Campaign Monitor Blog

A new look for system emails

Ros Hodgekiss — 2009-11-06T02:35:02+10:00

If you’ve been receiving invoices, email delivery confirmations or password reset emails in the last few days, you may have noticed that we’ve made some changes to the look of these system-generated messages. They’ve been given a delectably modern cut-and-color, with clean lines, nice icons and more information:

In our previous blog post, you may have noticed the new invoice design; these now include customizable address fields, which can also include VAT number and any other relevant information:

The invoices to both you and your clients have been updated to be consistent with the look and feel of the application, which undoubtedly is a great improvement.

Please send us any comments or feedback regarding this redesign - we’re always looking to improve!

Email Bacon’s Matt Adams on why email goes better with bacon

Ros Hodgekiss — 2009-11-04T04:49:34+10:00

Email Bacon has combined all the best elements of a successful Campaign Monitor rebrand – a striking design, sense of humor, business-savvy and the smell of bacon. Matt Adams from factor1 spent a moment apart from the fry pan to tell us about offering affordable email marketing services and being a ‘purple cow’.

First things first - why is everything better with bacon?

It’s consistently advertised that bacon makes everything better. You can’t watch an hour of TV without seeing at least one commercial with bacon. When we market to a potential customer, we can count on the bacon concept being reinforced all day long. Hopefully customers will find Email Bacon to be memorable.

The Email Bacon site is brilliant, how did it come together?

We try to align all of our factor1 branded sites to a minimalist, core message approach. We like to have fun, and want things to be simple for our visitors and clients. Everything we create has the aim of keeping the heavy thinking on our end, so clients simply receive the content they came looking for. People are busy, and the last thing they want is to read 3 pages on why they should use Email Bacon.

How did you come up with your pricing model?

We wanted Email Bacon to be affordable, but we didn’t want to give the farm away. We also wanted to dissuade anyone not serious about using it. Thus, we don’t offer free setup (even with a stock template), since even account setup and walking clients though the product takes time.

We are pretty fast coders, so we kept the setup fee small and manageable for most clients, yet enough to cover the development costs even if a client never sends a single email. In addition, we make a profit from clients sending their campaigns via Campaign Monitor. It’s our goal to have some automated income without tons of handholding.

How have you been spreading the word?

We are keeping Email Bacon semi low-key. With so many players in the email marketing services arena, we can’t justify spending much on ad campaigns. So we have been sticking to our current client base. With over 100 unique visitors to our factor1 site daily, we hope to see some of them convert to Email Bacon. Many of our existing clients ask us about email marketing – viewing the Email Bacon website is 10 times better than any brochure we can send them.

What are your plans for Email Bacon in the future?

Right now, we are letting it cook a bit longer. We have some other big projects hovering around factor1 - all these projects cross-promote our additional services. So, as we sell full web or branding services to our clients, we promote Email Bacon.

In the future, we’re planning to reduce our setup cost (to as low as $99), and further automate our sign up process, potentially with the API. But that’s a bit down the road. We also have plans to include video demos, as we understand the power of video to promote our message. We already have the equipment, we just need the time to record and edit.

Any tips for other designers considering reselling Campaign Monitor?

Be remarkable. There are thousands of email systems out there, but most do not have the great features that Campaign Monitor has. This should be a huge advantage, but you will still have to be competitively priced, as email marketing is considered to be a commodity these days. If you are remarkable, a ’purple cow’ as Seth Godin says, at least you have a shot. We hear daily that Email Bacon is fun, light hearted, and looks like a great service. People are talking, and it’s not about how low-cost Email Bacon is, but how they remember our brand.

Campaign Monitor has generated over $2 million in profits for designers like yourself. Find out how you can use our white-label product to set your own prices and make money when your clients send their own campaigns.

Keep the tax man happy with detailed invoices

Ros Hodgekiss — 2009-11-03T04:55:24+10:00

Felt that your invoices were lacking important information? You can now add additional details like your address and VAT number to both the invoices we send to you and the invoices sent to your clients.

It’s easy to customize the invoices we send to you, simply head into your Account Settings and add any additional details you require in the new Address field:

You can also customize the invoices that are sent to your clients. In a similar fashion, click on Client Settings and click ‘Edit Client Details’. You will also see a new Address field:

The updated invoices to your clients will feature all the details in the Address field, including any tax information you enter:

This new feature shouldn’t just keep the tax-man happy, but also means more professional invoices for you and your clients. As always, do feel free to drop us a line if you have any suggestions as to how we can further improve our billing and invoicing facilities.

Set and Profit: Clients can now purchase their own email credits

Ros Hodgekiss — 2009-11-02T06:42:33+10:00

If you have been poking around your account this morning, you may have noticed that under ‘Client Settings’ and ‘Account access and billing’ that there is a new billing option for clients to purchase their own email credits.

What this means is that if you have clients sending their own campaigns via your Campaign Monitor account, they will be able to top up their email credit balance at their own discretion. Even better, you have the choice of either charging your clients for email credits at the base rate, or charging at your own set rate and pocketing the difference as profit!

For example, if a client plans to purchase 50,000 credits for their upcoming campaigns and you have set the price of email credits at 3 cents per credit, your client will pay $1500 for the credits and you will pocket $1000 in profit (base rate is 1 cent/email).

