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While email is obviously a mission-critical channel for all StrongMail customers, it typically is not the only channel that they use to market to customers and prospects. Online ads, affiliate programs, partner programs, and their own website are just a few examples of other methods that marketers use to communicate with subscribers, customers, prospects and the public at large.

As with StrongMail EAS and Message Studio, each of these other channels provides some level of reporting data. For the marketer, that can mean a lot of work to aggregate, view and analyze all of that data in a coherent and holistic way. Enter the web analytics products.

There are several web analytics products out there. The one's that we hear about most frequently are Omniture, Coremetrics, Google, and WebTrends, but there are others out there. For the most part, all of these products work in the same way--by attaching tracking variables to the URL that are passed to the web analytics engine when a link is clicked. That allows the click data to be captured both by the originating system and the web analytics system.

You can set up analytic tags in StrongMail or Message Studio by creating a content block file that contains the appropriate information for the analytics tag. Here are two examples:

OMNITAG {
cid=##SERIAL_NUMBER##&rid=##USERID##
}

GOOGTAG {
utm_source=email&utm_campaign=##segment##
}

In the first example, there are two parameters that would be included based on StrongMail system tokens--Serial Number and User ID. In the second example, the campaign parameter is passed a value from the mailer's data source.

Next, you just need to append the analytics tag token to each link you want track in your mailing. Here's an example:

http://www.domain.com?##OMNITAG##

If you want to include the StrongMail click tracking, you could set up the URLs like this:

##CLICKTAG##http://www.domain.com?##OMNITAG##

You can do this manually when you are creating the content or add the StrongMail clicktag token(s) automatically in Message Studio using the Add Clicktags feature. Now you will be able to see the click data in your web analytics dashboard, along with other metrics from all of the other streams that you tag. Gathering and analyzing the data in this fashion can reveal patterns and segments that may not be readily apparent when viewing the metrics of an individual stream.

To make the process of adding web analytics tracking tags even easier for Message Studio users, we are adding the ability to manage web analytics tags within the UI in an upcoming release. Message Studio users will be able to configure the system with default tracking tags, as well as have the option to utilize unique analytic tracking tags. Users will be able to select the default parameters and apply them individually or globally to all of the links in an mailing or modify the parameters for special cases (promotions, partnerships, etc) on the fly (as seen in the screen shot below)

Here's a sneak peek at the new Add Clicktags screen in Message Studio 4.1:

Within the Add Clicktags screen, you can now apply pre-configured web analytics tags to individual or all links within the template. Message Studio also provides a way to modify the web analytics tag just for a particular link in the message. Business users now will have a flexible, easy-to-use method for inserting the appropriate tags in their email tracking links.
 

In my last post, I introduced the concept of using StrongMail's token capabilities as a way to add relevance to your messages. But as I alluded to in that post, tokens are versatile tools that in addition to inserting personalization data, can also aid in managing and modifying your content with minimal effort.

I'm going to illustrate two ways that you can use tokens, along with content blocks to minimize the amount of work you need to do to get your mailings out each time. The first one involves locking down the template and just editing the copy. The second one makes certain parts of the template reusable across multiple mailings.

METHOD 1: Locking Down the Template

Many of you out there have invested heavily in your email template(s). You've had designers re-do the layout and spent countless hours and dollars getting the design just the way you want it. All that remains for each mailing is plugging in the content specific to each mailing.

Now, you can edit the whole template for each mailing, which can introduce rendering issues and/or template breakage or you can identify which parts of the template change for each mailing and tokenize them. Then all you have to do is upload the part that has changed as a content block and reference it using tokens.

This keeps the layout HTML stable while letting you or your copy editors fiddle with the copy as much as you want. When you are done, just upload the content block file and send a test email to see how it all gets assembled. Using this method, you could even have multiple people working on different parts of the copy without having to worry about one person over-writing another.

This method does take a little extra effort to compartmentalize the template and set up the token/content block schema, but that's a one-time cost and moving to this method can greatly improve your content editing process, especially if your template has a lot of moving parts.

