VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

Look Beyond the Click With Our Google Analytics Integration

2009-07-13T20:32:53-07:00

In a previous post from several months ago, I briefly discussed some of the more advanced reporting options provided by VerticalResponse. One of the advanced options I mentioned was our free Google Analytics Integration.

If you're using Google Analytics to track website traffic, this integration will allow you to take your email tracking past the click to see what your email clickers are doing once they reach your website. This provides an extra layer of analysis to further measure the success of your emails.

And did I mention that it's free?

Here's how to turn the integration on and access the extra reports:

Activate the Integration

Go to the VR Email Tab.
Click the Account Information link in the upper right hand corner.
Select Analytics Settings.
Check the Add Domains box found in the Google Analytics section.
Enter the domains you’re tracking with Google. Like onlyinsanfrancisco.com or visitlondon.com.
Click the Submit Changes button. The integration is now active and will be ready to go when you launch your next email.

With the integration turned on you’ll now see a Google Analytics box directly above the launch button for every email you send out. This box includes a drop down menu from where you can choose which identifying piece of data (like email address) from your records you’d like to see integrated with your Google Analytics account should someone click a link in your email and go to your site. The individual “clickers” will be identified using this data.

If you don’t have an Google Analytics account, then you can easily get one from here. Google will walk you through the setup process and provide you with a snippet of HTML code that must be added to every page on your site that you’d like to track.

Access Your Reports

The integration adds “VerticalResponse / Email” as a source of traffic in Google Analytics and identifies all those people who clicked a link and made their way to your website.

To find the VerticalResponse / Email as a Traffic Source report within Google Analytics go to:

Traffic Sources.
Click on All Traffic Sources.
From here you can compare your VerticalResponse emails to any of your website’s other sources of traffic.

To Identify Website Visitors

Go to Traffic Sources.
Click on Ad Versions
The Site Usage tab will list everyone who has visited your site via a VerticalResponse email link, how many pages they visited, and how much time they spent on the site. Individual people are identified according to the selection you made in the Google Analytics box found on your email launch tab (which is described earlier in this post).

Both these reports can help you calculate the actual value you’re getting from your VerticalResponse email campaigns and see if those people who click a link in your email actually spend time on your website following that click. You could even use this info to see if people who click certain links in the email are more likely to take action / spend time on the site than people who are clicking other links.

Let me know if you have questions via comments!

How to Use a Salesforce Report as an Email List

2009-06-29T16:50:48-07:00

A Salesforce report is a powerful tool that makes it simple to pull up very specific groups of leads or contacts. So wouldn't it be great if you could use a Salesforce report (or multiple reports) to build an email list?

Well, it is great, because you can already use Salesforce Reports to create an email list with VerticalResponse. It is a simple matter of running a report, adding the members of that report to a campaign and then selecting to use that campaign as a list.

Let's take a detailed look at each of the above steps, so you can start turning your Salesforce Reports into mailing lists today.

Get started by creating a custom Salesforce report. If you already know how to do this, you can skim through these instructions for putting together a basic report:

Go to Reports.
Click Create New Custom Report.
Use the provided drop-down menu to “Select the type of data you wish to report on.” Note that running a report on Leads is a good place to start. Then click Next.
Choose to create a Tabular, Summary or Matrix report. Tabular is the default and the one you should go with if you have no previous experience with Reports. Click Next after you make a selection.
Select the columns to include in your report. Your choices here have no impact on what ultimately ends up in your list - you’ll be able to select the columns for your list (like First Name, Last Name, City, Record Owner, etc.) during the list creation process in VerticalResponse. So you can leave this on the defaults if you want. When you’re done here, click Next.
Select the information to summarize. Your choices here determine how Salesforce will display the summary information for numerical fields within the Report. This page isn’t necessary for what we’re trying to do here, so you can ignore it and click Next.
Order the report columns. This determines the order in which columns of data are organized within the Salesforce report. This has no impact on your VerticalResponse list, so you can ignore this page if you want and click Next.
Select your report criteria. This is where you setup the search parameters to put your report together. You can search based on pretty much any information in your account to find the people you want to mail. When you’re done setting up these parameters, click Run Report.
Now your report is ready to go. If everything looks good, you can use the Add to Campaign button at the top of the report to select a report to which you can add these folks. Once they’re part of the Campaign, you’ll be able to turn that Campaign into a VerticalResponse list.
If you need to setup a Campaign for this purpose then save this report for now by clicking the Save As button. And then move over to the Salesforce Campaigns tab.