Allowing your clients to purchase their own email credits

Setting up the facility for clients to purchase their own credits is simple. Simply head to the ‘Client Settings’ tab and click ‘Account access and billing’ to edit. Ensure that alongside the ‘Create/Send’ tab, ‘Create and send their own campaigns’ is checked, then click the ‘Billing’ tab:

Now, you can you can allow your client to purchase credits, either at the base rate or at a price set by you:

Once you’ve set the rates that you want to charge for email credits, click ‘Save Access and Billing’ and you’re off!

What does the client see?

So, say you’ve set the price of credits at 3 cents for the first 50,000 purchased. When the client clicks on ‘Billing’, then the ‘Buy credits and save’ link, they can now enter the number of email credits they want to purchase and click, ‘Calculate cost’. The total bill and credit card facility to pay for them will be displayed. You will also see the pricing structure for email credits, as set by you:

Client Settings, now prettier

You may have also noticed that as part of this update, we’ve cleaned up the ‘Account access and billing settings’ section to make it much cleaner and easier to navigate:

If you have any suggestions or comments regarding the new design, please feel free to comment below.

How can I get my clients sending their own campaigns? Offering our white-label product to your clients is a great way to add value to your existing services and bring in additional revenue. Take control and set the prices, bill clients automatically and make some sweet coin. In fact, we’ve already raised over $2 million in profit for designers like you!

Wildfire integration brings promotions, social media and Campaign Monitor together

Ros Hodgekiss — 2009-10-29T03:15:29+10:00

Wildfire, a web application that brings together interactive promotions with social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace, has announced integration with Campaign Monitor. In a few easy steps, you can now synchronize your Wildfire campaign leads with a Campaign Monitor subscriber list - simply plug in your Campaign Monitor API key, configure your Wildfire account and you’re on the road. Take a look at Wildfire’s simple tutorial on how this is done.

Using Wildfire, you can not only set up branded and customisable promotions such as contests, quizzes and coupons, but push them to your website, or impressively, to a variety of social media properties. For example, you can set up a quiz in Wildfire and quickly publish it to your site and a Facebook Fan Page. After completing the quiz, registrants can then send invitations and reminder notifications to their friends via Facebook, as well as publish quiz details to their newsfeed.

By integrating with Campaign Monitor, Wildfire offers an additional marketing channel. New and existing Wildfire campaign registrants can be automatically synchronized with a Campaign Monitor subscriber list. As Wildfire clearly requests permission during the promotion signup process, you can send your registrants email communications such as reminders, offers and newsletters, all with the email delivery and reporting functionality that you love Campaign Monitor for.

Wildfire has also created a range of pricing plans to suit the features and creative control you require. Find out more about Wildfire on their feature tour.

Style Campaign lifts their click-through rate by 26% with A/B testing

Ros Hodgekiss — 2009-10-27T05:14:43+10:00

The following post comes courtesy of our guest blogger, Anna Yeaman, from Style Campaign, an email marketing and design agency based in Los Angeles, CA. Through a combination of A/B testing with Campaign Monitor and use of animation, Style Campaign discovered that it could lift an email campaign’s click-through rate by an additional 26%.

I recently ran an A/B test on an email campaign on behalf of our client, Dressed Up!, to determine if embedding an animated image increases click-throughs. In order to do so, I prepared two emails with a slight variation (click to view emails in a new window):

Email Version A featured a static video screenshot
Email Version B featured an animated GIF

The animated GIF in Email Version B consists of six frames and plays in the majority of email clients:

Testing the waters

Initially I stuck to subject line tests. These take seconds to set up and the payoff can be substantial. For example, here are the subject lines we used for our September newsletter:

Subject line A: ‘[firstname,fallback=Check out] - Mobile & Animated Emails’
Subject Line B: ‘Texting (SMS) & Email :: 360 Product Photo :: Animated GIFs’

My money was on the short, personalized subject line. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong! Subject line B increased our open rate by 250%. Bolstered by the discovery that a five-year-old could set up an A/B test, I started to test email content.

Setting up the A/B test

Under the A/B split campaign tab, I was given three choices:

Subject Line
Email Content
From Name

I selected Email Content for use in this A/B test. At this stage I also entered the subject line, ‘VIDEO: Susan Boyle Makeover :: Fall Tadashi Gowns Modelled’, which would be used for both versions:

As normal, you are prompted to import your HTML email creative. The only difference is that you do this twice. Then, after selecting my recipients, I moved on to defining the A/B split.

I’ll admit that the segmentation feature intimidates me, so I was relieved that this part of the process was so intuitive. Dragging the bar, I set it up so that 25% of Dressed Up! subscribers received Version A and 25% received Version B. The remaining 50% would receive the winning version.

Underneath I selected, ‘Total clicks on selected link’. This allowed me to determine a winner based on the number of clicks the video graphic received, rather than total unique clicks:

Finally I set the A/B test to run for 5 hours, after which time the winner would be sent to the remaining subscribers.

It takes only a couple of minutes to set up an A/B content test. I had no problems on my first run though, without reading any documentation!

The Results

Overall, Version B generated a 26% increase in the click-through rate, in comparison to the non-animated version of the email. One explanation is that the animated GIF draws the eye, further acting as a visual cue by crudely simulating video.

My client was thrilled by the results, which I presented to him as a PDF, via the Campaign Snapshot page.

I’ll be doing more A/B tests to refine this technique, such as testing three animated frames vs. nine frames, to see if more images result in higher conversions. On top of this I’ll be testing a horizontal vs. vertical layouts, after being inspired by this unique Abercrombie & Fitch email.

I’d love to hear from other Campaign Monitor users, what A/B tests have you carried out?