METHOD 2: Reusable Pieces

Maybe you don't have a single template that you use for all of your mailings, but you do have parts that get re-used over and over in different mailing. Things like the mast head or side bar or unsubscribe text. If that's the case, you can start tokenizing the elements that get reused from mailing to mailing.

There are two ways to approach tokenizing the content elements. The first involves creating a single content block file that has all of the reusable elements in it. This option has the benefit of keeping things simple; there's only one one file to keep track of and everything is all in one place. The trade-off is that when a change needs to be made to one element in the content block, you have to edit the file that has ALL of the elements, which could increase the risk of unintentionally modifying one of the other elements.

The second option involves putting each reusable element into its own content block file. Going this route protects you against accidentally corrupting other elements and also lets you use the individual files as building blocks, but it also means keeping track of more files for each mailing.

Once you select how you want to manage the reusable elements, you can easily call those assets from the content block(s) using tokens and then, as in method 1 above, focus on the parts of the email template that change from mailing to mailing.

Whichever method you use, the goal is to make executing your mailings easier, while providing flexibility and control over your content. If you need more information about how to use tokens and content blocks, take a look at Chapter 6, Customizing a Mailing, in the StrongMail System Administrator's Manual.

In a previous post, I talked about how important it is to send the right message to the right recipient at the right time and how you can use the Business rules editor in Message Studio to create that right message. One of the most powerful features of email marketing is the ability to easily personalize the message to individual recipient.

The Business rules editor is great for the emailer who wants to easily manage complex dynamic content, but it might be overkill for the emailer who just wants to include some profile data in their messages. For emailers who just want some basic personalization, StrongMail's tokens are a simple tool that makes it easy to insert dynamic content from your database (you can also do the same thing with reusable content, like a header, footer or legal text). Read on to learn how you can easily insert relevant content into your emails to make them more appealing to recipients.

The first step is to determine what information you have or what you want to collect to use in the content. The most obvious (and common) is profile information:

• Name
• Address
• Preferences
• Membership level
• Subscription settings
• Favorite topics
  

Most mailers collect some additional information besides just email address when a subscriber registers. It may just be basic contact information or detailed preferences. Even if you don't collect anything except an email address at sign up, you can use your mailings to encourage recipients to provide more information about themselves.

Once you have some collected the information that you want to use in your email, you just have to decide where in email message you want to put it. Many mailers use the recipients first name to insert a personalized salutation (e.g., Dear Ivan), but you could also write the body copy to incorporate the recipient's name (Ivan, we noticed that you purchased our document kit, but have not downloaded it from the website yet).

To accomplish either of these, all you would have to do determine the name of the field that contains the first name and add that to the template with a token. For demonstration purposes, I will pretend that the field in my data source is called first_name. My token would look like this:

##first_name##

To create the salutation, I just insert the token in the copy like this:

Dear ##first_name##,

This can be done manually when creating the email copy or by using the personalization wizard in Message Studio:

Now, most emailers know that you don't always have the necessary profile data in every single record and you certainly don't want recipients to see a message that says, "Dear ," as the salutation. Luckily, StrongMail's token capabilities include the ability to add a default value if there is no value in the data source. So rather than than inserting, "Dear ,", you would get something like "Dear Product Talk Subscriber," which, while somewhat formulaic, doesn't look like your message is broken.

Default values can be inserted using the personalization wizard in Message Studio or the following manual notation:

Dear ##first_name[Product Talk Subscriber]##,

This would insert the value of the first_name field if there was one and if the field was empty or null, it would insert "Product Talk Subscriber". Pretty nifty, eh?

There are lots of things you can do with tokens. They can be used in both the body of the email and the envelope, so there are a lot of options on what, how, and where to use them. As I mentioned earlier, you can even use tokens to insert content blocks into a template (or even a section or whole email template). You can even use them as a look up variable to get other data or content (that's a more advanced topic that you will see discussed later).

