We can’t believe the rate we are getting new features and changes out in dotMailer, but here’s yet more awesome things that have been implemented in the tool…

Test sends from EasyEditor

You’ve just created your fab campaign in the editor and now you need to test send it – see how it really looks in your inbox. Until now, you would have to go to the plain text version then onto the test send page; a lengthy process at times! Now you can test-send directly from the editor – Hurrah!

It’s now much easier to do a test-send, proof and edit of your HTML version, saving you lots of time and making sure your campaign is as perfect as possible. With up to 50 test send addresses available, you can send it to lots of people for proofing.

Don’t forget to test send your plain text campaign too.

Email approval within the app

Even more awesome than test sends direct from the editor, we have now developed a new workflow process that enables you to submit your campaign for approval and get valuable feedback all inside the app.

Available for enterprise level accounts, where the person writing the campaign does not have authority to send it out themselves they can follow the below process

• Campaign is complete – including address books and scheduling, writer hits “Ready to send pending approval”.
• Manager reviews campaign (content, addressees, scheduling…) and declines with a reason
• Campaign writer gets notification, with reason, edits campaign – tries to send for approval again
• Manager review and approves campaign, it is sent out immediately (or as scheduled)

A great way to enforce that campaign content gets reviewed and a great way of opening the lines of communication within you organisation .

It can also be set up for Parent / Child accounts – so a child account can’t send without parent account approving.

find out more

You can read more posts by Emma Raw here

If you’ve been a dotMailer user since our early days (we started in 1999), you’ll remember we came from humble beginnings, starting out in small office above a shop in South Croydon.

As both a business and as a service to our customers we’ve come an awful long way since then (we now have offices in Croydon, Central London, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Minsk and over 170 staff).

And now we have our sights set on America!

As a kick off to our international partnership building programme, Matt Pickup, our Head of Channel  and I have been on a tour of North America.

We’ve also taken part in three major events: Email Evolution, Magento’s Imagine eCommerce, and the Microsoft Dynamics Convergence Event, showing US suppliers what makes dotMailer so different and so popular with marketers here in the UK – they’ve been loving our enterprise feature set, simplicity of use and integrations.

Jetlag? Never!

This last month or so we’ve been to Vancouver, Miami, Tampa, New York, Houston, and Las Vegas.

We’ve secured several major US partnership deals and helped deepen relationships with our North American resellers / whitelabels – a really exciting opportunity for us as it opens up a huge pool of potential users of dotMailer. And the more we grow, the more we put back into making dotMailer even better – so it’s good news for our clients too, as we look to extend our feature set and services.

We’re not stopping at America either. We have plans to go down under. So. If you have marketer friends in the US or in Australia – let them know…dotMailer is on its way, and we welcome discussions regarding our partnerships and reseller programs.

Feel free to circle me on Google + for more on digital marketing

I am also on Twitter and LinkedIn too.

You can read more posts by Tink Taylor here

The thing about email is – the more you send, the more money you make online. Research has shown that many businesses are missing out on opportunities and leaving money on the table by not sending enough targeted email campaigns in sufficient volume.

Here’s how you could be missing out….

• Non openers
• If some subscribers didn’t open your last email – the opportunity hasn’t vaporised. Using the dotMailer automatic remail feature you can automatically re-mail non openers and reach more people. You should try different times of day, subject lines and even creative / copy. This allows you to get better, too.
• Reminders
• So you sent out an offer valid for 30 days and now you’re relying on the reader to remember the close date!? Err…do you remember the close date of the last good offer you got? Probably not. So you just can’t expect your audience to remember the same. Get a reminder email out – and if they clicked but didn’t buy – get a series of reminders out (dotMailer can do this for you).
• Triggers
• Using triggers you can send specific campaigns to users who behave in a certain way. Signed up for an account? Send a welcome trigger series. Clicked on a previous link twice? Send a related campaign. Clicked a social link but didn’t share email? Ask them to ‘Like’. Created a basket but not checked-out? Send a trigger campaign offer. The opportunities are endless, so stop missing opportunities to talk to an engaged audience and get your content in their inbox. Again, dotMailer can automate this for you.

