done, copy is approved – time to start coding and testing for proper rendering! Since the rendering of the email is crucial to ensuring the subscriber has a positive experience, it’s important to choose the appropriate editor to achieve that result. Many popular WYSIWYG editors such as Dreamweaver and FrontPage will work well for web pages, but experience display issues when used to create emails. In a nutshell, this is due to the differences in the way email clients support and display HTML and CSS. There is a firm set of standards in place for coding HTML for web pages, but email standards are still a topic under debate. Programs like Dreamweaver and FrontPage were created with web standards in mind and won’t necessarily generate code that is optimized for email.

Even though these programs are designed with web standards in mind, using them doesn’t guarantee you are left with 100% compliant code. Make sure to avoid using the “Save as a web page” functionality in Microsoft Word. The resulting HTML contains proprietary code and embedded CSS that will not display properly in most email clients.

Advanced Tip
For best results, code HTML emails and templates in a plain-text editor. NotePad and TextEdit come pre-installed on your PC or Mac. Here are our favorites available for download:
These programs output the cleanest html without adding anything extra that may lead to rendering problems. Even better, some editors have productivity tools that allow you to add snippets or pieces of code you might type again and again and allow you to access those snippets with simple keyword triggers. Designer Chris Studabaker elaborates on other productivity tools.

For more design tips and recommendations like this, check out:
Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials
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