Salesforce Campaigns are a useful way to keep track of your various marketing campaigns, but they are not available by default in every edition of Salesforce. So if you’ve never used them before you’ll need to make sure you have access to them. Of course Campaigns are also, as we’re seeing here, a good way to turn Salesforce Reports into a VerticalResponse list. Setting up a Campaign is very simple:

Go to Campaigns.
Click New. This opens up the Campaign Edit screen.
There are a number of things you can do from the Edit screen, but there are only two things you absolutely must do: - Give your Campaign a name.  - Check the Active box (if this box is not checked, then the Campaign will not be visible to your VerticalResponse account)
Once you’ve done at least these two things, you can click Save.
Your Campaign is now created and will be available when you click the Add to Campaign button in the report you ran earlier. So now you can go back to Reports, find your saved report (which should be right at the top of the page) and add the members of that report to your Campaign.
If you want to use more than one report for your mailing list, then you can add several Reports to the Campaign.

With all that work finished (which doesn’t take very long at all once you’ve done it a few times) you can import the members of the campaign as a VerticalResponse list:

Go to VR Email.
Click New List.
Choose the option to Use a Salesforce.com campaign.
Select the Campaign you want to use from the provided list. If the list is really long you can use the Search box to find your Campaign. Making a selection will open up the Map Your Fields page.
The Map Your Fields page allows you to select which pieces of data from your Lead / Contact records you’d like to pull over into your list. Use the drop down menus and checkboxes to choose if you’d like to pull over First Names, Last Names or any other Standard, Customer, Owner or Account level field associated with your records. Any data you include can be used to personalize an email sent out to the list. Note that Email Address is checked off to be included by default since you can’t send an email to a list that does not include the email addresses for each of your recipients. Click Next Step when you’re done.
Now you’ll see a Summary / Preview of the records that are being pulled into the list. If everything looks good, continue on to Next Step.
Give your list a name and click Create List. Your list will then be created and ready for you to use with an email.

Any thoughts or questions about these instructions? Let us know in the comments!

Tips for Using Twitter for Your Business

2009-06-15T16:33:04-07:00

Despite being the punch line of many bad jokes (like the ones made by me in our last newsletter), Twitter is continuing to prove itself as an excellent tool for personal and business communication. If you’ve been following the news on Iran’s very controversial election over the weekend, then you’ve seen first hand that Twitter can be much more than a tool for snark and navel gazing.

In my last post I looked at why your business should use Twitter and discussed the basics of getting started. Now let’s look at some different tips for how your business can use Twitter, just like we do here with our own VR4SmallBiz account.

As Part of Your Email Marketing

What does Twitter have to do with Email? Plenty!

VerticalResponse creates a hosted version of every email you send out. You can take the link to that hosted version and post it to Twitter. We do this ourselves - and also see lots of clients doing it - as it's a great way to get your newsletters and other emails in front of an audience that probably includes lots of people who may not already be on your subscriber list.

Note that we do not make any money off people visiting the hosted version, so recommending this is not an attempt to gather a few more pennies from you. This is simply a great way to get more exposure for the emails you put so much work into.

By the same token, you should reference your twitter page in your emails. That way people who are already clearly interested in what you have to say will see you have a Twitter account and can start following you.

Quick Updates

Having a sale? Link to it. Write a new white paper? Link to it. Send out a newsletter as I mentioned above? Link to it. Hosting an event? Link to, errr, you get the idea. Twitter is a great place to say, “Hey, look over here! We’re doing something cool.” This is especially true if you actually are doing something cool.

You can also use a tool like tr.im to create very short and trackable links for your tweets.

And don’t feel like you have to limit your tweets to just describing what you’re doing. Feel free to talk about the interests you have from a business or personal perspective. Link to other resources that may help your customers in some way. Be sure to show some personality.

Don’t worry about repeating something you put in a blog or an email, because most of your customers and prospects are not engaging with all your communication. And those that are probably aren’t going to mind seeing a two sentence message in which you mention something they already know about.

Provide Support

VerticalResponse has a designated support Twitter page (along with designated support twits). If someone on Twitter has a question, seems frustrated with our application or otherwise is looking for VR related answers, support reaches out to them right away with answers and links to resources. If an answer will take too long via tweeting, then support links to other support options that the person may not previously have known existed or may not have used without prompting.

Find Prospects

People will be twittering either about you or the products / services you offer. This is an excellent time to reach out to them with a “we’re here to help” or “have you checked out our service?” type message. Don’t spam people, though. Messaging others at random is not very effective and a good way to get yourself labeled a spammer. And be honest about who you are - pretending to be a customer of your own company will not look good if anyone finds out you’re doing that.