- Anna Yeaman, http://www.stylecampaign.com
Follow Style Campaign on Twitter (@stylecampaign)

To learn more about embedding video into email, visit our resource, ’The Current State of Video in Email’

Using A/B testing to boost your email response

Ros Hodgekiss — 2009-10-26T05:44:18+10:00

The A/B testing feature was released earlier this year atop an amazing wave of excitement and anticipation. Many of you may have already had a chance to run A/B tests on your campaigns, however if you haven't, you will find that its a very effective way to maximize your campaign results and learn about your subscribers. Secondly, it ensures that the message the majority of your subscribers receive is the most relevant choice - this is a win for everyone.

What is an A/B Test?

An A/B test involves two differing emails being sent out to a small portion of your subscriber list, with the most successful ('winner') email being chosen from the two after a defined period of time. The winner is then sent to the remainder of your subscribers.

You may have heard this practice being described as '10/10/80 split' or 'multivariate' testing (however the latter involves changing multiple parts of your campaign). Perhaps you have heard reasons why people don't use it, such as 'it's too hard to do', or, 'by the time I get the results from the initial test, it will be too late'. The good news is that we've set up a very powerful and easy-to-use interface for your to conduct A/B split campaigns. As the results arrive in real-time, you don't have to wait until the following day to select your winning email; in fact, we'll send the winner out automatically.

So… Why test?

There are a number of great reasons why you should optimise your campaigns using A/B testing, including:

The chance to experiment and learn from different subject lines - what will produce the better open rate, 'Receive 20% off all products at ABC Store', or 'Discounts on all products at ABC Store'?
The opportunity to decide what email content is most relevant and responsive - Is layout A better than B? What call to action will work best?
Deciding which From name is best - Do you go corporate 'ABC Store', or personal 'Bill Storeowner'?

No matter what you decide to test, A/B testing will always provide you with useful feedback on your campaigns. For example, you will soon find that the process of choosing the 'perfect' subject will rapidly become less of a guessing game and more of an empirical study.

Creating an A/B test campaign

Creating an A/B test campaign is similar to creating a regular campaign - after you click the 'Create a new campaign' button, you will see two tabs beneath 'Step 1: Define the Campaign and Sender'. Click the 'A/B split campaign tab' and you will be on your way:

In this example, we’ll be selecting two different subject lines. You will be required to enter differing subject lines for Version A and B of this campaign. You can also personalize the subject line with the recipient’s first name, last name or full name:

Once satisfied, complete 'Step 2.1: Select the format for this campaign' as you would on a regular campaign. If you have chosen to send two differing emails, you will be presented with the option to include both of them on this step. Next, you will move onto defining recipients. At 'Step 2.1 - Select the recipients for this campaign', select your subscriber list as you would for a regular campaign, then click the 'Define A/B Split' button:

In 'Step 4.1 - Size of test and how you'll decide the winner', you can define using the slider what percentage of your subscriber list will receive the initial A/B test emails, then what percentage will receive the winning version. These percentages (A/B/Winner) are entirely up to you, however they cannot be smaller than 1/1/98%, or larger than 25/25/50%. Commonly, 10/10/80% splits are used:

Secondly, you can define what criteria will be used to select the winner. You can select from Open rate, Total unique clicks, or Total clicks on a selected link. This will map back to how you will finally gauge the success of the email campaign, for example, if you are looking to drive visitors to your online store, you may want to select ‘Total unique clicks’ as the criteria for selecting a winner.

Finally, you can select the number of hours or days across which you want to run the A/B test. The default is to 'Select a winner after 6 hours', however depending how time-sensitive your campaign is, you may want to select more or less. Note: Setting a testing period of less than a few hours may impact the reliability of the test, as there may be insufficient click and open data generated to accurately determine a winner.
Once you're done, click 'Next'.

You will then be presented with a snapshot of the email campaign, including the two subject lines defined earlier. Review, then click 'Test and define delivery':

In 'Step 5.1 - Test your campaign', you will have the opportunity to test your campaign prior to sending it just as you would a regular campaign. Likewise for 'Step 5.2 - Schedule campaign delivery'. It's time to get sending!

Sending and monitoring an A/B test campaign

The excitement all happens once you’ve sent out your email campaign - and at this point, you will see the real-time presentation of results to be quite different from that of regular email campaign sends:

Not only will you be able to see how each version of your creative is performing in the test, but upon completion, you will be able to view the total benefit gained from running the test. This is an excellent way to admire your own handiwork, as well as learn how differing approaches to subject line, content and the from line can alter the results of an email campaign.

This is the first in a series of posts on A/B tests, which we hope will assist you in making your email campaigns more effective (and maybe even make testing fun). Feel free to discuss this post via the comments below, or visit our always-buzzing forums if you have a particular question in mind.

Next: Anna Yeaman, our guest blogger from the Los Angeles-based agency, Style Campaign, will show us how they dramatically lifted the click-through rate of their Dressed Up! email campaign using an A/B test. Stay tuned!

Guestlist synchronization with Campaign Monitor

Ros Hodgekiss — 2009-10-23T03:13:08+10:00

Guestlist, an online service for managing event registration and ticket sales, has recently announced integration with Campaign Monitor. This means that collecting registrations is now easier than ever - as soon as you plug in your Campaign Monitor API key into Guestlist, all current and future attendee contact information will be synchronized with your existing Campaign Monitor subscriber list.

The following short video demo outlines how easy this process is:

Too simple. What's better, Guestlist is currently free to use while in beta, so do check it out. Find out more about Guestlist's Campaign Monitor integration.

