As part of the launch, LiveIntent has announced key partnerships with ESPs who have already joined the LiveCertified program, Adestra being one of them.

“The LiveCertified program is about compatibility and client growth.” said Henry Hyder-Smith, Managing Director of ESP Adestra. “As a member, our clients know that our LiveTag parameters have been tested and work as expected. We’re excited to partner with LiveIntent and help our clients increase their email publishing revenue.”

ESPs in the program can now offer their customers a simple way to include real-time ads in their emails without additional add-ons or development. ESP integration with LiveCertified offers publishers a way to offset the costs of sending email to customers, while helping advertisers and brands reach consumers where they spend the most time: their email inbox.

Before participating in the LiveCertified program, partners simply have their implementation and LiveTag parameters vetted by LiveIntent. Acceptance into the program certifies that partners are compatible with the latest LiveIntent LiveTag capabilities, which enable publishers and advertisers to buy and sell display ads within email newsletters, alerts and notifications.

To find out more, visit the LiveIntent Website

SMS is the most widely used mobile technology and 90% of SMS sent, are read within 15 minutes of receiving. SMS can work hand in hand with any other forms of marketing helping you to build an opt-in database. If you place an advert in a newspaper how do you know how well it has done? You’re left with only brand awareness to measure ROI, whereas if you place an SMS call to action on that newspaper advert you could see that you had x number of people requesting further information as a direct result because of the keyword used in the advert. Different keywords could be used for different mediums, acting as a unique identifier per medium allowing you to identify the most effective campaigns and stream line future campaigns.

We also looked at how SMS can work well with email as it is a great way to encourage people to sign up to your email communications when they may not necessarily be near a computer. For example rather than having someone with a clip board collecting email addresses at an event which you may or may not be able to read accurately when manually entering them into your system.

If you would like to see how SMS and email can work together, text the word ‘subscribe’ and your email address to 81222 in order to sign up to Adestra’s email communications.

Covered within the Q & A section we also discussed the legalities surrounding SMS, similar to email, SMS is covered by the Privacy and Electronic Communications regulations (PECR), which states that in order to send marketing communications via SMS you must have opt in consent, or is covered by soft opt-in. Make sure you are not sending unwanted SMS’s, as unwanted texts will annoy recipients, more so than other forms of marketing due to the personal nature of the mobile phone.

If you have any questions regarding SMS or how Adestra can help you please get in touch by emailing moreinfo@adestra.com. If you would like to view the recorded version of the webinar, click here.

Have you registered for our next webinar?

A Think series special feature:

Lighting the way for the email marketing
industry in 2012

The Adestra & Econsultancy Email Marketing Industry Census 2012

Date: Wed 28 March 2012
Time: 15:00 – 16:00 BST
Duration: 60 minutes
*Post webinar a recorded version will be sent to all
registrants whether they attended or not

The Adestra and Econsultancy Email Marketing Census results are hot off the press. This is your exclusive invitation to our special feature webinar to launch this report. This year, the focus has done a 180 degree spin – marketers are switching back to the demonstrative ROI of email marketing. The main challenges surround fundamental topics, including interoperability, database maintenance, and automation.

This webinar will give you a unique insight into the census results and how you need to adapt to stay ahead of the game. As an additional bonus, all attendees will also receive a copy of the report worth £250.

What you will learn:

1. Top line results – where is email marketing at as an industry?
2. How are marketers overcoming challenges of platform integration?
3. What are the key database maintenance strategies being used by market leaders?
4. How are email marketers benefiting from automation, in terms of both time and money?

The Agenda:

A great phrase I can borrow (doffing my cap to Tim Watson, Email Consultant, in the process) is don’t fall in to the trap of “FIRE! AIM! READY!” which is often what people do when they realise they need email addresses. That is to say, put together the plan of what you want to try to achieve first before going about implementing any random new scheme to collect addresses.