How do you find out if people are mentioning you? Search for your company name at search.twitter.com. Or setup automated searches using a tool like Tweet Deck.

Learn from Others

Follow your competitors. Follow companies you like or respect. Look at both how they’re using Twitter and at what they’re saying to the world. You should do this even if you don’t use Twitter for any other purpose.

And don’t stop there! Sign-up for competitors’ email newsletters and updates. I’m sure their emails aren’t nearly as good as yours, but that doesn’t mean you won’t learn anything.

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Twitter: It's Not Just for People Who Use Buzzwords Anymore

2009-06-01T16:04:41-07:00

You’ve probably heard of Twitter. You might think it’s cool. You might think it seems a little silly. You might be using it right now to let everyone know what you had for breakfast this morning.

Regardless of how you currently use Twitter - or how you feel about it on a personal level - it is a great business tool. It’s such a great business tool that we even use it here at VerticalResponse. You can see how we’re using it by checking out our VR4SmallBiz Twitter page.

But why should your business use Twitter?

It’s Free

Twitter is growing rapidly, but currently generates no revenue due to the whole “not charging our users money” part of their service. This doesn’t keep it from being very popular with investors who collect internet companies the way wealthy Italian patrons used to collect the work of Renaissance painters.

Is there anything better than a high quality product that also happens to be free? Except for VerticalResponse?

It’s Fast

Type in your short, less than 140 character message and it’s immediately out there for all your followers (and anyone else who happens by your page) to see. This allows you to practically beam important information to your hungriest users and prospects.

That said, don’t go overboard and drown your followers with endless information. Make sure your tweets have a point of some kind and be sure to listen to what people say in response.

It Gets Everyone Involved

Anyone in your company with their own Twitter account can reach out to fellow tweeters who have questions about your business. This can be a great way to provide great customer support to people who may not be expecting it.

Just try to make sure that several people in your office don’t all respond to the same person. You don’t want to annoy people with seven nearly identical answers to the same question.

And don’t give in to the temptation to have employees pretend to be customers who are randomly saying nice things about your company. That kind of dishonesty can come back to bite you.

Find Our What People Are Saying About You

People will be 'tweeting' both good and bad things about you. And will even be tweeting that they’re just using your service or buying your products. Obviously, not all your customers and prospects are on Twitter. But, of course, not all your customers drive by that billboard you have up on Interstate 80. That didn’t stop you from putting that billboard up, and it shouldn’t stop you from using Twitter.

Because of the way Twitter works, you can easily reach out to people who are talking about your company - or the services your company provides - to offer help or to simply call out something someone said. You can listen to what someone has to say and then directly respond. And if you’re not out there directly responding to people who are talking about your services, then you can bet a competitor will be. Why miss an opportunity to promote your business?

How Do You Get Started?

Appropriately enough, you can sign-up for a Twitter account at twitter.com. It’s quick and easy. Be sure to upload a company logo - or other similar image - as your Twitter icon.

Next, download a free desktop Twitter tool like Tweet Deck. Not only can you post to your Twitter account using this tool, you can also create automated searches to find people who are mentioning your company, products or services. This makes it easy to find those folks who may benefit from you reaching out to them.

Once you're tweeting away, you’ll obviously want to attract some followers (people who follow your twitter account are updated with each of your tweets). A great way to get started is to find people who are mentioning your company or products, or who are just talking about subjects that line up with either your business or the topics you’ll be tweeting about. Follow these folks and, if they like what you’re saying on Twitter, there’s a good chance they’ll follow you, too. You should also reference your twitter account on your website and in your outbound communication (like, say, your emails).

In my next blog post, I’ll go over some specific tips on how you can use Twitter for your business.

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Using Anchor Tags & Anchor Links

2009-05-18T17:11:13-07:00

Every VerticalResponse for AppExchange newsletter includes an "Also In This Issue" Table of Contents right at the top to help all our readers find content that interests them. Have you ever wondered how you can create your own TOC? Well, wonder no more!

You can very easily create a TOC for an email created within VerticalResponse through the use of Anchor Tags and Anchor Links. Anchor Tags allow the creation of a link in one section of an email that links to another section of that same email - just like in the "Also In This Issue" part of our own newsletter.

To create an Anchor Link in an email of your own, you should start by placing an Anchor Tag within a section of the email to which you intend to link. The title or first sentence of the section is the best place to insert the Anchor Tag. Note that you must be using our Canvas Editor for this to work as we do not provide a method for creating Anchors within our Wizard tool. Here’s how to insert a tag:

Left-click the exact spot where you want to place the Tag.
Click the Anchor Icon found in the top row of the Canvas toolbar.
This opens an “Insert/Edit Anchor” dialog box. Enter a name for your anchor here. The Anchor’s name should be no longer than one word, otherwise the link you create may not work properly for some recipients.
Click Insert.

