What is SPF?

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is a DNS-based email validation system designed to prevent email spam by detecting spoofed mail senders, a common vulnerability that accounts for a large portion of all spam sent.

How will it help me?

If a domain publishes an SPF record, spammers and phishers are less likely to forge e-mails pretending to be from that domain, since the forged e-mails are more likely to be caught in spam filters which check the SPF record. Therefore, an SPF-protected domain is less attractive to spammers and phishers.

Since an SPF-protected domain is less attractive as a spoofed address, it is less likely to be blacklisted by spam filters and so ultimately the legitimate e-mail from the domain is more likely to get through.

What do I need to consider?

To get the best results from implementing SPF it is very important to include all IP addresses that will be sending mail using your domain name such as:-

• Email servers and gateways who deliver directly to the internet
• Web servers who generate emails e.g. confirmations.
• 3rd party suppliers who send billing and statement information
• Mass mailing platforms who distribute newsletters and other company information.

How do I implement it?

You would need to contact your DNS provider to create an SPF record that covers all the IPs in your organisation that do final delivery of mail. If you are managing your DNS yourself there are some excellent resources available on the internet to guide you through the creation of the DNS record.

http://spfwizard.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/content/technologies/senderid/wizard/

I want to know more

The best information resources on the subject is undoubtedly http://www.openspf.net/

When the very first email attachment, compatible across most email programs was sent, people were of course sceptical, but the invention of the email attachment has since revolutionised modern communication. At the time, people didn’t understand that the ability to send photos, music, and other types of documents by email rather than relying on traditional postal systems would change the way we work today. When Borenstein first suggested that his dream was to email people pictures of his grandchildren, people laughed at him. But now (according to the Guardian article) ‘each day in 2012, we send around a trillion Mime* attachments’. The humble Email Attachment actually turned out to be one of the brilliant inventions of our time, providing businesses around the world with the means to operate faster and transfer information more efficiently. It also allowed Borenstein to fulfil his dream. It’s an inspiring idea!

At the start of Rocketseed in 2002, we also had a vision, developing new possibilities for employee email. Ten years ago, few individuals would have understood that an email could drive sales and web traffic for businesses, but this is now what we do for our clients every day. While social media plays its role, Borenstein also thinks that ‘email will always be the best way of contacting specific individuals’ and we tend to agree. But our favourite quote from the father of the email attachment is this. “Similarly, email, which some people say is dying, continues to grow. And most dying things don’t really do that.” At, Rocketseed, we’re positive that email is a growing medium (Check out Rocketseed Email 2.0 here) and one that businesses need to use to the best of their advantage, to promote their social media activity and drive sales.
p.s We’re sad to hear about the price of a postage stamp going up, but our other favourite quote of the day is from @Queen_UK who tweeted ‘60p is more than reasonable for a picture of your gracious and loving Queen’. Perhaps we should also create a nice email signature for Her Majesty.

*(the technical term for the standardisation system invented by Borenstein and his collaborator Ned Freed).’

If you haven’t already noticed, what we really love to talk about at Rocketseed is Email Marketing! So, you won’t be surprised to hear that UK Managing Director Fiona Robson has been speaking again on the subject, this time at the Hotelympia Conference in London, providing the industry attendants with an insight into how they too can drive sales through email marketing. We’d like to share some key highlights and tips from Fiona’s presentation.

If you’re interested in improving your email marketing strategy, there are a few basic techniques which you should already be adopting, such as optimisation for mobiles, more sophisticated segmentation and personalisation, and most importantly testing, testing, testing to ensure the impact of your message is maximised. But at Rocketseed we’d like to move beyond the ‘Batch and Blast’ approach to email marketing and get you to think differently about your emails.

At the recent conference, Fiona posed the question, ‘When is the best time to send an email?’ The audience was divided. We think the best time to send an email is when your customer wants to receive it. It could be on Tuesday afternoon, when they have a break at work, or it may be at 3 O’clock on a Saturday when they’re standing in a queue looking at their mobile phone. The right time to send an email is going to be the right time for the customer. So rather than just blasting emails to try and get more business, we encouraged the audience to think about when their customers would be most interested in hearing from them.

We took a look at the types of emails that companies tend to send to their customers along the purchase cycle, including some specific trigger campaigns aimed at hitting the customer at the right time for them. Some examples included ‘When they’re looking for a product’, ‘When they’re undecided on their choice’, ‘When they’re already planning their holiday’, ‘When they’ve booked or purchased’. These bulk emails are all about engaging with customers at the right time for them. What about when a customer contacts your company? Do you reply on a blank email with no branding? Hopefully not! Branding your emails consistently across all email channels is key in engaging with your customers and maximising sales opportunities.