One of the fine people you’ll find on Word To The Wise, Laura Atkins (one of the people in the email world I respect the most) – says “Have all your emails, templates, offers and processes in place before you collect your first email address.” When doing so, there’s some key things most people don’t do and then regret it. Below you’ll find a list of all the points I chatted to my friend about – some through experience and others I gathered from a variety of sources from around the industry. Hopefully it will get your cogs turning too!

• Ready the database – by this I mean make sure that you have a system in place that you can put all the email data into. So, all new collection points should funnel the data in to ONE pot. Don’t end up with data sitting in several different places. Make sure also that you can adapt and update this database. All very well having chosen your pot and then to find out you can’t add that crucial ‘date of birth’ field your strategy hangs off.
• Flag the source of collection in the data – A personal soap box of mine, but also incredibly important. If you end up with two, three or ten places/systems that data is going to be collected, make sure you can write this information into the data. It will mean you can track success of the collection process, and you can easily personalise emails for those who (for example) sign up off the website versus, say, an in-store card they filled in. Moving forward you may be able to then track the success of your marketing against these sources. So not just how many people filled in the various forms you have, but compare which source ends up making the most money.
• Prioritise all ‘new things’ you’re going to do – You might end up with a big ‘ole list of stuff to do. All exciting, all stuff you want to do. But some will take time to implement, some will cost more. Factor all those in and prioritise in which order you’re going to tackle stuff. Don’t be afraid of paying someone Project Management fees to handle this either – it will help get it done.
• Get emails to new signups quickly – Whether this is enforcing a double opt-in process or just sending them a thank you email. You should aim to send them their first email from you immediately. It’s a technical issue to resolve but resolving it will be the biggest thing you can do to improve the engagement of your email list. I promise!

So assuming you’re rocking these four things, what’s next?

• Social sign up - If someone likes you on Facebook, follows you on Twitter or Google+ or LinkedIn, that’s great. At some point though, any or all of these social channels might change the game, making it more difficult to market to these valuable brand advocates. It is not uncommon these days for a brand that has 300,000 likes on Facebook but only 30,000 people on their email list. The value of your efforts on your social channels is fine, and can be discussed elsewhere – but at least for now email is the still the best route for you to send messages with traceable results. Every place you have a presence in the Social world you should link to, or embed, a sign up form. And in available text boxes (think Twitter bios and G+ “About” pages) promote it (even incentivise it) and say what they should look forward to when they get your emails. Have a read of Parry, one of our Account Director’s blogs on the subject here. There’s a great presentation available here too from our industry colleague Loren McDonald on this subject.
• Text signups – Lots of ESPs (like us) offer the ability to rent a shortcode (or a shared shortcode) and use it for data capture. Pick up your phone now and text the word ‘subscribe’ and then your email address to 81222. You’ll then see it in action. It’s great for events, great for charities, shops and many other applications too. As per the social sign ups, if you go for this, don’t hang back in promoting it, put that text everywhere!
• Leverage all customer/prospect touch points – even if you can’t run with the SMS signup route, and you only have a website signup, think about all the places you might be able to entice people on to your list, and how you can entice them. Trade shows, training sessions, conferences… point of sale, shop window, partner websites, banner ads. Check out the section in the emaildirect blog post here, entitled “How to Build an Email List: Offline”
• Give signups something in return – doesn’t have to be money off offers, we could be talking about some top tips. Send a personalised offer.. doesn’t have to be about money. Lay it out all through the signup process – tell them what they should expect to receive and show examples. You can also think about ranking these new signups – ask them what and when they might be interested in joining a paid program of some sort. See how our client Celtic Manor grew their email list organically by encouraging their existing subscribers to recommend their friends – also check out Jordie van Rijn’s excellent signup process on Emailmonday.com.
• Don’t forget your website – you may push all channels towards one form on your website. All cool. Don’t forget though that you can improve signups on your site through search or organic traffic. Make the form more obvious. Link to it from your header and footer. Place links to it at points across your site enticing people with exclusive content if they sign up.
• A step further? – Do you have “share this email” or “share this article” links in your existing emails? You can make this shared version of your email carry specific content – so think about adding a data capture form to all shared versions of email newsletters or promotions.