Segments are good for you

Ros Hodgekiss — 2009-10-21T15:33:55+10:00

Although previously considered to only be in the realm of expert email marketers, segmentation of your subscriber list is something that everyone can do - and should. In this post we will cover some of the great reasons why you should apply segmentation to your campaigns, how to segment your lists and finally, mention that segmentation should be used to promote engagement, not kill it.

What is a segment?

A segment is a subset of one of your existing subscriber lists. Simply speaking, it’s a group that can be defined by you, based on criteria such as:

If the subscriber clicked a link in a previous campaign
If the subscriber joined your list prior or a specific date
A match with any of your custom fields (eg. Subscriber lives in Berkeley)

Lets say you’re running a coffee club meet in Berkeley. Your list may contain a lot of other coffee club subscribers from across the country, but your email is only relevant to subscribers living in Berkeley. That’s where list segmentation can come to the rescue.

But that’s not all...

There are oodles of other reasons why you should use list segmentation, including:

Sending introductory offers to, or asking for feedback from new subscribers
Re-awakening subscribers that have not responded to your last few campaigns
Limiting your subscriber list when sending a campaign to subscribers who responded to a previous campaign
Testing a new subject line or call-to-action on subscribers who did not respond to a previous campaign
Sending nice notes to subscribers on their birthday

Segmentation can create more personal, targeted interactions between you and the subscriber, as well as minimize list fatigue. Secondly, it’s a great way to get in touch with specific groups such as inactive subscribers, who may simply need a different kind of prompting.

So, where do we start?

We’re going to pick up again with the example of a coffee club meet in Berkeley. Lucky for us, our subscriber list includes the custom field, ‘Suburb’, so we will be able to filter and segment our list using ‘BERKELEY’ as criteria.

Start by clicking the ‘Manage Subscribers’ tab and in the ‘List’ column, click on your subscriber list. You will now be able to view all the subscribers in your list. To define a segment of this group, click ‘Segments’.

On the ‘Manage segments’ page, click ‘Create a new segment’. You will then be asked to enter a name for your new segment. Make it something meaningful, like ‘Subscribers in Berkeley’. Now we will create the first rule for our new segment. From the ‘Create your first rule based on…” drop-down, select ‘Suburb’ and click ‘Add Rule’.

We now want to specify that we will be selecting subscribers from Berkeley only for this segment. To do this, beneath ‘Suburb’ we will select Suburb Equals ‘BERKELEY’. You also have the opportunity to add further rules, as well as OR conditions to the rules you specify (e.g. Suburb Equals ‘BERKELEY’ OR Equals ‘OAKLAND’). Once satisfied, click ‘Save and refresh count’. The number of active subscribers that match the criteria and thus, will populate this segment are displayed.

You can now use this segment to send your email to, or alternately, you can view the subscribers’ details or export the list as a CSV or text file. To send your email campaign, simply check the segment you want to send to when defining your recipients.

And voila. 87 Berkley coffee drinkers and a list of subscribers happy to receive one less irrelevant email.

So… It all looks like win to me.

Not so fast. While there are countless advantages to clever segmentation of your subscriber lists, the above-average delivery and response rates for certain segments may tempt you to send these groups plenty of email, while ignoring the rest of your subscribers. Remember to share the load - even if a subscriber hasn’t responded to your last two campaigns, that’s no reason to segment them out of your next send. These dormant subscribers may be simply waiting for a more compelling offer. Plus, you may run the risk of fatiguing your most valuable subscribers.

I recommend reading Mat’s previous article, “Creating and using segments”. This easy guide covers the mechanics of setting up segments in depth. Also, make sure you visit the forums if you have any specific questions, want to share your experiences, or just want to know how others are using segments to their advantage. Happy segmenting!

Gary Vaynerchuk has advice for web designers

Mathew Patterson — 2009-10-19T18:00:23+10:00

Have you ever "brought the thunder", hussled or "crushed it"? If you have, you'll know Gary Vaynerchuk, the wine business guru who has exploded into the internet and social media world over the last couple of years. If you are an awesome designer but struggling to find new clients or build your business, he's an excellent source of advice and motivation.

Gary's personal style is hugely excitable and passionate, he's like what Australia's Crocodile Hunter would have been if he was hunting $10 bottles of Merlot instead of crocs. At Campaign Monitor we've watched Gary's videos and talks and been impressed with the way he approaches marketing and branding. Although his delivery is a bit different to ours, his advice and direction really match the way we like to work.

So it was awesome to get the chance recently to ask Gary a question. We wanted to know what he would say to web designers about building up their business. Watch the short video below to hear his advice. You may already know the theory, but hearing it from someone who has actually done it, and who is a consumer of design services is really valuable.

That's quite a challenge, to dedicate a good chunk of your day to doing things which are not the actual design work. If you've got your passive income happening, you might be able to spend a bit more time listening to what people are looking for, and working out how you can provide it.

Gary also dropped in an extra special plea on behalf of Fix Outlook:

All the design chops in the world won't help you if you can't get the attention of client's who need them. If you need to get pumped up about building your brand and your business, definitely check out Gary's new book, Crush It! which focuses on turning your passion into real money.

Did you find the video helpful? Or maybe you have some advice to share on building up your web design business. Leave us a comment below and we'll send a sweet Campaign Monitor shirt, plus a copy of the book to our favorite commenter over the next week.