Now that the Anchor Tag is in place, you can create a link that points to that Anchor. To do so you should:

Select text or an image that you want to use for the link.
Click the chain link icon in top row of the Canvas toolbar.
This will open the “Insert Hyperlink” dialog box. Use the Anchors drop-down menu to select the name of the Anchor Tag you created earlier.
Click Update. You have now created a link that points to the section of the email in which you placed your Anchor Tag.

To test that the Anchor Link works properly, go to the Quick Preview section of the Canvas editor or send yourself a test version of the email. And to create more Anchor Links, just repeat the steps above. There is no limit on the number of these links that you can include in an individual email.

Including a small Table of Contents at the top of a long email or an email that includes several different topics (as with a Newsletter) can be a great way to get more people engaged with your message. A TOC allows recipients to find items that interest them without needing to scroll through the entire email message. And, of course, the easier you make it for your subscribers to find content that interests them, the more likely they’ll be to take action with your message.

To learn more about both creating regular Links and Anchor Links using our Canvas Editor, watch the video below:

Segment Your Way to Email Success

2009-05-04T16:45:05-07:00

Email marketing would be significantly easier if every customer had the exact same needs and interests. Then you could just focus all your efforts on this small list of "what people want" and leave work at noon every day. What a marvelous dream.

But we all know marketing isn't so simple. While there are both general and detailed best practices that can be followed with regards to email timing, layout, content and everything else even vaguely associated with your message like what time you should eat breakfast the day you send a newsletter and in which direction the wind should be blowing when you click the launch button, no list of best practices is likely to be a perfect match for your database.

So how can you get the highest return on investment from your email marketing efforts? By using segmentation to test different approaches and to create more targeted, relevant messages for your subscribers.

Why Segment?

As I’ve noted in several recent posts that preceded this one, emails that are more targeted to the interests / experiences of a particular group of people are more likely to provide a higher return on investment than emails that try to do everything for everyone. That doesn’t mean all of your emails need to be targeted (a newsletter, for example, will usually go out to everyone), but many kinds of emails will perform better if they are targeted to specific groups.

Some example uses for segmenting:

Limiting the geographic reach of a message. If I was going to have a breakfast seminar in Nashville, I could limit my email invitations to people who live in Tennessee or Kentucky. This would save money since I’m not blasting the invite out to everyone I know and keep customers in, say, Oregon from getting annoyed at receiving an email invite to a morning presentation that they are highly unlikely to fly all the way to Tennessee to attend.

Sending different messaging to customers and prospects. A customer’s relationship with your company differs from that of a prospect and it couldn’t hurt for your communication to reflect this fact.

Tailoring a message to the customer’s interests. If you offer products or services that can be sorted intro broad categories, then you could sort your customers along similar lines based on purchasing history or most recent purchases. The primary focus of your message could be on the apparent interests of a specific group of customers and then a smaller portion of the message could deal with other types of products / services.

Creating lists based on record owner. If each of your customers has an account representative, then you can split the messaging up so that groups of customers receive the messaging from their specific rep. This can make the message more personal than a standard bulk email.

Splitting recent customers from those who are not so recent. Someone who last made a purchase nine months ago may need different messaging than someone who made a purchase last week.

How to Segment

Preparation for segmentation begins with the data collection process. The more data you collect, the more segmenting you can do. Though you do have to consider that the more info you request, the more resistant people will be to providing you with any info. But lots of useful data, like type and date of purchase, can be collected without needing the customer to fill anything extra out.

With the data in hand, you can segment when you create your list. How you set up your segment will depend on whether you’re building the list by “Creating a New List of Leads and Contacts” or by “Using a Salesforce Campaign.” Let’s take a look at both.

Creating a New List of Leads and Contacts

When you select to Create a New List of Leads and Contacts the system prompts you to enter search parameters so it can find people who match your query. So, unless you simply create a search which finds every record that has an email address, you’re already using this tool to segment your database at some level. But let’s look at how you can use this tool to create most of the example segments I noted above:

Limiting the message’s geographic reach: To find those members of a database who live in Tennessee or Kentucky, you’d do a search for “State” “Equals” “TN, KY”. Placing a comma between each state tells the system to perform an OR search. Since this is an OR search, the system will find everyone whose state matches either Tennessee or Kentucky. If you did an AND search, the system would only find people whose state matched both Tennessee and Kentucky at the same time (which would be no one).

