StreamSend Email Marketing Blog

StreamSend Share Delivering 20% More Email Views

2012-01-31T14:51:00.001-08:00

Email+Social Campaign Tool Integrates with Google Analytics

StreamSend, a leading email marketing service provider, has now integrated Google Analytics into its social marketing tool suite StreamSend Share, a feature that shows more than 20% improvement in the view and click rate of emails designed to be shared socially.

Having already made Google Analytics an important part of its standard email reporting, StreamSend is now using this valuable feature to deliver precise, ROI-boosting insights as recipients share socially-powered emails, multiplying the impact of a single email message.

“With a single click, businesses can now send an email to their mailing list and then beyond, into the social world, where continuous distribution is limited only by the relevancy of the content and how easy it is to share,” said Dan Forootan, president of StreamSend Email Marketing. “By adding the Google Analytics feature to our socially-enabled emails, we can trace every step of that journey, recording every prospect touchpoint and action for future contact and informed business decisions. As the process continues, we expect to surpass the 20% viewership boost that our research – based on billions of email messages -- has already revealed.”

StreamSend Share tags all links within socially shared email messages so businesses can pull traffic, goal, and e-commerce reports from within Google Analytics. Businesses can also share that message on a Facebook wall or post it as a new tab, and StreamSend will tag all links within the piece for tracking.

StreamSend automatically adds the Social Share bar to email marketing messages at no cost, enabling easy sharing so that every message can travel to new audiences and find interested prospects. Meanwhile, the new social statistics report tracks the additional social views, clicks and shares, empowering businesses with valuable information to build their new business relationships.

Get more information on Social Marketing with StreamSend Share and StreamSend Social Tools. See a StreamSend free Facebook tab that is also a standard Email Marketing piece.

Driving the ROI of Email and Social Marketing

2011-11-28T13:01:00.001-08:00

Give your Email Marketing a Boost with the StreamSend-Sponsored Research Report, “Driving the ROI of Email and Social Marketing: Tactics to Improve Relevance and Results.”

There’s never a dull moment here at StreamSend as we keep searching for ways to help our clients maximize their email investment, and today is a particularly good example of our commitment. We have commissioned a research report to help guide you as you look to boost your ROI by linking your marketing efforts to social media. The report, produced by email industry experts The Relevancy Group, is entitled “Driving the ROI of Email and Social Marketing: Tactics to Improve Relevance and Results” and is available now, for free.

Our president, Dan Forootan, summed it up:

“As we educate our clients on the huge opportunities available to them through building their lists and relationships with their customers by leveraging the combined power of email and social marketing, we wanted to step back, look at the industry and common practices as a whole, then share that perspective with business marketers. The Relevancy Group is widely acknowledged for its expertise in email marketing trends and practices, and their findings backed the direction in which StreamSend is leading its clients.”

Key findings include:

Marketers that use email in combination with social segmentation drive six times the amount of revenue than those marketers that do not connect social and email segmentation.

Moreover, marketers that are able to leverage social and email data deliver monthly marketing campaign profits that are seven times higher than their unsophisticated peers.

Email continues to be used each day by 93% of consumers.

Mobile utilization of email and social is also on the rise, with as many as 66% of consumers interacting with email on their mobile phones.

Consumers continue to demand relevance and state that non-relevant or too frequent email marketing messages will be deleted.

Email continues to drive high return on investment (ROI), higher than other direct marketing channels.

Email Marketing is bringing in $40.56 for every dollar spent on it this year, (Direct Marketing Association).

The majority of email marketers are not embracing segmentation strategies to improve relevance and marketing results.

Sign up to get the full report here (and this is a Streamsend embedded form btw) and see how you can boost your ROI by embracing the Email-Social connection.

Get more information on Social Marketing with StreamSend Share and StreamSend Social Tools. See a StreamSend free Facebook tab that is also a standard Email Marketing piece.

Email + Social: The ROI Rules of Engagement

2011-11-11T13:49:00.000-08:00

6 Questions Small Businesses Ask

In the military, you follow the rules of engagement when entering into combat with enemy forces. As a small business entering into email + social marketing, rules of engagement are also key to your ROI and survival, except you’re not dealing with an enemy – anything but. You are trying to engage your customers and prospects to build a relationship, and if you disregard their likes and dislikes, you really might start feeling like you are working under combat conditions.

Small businesses are using social media first to engage new and prospective customers, second, to try to communicate with customers (i.e., we are having a sale) and, third, to monitor what is being said about their company. Social networking sites provide a great way to add to your knowledge of customer preference and interests. The key is to discover that information and put it to work, while keeping track of it so that it can be used in the future.

Why all the noise about email + social? Here’s why: Email is bringing in $40.56 for every dollar spent on it this year, according to the DMA’s recent Power of Direct Study, compared to catalogs’ ROI of $7.30, search’s return of $22.24, Internet display advertising’s return of $19.72 and mobile’s return of $10.51. Adding social muscle to your emailing cranks the ROI even higher.