For now, try out simple tokenization and see how they can improve the value of your message and increase response rates.

Previously, I wrote about how you could implement Forward to a Friend (FTAF) capabilities utilizing the StrongMail Transactional Server in concert with Message Studio or StrongMail Server. This option is great for emailers that want flexibility and control over their offers, branding and messaging. But not everyone has the option to roll out such a powerful tool.

For those of you who who are looking for a lightweight tool to help with list growth, you can use the dynamic content capabilities of StrongMail Server or Message Studio to automatically include a link (and some supporting text/HTML, if you like) that drives non-subscribers to your subscription page. The text might read something like this--

Did you receive this email from a friend, family member or co-worker? Would you like to get your own version, specifically tailored to your preferences? Sign up to receive our weekly newsletter and other emails at our subscription page.

With something like this in your email template, even if recipients forward the email around to their friends using just the forward feature of their email application, there is already an opportunity in the email for the friend to sign up and get their own version. It doesn't provide the same customizable experience that you would get with FTAF, but at least there is an easy and clear call to action for anyone who isn't already a subscriber.

So, now you are asking, "How can I easily add this to every mailing I send out? Good question! I have provided the steps and a sample below. These are for Message Studio v4, but the process is similar in StrongMail Server

1. create a text file with the following format
   
   

   TokenName {
   content
   }

   Here's a sample of what it might look like:

   new_subscriber {
   

   Did you receive this email from a friend, family member of co-worker? Would you like to get your own version, specifically tailored to your preferences? Sign up to receive our weekly newsletter and other emails at our <a href="http://www.yourdomain/your_subscription_page.htm">subscription page.
   

   }
   
   
2. Upload or copy/paste the file into Message Studio in CONTENT LIBRARY>>CONTENT BLOCKS>>CREATE CONTENT BLOCK
3. Add the content block to your email template (this can also be done when assigning the template to a mailing, but adding it to the template ensures that it is available any time the template is used).
4. In the template, add the token (##new_subscriber##) in the location that you want the content block inserted into the template.
5. When the mailing is launched, the message will be assembled with the section with the new subscriber link in it.

You could also do the same thing by adding the static content to each template, but the content block makes it easy and portable to a variety of templates.

Many email marketers want to encourage their subscribers to reach out to people that they know and encourage them to either subscribe to the newsletter or go to the website. This can be accomplished two ways--the recipient uses the forward feature of their email software to send a copy of the email to others or they click on a link in the email which sends another email to the address(es) that the original recipient enters.

The first method is certainly the easiest for both the marketer and the recipient, but it has several shortcomings:

• No tracking
  Every click on the forwarded email looks like a click from the original recipient
  
  
• Lack of control over the offer
  If you are segmenting your list, recipients may be receiving content or offers that are not matched to their preferences or for which they are not eligible
  
  
• Unintentional unsubscribes
  When a recipient forwards their email to another person, the links for the original recipient remain in the email, which could lead to the unintentional removal (or profile change if there is a subscription management link in the email) of the original recipient if one of the forwardees accidentally or intentionally clicks on the unsubscribe link
  
  
• Broken templates
  While using the forward function of an email application is fine for sending primarily text correspondence, it can wreak havoc with the design and layout of commercial HTML email, which doesn't present your message or your brand in the best light

What marketers want is the second option--an easy way for their recipients to initiate a new message to be sent to people they know that will increase the opportunity that the new recipient will either sign up to receive future communications or make a purchase on a website. This is commonly referred to as Forward to a Friend (FTAF). The StrongMail Transactional Server can be used to facilitate FTAF capabilities in concert with a standard mailing sent via either StrongMail Server or Message Studio. Here's a high level view of how it would work:

1. Set up a standard mailing in Message Studio or StrongMail Server
2. Set up a mailing on the StrongMail Transactional Server with the same template/header (or a different one if you want to send a separate mail to FTAF recipients) 
3. Create the following web pages and host them on a web server:
   1. FTAF landing page with form elements to collect information on who to forward the email to
   2. Confirmation page to notify the sender that their FTAF email was successfully sent
   3. Error page to notify the sender that there was a problem with sending the FTAF email 
4. Configure the form on FTAF landing page to send an API call to the Transactional Server to send the transactional mailing to the recipient(s) indicated in the form
5. Place a link in the standard mailing template that takes recipients to the FTAF landing page
   

In addition to the standard setup described above, there are a number of variables that you could modify to enhance how the FTAF works:

• Control the number of FTAF recipients permitted from a single FTAF request to reduce abuse and spam complaints
  
• Determine whether the same FTAF landing page could be used for multiple mailings (reduces the effort required to execute FTAF mailings)
  
• Design the FTAF landing page and the forwarded email to permit the original recipient to include a comment to the FTAF recipient
  
• Decide whether the FTAF recipient receives an identical or modified version of the email
  

There are many ways to configure FTAF using the StrongMail Transactional Server. Identify what you want to accomplish with your FTAF program and then choose the option that best suits your needs.

StrongMail has two sets of APIs for managing mailings--the Web Services SOAP API, which controls batch mailings and the Transactional Mailings API, which controls transactional mailings. The Web Services API is included with all EAS installations, but the Transactional Mailings API is only available for those users who have purchased either the Transactional Server or Transactional Mailings module for EAS.

Today, we will be looking at just the Web Services API, which incidentally has two main components of its own. The first is the ClientInfo API, which provides detailed information on a specific mailing or can provide summary-level status information. The other type of Web Services API is the mailing API, which actually handles the creation/modification of mailings. We'll discuss how this information can be used in a bit.

Now if you are a business user, you may be saying to yourself, "That's great, but what do I need to know about APIs? I'm not an engineer...I need a UI." Well, that depends. StrongMail already provides Message Studio a full-featured campaign management and reporting system for business users and for most email marketers, that probably meets 90-100% of your needs with regard to email marketing.

But if you have unique business requirements that may take a while to make it into Message Studio, you can utilize the APIs to control the StrongMail Server and build a solution that is 100% focused on what you need. In fact, several StrongMail customers have done exactly that. They recognized the power and flexibility provided by the StrongMail infrastructure, but needed something that would address a specific business requirement. You can read about some of their stories here and here.

Now, let's take a closer look at each of the StrongMail Web Services APIs. The ClientInfo API is useful for determining and reporting on the current or historical status of a mailing. It provides information such as a complete list of mailings by type (e.g., all completed mailings) or information about any specific mailing specified by either mailing id or config file. (NOTE to business users: the next section gets a bit technical, but hang in there, you'll like the ending.)

Here's an example of how to use the ClientInfo API:

A request is made to the StrongMail Server which asks the server to provide a list of all of the active mailings--

<strongmail-client
 username="login"
 password="pword"
 context="clientinfo"
 action="mailings">
   <mailing>
     <status code="1">Active</status>
   </mailing>
 </strongmail-client>

The StrongMail server responds with the following information--

<strongmail-client
 context="clientinfo"
 action="mailings"
 response="1">
 <mailing file="/sample/mailing1.cfg" serial="112233">
   <status code="1">Active</status>
   <enhstatus>ACTIVE</enhstatus>
   <isrunning>YES</isrunning>
   <reportsent>1</reportsent>
   <reportfailed>1</reportfailed>
   <reportfailedpercent>100</reportfailedpercent>
   <reportdeferred>0</reportdeferred>
   <reportdelivered>0</reportdelivered>
 </mailing>
 <mailing file="/path2/mailing2.cfg" serial="112244">
   <status code="1">Active</status>
   <enhstatus>PAUSED</enhstatus>
   <isrunning>NOTRUNNING</isrunning>
   <reportsent>1</reportsent>
   <reportfailed>1</reportfailed>
   <reportfailedpercent>100</reportfailedpercent>
   <reportdeferred>0</reportdeferred>
   <reportdelivered>0</reportdelivered>
 </mailing>
</strongmail-client>

Now for you business users, this looks like a bunch of gobbledygook, but the example above is what your application development team could use to build a UI that displays what mailings are currently active and their status. And there are a variety of other options for collecting other mailing-related information. Using a combination of this example and other API parameters, they could easily build a dashboard that lets you monitor the mailings on the StrongMail Server in whatever way you like.