Different messaging for customers versus prospects: If you’re using Salesforce exactly as intended, then your prospects will be Leads and your customers will be Contacts making it very easy to sort the two. If you’re not using Salesforce in this way, then you’ll need to have a field indicating this info and search for it using a similar method as used in the state search.

Creating lists based on record owner: In this case you’d do a search of “Owner-First Name” “Equals” and then click the magnifying glass to choose the owner (or owners) whose records you want to include in the list.

Separating recent customers from those who are not recent: You’ll need to create a custom field for Last Purchase Date within Salesforce. Then to find more recent purchases you can do a similar search to: “Last Purchase Date” is “Greater or Equal” to “11/04/2009”. To find less recent customers you’d do a search for: “Last Purchase Date” is “Less Than” “11/04/2009”.

Using a Salesforce Campaign

To create a list using this method, all you do is choose the campaign whose members you want to use as a list. There is no filtering here - all campaign members become part of the list. So any segmentation done through this method must be done when you’re adding people to the campaign.

The most common way to add people to a Salesforce campaign is to run a report and then use the Add Members to Campaign button within that report. You can customize reports using the exact same search functionality that’s available when Creating a List of Leads and Contacts. To do this, all you have to do is go to Reports > Create New Custom Report or use the Customize button to “Select Criteria” within an already created report.

Have you had any success creating targeted lists? Let everyone know in the comments.

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Maintaining a Healthy Mailing List

2009-04-20T16:46:00-07:00

A healthy list is the key to a successful email marketing program. You can come up with clever subject lines, write dazzling prose and illustrate it all with the prettiest pictures around, but you won’t be getting the most from these efforts if your mailing list isn’t in good shape.

Adding an address to a list is just the first step in an always ongoing process of cultivating a relationship with the subscriber. But - for many companies - collecting the address is often both the beginning and the end of the cultivation process. This is unfortunate, since subscribers must be treated properly in order to keep them actively engaged in an organization’s email marketing. You aren’t their grandmother, so they’re not going to keep opening your emails forever if you don’t give them a reason to do so.

Let’s take a look at the steps you can take to cultivate relationships with your subscribers and maintain a healthy mailing list.

Sign-up

Signing up is the beginning of the process and it should be as easy as possible. If it isn’t easy, then you’re losing out before the relationship has even started. Here are some ways to make it easy for people to join your list:

Opt-in Form: If you don’t have an opt-in form on your website, you need to get one up pronto - consider using Salesforce’s Web-to-Lead Form - as there is no reason to not ask website visitors to sign-up for your list.   

If you do already have a form, you should make sure it is easily accessible from every page (either through a prime spot on your main navigation menu or by placing it in a sidebar that appears on every page of your site). You should also give a brief explanation of what people will receive as a subscriber. A newsletter, special deals, tips, etc. An explanation shows that you’ll be providing value of some kind, which makes people more likely to sign-up.

Guestbook / Fishbowl: If you have an office or storefront that accepts visitors off the street, then you need to provide a way for those visitors to subscribe to your list.

Phone: Do people call your office to place orders or to get help? Then ask for their address! However, don’t just say, “Can I get your email address?” Say, “Can I sign you up for our newsletter?” or “Would you like to get more information or access to special offers via email?” Asking someone if you can send him something is always going to get a better reaction than asking if he will give you something.

  Also make sure that other employees in your company know the value people will receive if they sign-up. That way it doesn’t feel like they’re “up-selling” by asking for an address - they’ll feel more comfortable asking for the address and the potential subscriber will feel more comfortable giving the address to them.

A welcome email following sign-up, especially if that sign-up came from somewhere other than your website, is a good way to immediately engage your new subscribers. As an example: waiting three weeks to send a newsletter to people who came by your tradeshow booth could mean that many of those folks will have forgotten why they were even interested in your company by the time you’ve written them. Which means you’ve already lost them after only a few weeks. But sending a welcome email within a few days of the sign-up thanking them, explaining who you are as a company, and the kind of value you provide (and that your emails provide) will get them immediately in the loop and prep them to start receiving your regular messaging.

Frequency

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, don’t mail subscribers sporadically once or twice a year and expect them to take action with your emails. How often is too often? How sporadic is too sporadic? I would say twice a week to once every two months is a good range to keep in mind, depending on the type of messages you're sending out. A newsletter probably doesn’t need to go out twice a week, but special offers and event invitations certainly don’t need to be limited to once a month.