Social networking’s ROI is also expected to rise, according to the DMA study. Social networking’s current ROI now is $12.71, and social networking will return $12.90 for every dollar spent on it in 2012 and $13.43 for every dollar spent in 2016.

Meanwhile, the same study points out that commercial email is expected to drive $63.1 billion in sales this year, compared to $57.8 billion in 2010.

That’s some pretty strong evidence – enough for many small businesses that are throwing their hat (and marketing dollars) into the email-social arena.

Here are six frequent questions we answer from small businesses trying to get in on the success of email+ social engagement:

1. What’s the trick to engaging customers and prospects with email +social?

No trick. While social networking sites can build brand and product awareness, they are not necessarily the quickest way to the shopping cart. They can be effective in getting your fans to "like" something about a brand or to "read more" by clicking on something that they find engaging and want to read more about. Sometimes this is an offer, more often it is an items or topic that interests them. Social networks, just like email marketing, tend to respond more to relevant information-offers versus outright sale-oriented offers. Social email is the glue to create social engagement with consumers and to keep you in their thoughts.

2. Why is my social marketing dragging?
Consumers have gotten used to looking at social posts and newsfeeds the way they scan the news or twitter feeds. They read the short description and only click on something that truly interests them. Unfortunately, without this interaction your social posts slowly fall down the newsfeed of your targets. So what can you do?

Write engaging posts that encourage clicking
Be sure to use your "facetime" with your social fans to get them to opt into an offer or email list--the sooner, the better
Then use the social interactions to help you understand more about your fans
Write email marketing pieces that are also shared/targeted on social sites

3. Is social email different than regular email marketing?
Social email augments email marketing to 1) create a viral extension to what is already being mailed in a campaign and 2) post at social sites, creating an immediate response, A/B testing, or offer. The results are pooled into your ever-growing knowledge of your customers and prospects.

4. What can social email do to an existing campaign?
It can:

increase overall email opens through viral sharing
improve targeting knowledge of your list
increase social media engagement and improves edge rank
drive online sales or signups.

5. How do I build my list?

It is really all about the list. With social you have friends, fans and followers but you often don’t know anything else about them. Email sign-up widgets on your web, on your free Facebook Tabs, and on any other social or offering pages will grow your list. Data on where they came from, what they have read and what they have responded to helps you better "target" future offers. List data lets you know what network to target for your readers, who are your influencers, where your visitors came from or what they are responding to. Automated welcome and response campaigns then help you engage them in an ever more targeted way.

6. How do I track all this activity to target my best customer leads?
Reporting and automatic triggers let companies discover which consumers are engaged with their brand as well as the social sites directing new subscribers to your company, and they are interested in. Target your messages, offers and list building to the social networks where your most active email subscribers are located to build lists and follow up with targeted personalized email offerings. Email subscribers are the most valuable customer lead source you have. Track them to learn their interests and make them the right offers to create a valuable customer who purchases from you.

Get more information on Social Marketing with StreamSend Share and StreamSend Social Tools. See a StreamSend free Facebook tab that is also a standard Email Marketing piece.

Make New Friends with StreamSend Social ListBuilder!

2011-10-17T15:07:00.000-07:00

Your Attention Please! We don’t mean to be formal about it, but there’s a very good chance you’re going to want to check out StreamSend Social ListBuilder, our powerful new tool that encourages social audiences to take the next step in building their relationship with organizations.

Business can use Social ListBuilder to reach out to their social followers with the right offer and convert them into loyal members of their email marketing lists – an audience with proven value.

As you know, email and social are the only two permission-based channels, and as such, create a communications synergy that identifies prospects on their own terms, accurately reflects their interests, invites them to engage though people they trust, strengthens existing customer relationships and sustains the conversation with content they value. StreamSend Social ListBuilder lets you identify who you are reaching at every social message point of contact, then keep building your community with ongoing email communications to sustain these new relationships.

With Social ListBuilder, you can create a form - once - containing a coupon, invitation or offer, and distribute it everywhere to keep feeding email distribution lists and finding new prospects. Our technology lets users click on the offer and directly respond, distribute the offer to a friend or to their entire contact list, or automatically create a fan page. It’s also easy to embed the form in a blog, or email it so that users can fill it out right in that email.

For instance, you can use Social ListBuilder to create one coupon, email it, make a tab, put it in their blog, and share it everywhere they have an online presence. You gain the invaluable opportunity to connect with a growing list of interested but unknown individuals who directly become members of your prospect and customer community, referred by one of your customers.

You will know exactly how well your offers are performing. StreamSend’s Social ListBuilder will track all shares, likes and joins to supply an entire picture of whom the offer has reached, whom it has attracted, who has signed on, and other information key to starting a successful relationship. Social ListBuilder will also take care of follow-up communications to nurture the relationship. And as lists grow with each offer, future offers are enhanced as you easily review every aspect of the offer history to fine-tune your message content and delivery for increasingly greater response.