If you want to think differently about your email marketing, you should be making your emails stand out throughout the sales cycle, engaging with customers to drive sales and integrating with your social sharing activity. Email is a powerful tool, which when integrated with the website and social media channels can lead to increased revenue for your business. Click here to Re-tweet our meme!

The Email Marketing Council seek to champion email as an essential part of the greater marketing mix and an effective direct marketing channel by producing and disseminating best practice guidance, research, case studies, data-driven reports and organising events for the membership.

As Managing Director at Rocketseed UK, Fiona works with our customers to ensure they are making the most of their marketing opportunities via email. The focus is not just on email newsletters but also on everyday business communications. Fiona has over 15 years’ experience in sales & marketing plus ecommerce roles.

Thanks for all the support from our customers in the elections.

Download the Email Marketing meme here (pdf)

When did you last get an email thanking you for flying First Class around the world? Ok, you don’t fly First Class? Well, when did you receive a thank you from a hotel or restaurant? Businesses of all shapes and sizes take our money and often never say thank you for our business. Why not? There may be lots of reasons, including bad manners but it’s unlikely to be because they’ve lost your address.

Airlines, for example, know a vast amount about their customers – name, address, email, phone and credit card details to list a few. Virgin Atlantic charge around £1200 to fly Premium Economy to the Caribbean, but do they ask you how your flight was? No. Could they? Or more importantly, should they? Absolutely! All they have to do is to send a personal email to ask you. They don’t need to do very much to those who give a good rating, but suppose it was poor or average? Wouldn’t a phone call to find out more make a lastingly positive impression?

Personal, 1:1 email is the most underused marketing tool in businesses’ marketing departments. Bulk mail or newsletters blasts, Tweets and Facebook posts all have their role but there’s no medium with greater impact for customer care than the humble hand-typed email.

At Rocketseed, we care as much about personal communications as Chris King, the Customer Manager at Sainsbury’s. We work with our customers to enhance their personal communications to deliver long term results. I bet Lilly Robinson will be the number one advocate for Sainsbury’s for the rest of her life! Good old 1-to-1 personalised communication. Look after customers – they pay the wages!

Let us know what you think…

The group offers a complementary range of channel-enabled services that provide reseller partners with both the capacity and the capability to meet the demands of their customers in the most agile and economic way.

“Rocketseed Mail is a proven marketing channel for SDG. It delivers quantifiable results and provides our sales teams with a constant flow of new business leads – it just works!” Andrew Clarke, Head of Marketing

Download the complete case study here (pdf)

It’s January, the traditionally introspective time when individuals look to self-improvement and businesses look to…well, self-improvement. With lists of resolutions piling up and actions needed, here at Rocketseed we think “CRM” and “Customer Database” should be at the top of every list, as a key way for businesses to improve in 2012.

As a business, your database could be one of your most valuable assets, allowing you to engage with customers, build relationships and most importantly, generate new business. But how valuable is your own database and what can you do to improve it?

A recent Channel 4 documentary aired in the UK investigated the various tools companies are using to collect data about their consumers. The documentary featured a demo of the ‘What am I worth’ app which allows consumers to calculate how much they are worth to businesses based on their online behaviour and consumer preferences.

It’s a fun idea, but actually the basic idea that a single ‘consumer’ can be given this type of potential value is critical, and every business should focus on being able to attribute a specific value for their business in adding a customer to their database. According to the app I am “worth” £525 (around $750, or 6,000 Rand) . How much is one customer on your database worth to you?

It is only when you know this that you can set targets for database growth and measure return on your efforts/spend to grow it.

Of course, the value of your database is also directly related to the quality of the data it contains. Old, out of date contact details will not help you build relationships or generate business if the email addresses no longer exist or the subscriber has lost interest in your product. Equally, if you are purchasing lists through a 3rd party, the likelihood is that you’ll have quantity without the quality. Here are some of our suggestions on other ways that you can grow your database:

• Don’t waste easy opportunities!
Your employees each send out around 15,000 emails a year to customers and potential customers in the course of their normal work. Adding a newsletter sign-up button to your email signatures will encourage the clients interacting with you to subscribe to your database. (With Rocketseed Mail you can also track the sign-ups that your emails deliver, as well as your conversion rate from clicks to sign-up.)

• Use your social media communities
You’ve probably already got sign-up forms on your website, but have you integrated your newsletter sign-up with your Facebook page? Are you promoting your sign-ups on Twitter? Think about an integrated approach across all your channels.

• Incentivise new sign ups
Run a campaign on your everyday email to encourage new subscribers, providing them with a reason or incentive for joining the list. You can see an example case study for All Star Lanes, where we got a 40% conversion rate from clicks to sign-up.

• Use organic data to prevent database churn
According to Lyris, the average list churn for a business averages 20% -30% per year. With Rocketseed Mail you can use the ‘Receivers List Builder’ report to pull off a ready-made list of all email recipients that your business has contacted within a particular date range. These are current, engaged customers that your business has started interacting with. Invite these users to ‘Opt in’ and you’ll have a great way to keep your list continually topped up.