I bought a software application (an application which I love) about a year ago and I’ve received three emails from the company that sold me the app since then. Every time I receive one of their emails, I have to rack my brain to remember who they are since their company name is not in any way related to the name of the application. And I work in the email industry. Most people probably aren’t bothering to rack their brains and are just deleting the emails.

Relevance

The more relevant your email is to a recipient, the more likely that recipient will be to continue opening the emails. The less relevant the messaging is, of course, the more likely the recipient will be to stop reading your emails.

Avoid treating your emails the same way you would treat a print ad or a billboard. If you use the same content again and again, then recipients will have no reason to open your email. If a magazine kept sending you new editions with the same articles then you’d probably quit reading that magazine, and the same thing is true with email subscriptions.

Instead of sending out blanket emails that try to say everything to everyone, try sending out messaging to different groups of people that focuses on their interests and then also references other services / items you’d like to see them buy in the future. And when most of your message is at least somewhat relevant to what a recipient has done in the past, they’ll be more likely to assume other items you’re referencing are also relevant to them since you’re making an effort to speak directly to them.

How do you get information in what people are interested in? Ask them at sign-up or pay attention to their most recent purchases.

And how can you more easily stay relevant? By using:

Segmentation

Segmentation enables you to target emails to recipients based on their history or interests (so long as you’ve collected this information, of course). When you’re creating your list through VerticalResponse, you can search using both standard & custom level fields. So you can search based on info you’ve collected.

A winery, as an example, could set-up lists based on a customer’s favorite kind of wine. So a list of Merlot lovers and a list of Gewürztraminer lovers could be setup and each list would receive a message that was tweaked to what they like. In my next blog post, I’ll take a closer look at all the options available to segment your list when working within VerticalResponse for AppExchange.

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Design Your Email for Delivery & Response

2009-04-06T16:52:01-07:00

In my last post I briefly described a number of steps you can take to help ensure your email is both delivered properly and garners a strong response. Today I want to take a closer look at one of those steps: designing an email with delivery and response in mind.

This is a very broad topic, that covers everything from the From Label to images to HTML. So I’ll stop wasting space with this opening and dive right into the details:

From Label & Subject Line

The From Label should almost always be the name of your organization. It’s important that your recipients be able to immediately recognize the email is from a person or company they know - otherwise they’re likely to glance right over the email without opening it or could potentially even report it as spam.

To illustrate this point: I belong to a non-profit organization here in San Francisco and they send me a few email updates every month. However, I didn’t notice these emails for weeks after my initial sign-up, because instead of using the name of their organization as the From Label, they used the names of various high level people in the organization.

I realize that they were likely doing this to make the emails seem more personal, but it didn’t matter how personal they were being as I looked right over their emails until one of the subject lines finally clued me in that the messages were from their organization. Speaking of which…

The Subject Line is essentially the headline for your email. Keep it as short, descriptive and interesting as possible (easier said then done, I know). A few tips:

Try to keep it under 45 characters long. Many email clients cut the subject line off at or around 45 characters, so going over this number can lead to many of your recipients not being able to view your entire subject.

Don’t write a misleading subject. Doing so is questionable from a legal standpoint and will also cause subscribers to stop trusting your messaging - use a misleading subject line now and people won’t believe the great subject you use in the future. The subject should describe the actual content or purpose of the email.

Don’t use ALL CAPS or overuse punctuation!!! This makes it look like your email is screaming for attention, which can both annoy your recipients and make your message more likely to get picked up by a spam filter.

Message Content

Plan for the Preview Pane - Make sure that your call to action or some of your interesting content will show up if the recipient views your email in their preview pane. The average pane is 600 pixels wide by 200 pixels tall, but that is going to vary by recipient since the preview pane is adjustable. So plan to have easily digestible content at the top of the page that will drive the recipient to take action or read more.

Use Short Blocks of Copy - Avoid writing long paragraphs that are difficult to scan through. Use short paragraphs and bullets to make your points and call to action pop out. If you do write long paragraphs, highlight words and phrases within each paragraph that highlight what you’re going on about. That way a recipient can quickly scan your message and determine if they want to do anything with it.

Always remember that - in most cases - recipients aren’t going to sit down and read your entire message. They need you to show them where, why and how they should take action.

Provide Numerous Links - Don’t just link back to your website once or twice - make it easy for people to take action by sprinkling links throughout the message. Turn all your images into links, too - images are big and pretty, making them tempting to click on.

Follow the 80 / 20 Rule - This is a simple rule of thumb that says your email content should generally be no more than 20% images and no less than 80% text. Measure this simply by looking at the email and roughly estimating how much of your message real estate is covered by text or images.