So check out StreamSend Social ListBuilder to make some new friends – and profit!

Check the video about StreamSend Social ListBuilder

Get more information on Social Marketing with StreamSend Share and StreamSend Social Tools. See a StreamSend free Facebook tab that is also a standard Email Marketing piece.

Email + Social = Great Opportunity to Build Your Business

2011-09-08T08:40:00.000-07:00

Email marketers know that their list is their lifeblood – it’s how they nurture new relationships and keep existing relationships going strong. It’s the way they deliver valued content that subscribers respond to and look forward to receiving. So adding new members is essential to keep that momentum going. And that means finding similarly-interested prospects to add to your audience -- which is how the Email + Social equation adds up to a big payoff for your business.

You already know the power of email marketing. With about 2 billion users in the world, it’s the backbone of customer relations. It is how a customer gets order confirmation and warranty info or finds out about your business announcements, special offers and sales. It is also how new customer prospects find out more information by opting-in to special offers or news.

Social Media has burst on the scene and now Facebook has 750 million active users and over 4 million active Facebook fan pages. Social Media has its own vernacular. It is about "engaging" a customer or "being part of the conversation," which really just means getting your message out and ultimately getting the customer to opt in to one of your offers. However, Social Media really works because it lets people get to know you for a while and allows customer prospects to take interim steps to “follow you” or “like” you before signing on. They see what your business is offering, and they see if their friends like your business, but they haven’t yet decided to "get on your list" or responded to any specific offer.

They need the right impetus to get on board, so make the right offer and make it easy for them to get engaged. Here are a few of our favorite time-saving tricks to make that happen:

1. Use the StreamSend Share tool several times a week to post interesting content from other sites to your fan page. Everything you make is social media-ready. It can be shared the moment it is done to everyone you know. Find other things out there that you think your friends might like, then share those onto your Fan page. Keep it interesting. Any time a reader clicks on an item or likes some of your content, your future items will climb higher in the newsfeed.

2. Build Free Fan pages -- often.
Use coupons, newsletters, offers.. Make them, make tons of them with the StreamSend easy-to-use templates. Paste them in your blog, in your friend’s blogs, on free web pages, and most importantly on your Facebook Page or Google + page. And mail them out using email marketing (it’s automatic-you don't have to change a thing). Be sure to link some of your Facebook Fan page posts onto your Free Fan pages. When people click on them this will raise your rank and push those feed stories higher.

3. Put forms on all your materials asking users onto your list and put links on all your materials to ask a customer to "like" you on Facebook. Your customers at any point can join your list by a simple click at blogs, in articles, or on Facebook pages or in response to a Twitter link.

4. Watch your stats explode…
…as your email readers share your email marketing piece out into the social world with the automatic share bars on the communications you deliver via email marketing.

Now doesn’t that sound like the kind of success equation that adds up for your business?

Get more information on Social Marketing with StreamSend Share and StreamSend Social Tools. See a StreamSend free Facebook tab that is also a standard Email Marketing piece.

Ten Steps to Make Email Campaigns Work Harder, Deliver More Social Impact

2011-08-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

What does it take for Business to make the Email–Social Connection? We have compiled 10 key steps small businesses should take to power their email marketing campaigns with social applications like Facebook, reaching whole new audiences and attracting more prospects with increasingly targeted messages.

“Actually, it is very simple – social marketing is a powerful way to build your prospect list, effectively sharing your message with offers that attract,” reports Dan Forootan, president of StreamSend Email Marketing. “And email marketing is unsurpassed for invaluable measurement on what content is working, and how well. Combine the power of these two media and you get unprecedented reach, targeting and audience-building capabilities. Here are ten steps we help businesses take to maximize their email-social connection with new business prospects.”

1. Engage! – Social Marketing is a fabulous prospecting and customer engagement tool; build your audience with it by providing authentic content that adds value to their lives and businesses.

2. Get on the Right Track – Get enough of this valued information in front of the user so that you are “Liked” – then you know you’re on the right track and you’re halfway there. Conversely, don’t ignore lack of acceptance – re-tune your message and content until you’re back on track.

3. Spread the Wealth -- Use email marketing newsletters to announce new Linked-In, Facebook or Twitter feeds, directing readers to your social networking site for sign-up.

4. Build a Free Facebook Fan Page – This public profile enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users. And don’t be shy: share that link with your all your audiences or other pages you might have.

5. Keep it Fresh -- Use email plus social to add new items to your Fan page. When you put your email marketing piece right on a Facebook tab you are giving a prospect a chance right there to tell you what they are looking for. Give them a reason to sign up and come back.

6. Make the Affinity Connection – Search and "Like" all the related business fan pages you think might have common customers or who might become a customer.

7. Zero in on List Candidates -- Post more custom Fan pages (tabs) that have "opt-ins" to your list opportunities; contests or newsletters can accomplish this well.