New Java wrapper for our API

David Greiner — 2009-10-15T04:25:55+10:00

Yesterday we released a brand spanking new (and much requested) Java wrapper for our API. Written by our very own James Dennes, it's a SOAP-based wrapper that makes getting started with the Campaign Monitor API crazy easy for any Java developers out there.

The wrapper works in a very similar way to our SOAP based Ruby wrapper by allowing you to call native Java methods to access all the functionality in the API. The wrapper is free to use and available at GitHub, so fork away if you spot any changes or improvements you'd like to make.

If you don't work in Java often, you might also be interested in our wrappers for PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, .NET and Flash.

HTML5 and video in email

David Greiner — 2009-10-14T05:01:39+10:00

As momentum quickly builds behind HTML5, the new version of HTML and XHTML, we've had a close eye on what impact this might have on HTML email in the years to come. While the finer details of HTML5 are still being finalised, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera have offered support for much of the new technology for some time.

One particular area of interest to me was the HTML5 <video> tag. The aim of this tag was to provide native video support using a single codec across all browsers without the need for third party plugins like Flash. While the dream of a universal codec appears unlikely, one clever project has surfaced that uses the <video> tag for browsers that support it and falls back on traditional video options for those that don't.

Current approaches to video in email

This isn't the first time we've had a close look at support for video in email. In our previous research we were looking for an approach that would allow video in email clients that support it and a clickable fallback image for those that didn't (that would then play the video in the browser).

The results were disappointing. Only Apple Mail supported decent video playback via Flash, and there was no consistent way to provide fallback content for those clients that don't support Flash. To me, this is the crux of the problem. If video doesn't work, you better have a backup plan that works well for everyone else. Because most email clients strip the <object> tag used to insert video, a backup plan wasn't available.

There had to be a better way, and maybe HTML5 was the answer. Turns out I was half right.

A simple approach using HTML5

Using Kroc Camen's very cool Video for Everybody as a starting point, I quickly saw that the approach for the browser would be very different than for email clients.

Kroc's technique provided multiple layers of support (seen here). So, if HTML5 <video> isn't available, you can fallback to QuickTime or Flash and almost always guarantee the video will work. Because we know that Flash and QuickTime are universally blocked in email, I stripped these backup options to keep it simple.

Due to the codec battle I mentioned earlier, you need to provide your video in both H.264 (supported by Apple and Google) and Ogg Theora (supported by Mozilla and Opera). This isn't the case with email. The only popular email client that uses Gecko (the Firefox rendering engine) is Thunderbird, which currently chooses not to display HTML5 video. So, just like the Flash/Quicktime fallback, Ogg Theora is also out. If a big number of your recipients were clicking on the web version of your emails then you could consider adding it back in for any subscribers using Firefox.

The final code

After cutting out all the video options made redundant by email, here's the final code that gave the best results.

<video width="640" height="360" poster="fallback.jpg" controls="controls">
        <source src="http://mysite.com/videoname.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
        <a href="http://mysite.com/"><img src="fallback.jpg" width="640" height="360" /></a>
</video>

As you can see, you provide a fallback image (which is conveniently loaded as the poster for the movie before playing for email clients that support video) in the <video> tag along with the width and height of the video. Within the <video> tag you call the H.264 encoded video using the <source> tag, remembering to fully reference the file on your server.

Finally, add the backup content you'd like to be displayed in any email client that doesn't support HTML5 inside the <video> tags. This would normally be a clickable screenshot of the video that would play the video in the browser when clicked.

The results

Working on a Mac, my first stop was Apple Mail. The video rendered perfectly. Next stop, my iPhone. Holy crap! Video played beautifully on the iPhone email client too.

I then turned to the popular web-based email clients - Yahoo!, Gmail and Hotmail. Unfortunately, it looks like web-based email clients are choosing to disable HTML5 video from playing. While this was disappointing, the news isn't all bad. In place of the video I was able to display the provided backup content. In this case, a clickable fallback image where I could link to the video on my web site. This facility was never available with any of the previous attempts at true video in email and was a welcomed improvement.

As I continued to test, the same results were experienced on desktop email clients on the PC. The video didn't play, but the fallback option appeared in every single client I tested. here are the full results.

Desktop email clients	Result
Apple Mail	Video plays
Entourage 2008	Video plays
Lotus Notes 6, 7 and 8.5	Fallback content displayed
Outlook 2007	Fallback content displayed
Outlook 2003	Fallback content displayed
Thunderbird	Fallback content displayed
Windows Mail	Fallback content displayed
Web-based email clients	Result
AOL Web	Fallback content displayed
Gmail	Fallback content displayed
Hotmail	Fallback content displayed
MobileMe	Video plays
MySpace	Fallback content displayed
Mobile email clients	Result
iPhone	Video plays

See it in action

To give you a feel for how HTML5 video renders in a few of the popular email clients, here are some screenshots from my testing. You can checkout the test page I used here.

Apple Mail 4

When I opened the email in Apple Mail, the fallback image I specified in the poster attribute was displayed while the movie started streaming in. After a few seconds the video controls appeared and I could see the progress of the movie loading and start to watch it.

iPhone 3.1.2

The iPhone doesn't support video streaming in the browser or email client and instead provides a clear prompt that clicking the poster image will let you watch the movie. Clicking the image then loads the movie in the iPhone's QuickTime player. At the conclusion of the movie you're taken back to the email.

Outlook 2007

Like all email clients that don't support HTML5 video, Outlook 2007 displays the fallback content we specify within the video tag. This can be any HTML you like and isn't limited to a single image. In most cases, this would likely be a screenshot from the movie and perhaps a play icon overlaid to entice the recipient to click the image and view the video in their browser.