Right, that was enough to get my friend started list building. What about you? Would be great to hear your ideas on how to build a list organically.

Steve Denner
Director

The MessageFocus/Salesforce integration application allows MessageFocus users to target and send email marketing campaigns, quickly and easily, using important CRM data from Salesforce. This integration allows users to take Campaign Members from within their Salesforce account and transfer to MessageFocus in real-time, with just the click of a button, without the worry of manual data transfers.

This functionality means increased data security and data accuracy for better campaign performance, removing the need for manual data uploads.

The process is very simple to follow and intuitive for users. Data selections can be made in Salesforce and then added to a Salesforce campaign. Then with just a couple of clicks, the users decide where the list should go in the corresponding MessageFocus account. Want to automatically create a campaign and append the data at the same time? No problem, users can then be transported directly to the new MessageFocus campaign that they just created.

Steve Denner, Director at Adestra, comments: “We’re delighted to be integrated with Salesforce. It gives their users access, through an easy to use interface, to our powerful enterprise email platform, MessageFocus. Using automated, real-time data transfers improves data security and accuracy – and saves time.”

Key Benefits

• Easy-to-use: send your Campaign Members to MessageFocus from Salesforce in just a couple of clicks.
• Improved data security: remove the need for manual processes when uploading data into MessageFocus.
• Realtime data transfer: enabling up-to-date lists of campaign members to be transferred to MessageFocus.
• Save time and resource: reduce manual processes of downloading and uploading data.

This integration is possible through Adestra’s flexible API that can integrate with many existing systems. By linking systems and automating email activities, businesses can enjoy many commercial benefits that directly affect response rates.

For further information please visit contact press@adestra.com or telephone +44 (0) 1865 242425

We had our own Adestra industry expert, Account Director, Kate Gowers present on; Email: The power and the glory. Below she gives a brief synopsis of what she covered:

30 years ago (way back when the Dead Sea was still only sick), we had one commercial television station, one commercial radio station in London, and we got our news from newspapers and television. Fast forward to 2012 – the consumer of today gets his information from a myriad of sources. He reads his email, watches one of over 500 channels, surfs the net and opens his post. Media has truly fragmented, so the savvy marketer needs to adopt a truly multi-channel approach to keep our consumer’s (limited and transient) attention.

Email marketing is probably the only channel that allows for dialogue – it has the potential to be a true two way conversation. You have the opportunity to reinforce your brand, to educate your customers (or readers) about your offering or industry, to chase that elusive sale, to keep your customers happy and to create advocates amongst your customers (allowing them to do some of your work for you). To achieve all these things, though, you need to talk not SHOUT and ensure that when your programme does initiate response that you LISTEN to what your recipients have to say. Your customers are speaking to you – by opening, or failing to open a message; by clicking (or failing to click) a link and by purchasing (or, you guessed it, failing to purchase) your product or service.

I discuss how best to deliver interesting and relevant (two very important words) content and how best to listen and take note of the response you get.

If you would like to view my presentation, click here.

1. They may have been too busy at the time to read it
2. They may have deleted it by accident
3. The subject line may not have interested them
4. They may have read your email content without turning images on
5. They may have read the plain text version of your email
6. and so on and so on.

The key thing to remember though, is that if a recipient did read your email without turning images on and did not open it’s likely that they just weren’t interested in your message, and won’t open the second time around. To try and engage those who were just too busy the first time, can be an attractive idea to marketers. We spend a lot of time creating our finely tuned email campaigns. Why not try and generate that little bit more ROI from all of that effort?