It was also interesting to see, at the end of last year, that Google started testing a new form of Google Adwords with Honda. The new format included a direct email subscription option, which allows companies to capture an email address opt-in via search, without the person subscribing even visiting the corporate website (and, by the way, the sign-up is pre-populated for logged in gmail users). This type of ‘search and sign-up’ technique will ultimately allow companies to grow ‘targeted’ quality databases through their paid for adverts.

I wonder how much value Google will attribute to these ads vs. normal adwords after the testing period is over? What is key however, is the undisputed need to focus on database growth, and it is clear that businesses do need to embrace new tools for gathering data, and establish an ROI for the mechanisms that drive results for their business.

So whether it’s through Google Search, Rocketseed Mail or Facebook integration, our advice for 2012 is to ensure you are adding ‘quality’ new sign ups to your database, not just re-using old data, or scatter-bombing large purchased lists. Make growing your database your New Year’s resolution this year as it could be your most valuable asset by next Christmas.

2011

2011 has seen new Managing Directors, Robyn Woods-Child (Australia) and Fiona Robson (UK) enjoy equally successful first years at Rocketseed. Both sets of feet are firmly under the desk, high-heels are at the ready and new business is rolling in on both sides of the world.

The roll-out of the upgraded Rocketseed platform is now near completion, providing Rocketseed customers across the globe with an improved user interface, additional functionality and greater opportunity for targeted results.

Rocketseed has also pioneered the launch of Email 2.0 next generation technology… Not sure what this is yet? Click here to find out more.

2012

In 2012, we predict a dramatic increase in demand for smarter more cost effective marketing solutions like Rocketseed. We will be focusing on helping our clients achieve higher ROIs and finalising the roll-out of our smarter platform to ensure that all customers are equipped with the tools to target customers and prospects wherever they may be.

We also expect to see further integration of Rocketseed with other digital platforms, such as CRM systems, in 2012 and the continuing integration of email and social will be a key driver for Rocketseed as we leverage our platform’s unique direct response capabilities (think more friends, more followers, more accountability) by reaching busy executives on the go.

And finally, we’re rather proud of our Rocketseed logo already but as with all kinds of seed, we’re expecting it to grow! In 2012 we will be developing our brand identity and looking forward to the launch of a brand new website. Watch this space!

As Rocketseed continues to operate globally, we’re pleased to provide a local update on 2011 news and events, as well as wishing you a Happy New Year from all 4 corners of the world:

Highlights from South Africa

Tess Sulaman

Managing Director
Rocketseed, South Africa (effective January 1 – Congratulations!)

2011

• “Rocketseed has been bumped up from a level 2 to level 1 BEE contributor.”
• “We started to develop our new, improved customer service team.”
• “Our Technical experts have developed an email archiving and compliance tool through alliance with Symantec and IS.”
• “We’ve demerged our SME business into Clikit Media, to improve focus for Enterprise customers.”
• “And finally, our Business Development Director has tied the knot- Congratulations Wade and Bianca.”

2012

• “We’re looking forward to settling into our new Rocketseed Johannesburg office, which will be the hub for our South African and Sub-Saharan business.”

Highlights from the UK

Fiona Robson

Managing Director
Rocketseed UK

2011

• “Rocketseed has expanded its UK client base into Ireland.”
• “Rocketseed UK became a certified member of the DMA.”
• “Rocketseed was featured on the front cover of the Irish Times business section, with the tagline, ‘Email beats Facebook.’ (Fiona Robson 1. Mark Zuckerberg 0).”

2012

• “We’re looking forward to speaking at Hotelympia technology hub (Feb 26-March 1), and International Hotel Technology Forum – May 2011 and hope to see you there!
• “We are also working on developing strong partnerships with Rocketseed Application Service providers”.

Highlights from Australia

Robyn Woods-Child

Managing Director
Rocketseed Australia

2011

• “Rocketseed has signed new Enterprise customers like Melbourne IT.”
• “Rocketseed has expanded its Australian client base into New Zealand.”
• “The Rocketseed Reseller group has grown rapidly along with addition of the first Systems Integrator now on board.”

2012

• “No babies or weddings down this end of the globe in 2011, we will try harder in 2012!”

Highlights from the US

Scott Ellis

Director
Rocketseed US

2011

• “Rocketseed has signed new Enterprise customer Choice Hotels International and is finalizing an agreement with one of the world’s leading technology solutions organizations after a successful pilot.”
• “Rocketseed has seen the birth of the first Ellis baby!”

2012

• “The US business continues to see a steady stream of Google Apps users coming on board; Rocketseed Gmail and Google Analytics integrations are proving a real hit.”