The result was the same for all email clients that didn't support HTML5 video, making this a handy way to provide a consistent experience for every recipient.

Should you use this technique?

First off, I think this approach is the best option available for including video in email. The fact that you can reliably provide fallback content that works in every email client out there is a huge positive that no other technique I'm aware of offers. The obvious limitation is that right now it only works for your subscribers using Apple related products.

Making a decision on the suitability of this approach really comes down to your subscriber list. For example, 50% of our own customer list open our monthly newsletter using one of the supported Apple email clients (you can find this out for your own list using our handy email client reports). If we wanted to include video in an email, this technique would mean that half our subscribers can watch the video right in their email client, and the other half will see a perfectly acceptable fallback image they can click to watch it in their browser.

Whether you should be sending video in email at all is another question entirely, and perhaps something we'll tackle in a later post. I didn't get a chance to test this technique in every email client, and I'd love to see the results in Palm Pre if anyone has one handy (purely because like the iPhone it also uses Webkit to render HTML emails). You can grab a copy of the test email here. I'd also love to hear everyone's thoughts on this approach and if you think it's a useful technique.

Passive income is kinda cool

David Greiner — 2009-10-06T05:00:26+10:00

For the last month or two we've been running a little ad campaign on a number of design sites promoting how a web designer can use Campaign Monitor to create an additional revenue stream for their business. Today we sent out the most recent monthly earnings to our reselling customers, and I figured this was a good opportunity to share the details.

When we merged the billing features of MailBuild into Campaign Monitor at the end of last year, it suddenly became easy to automatically generate income from your clients sending their own email newsletters. You add them as a client, design them a template (and charge them for it), and set how how much they should pay each campaign. Every time they send, you earn a tidy profit which we send you at the end of each month. Couldn't be easier.

You might remember that a few months back we announced we'd generated more than $1 million in direct, automated profit for our customers. Today we distributed the profits for September totalling more than $150,000 and within the next month or two we'll cross over the $2 million mark. As you can see from the chart below, the profit earned has been growing at an almost exponential rate.

The best part, this is only the profit generated from your clients sending campaigns. Many of our customers make much more charging for their template designs and ongoing strategy for each client. On top of this, an even bigger percentage of customers pay on their clients behalf and then charge them later, so their profit isn't even represented here.

Personally, this sort of stuff is awesome to see. To know we're making email marketing easier for our customers is one thing, but to see how we're helping you guys build successful business is both exciting and gratifying.

If you're using our client billing feature already, then check your email for the details of your latest earnings. If you're not, then check out the details on how all this works and read a few case studies on how other customers have been so successful. Your accountant will love you for it.

Nerd shirts, Campaign Monitor and Australian Web Week

Mathew Patterson — 2009-10-01T23:54:29+10:00

Every year around this time we post about Web Directions South, our favourite web conference. It's on again next week, but this time there is an entire week of web events around it.

You can find out about all of the events at the Web Week site. If you'd like to catch up with some of the Campaign Monitor crew, we'll be attending at least a few different events like WebBlast and Ignite Sydney during the week. If you spot us, come and say hello!

Our main focus will be the expo booth at Web Directions itself. We're situated right outside the main conference room, so you shouldn't have any problems finding us, and our booth is on the end.

We'll be stocked up with plenty of our new shirts, as seen awkwardly modelled in the Freshview office by Ken, Dave and I.

You can come and talk to us to score a free shirt, and if you actually wear it (of course you will) you can enter a competition to win a spanking new 13" Macbook Pro.

With a black t-shirt and a new Macbook Pro you could truly be living the geek dream! It is always helpful and fun for us to meet customers in actual real life, and we look forward to seeing some of you there. Even if you can't make Web Directions, definitely take a look at the other Web Week events and make the most of Sydney's growing web scene.

Emails to Hotmail and Yahoo subscribers temporarily delayed

David Greiner — 2009-09-30T13:13:50+10:00

UPDATE: The blacklisting has now been removed, and we've verified that emails to Hotmail and Yahoo are being delivered as per normal. We've released all the delayed emails and they are sending right now, although it may take some time for the queue to be fully sent.

Some smaller domains may take a while to refresh their blacklists, so we would expect to see slightly higher bounce rates while the removal trickles down. Please accept our apologies for the delays.

Late last night (Sydney time) we discovered that some of our delivery servers have been picked up by the popular blacklist provider Spamhaus. In this case, the servers were blacklisted because of one or more complaints about a campaign sent by one customer in particular.

As soon as we became aware of the issue, we took the following immediate steps:

We closed this customers account pending a further review from our approvals team.
We contacted Spamhaus about the issue, provided them with all the details about this customer and explained our commitment to never spamming. We are currently awaiting a response.
Immediately stopped delivering emails to ISP's that are known users of Spamhaus. The most significant of these is Yahoo! and Hotmail. To ensure those emails are not rejected, they are currently quarantined on our mail servers and will be released the moment the listing is resolved.
Working with any customers impacted before we identified the issue. If you sent a campaign in the last two hours and notice a high bounce rate, get in touch and we'll organize a full refund for the campaign and let you know how to resend to those recipients later.

Should I still send this campaign I've been working on?

If your email is timely and must get delivered to your Yahoo! and Hotmail subscribers at the same time as the rest of your subscribers, then we don't recommend sending now. While we'll be quarantining the majority of email impacted by the block, there may be additional subscribers at other domains that could also result in a bounce. If you want to avoid any risk of this altogether, we recommend holding off sending until the issue is resolved.