If you can do this in a targeted way – with the right messages, sent at the right time, you really can notch your conversion rate right up. Just remember…

The five rules

• Don’t assume a non-opener is completely redundant data – they may just be busy! Just monitor your unsubscribe rate if you are sending more campaigns to them.
• Don’t assume your readers will remember an offer close date – or anything else about you, for that matter. Sorry, but people are busy!
• Don’t miss the chance to send hyper-targeted campaigns using behavioural triggers, and hit the right moment.
• If you’re re-sending, test a new approach to the same message. You’ve got nothing to lose!
• Or, given that you’ll make money each time you email – build a new campaign to be sent to openers and non openers – don’t let time stand in the way of making more money, especialy out of openers, who are your hot prospects! If you haven’t got time – get our managed services team to help you.

And that’s that. Send more, sell more.

P.S: show and tell more – put your comments / experience / suggestions below, or tweet them to @dotMailer. Good Luck!

You can read more posts by Luella Ben Aziza here

If you use Salesforce.com and dotMailer (or you’re thinking about using either) then you’ll be pleased to know we’re about to release a powerful new dotMailer-Salesforce integration to make your life a lot easier and your sales/marketing processes even more effective.

We’re in final testing stages of the integration, and will be going live in the coming weeks. In the meantime though, we’re ready to give you a preview!

See it in action – sign up to one of our Preview Webinars

We’ll be holding live, interactive webinars in the coming weeks, showing just what the new Salesforce integration can do. Register your interest here.

What can the new connector do?

Well you can now use our amazingly user-friendly drag & drop campaign editor to create and edit campaigns directly within Salesforce – you’ll find this just under the brand new dotMailer object.

We’ve also added an Email Campaigns object, so now you can manage and see your campaign performance data in Salesforce too.

Marrying the two means that Email Subscription Groups are now linked to your dotMailer address books, so you can co-ordinate subscriptions easily.

And you now get to see your campaign reporting data in Email Campaigns, and of course at contact level.

Best of all – all the data sits within Salesforce, so it doesn’t have to be constantly ‘called’ from dotMailer – making the whole system fast and smooth. This also means that you can use the data to automate processes or workflows – creating a task to call a client, for example.

Watch the video ‘Introducing the dotMailer Salesforce Connector’ on YouTube

So – we’d love to hear your thoughts below. And if you have more suggestions – now you know that the forum is the best place to plant your dotMailer dreams if you want them realised.

You can read more posts by Luella Ben Aziza here

Everybody just chill out. We’ve got the EU cookie law covered for you.

Here’s the deal:

Changes to PECR came into effect in May 2011, requiring marketers to audit their websites for types of cookies in use, inform visitors that the site is using them, and gain each visitor’s consent for their use.

Due to industry concerns about implementing the changes, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) granted a year’s exemption on imposing sanctions for non-compliance.

Your time is up as of the end of this month.

The bottom line is you’re going to need to implement some software if you want to continue using cookies.

We just held a sell-out seminar for marketers wanting to know what they need to do make sure their websites are compliant with the regulations.

Luckily, we filmed the whole thing, so you can watch it, get up to date and get compliant. Just click the play button below or you can view the slides directly here.

If you’re in need of a solution for your website, the consultants here at dotAgency - dotMailer’s sister web design and search agency – have created a cookie compliance package that includes a website audit, and advice on compliance next steps. Just get in touch with Ben Staveley on 0207 654 8686 if you’d like to learn more.

dotMailer bosses Tink Taylor and Skip Fidura are also involved with the IAB and the DMA email marketing councils, and have been working closely with the Information Commission, resulting in the free how-to guide  ‘Email and cookies legislation’, outlining the details of the cookie law’s impact on email marketing. Download your copy today, here.

You can read more posts by Luella Ben Aziza here