8. Read your Stats – See who’s reading what in your communications and send auto-emails to your prospects based on what interests them the most.

9. Build your List - By getting your customers to both "like you" and get on your list, you are building a strong foundation for them to opt-in. Remember, social "likes" only go so far; over time your message will fall down your visitors’ newsfeeds so that you may not be seen.

10. Take the Next Step – Continually ask your social visitor to opt-in to your list, get a coupon, etc., so you can “take a next step” together.

Get more information on Social Marketing with StreamSend Share and StreamSend Social Tools. See a StreamSend free Facebook tab that is also a standard email marketing piece.

We're Getting Social - and You'll Love What it Does for Your Business

2011-07-23T13:06:00.000-07:00

BIG NEWS! We are offering businesses a better way to reach customers and prospects with their email messages. StreamSend is launching three new social marketing tools that deliver those messages to the inbox and beyond, into a continually growing social network of your loyal followers and subscribers. This is powerful! Here are the feature highlights:

1. Free Wall Tabs

StreamSend’s Free Custom Wall Tab for Facebook pages lets your business automatically create and make a Facebook page in a single keystroke using the email templates from Steamsend’s library or with our easy-to-use editor to make a coupon, email newsletter, or offer. Mulitple Fan pages and multiple wall tabs are supported.

2. Social Share Bar on Emails
StreamSend’s Social Share Bar can be put on any email message automatically, letting you share your email messages on Facebook, Linked-In and Twitter. Followers can easily read, like, re-tweet and share those messages, multiplying delivery performance while supplying delivery statistics every step of the way. These features unlock the opportunity for you to reach customers and prospects on a whole new level as recipients share valuable messages with their established relationships.

3. StreamSend Share APP - Multiply Sharing
This is StreamSend’s powerful share button that you drag and drop onto your browser bar. From there, you can share any URL just by clicking on it and checking off which multiple fan pages you want to share it to. You can get your message out in seconds, easier than ever before. You can also easily keep your brand fresh on their pages with regular postings.

This breakthrough, free sharing tool lets message recipients easily share to multiple Facebook Fan pages. The result? Message delivery multiplies that much faster, and since it is being shared with online “friends,” the social opt-in rate is much higher. The same, original message is delivered to more people who are more likely to accept it and become a subscriber.

So what does all this do for your bottom line? I’ll tell you -- exactly:

Bottom Line: Build Business on Facebook
With these new features, you can use StreamSend templates to create one message that goes to the inbox, is posted up on a wall tab, then goes viral as recipients re-post and share the message to key social sites, blogs and other social media. They can also be pasted on the templates right into blogs where they track clicks. It’s a landing welcome page your business can mail – and a coupon that clicks-through to make a sale.

Bottom Line: Track It All and Build Your List
Unlike many other Facebook business pages, StreamSend has designed these features for the non-technical user, while also delivering highly targeted email marketing. This resource tracks the clicks and shares, just like an email marketing piece. Whether the message travels to inbox, social sites or blogs, whoever receives it and whatever action they take becomes a businesses’ “social intelligence” as all of those statistics return for inspection and are put to work optimizing the next campaign for maximum response.

We think you’ll agree – it’s time to start thinking outside the inbox! That’s where you can take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to deliver messages that keep gaining momentum, reaching more and more interested subscribers. And since you will be able to track every step of that journey – every open, click, like, tweet, post and share – you’ll automatically get all the information you need to email smarter every time.

Here is a little 8 Min video on how to use the new features...

Automatic check for Mailing Address implemented

2011-05-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

Emails must include a full mailing address to be compliant with the U.S. Can-Spam Act. A lot of customers forget. We decided to solve this... We're slowly rolling out the automatic checking of a mailing address in the body of emails.

Our system will be asking your for your mailing address and then checking it against your content. If there is a match, then great. If there isn't a match, then we're going to add your mailing address to the footer of your email. This ensures that you're emails are going out in full compliance with the Can-Spam Act.

The only visible change you'll see is that we're asking you to enter your full physical mailing address. For most, you only need to enter this once, because our system will keep a list of recent mailing addresses. In the future you can simply select the address and continue.

Keep in mind that we're slowly rolling out this update during the next few weeks. If you don't see the additional fields today, just wait and you'll see it.

Success Story: Two Sacramento non-profit organizations

2011-05-04T16:34:00.000-07:00

We are proud to be helping two Sacramento-based, non-profit organizations better reach their network of supporters and build relationships more cost-effectively.

The Children’s Receiving Home of Sacramento and the Downs Syndrome Information Alliance are using StreamSend to create and send email newsletters, increase attendance at non-profit fund-raising gatherings, and drive traffic to their websites.

Tight budgets and limited resources demanded an email marketing solution that was easy-to-use and inexpensive, but could create communications that were reader-friendly, measurable and elicited greater response. After resolving to make these improvements, the organizations turned to us.