On the other hand, is the extra ROI worth the risk of a potentially higher unsubscribe rate, a higher number of spam reports and the risk of  annoying people who have read and dismissed your email in the preview pane.

In November 2011, we launched our new “Resend to non-openers” button within the campaigns in MessageFocus. Many of our clients had asked for an easy way to extend the longevity of the email messages, without lots of effort and this was a great answer to their requests. Since then, we have undertaken some research into what impact the use of this functionality has had on our clients results and we’d like to share them with you here.

The results:

• The resent email achieved an open rate that was half that of the original send. So if Email 1 achieved a 20% open rate, the follow up to those who did not open the first time, will achieve around a 10% open rate, increasing your reach by around 50%.
• Unsub rates of the resend were on average 0.06% less than the original email send.

These results show that resending your email campaign to non-openers can increase your email campaign ROI with minimal extra effort. However, it’s important to keep an eye on your results. If you see a big increase in your unsubscribe rate then you need to decide whether it’s worth losing those people, in exchange for the extra opens and clicks? Also, remember to look at the click through rate. If you are getting more opens, but people aren’t clicking through, is it really worth sending the email again?

As with many things in email marketing, give it a test. You’ll never know unless you try and our research shows resending to non-openers can have a big impact on your results.

Reena Mistry
Marketing Director

This year at the show, we are inviting visitors to come to our stand and join us for a glass of bubbly. You’ll find us on stand B9 on the showfloor.

Also at the show this year:

Email advice centre
The Adestra Email Advice Centre is a great opportunity to gain free email marketing advice from experts. Each session lasts 20 minutes and we can cover any aspect of your email marketing, from your email templates, to how to re-engage your inactive email addresses.

Book your place now

Adestra and PPA UK Publishing Email Benchmarking Survey
Last year, we launched the first ever UK Publishing Email Benchmarking survey in conjunction with the PPA. This is the first time that such a survey has been conducted for the publishing industry. It has found some interesting statistics gathered from publishing experts across the sectors, core activities and differing organisation sizes. You can either download the survey here, or come to our stand and request a copy to be sent to you.

Download the survey here

Demo of our new email platform
Last year, we launched the new version of our advanced email marketing platform MessageFocus. Why not come to our stand for a demo and find out why so many publishers say that MessageFocus is the best email platform for the publishing industry.

Watch our presentation – “Automated Email Content – Why isn’t Everyone Doing it?”
Time is money and content is king, right?  So, if you could save time and deliver timely, personalised content… that would be awesome.  In this presentation, Parry Malm from Adestra will go over 4 real-world case studies of how major publishers are improving their content while simultaneously saving time… and will let you know what you need to do to reach automated awesomeness. Presenting with him, will be Dan Stone from Future Publishing, talking about steps they have taken to automate their email marketing.

Time: 14:00
Place: Digital & Multi-Publishing Theatre
Date: Tuesday 28th February 2012

To register for the show (if you haven’t already), visit the Publishing Expo website here >

The Publishing Software Company (PSC), specialists in producing computer software for the magazine publishing industry, which includes ad sales management and invoicing announces integration of their Contact Manager with Adestra’s MessageFocus, an advanced email marketing platform.

The integration allows users to select individuals in their PSC Contact Manager database quickly and easily, and then send the selected contacts to their MessageFocus account where they can both broadcast and manage campaigns from within the MessageFocus email platform. MessageFocus has a multi-tiered design that is ideal for the business structure of publishers, allowing multiple brands or divisions to all exist separately as part of one account. This is unique – no other email service provider has been designed in this way.
Post-email send information, recorded by the comprehensive MessageFocus reporting suite, is then transferred back into PSC reporting all the bounces. This, combined with other data collected through MessageFocus forms, is added to the PSC database allowing advanced targeting and segmentation. Contact information, therefore, is automatically updated and users of PSC’s software will see a message next to the contact if their information has been flagged as bounced. This means the user can manually contact and update details to keep the data clean.
From one-off broadcasts to more comprehensive integration, the new Adestra/PSC partnership helps marketers co-ordinate and manage multiple direct marketing promotions and handle responses in a reactive manner. This benefits users in a number of ways: giving greater control over their email marketing; improving bounce suppression and deliverability; and, using best practice guidelines, can significantly improve response rates. This, combined with the benefits that the unique structure that Adestra’s MessageFocus brings, makes for a great partnership.