Similarly, using the Mailings API, your application development team could build a campaign management system, similar to Message Studio, but tailored specifically to your business and user requirements. And the good news is that in the coming months, we are enhancing the APIs to include even more features, as well as making them more robust and simple to use.

For as long as most email marketers can remember, the mantra of a successful email marketing program has been "The right message for the right recipient at the right time." The challenge with executing such a program is that it takes a great deal of effort and time to do correctly, and those are commodities in short supply for most email marketers. Additionally, email marketers typically have to go outside of their area of expertise in order to accomplish. This raises the barrier for getting the program off the ground, as well as making changes to modify it over time.

Instead of abandoning the opportunity because it is too big or too difficult or too time-consuming, try breaking it up into phases. Not only can this provide an incremental improvement to your marketing program, but by dividing the larger goal into manageable pieces, you can focus on the key aspects of that phase and insure that you have sufficient time to plan and execute effectively.

For now, I am going to discuss the first part of the triad, the right message (stay tuned for articles on the other two parts in the future). Static email content that is sent to your entire email list will certainly resonate with some recipients, but in order to maximize the effectiveness of your mailing, the content HAS to be tailored to the recipient in some fashion. It could be based on past behavior (clicking on a link in a previous email or making a purchase on a website), profile data (demographic, subscription settings or status), or profile analysis (Nearest Neighbor or Market Basket).

Historically, creating this type of content required managing multiple email templates with advanced database queries and scripting or building complex, inflexible and expensive dynamic content engines. However, with the new Rules capabilities in Message Studio 4.0, the cost and complexity of building out such a program disappear.

Business users can create rules that govern what content is inserted into the template or if the content is displayed at all. There's no need to go to a DBA to write a SQL query or to ask your application development team to script up some code that addresses only your current content requirements. You can create sophisticated rules right in the Message Studio 4.0 UI that give you both direct control over the rules and access to modify them (or create new ones) on the fly.

Here's all you have to do start using rules:

1. Go to the CONTENT LIBRARY module in the left-side navigation bar


2. Click on the RULES link


3. On the RULES screen, click the CREATE button at the top of the screen


4. On the CREATE RULE screen, first, select which data sources you want the rule to consider.


5. Then configure the criteria for your rule using the pull down menus (add as many criteria as you need)


6. Next, select what you would like to happen when the rule criteria is met. You can insert a text string, a value from a data source, or a content from a content block.


7. If desired, you can select an action to occur if the criteria is NOT met. This part is optional. If you want nothing to be inserted if the criteria is not met, then do not select this option. If you want an alternative action to occur, check the box for ELSE, USE ALTERNATIVE VALUE OR RULE. In addition to the three actions available in the positive case, the negative case lets you run another rule in addition to inserting values. The rule applied in the negative case must be created before you can assign it, so it's a good idea to map out all of the rules you want to use and create the negative case rules first.


8. Now you are done with creating the rule(s). Click the TEMPLATE link in the left-side navigation bar and open up the template that you want to use the rule in.


9. Use either the WYSIWYG or Source editor to edit the template.


10. Place your cursor in the area of the template that you want the rule to execute.


11. Click the PERSONALIZE button and select the RULES tab in the Personalization pop-up wizard.


12. Select the rule you want to use and click the INSERT button. Repeat as necessary to add all of the elements to the template that you want.


13. Voila! Dynamic content created specifically for individual recipients.

The steps described above illustrate how to implement rules to easily insert dynamic content into a template, but there are many ways that you can use rules to make your messages more relevant. Start off simple and see what works (or doesn't). With the Rules editor, it's easy for business users to add and modify how the dynamic content is inserted. The only limit is your own imagination.