However, if you're prepared to accept that risk and for your Hotmail and Yahoo! subscribers to receive your campaign a little later than everyone else, feel free to send now. At this stage we don't have an estimate as to when the listing will be resolved, but in our experience it can take up to 24 hours. While this delay shouldn't impact most of you, we wanted to be as transparent as possible.

How will I know when email to these subscribers will be sent

We'll keep everyone updated through this blog post, and also via our Twitter account. As soon as we have confirmation these subscribers are in the clear, we'll let you know.

Our ‘Giving Back’ program rolls on

Mathew Patterson — 2009-09-29T04:55:07+10:00

Campaign Monitor has always had plenty of support and feedback from the web design community. As a small way of saying thanks, we run our Giving Back program that can provide support like free email credits, beer and pizza money or traditional sponsorship for web design events and groups.

Here's a few of the recent events that Campaign Monitor has supported, and also a few events you still have time to get involved with.

Recently supported by Campaign Monitor

Handcrafted CSS Workshop
Dan Cederholm and Ethan Marcotte presented this one day workshop based on their upcoming Handcrafted CSS book. Campaign Monitor provided sponsorship money that helped a couple of haiku writing designers get a free ticket.

Pittsburgh Web Design Day
A "one-day, local web design conference to highlight local talent as well as those with strong ties to Pittsburgh who have gone on to be leaders in our industry", this excellent local event was helped out by some Campaign Monitor support, and by all reports was a big success.

Web Standards Group casual event
Campaign Monitor has paid for the beers at a few of these Sydney meetups for web people, and we've drunk a few in attendance too! Future events will become the new Web Blast. Hopefully we'll see you there!

Upcoming events and meetings we're supporting

2009 UCDA Design Conference
For 3 days from October 3rd the The University & College Designers Association will be putting on their design conference. This year, our own support team champion Diana Potter will be speaking, so don't miss it if you can make it.

LessConf
Saturday, Oct. 17th 2009 in Jacksonville Florida will change your life, according to the organisers of LessConf. We're a supporting sponsor and looking at the line up, we'd have to agree. Gary Vaynerchuk and Derek Sivers to name a couple. Imagine how much you could learn in one day!

Web Directions South 2009
Campaign Monitor has had a long association with Web Directions, and we'll be there next week in the exhibit space, meeting plenty of you guys and girls as always. It's another great program this year, and if you come and see us at our booth, we might even have something for you.

Ignite Sydney
Another event during Australian Web Week is Ignite, the high energy presentation evening with each speaker limited to 5 minutes and 20 slides. Campaign Monitor is sponsoring, so if you got a ticket before it sold out we might catch you there.

If you are a current or aspiring web designer, these kinds of community events and groups are a fantastic way to meet new people, learn new skills and have some actual real-life fun. If you can't find a group in your local area, why not set one up?

If you're involved in a designer focused group or an event that could use some support, jump over to our Giving Back page, fill in the form and we'll get back to you.

The new Campaign Monitor t-shirts

David Greiner — 2009-09-23T06:04:23+10:00

Way back in May this year, we asked you guys to come up with some new ideas for our popular range of email nerd t-shirts. In the end, we had nearly 150 hilarious (and some kinda scary) ideas that we then put up for vote. We announced the three winners in July, and have finally turned those winning ideas into something you can wear.

Just like last time, we were very fussy about quality. After lots of searching, we've partnered with fellow Aussies and good friends RedBubble (the super popular online art community). RedBubble print on high quality 100% cotton American Apparel stock, so the shirts fit nicely and feel great.

Once the votes were tallied, they were handed to our support and design extraordinaire Jarrod Taylor, who turned them from funny tagline to a shirt you'd actually wear. Without further ado, here are the winning designs...

Unsubscribe me from this conversation

Suggested by our very own Mat Patterson, who says good email marketing etiquette can't be just as useful in real life? The next time somebody isn't offering timely, relevant conversation that you opted in to hear, just slide your jacket open and present them with this message.

Zoom

The full tee

G'day

The G'day shirt (suggested by Ricky Cox from Japan) highlights that awkward social situation we've all been in. You go to say hi to someone and at that moment their name escapes you. Thankfully there's always a fallback, and in Australia it's the universal "mate". Extra points for using the Campaign Monitor personalization syntax in there too.

Zoom

The full tee

Plain text

This shirt, suggested by Doug Neiner is perfect for those plain text purists out there. If you're still reading your email with Pine, this shirt is for you.

Zoom

The full tee

Getting your own copy of our new shirts

Unlike our previous tees, we won't be making these available for sale. Instead, we'll be giving them away to customers. The only thing you need to do is be awesome. Whether that's through doing something clever with our software, designing a beautiful email, helping other people out in our forums or helping spread the word about Campaign Monitor, we'll be armed with boxes of these tees to send your way.

A big thanks to everyone who offered their suggestions and helped pick a winner.

Huge speed improvements to Campaign Monitor

David Greiner — 2009-09-22T09:55:31+10:00

Now that A/B Testing is well and truly released, we'll be rolling out a stack of other cool updates we've been working on of late. If you've logged into your account in the last couple of days you might have noticed everything feels snappier. Judging by some of the reactions we've been seeing, plenty of you have already spotted the difference.

Given the fact that a big percentage of our customers are web designers and developers themselves, I figured we'd share some of the more juicy details on the changes we've made to improve the overall performance of Campaign Monitor. Many of these changes are things you can apply to your own web sites to improve page load times. Before we get into the nitty gritty however, let's take a peek at the results.