Steve Denner, Director at Adestra, comments: “We’re very pleased to have agreed this partnership with PSC. It gives their users greater flexibility, and enables them to maximise the value of their data through using powerful email marketing tactics with our email platform MessageFocus. With our experience in the publishing sector, this integration will benefit our existing and new clients – the bottom line is improved response rates.”

Laurence Cope, Managing Director of the Publishing Software Company, said “With this addition of PSC’s link to Adestra it now means that PSC’s clients can quickly and easily send their selected contacts to Adestra’s MessageFocus where they can send out bulk emails and manage their email campaigns using one of this country’s best email marketing platforms. PSC’s programs consist of a number of inter-connected programs which includes solutions for advertising sales order entry, contact management (CRM), accounting, subscription and controlled circulation management and flatplanning. Whether you are searching for key account information, monitoring sales performance, copy chasing, invoicing, analysing trends or managing workflow, PSC’s ensures increased productivity through shared information which can be tailored to each individual so that for example sales, accounts, production and management can only see and or change what they need to do their jobs.”

For more information on PSC contact Laurence Cope on +44 (0) 203 1574044 or email Laurence@p-s-c.co.uk  
For further details on Adestra visit www.adestra.com   or contact press@adestra.com , +44 (0)1865 242425

Adestra today launches the Adestra Customer Charter and becomes the first Email Service Provider [ESP] in the UK to do so. Not only does this demonstrate the company’s focus to be the most customer-centred ESP, but the clear and open Customer Charter details the standards of service it aims to provide clients and shows the best channels for communication with the management and support teams.

The Adestra Customer Charter clearly differentiates the company from others in the email marketing sector. With many players ‘obsessed’ with the technology side of things, Adestra is taking a more holistic, customer-centred approach by formalising the commitment to service levels, which is based on continual improvement.

Adestra is already highly respected by its client base and throughout the email marketing industry, a fact borne out by their high retention rate of 98.7%. The Customer Charter builds on this and shows customers what to expect. Henry Hyder-Smith, MD at Adestra, explains:

“The Adestra team has always believed customer service to be paramount, and our Customer Charter goes a step further, formalising the process of interfacing with clients and detailing the standards of service we are aiming for.

“By introducing the Customer Charter this shows clients how we value them and means we are completely open and up-front, so they know what to expect.”

At Adestra, the team seeks to provide the highest possible levels of customer support and intelligent, innovative consultation. They recognise that their clients have the right to expect a fair, efficient and polite service from Adestra that meets their needs.

The Customer Charter is based on direct feedback from clients on what is important to them. The company is committed to making sure that all employees keep to the principles of high quality customer service. It accepts that it may have some work to do to achieve all of these, but it will be open with clients about its progress and any improvements made.

If you would like a copy – please click here

Press Contacts
For more information, please contact press@adestra.com

It shows publishers are doing a number of things right and using email marketing to deliver serious response / ROI metrics, as well as taking steps towards a single customer view. So medals all round and move on to something else? Well, not quite. What is also apparent is that publishers are ignoring some key areas, particularly emerging channels, and lag behind the practices being implemented by their peers in the US.

Lacking some basic email practices and not embracing new channels can be critical for current and future comms activity and needs to be addressed urgently. These are not ‘theoretical’ improvements; these are proven, practical techniques to drive response, particularly sign-ups. Data is king, we all know that. But what are publishers doing to grow it, keep it, clean it and manage it?

Read the article here

Request a copy of the survey here