Now, the organizations are better able to shape their lists and reach interested readers by knowing who is reading their emails and clicking what links to the site, by topic. The enhanced email format and more targeted recipients are helping to attract more volunteers and donations.

Straight from the client:

“We have been able to use StreamSend to create newsletters that are more visually appealing, and then build readership and response by continuing to improve those elements that campaign tracking shows are most effective,” said Hilary Sisson, marketing and development manager for the organizations. “We have been getting great feedback, while responses and visits to the sites are continuing to grow.”

Glad to help, Hilary!

Does the Can-Spam Act require that I have an Unsubscribe link in my transactional emails?

2011-04-27T14:45:00.000-07:00

We had a customer recently ask us....

"Does the Can-Spam Act require that we have an Unsubscribe link in Transactional Emails?"

The short legal answer is...

No, transactional emails do not need an unsubscribe link in them. However, it's important to understand what constitutes as a transactional email.

What is the definition of a transactional email?

A transaction email is one which facilitates an already agreed-upon transaction or updates a customer about an ongoing transaction.

What are kind of content qualifies as a transactional emails?

Welcome emails. e.g. facilitates or confirms a commercial transaction that the recipient already has agreed to;
Product/Service advisories. e.g. gives warranty, recall, safety, or security information about a product or service;
Statements/Invoices. e.g. gives information about a change in terms or features or account balance information regarding a membership, subscription, account, loan or other ongoing commercial relationship;
Employment information. e.g. provides information about an employment relationship or employee benefits; or

StreamSend's opinion...

We operate with the belieft that the email recipient is king. It makes a lot of sense to be clear to email recipients about how they can stop receiving your emails. You probably don't need to have an unsubscribe link if you are emailing out an email that is rare and a result of some kind of action. For example, a registration thank you email. However, if the frequency of emails is high, then you'd want to allow your recipients to opt-out of receiving the transaction email.

Think Facebook... Facebook sends out a lot of transactional emails, such as those that notify you that someone commented on your wall / post. They offer users a way to opt-out since they know that the volume of emails can get high (if you have a lot of friends commenting). Do they legally need to do that? No. However, the recipient is be respected and provided an opt-out option.

To read more about the Can-Spam Act and transactional emails.

Internet Explorer 9 Supported

2011-04-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

Hot on the heels of our FireFox 4 support announcement.... We're happy to say that we now fully support Internet Explorer 9 as a browser. This includes all areas of the application, including our email editor.

Internet Explorer users, feel free to upgrade your browsers.

Firefox 4 Supported

2011-04-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

We now fully support FireFox 4 as a browser. This includes all areas of the application, including our email editor.

To all of you cutting edge FireFox users, I say.... Enjoy!

Success Story: Art4Now

2011-04-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about working for StreamSend is working with some really interesting businesses. Art4Now is a great example of that.

Art4Now™ is an online retailer that sells fashion and collectibles – particularly, the annual poster – for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, with which it is in close partnership Art4Now has a new handle on email marketing that is paying off in numerous ways.

The Festival is non-profit and Art 4Now donates a portion of its sales to benefit the New Orleans community outreach programs that the Festival supports. The Festival is held the last weekend of April or the first week of May.

As a premier world jazz event from the birthplace of jazz, the festival posters are eagerly sought out by shoppers nationally and internationally with big collector followings in Tokyo, Japan, the UK and Scandinavia. Art4Now produced the 2010 poster with Tony Bennett. The posters are also sold at local galleries and used widely throughout the city as a promotional tool for the festival.

As an online-only retailer, Art4Now saw the value of email newsletters to create and build its relationships. But their existing email software had no capability to track views, traffic, etc., was difficult to integrate with the website at a critical time of year, required lots of manual administration, and could undermine their online marketer reputation with internet service providers (ISPs) by not eliminating invalid or uninterested email addresses.

They turned to StreamSend and immediately saw changes with new ease of use and the ability to track, measure e-mailings, while optimizing email content for delivery :

They reduced their customer distribution list to 20,000 customers, parsing out 5000 undeliverable addresses – saving money and effort, plus insuring a high-quality reputation with ISPs so that the good addresses would be reached and not blocked as Spam.

Art4Now increased open rates by 30% and click-through rates by 20%.

With our easier, intuitive tools, they doubled their mailings, letting them stay better in touch with an audience geared to one annual event. Increasing their e-mailings also helped them compete with other heavily-marketed New Orleans events like the Saints in the SuperBowl and the Mardi Gras.

Mission accomplished. We wish art4Now luck and a great time at the New Orleans Jazz Festival later this month!

Success Story: SF Sketchfest: The San Francisco Comedy Festival

2011-03-22T08:40:00.000-07:00

StreamSend has been a supporter and the email solution provider of choice for SF Sketchfest for most of its ten-year run, helping the festival build awareness and reach its audience of comic fans.

SF Sketchfest is a nationally renowned comedy festival founded in 2002 by Bay Area actor-comedians David Owen, Janet Varney and Cole Stratton. The festival takes place every January for several weeks in a variety of San Francisco venues and features sketch, improv, stand-up, film and special tributes and panels. Recent performers have included both emerging stand-up talent and comic actors from shows such Saturday Night Live and Kids in the Hall, and top names like James L. Brooks, Garry Shandling, Candice Bergen, Cloris Leachman, Dan Aykroyd, Neil Patrick Harris and Fred Willard.

As a grassroots event, SF Sketchfest showcases live comedy, but needs to take marketing seriously, so most attention to that effort has been staying in touch with comedy fans and keeping them up on the festival and other events year round. Early on, the directors saw the value of using email to reach those fans and started by doing it themselves. But as the numbers grew, so did the hassles of maintaining email lists and mailings and keeping the operation running smoothly. They searched for an easy-to-use, effective solution and found StreamSend.

We lived up to our reputation and have helped email marketing become the festival’s most consistently successful communications tool, now reaching over twelve thousand fans with a variety of newsletters and show alerts year round. Helping festival directors handle the challenges of email campaigns on all fronts, StreamSend supplies them with clear, detailed response and delivery analysis, helping guide future mailings and maximizing delivery rates.

David Owen, co-festival director summed up his experience with us:

“StreamSend makes it easy for us; it’s a great marketing tool. Using just StreamSend and social media – no print, radio or TV – we can sell out shows of more than a thousand people. It’s that effective.”

Thanks David!

Success Story: Adam Mesh Uses Email Newsletter to Educate Stock Investor Membership

2011-03-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

When the highly successful Adam Mesh Trading Group wanted to use an email newsletter to educate its stock investor membership while building and strengthening those relationships, they came to StreamSend.

Adam Mesh Trading Group is a recognized leader in stock market investment coaching. As featured on CNN, Fortune, Forbes, CNBC, and Trading Monthly, Adam’s unique stock market system has helped thousands of beginner investors around the world transform their financial lives for more than 10 years.

Daily emails containing tips, market snapshots and new perspectives are a critical factor in creating and building relationships with Adam’s members, but his group was hampered on several fronts:

Although trying to maintain regularity by mailing at nine am every day, messages sometimes would not reach their destinations until hours later.
There was no way to learn from previous mailings.
Since staffers had to share a public IP address, they might also have to wait to use the address for mailings, not to mention risk being tainted by other users’ spam practices.
When something went really wrong, Adam Mesh staffers were basically on their own.

We at StreamSend worked with them to find a solution:

The first step was to learn more about their needs and develop a plan. StreamSend supplied the resources, dedicated IP address, and deliverability expertise to let Adam’s staffers push the “send” button at precisely nine am every day, so that members knew just when to expect their emails.

With StreamSend’s expert service and Google Analytics integration, Adam’s group can now learn and improve from each mailing, dissecting each component for the most effective emails.

Although Adam’s subscriber base had tripled to over 100,000 members since signing on with StreamSend, complaints have plummeted and deliverability has jumped to 99%. Viewership and click-through now exceed 15% and continue rising as the Adam Mesh Trading Group builds profitable relationships by using StreamSend to effectively share expert, timely financial guidance and insights with its members.

Success Story: Glenny's Gets Healthy Marketing with StreamSend

2011-03-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

When healthy snack-maker Glenny’s asked us to raise its brand awareness online while improving email communications with its customers, it was a challenge we ate up!

Glenny’s has been creating delicious, healthy snacks for nutrition-conscious dieters since 1979. Nutrition experts, national magazines and numerous celebrities endorse Glenny’s low-fat, low-calorie, and high-fiber snacks as a great way to control appetite and lose weight. Glenny's Soy Crisps are the #1 selling soy crisps in drugstore chains across the U.S.

Continuing its commitment to offer its customers both selection and convenience, Glenny’s wanted to build its online presence and customer relationships. After choosing email newsletters to share product updates, launches and promotions, Glenny’s began using an in-house email marketing system. But as the program grew, a stronger, more robust system was needed.

Turning to StreamSend email marketing after a competitive review, Glenny’s soon connected with a new set of capabilities at a low cost. First, by gaining its own IP address, Glenny’s deliverability could not be affected by the poor emailing practices of shared IP users. And StreamSend’s guidance with email content and major ISP relations added to Glenny’s online reputation and deliverability.

Glenny’s has also built readership with other StreamSend capabilities, such as the “Share with Friends” social network feature, Google Analytics to learn from each mailing, and overall campaign management that lets Glenny’s send out timely, effective emails twice a week to a growing audience that now exceeds 13,000 readers.

After working with StreamSend, Glenny’s open rate, deliverability and conversion rate have all risen considerably, making email marketing an essential part of its marketing program.

A tasty mission accomplished!

Success Story: Lotos Nile Reaches Music Fans with StreamSend

2011-03-02T08:24:00.000-08:00

We love to showcase our customer success using StreamSend, and here’s a great example.

One of our clients, Lotos Nile, conducts award winning public relations campaigns and is a leading edge specialist at developing high-impact digital experiences that influence consumer decisions and engage users while building lasting relationships between customers and brands.

After reviewing available email marketing solutions, Lotos Nile decided to replace its in-house system with StreamSend and lower costs while reaching more prospects on behalf of its clients.

StreamSend has proven particularly valuable as Lotos Nile works with musicians to develop a patronage model in which they directly reach their “superfans” with communications and entertainment, and receive their support in return. A recent StreamSend-driven campaign for one musical artist netted a 22 % increase in fan “sponsors” that month.

Lotos Nile attributes this email marketing success to StreamSend capabilities, pointing to higher delivery rates based on optimized subscriber lists and an enhanced sender reputation with internet service providers (ISPs). Messaging format and content have also become more effective, eliciting a higher response from readers. And as results have risen, costs have dropped.

In their own words:

“With Streamsend, we have been able to drive our email marketing campaigns to get the maximum impact for our clients at the lowest cost,” said Kissy Black, president of Lotos Nile. “We can better realize email’s effectiveness as a relationship-building tool that offers relevant, valued communications.”

Thanks Kissy. Smart customers like you make us look good!

Success Story: Green Beans Coffee

2011-02-23T23:12:00.000-08:00

We recently helped Green Beans Coffee company build its audience and add to the success of its “Cup of Joe for Joe” program to benefit US soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Green Beans Coffee Company brings coffee service to military personnel stationed around the globe, operating 70+ cafes in the US and at military bases in six countries throughout Southwest Asia, the Middle East and East Africa.

In the Cup of Joe For A Joe program, a two dollar donation can buy a cup of super premium coffee with a personalized note for a GI deployed on or near a U.S. Military base in support of Operation New Dawn (OND) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

To support this effort, and the company’s growing presence in the U.S. market and around the world, Green Beans Coffee is using email as a key route to deliver its message. After reviewing the field, the company chose us for the mission.

Right away, we were determined to deliver on our promise and began engaging Green Beans Coffee email newsletter subscribers and site visitors with highly targeted messages that elicited enthusiastic response. Green Beans Coffee took full advantage of our features like the easy-to-use StreamSend interface, real-time reporting that drills down to examine results and guide future communications, Green Beans Coffee-personalized email templates and an independent IP address that prevents being clumped with email “spammers.”

We are happy to report that the results have confirmed Green Beans Coffee’s decision to go with us. In a Thanksgiving email campaign powered by StreamSend and sent to its subscribers, Green Beans Coffee produced a 22% unique open rate, a 29.5% unique click-to-unique open rate and a conversion rate close to 10%. And the unsubscribe rate was almost zero.

We don’t like to brag (too much) so let me quote the client:

“StreamSend provides compelling evidence to use its services,” said Clay Lingo, vice president of marketing for Green Beans Coffee. “We could have chosen one of many other providers, but StreamSend’s performance – its ease-of-use, cost-efficiency, robust reporting and strong customer service -- makes it stand out from the crowd.”

That’s what we like to hear!

Success Story: Instructables Expands Membership

2011-02-21T17:49:00.000-08:00

Here at StreamSend, we like to highlight our clients’ success using email marketing to build their business. In the case of Instructables.com, the most popular do-it-yourself community on the Internet, that meant expanding its membership while enriching members’ experience on the site.

Instructables is a web-based documentation platform where passionate people share what they do and how they do it, and learn from and collaborate with others. The seeds of Instructables germinated at the MIT Media Lab as the future founders of Squid Labs built places to share their projects and help others. ABC News, The Washington Post, New York Times, Forbes and Business Week are among the press to herald Instructables’ contribution to do-it-yourselfers worldwide.

Email is the primary marketing tool Instructables uses to reach passionate, creative people who share their most innovative projects, recipes, and hacks with its highly engaged audience. Instructables chose StreamSend as a partner in 2008 to help reach those people and optimize the email newsletters that are its primary member communication.

A key factor in Instructables’ switch to us was its need to get a better handle on its email marketing with the newsletters: who was reading what, what content was the most popular, what drove the most site visits, and how successful was their email delivery through ISPs.

We are proud to say that we delivered on all fronts, supplying better analysis on click-throughs and link use while helping guide future content by providing key information on the stories and trends most appealing to readers. By quickly and accurately keeping track of email newsletter subscriptions and avoiding subscriber complaints, StreamSend helped maximize email delivery through ISPs.

Sending twice-weekly email newsletters to its members that highlight projects, contests and other promotions, encouraging subscribers to generate content, Instructables has grown its subscription base to over 720,000 members. The delivery rate is 99%, open rate is 21% and click-through rate is 8-10% -- very healthy numbers for that frequency of emailing by an organization that has grown primarily by word-of-mouth.