The chart above is based on the data provided by one of our layers of performance monitoring. This particular tool actually simulates a real user by walking through and performing many common tasks in Campaign Monitor on a regular basis. The time on the left hand side refers to the number of seconds it took to complete the sequence of tasks.

As you can see, the combination of updates we made resulted in a 35-40% speed improvement across the application. Here's what we did.

Switching JavaScript libraries

For the last few years, we've been big fans of the Protoype and script.aculo.us JavaScript libraries. Any part of the Campaign Monitor interface that moves, flashes or updates without a page relies heavily on these libraries.

As part of this update, we switched the entire application over to jQuery. We made the switch for a number of reasons, including the growing community and plugin support, but the primary motivator for us was file size. Switching to jQuery shed around 150kb compared to the previous combination. Your clients using our email builder will notice a huge speed boost when creating their next campaign.

Big props have to go out to our designer Dave Martin for the smooth transition to jQuery. The rewrite was a huge job and everything went beautifully.

Improved caching and speed for static content

By getting smarter about how we cache the static parts of the application like CSS files, scripts, images and even our charting SWF files we were able to dramatically reduce the number of requests your browser makes moving around your account. Instead of requesting a copy of these assets for each page load, your browser now knows to load the cached version from your local machine and avoid any server requests.

On top of this, we're also serving these static assets from the same super-fast CDN we serve your campaign content from. This means that instead of having to serve your files from our main US data centre, each asset will be served from the closest of our 15 key locations around the world.

Because of the two request limit per subdomain, we've also spread all assets over multiple subdomains to ensure the maximum number of files can be requested and downloaded simultaneously by your browser. This basically lets us quadruple the speed you can download pages in the app.

Consolidating our JavaScript files

We've combined multiple JavaScript files into a single file to reduce the number of server requests when you load that page.

Where possible, we've also moved the JavaScript to the bottom of the page to ensure you can start using that page before it has fully downloaded. This also means we can reduce the impact of browser limitations imposed when downloading a JavaScript file. Basically, browsers block other requests when downloading JavaScript files because that file could have an impact on the display of the page being downloaded. By moving any files that don't impact the design of the page to the bottom, we avoid any unnecessary delays.

Last but not least, we've also minified our CSS to get the file size as small as possible.

Of course, these changes are only one piece of the performance tuning pie. As well as improving the client-side experience of Campaign Monitor, we're also working hard on database indexes plus query and code optimization on the server side. I hope you enjoy these updates. If you've noticed the changes or have any feedback at all, we'd love to hear about it.

Interface tweaks to the create and send process

David Greiner — 2009-09-18T01:32:38+10:00

As part of the A/B testing feature we released yesterday, you might have also noticed some other subtle changes when sending a campaign. To explain the changes we made and why, it's important to provide a little perspective.

A blast from the past

When we launched Campaign Monitor to the public back in 2004, it was originally a fixed width app built for the staggering screen width of 800 pixels. If you've been with us for longer than a year, then this screenshot should bring back some memories.

Because of the steps required in creating a campaign, importing your content and selecting your recipients, a wizard-style experience has always made sense. It makes it clear where you are in the process and sets expectations about what's coming next.

To control your place in the process, we used Next and Previous buttons. In keeping with the wizard-like experience, we went with the logical positions of Previous on the left and Next on the right.

Where did that button go?

When we launched a redesigned Campaign Monitor interface in December last year, we stuck with the same Next and Previous approach. The problem was, the new interface used a fluid width that adjusted to your screen width. At the maximum width we allowed of 1,800 pixels, trying to click the Next button required a desk extension so your mouse could reach it. Click the screenshot below for a bigger version.

Not only is the button for the next action almost out of sight, the button to go back looks like the right button to press. Luke Wroblewski would not be impressed!

A smarter approach

With the redesign of the create and send process for A/B testing, we decided to resolve this issue once and for all. We've abandoned the concept of a Previous button altogether and opted for a simple text-based version after the Next button.

This approach allows the right weight to be put on the primary action of the page, which is progressing forward through the process. This change also meant the primary button was now where it belongs, right under the form you've just completed. And finally, this change ensures the create and send process is now consistent with the form and button style of the rest of the application.

A/B Testing is now available

David Greiner — 2009-09-17T01:14:07+10:00

It's been a long time coming, but today I'm excited to announce that our new A/B testing feature we announced a while back is now live and available in all accounts.

Like we mentioned in the original announcement, we've worked hard to make sending an A/B campaign just as easy as sending a regular one. You can test different subject lines or sender details in a matter of seconds. If you have the time to create a simple design variation for your campaigns, this is also a breeze to test. I really can't think of a good reason to send a regular old campaign any more.

The best part, you learn something from every single test you run.

One of my favorite new features that come with the A/B testing update are benefit estimates. Basically, after the test is run and the winning version is sent to the remainder of your subscribers, we'll look at how much better the winning version performed in your test and extrapolate that across the rest of your campaign results. Check out the screenshot below for a campaign that received an additional 819 clicks by sending the winning version.

Benefit estimates give you a great indication on the total benefit gained from running the test. It's also a great way to justify testing to your clients or the powers that be.

Now that A/B testing is out, we can roll out a host of other sweet new features we've been hard at work on. To help you get the most out of A/B testing, we'll also be starting a new blog series next week with loads of info on how to plan a test, what you can test and different approaches you and your clients might want to try.