Why should you follow this rule? Mainly because many email clients initially block images when an email arrives in the inbox, requiring the recipient to click a button or a link to turn the images on. Relying too heavily on images can mean much of your content will be initially invisible to many recipients. A very image heavy email can also be more likely to end up in a spam folder.

Optimize Your Images for Email - The smaller the file size of your image, the faster it will load. Be sure to save your image for web use using an editor like Photoshop or to edit the image using the tools found in our Library (we always optimize images for web use when you edit and save in the Library). The file size of an email image should generally be 25kb or smaller.

You should also provide alt-text for all of your images. This back-up text will display in place of the image in many of those same email clients that block images. Plus, if you have any blind subscribes using a screen reader to read your email, their screen reader will read the alt-text aloud.

Test - Not sure you’re getting the most from your campaigns with the content you’re using? Test! Try different kinds of layouts and content to smaller segments of your list to see if you get higher response rates. No form of marketing, including email, has a one-size-fits-all approach, so you can’t determine what will work absolutely best for you without trying different approaches.

Any ideas or comments of your own? Let’s hear ‘em in the comments!

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

What You Need to Know About Email Delivery

2009-03-23T17:27:46-07:00

Email Delivery sounds pretty simple: you create an email, hit send, and then mighty wizards transport that email to your recipients through the use of hand-crafted cables and powerful laser beams. What more is there to it than that?

As anyone who has sent more than a few pieces of commercial email knows, there is much more to it than that. Nothing has a bigger impact on the bottom line of an email campaign than seeing that email delivered properly and then opened by as large a range of recipients as possible.

This leads to two questions: what does VerticalResponse do to ensure email is delivered? And what can you do to ensure your email is getting in front of as many recipients as possible?

Let's take a look at both these questions.

What Does VerticalResponse do to Ensure Excellent Delivery?

We Use Authentication Protocols

As our CEO Janine Popick points out in the VR Marketing Blog today, we authenticate client email through the use of the four major authentication protocols: SPF (Sender Policy Framework), Sender-ID, DomainKeys and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). With SPF and Sender-ID we have published records that state our mail domains are allowed to send email on behalf of our own IP Addresses. With DomainKeys and DKIM we sign each email with a key that the recipient server can then use to verify that we actually sent the email.

Authentication is an increasingly important component in email delivery, as email service providers can be confident that fully authenticated mail is not a scam or phishing scheme of some sort. And VerticalResponse is one of the only providers in our space that utilizes all four of the major protocols for clients by default.

Be sure to take a look at Janine’s article if you want to learn more about authentication.

We Use Feedback Loops

We have feedback loops set-up with every single ISP that is known to offer one. This means if someone clicks Report Spam at Hotmail, that Hotmail trusts us to take action on the complaint. It also means that when someone clicks such a button at a participating an ISP (like Hotmail), VerticalResponse users don’t have to worry they’ll accidentally send mail to that person again as we automatically unsubscribe recipients who treat your mail in this way from your list.

Each ISP has their own threshold regarding how many complaints are allowed. If you near this threshold or go over it, we will reach out and help you get to the root of the problem.

We Automate Bounce / Unsubscribe Processing

By automating this process (like many of our competitors), we ensure no users can abuse our IP Addresses by ignoring bounces and unsubscribes. This also helps us keep an excellent reputation.

Most service providers take their bounce messages very seriously and do not like it when someone continues to send email to addresses that provider says no longer exist. Ignoring bounces can lead to mail not being delivered. And, of course, ignoring unsubscribes is illegal according to the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act.

We’re Anti-Spam

Everyone says they’re anti-spam, but we really, really mean it. We respond to and investigate every single complaint that comes in to our abuse desk, we quickly deal with clients who receive complaints (before they start causing delivery problems), and we even look over every email our clients launch to make sure nothing suspicious or fraudulent can make it out the door. This keeps complaints to a minimum, which is a big part of maintaining a strong reputation for our IP Addresses. And a stronger reputation for us means a higher delivery rate for you, since your mail is being sent out through our IP Addresses.

What Can You Do To Help Ensure Excellent Delivery?

Keep Your List Healthy

Be sure everyone on your list has specifically requested info from or about your company. Also make sure you’re not mailing previously unsubscribed or bounced addresses (as I noted above). That went out of style a long time ago.

And remember that permission is not forever. If someone gave you their business card at a tradeshow two years ago, it’s not a good idea to send them their first email today. Don’t wait more than a month or so to mail a new contact, otherwise large segments of your list will begin to forget their interaction with your company. This will lead to a lower open rate and cause some people to unwittingly report your email as spam.