Ed Lewis, content manager for Instructables, summed it up well: “As our numbers grew, so did the need to make sure we are maximizing the value of our communications to member subscribers.” And that is exactly what Ed and Instructables did. “Great job!” out to Ed from his partners at StreamSend.

Security Log for access attempts

2011-02-02T18:57:00.000-08:00

We're really big on account security. Our clients host valuable list information and we realize that we're trusted to maintain the security of this information. During the past few months, we've taken a number of behind the scenes actions to make sure that this data is further protected.

We've also wanted to provide some visibility to account administrators. So as a first step, we've deployed a small feature that provides account administrators a way to gain visibility into login attempts for an account. Our system allows for the creation of unique users for every person that will be accessing an account. To see login attempts for an account, simply login as an administrator and click on the "Security Log" link which is accessible from the bottom of the application pages.

"Security Log" link is located in the footer:

You'll see a page detailing the name of the user, date / time of the login, the ip address, user agent, whether the login was successful or not and the country.

Security tip: We highly suggest providing all employees with their own unique login and password. So create additional users instead of sharing passwords among co-workers.

We'll be adding more actions to this page in the future. Please comment if you have suggestions on what else would be useful.

Security log page with login attempts:

Template categories, and 41 new professionally designed templates

2010-12-23T08:42:00.000-08:00

We've reintroduced categories for our template library.

We've also added another 41 new email templates for your email marketing and email newsletters. As always, we've tested all these HTML emails to make sure they render properly in all major email clients. We added some festive holiday templates for those that wish to send Happy Holidays emails.

We now have a total of 95 templates that our customers can choose from.

Get your email template coded for the StreamSend Editor

2010-10-26T00:07:00.001-07:00

We've been adding a lot of pretty cool and useful features to the StreamSend email editor. Until now, however, the only customers that could take advantage of the editor have been those using our prebuilt templates, or those using one of our custom designed template.

We're now happy to offer a template conversion service. We'll take your HTML email (designed by someone else) and code it to be used with the StreamSend editor. Additionally, we'll test to make sure the email renders properly in all major email clients (you'd be surprised how many actually don't). We'll fix up the HTML, recode it and you're all set. We can do this for a one-time fee $150.

So if you want to take advantage of all the new features (free stock images, smart copy/paste, reordering of content, drag and drop images, and more) then you have some options:

Use our pre-built templates (our library has grown to over 50+)
Have our designers create a custom email template for you for $350
Have our designers convert and test your current HTML email for $150

If you're interested in a custom template, or the conversion service, then please contact our sales team.

Canadian Anti-Spam Law Compliance Guide For Marketers

2010-10-22T17:27:00.000-07:00

Canada is gearing up to pass their version of the CAN-SPAM Act. All email marketers should take notice of this new act that could become law early next year. The new law will not only apply to people sending from Canada, but people sending to anyone in Canada, and knowing exactly where all recipients on an email list reside is highly unlikely. Marketers who are already CAN-SPAM compliant and are closely following the best sending practices set forth by the ISP’s will already be in compliance with the new law. It is also worth noting that StreamSend automatically includes the proper unsubscribe mechanism and all necessary email headers to make mailings compliant. StreamSend also offers several permission based, opt-in methods, and displays reminders for marketers to include their proper contact information.

Our friends at Return Path have provided us with a useful guide to Canada’s proposed anti-spam law (FISA). The guide offers clear advice for marketers and answers the following questions:

What is FISA?
Do you as a marketer need to comply?
What are the penalties of not complying with FISA?
What steps can you take now to ensure that your marketing campaigns comply and optimize this new law?

Click here to view the guide

Images, Images, oh so wondrous Images!

2010-10-17T17:28:00.000-07:00

Announcing free, high quality images to drag into your emails

Our customers want to create attractive emails. This means selecting the perfect image to include within a message. How do you find such an image? Well, we noticed that our customers would look for images using Google Image search. We don't think this is such a great idea.

Why is grabbing an image from Google Image search bad?

Copyright violations. The images Google indexes are not free to use. Grabbing the images most likely results in a copyright infringement.
Not easy. It's a huge pain to have to search, download, and upload.
Quality not guaranteed. There was no guarantee that the image was of high quality, or the best format to use within HTML emails.

What does our solution offer?

Our engineers came up with something special: a free Stock Image Library which is easily accessible from our email editor. You can search images created by the thousands of photographers that upload to Flickr.

How to use it.

Search for images using the following steps:

In the new editor, click on the "Search tab" on the left
Search using keywords
Find the perfect image
Drag / drop the image into your email
Don't worry about copyright issues. We make sure to attribute the image to the correct photographer

Search for an image

Drag / Drop Images

How cute are these little guys??

More templates: 23 gorgeous additions

2010-10-14T23:02:00.000-07:00

We've added twenty-three new email templates for your email marketing and email newsletters. We've tested all these HTML emails to make sure they render properly in all major email clients.

We now have a total of 54 templates that our customers can choose from. It's been our goal to provide our customers with a library of templates that satisfy both form and function.