Design With Delivery in Mind

Don’t just put a big image together in Illustrator and think you’re good to go. Make sure the email is easy to read (consider paragraph length and fonts), that images are being used only to enhance the HTML / text content (not as the sole content), and that the email is something that the subscriber would expect to receive based upon their sign-up.

If you use one our email creation tools - like the Canvas - then you’re probably just fine here. However, if you write your own HTML you’ll need to make sure it’s validated and that you’re using code that is supported by all the various email clients out there (email clients are not as capable as web browsers when it comes to rendering HTML). Check out my article from several months ago on HTML you should avoid.

Treat Subscribers with Respect

Don’t mail subscribers too often and clutter their inbox with mail they don’t want. Set expectations at the time of sign-up: “This is what we’re going to send you. And we’re going to send it to you this often.” Also try to maintain a relationship with the subscriber. Don’t mail them sporadically once or twice a year and expect them to take action with your emails. How often is too often? How sporadic is too sporadic? I would say twice a week to once every two months is a good range to keep in mind, depending on the type of messages you're sending out.

Have any thoughts or questions? Let us know in the comments!

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Secrets of the Email Canvas

2009-03-10T08:17:05-07:00

VerticalResponse offers several applications for building an email within VR for AppExchange. The most popular of these apps is the Email Canvas. It is both a more powerful and more flexible editor than the other provided tools.

But more flexibility and power also means more complexity. And while many parts of the Canvas are very straightforward (adding an image, creating a link, changing fonts), some functions are not as obvious.

Let’s take a look at some of these less obvious “secrets” of the Email Canvas tool.

Line Breaks:

The first time you type any text into the Canvas and hit the enter key, something that is perhaps unexpected happens - you get a double line break. This is perfect if you wanted to start a new paragraph, and not so perfect if you were hoping to get a single line break. So how do you get a single line break? Hit Shift+Enter.

Linking to an Email Address

Creating a link to a website is very straightforward: choose the text or image you want to link, click the link icon in the top row of the toolbar, and type the address for the link (http://www.mysite.com). But what if you want to link to an email address instead of a web address?

The process is exactly the same as linking to a webpage, except you should type mailto:email@address.com in the link address box. If I wanted to create a link to the email address for VerticalResponse support, I’d simply type mailto:support@verticalresponse.com.

Changing Background Colors:

Every available Canvas Layout has it’s own default background colors. But what if you like a layout, but don’t particularly care for that layout’s provided background colors (or would like the colors to match your company’s branding)?

Each section within a Canvas Layout is a Table Cell, and the background color of any particular cell can be easily changed. All you need to do is click within that cell and then do one of two things:

1. Right click and then choose Table Cell Properties from the menu that pops up.
2. Choose Table Cell Properties from the Canvas Toolbar. The Table Cell Properties button can be found in the second row of the toolbar (on the left-hand side).

Either of these options will open a dialog box where you can use a background color drop-down menu to select a different color.

Creating a Table of Contents

For a newsletter that includes several different sections (like the VerticalResponse newsletter), it’s a good idea to include a table of contents at the top of the newsletter so readers can click a link and go straight to the particular section they want to read. How do you set this up?

Choose a part of your email that you'd like to link to. If you're writing a newsletter that has several different sections, the title to a section is a great spot.
Click the Anchor icon (top row, right side of the Designer's Toolbar). This will bring up a dialog box - name your anchor and click Insert
Now that you've "laid anchor", choose where you'd like to place a link to that anchor. This will usually be text or an image near the top of the email, since the main purpose of using an anchor link is to make it easy for readers to navigate to different parts of your message.
Click the Chain Link icon (it's right next to the Anchor icon) and use the drop down menu to select the name you gave your anchor earlier. Then click Insert.
Done! The new link will redirect you to the Anchor within your email. You can test this by going to the Quick Preview tab within the Canvas.

Changing the Default Font

If you’re not a fan of a layout’s default font, then you’ll probably want to change that font to one you like better. The most obvious way to do that is to select text you want to change and then use the Font Family drop-down menu in the toolbar to select a different font. But wouldn’t it be better to just change the default font for the entire email so that you get exactly the font you want as you type it? Of course it would!

To change the default font, just go to Document Properties. You can access Document Properties by clicking the fourth button from the right on the second row of the Canvas Toolbar. From here you can use the text properties options to change the default Font Family and Font Size, as well as other properties like the color of your text and links.

Any other Canvas functionality you have questions about? Let us know in the comments.

To learn more about using the Canvas, check out our How To Do Everything website or download our Step-by-Step Guide to Email Success.

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager