Influencer
Influencer is a powerful viral marketing solution that enables you to extend the reach of your existing email and online marketing campaigns into Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, blogs and other social channels. Unlike typical social sharing solutions, Influencer creates an interactive experience that motivates consumers to share offers and information with their networks. See my previous post for ideas on leveraging Influencer in your online marketing efforts

Social Notes
Social Notes delivers instant social interaction into any email campaign and makes it easy for your subscribers to share branded email content across the most popular social networks, blogs and email, all while engaging in a contextual dialog.

Forward to a Friend (FTAF)
FTAF provides your subscribers with the quickest and easiest way to share your email messages directly with their friends via email. FTAF provides subscribers with direct access to their web-based address books including Yahoo!, Gmail, AOL, MSN and Hotmail and gives you visibility into your top forwarders, as well as the ability to track multi-generational forwarding.

All of these features provide marketers with the industry's most comphrehensive solutions for "socializing" their email marketing campaigns and monetizing their investment in social media.

Please send comments, questions and any feedback to me at dcormier@strongmail.com. You can also follow me on Twitter @daveacormier

While showing the product to dozens of interested parties over the 2 days, I often found myself talking about Influencer in the context of extending the reach of email marketing programs. This makes sense considering that StrongMail also offers a leading email marketing platform. But the reality is that Influencer allows a marketer to inject rich social networking functionality into any web page, social network or other online medium that allows you to click on a link.

While on the flight home, I started jotting down the following list of uses cases where Influencer could be deployed:

• Create a new viral email communication focused on new customer acquisition


• Extend the reach of existing email campaigns by inserting rich offers that motivate and reward sharing


• Extend the reach of online advertising by transforming traditional web-based ads into viral marketing experiences


• Create website-based customer referral programs, motivating sharing activity and rewarding influencers


• Develop and run sweepstakes programs that drive new customer acquisition


• Increase ecommerce revenue by presenting refer-a-friend opportunities within purchase confirmation pages


• Leverage transactional email streams to drive new customer acquisitions with your most engaged customers


• Collect user-generated content and post to popular social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook


• Leverage promotional email campaigns to drive new customer acquisition by replacing traditional refer-a-friend links with embedded influencer programs


• Develop a Twitter-based Influencer promotional and referral campaigns


• Develop an Influencer promotional and referral campaign for your Facebook fan page

If my flight was longer, I’m sure I could have doubled this list.

To learn more about StrongMail Influencer and how it can help your organization monetize social media feel free to drop me a note a dcormier@strongmail.com. You can also follow me on Twitter @daveacormier.

Follow these simple steps to proof your mailing during the creation process.

The Planning Calendar allows you to see all completed and planned mailings, including scheduled, recurring, A/B Test and Transactional for the month, week or day. Once you find the mailing you're interested in, you can mouse over the title to get results data for completed mailings or status information on scheduled ones. From there, you can click on the mailing to bring it up in a separate Mailing tab for even more information.

Completed Mailings will automatically appear on the calendar according to their completed date. Future mailings that have not been launched or scheduled (status = Editing) will appear on the calendar according to the Planned Launch date that was defined when the mailing was created.

Finally, if you have a large amount of mailings, you can filter the type of mailings displayed on the calendar. Choose any combination of one-time, scheduled and recurring mailings, and then further fine tune the results to include A/B test and transactional.

The planning calendar is a great way to keep track of your mailing schedule and optimize them based on their number, frequency and type.

If you have any recommendations for future Product Talk articles, you can send them to me at dcormier@strongmail.com.

1. Dynamic Content Testing and Preview – We have greatly enhanced our Test Mail capability to allow for easier proofing of templates and mailings that include dynamic content before launch using actual recipient data for personalization.

2. Business Intelligence Suite (BIS) – This is a must-have module for any serious marketer who cares about driving better relevancy with their campaigns. BIS allows the marketer to identify trends, anomalies and correlations in customer and response data with easy-to-use OLAP analysis, ad-hoc reporting and dashboarding tools. More information about BIS can be found here.

3. Global Search – No more hunting around to find mailing assets. Our new powerful search capability allows you to quickly find templates, targets, mailings, content blocks and other mailing assets. This is just one of the dozen or so usability enhancements that make Message Studio even more intuitive and easy to use.

4. Planning Calendar – Easily plan and navigate your mailing schedule directly in Message Studio using our Planning Calendar with day, week and month views. Future mailings appear on the calendar according to their planned/scheduled launch date. Past completed mailings are also displayed with visibility into response results.

5. Template Flow View – Now you can navigate templates and mailings by flipping through a collection of template images. This is a great way to browse through your templates and mailings visually to find exactly what you are looking for.

Customers who are interested in upgrading to the 5.0 release should contact their StrongMail Account Manager.

Please send comments, questions and any feedback to me at dcormier@strongmail.com. You can also follow me on twitter @Dave_StrongMail.

If you have any questions, comments or other feedback, feel free to contact me via email. You can also follow me on Twitter.

]]> http://www.strongmail.com/resources/blogs/product-talk/2008/11/using-campaign-smart-lists-to http://www.strongmail.com/resources/blogs/product-talk/2008/11/using-campaign-smart-lists-to Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:50:47 -0800 Message Studio has an innovative feature, called Campaign Smart Lists, which allows users to manage and organize different mailing assets, including Mailings, Templates, and Targets, by Campaign. Since Campaigns in Message Studio are user-definable, you will be able to categorize your mailing assets according to your business requirements. Here’s how it works:

First, you need to define your Campaign in Message Studio. Think of campaigns as logical groupings or categories of your different mailing programs. For example, if you send out a monthly newsletter, you may want to have a campaign called "Monthly Newsletter." While setting up your campaigns, you will have the option to have Campaign Smart Lists automatically created for different mailing assets. When you save the Campaign, a new menu node called "Monthly Newsletter" will be added to all the selected assets. Campaigns are set up in the Administration module.

Next, whenever you create a new target, template mailing or other asset, you will have the option to assign a Campaign. For example, if you were creating a template for your monthly newsletter, you would select Monthly Newsletter for the campaign. This will automatically categorize this template so that any time you select the Monthly Newsletter Campaign Smart List in the menu, you will only see this and other templates that have been assigned a campaign category of "Monthly Newsletter."

Another added benefit of using Campaigns to categorize your mailing assets is that it also adds a filter when creating templates and mailings, so that only the appropriate data is shown, which enhances the user experience.

This feature was introduced in Message Studio 4.1.1. If you haven’t yet updated to this version, contact StrongMail Support to get started.

Here's how to do it:

1.) Create the following group with the groupadd command.

$ groupadd -g 5000 smuser

$ useradd -u 5000 -g 5000 -md /home/smuser -c "Strongmail Linux User " -s /bin/bash smuser

$ cat /etc/passwd
$ cat /etc/group

3.) Assign initial passwords to both accounts. For user smuser assign the password of smuser (type smuser in at this point - lowercase no quotes)

$ passwd smuser
Changing password for smuser
New Password:
BAD PASSWORD: it is based upon a dictionary word

Retype New Password:
$

$ logout

6.) Repeat steps 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 for each additional user account to be created. Note that linux expects the home directory name (/home/smuser1) to be identical with the username (smuser1), the last argument to the
useradd command.

7.) To allow read only access to the strongmail/log directory for read only access, the world permissions of Read/eXecute must be granted to both directories.

Existing Permissions for the directories strongmail and strongmail/log are:

Perms      Owner       Group       Name
drwxrwx--- strongmail strongmail strongmail
drwxrwx--- strongmail strongmail log

Perms       Owner       Group       Name
drwxrwxr-x strongmail strongmail strongmail
drwxrwxr-x strongmail strongmail log

$ cd /data1
$ chmod 775 strongmail
$ cd /data1/strongmail
$ chmod 775 log

Unfortunately, there are just some things that we cannot reproduce in our testing environment. For that, we need the help of our customers. We need customers to put StrongMail EAS and Message Studio through real-world trials, including high-volume and high-frequency sending, very large data sources and advanced targeting queries.

As we get closer to the release of StrongMail EAS and Message Studio 4.2, we are looking for customers who are willing to install the Beta software and test it out using their own templates, mailings, and process. Testing those types of scenarios will make sure that we have captured any remaining issues before the final certification process.

What, you ask, would make someone want to participate in the Beta program? Well, there are many reasons, including

• Early access to new features, enhancements, and bug fixes
• Opportunity to provide real-time feedback and have direct influence on the software
• Extra support from StrongMail for installations and addressing reported issues
• Test new software in advance of its availability
  

• Numerous usability enhancements
• New EAS clustering options
• New and improved APIs
• New dynamic content testing engine
• Enhanced standard reporting options
• Business Intelligence Server integration for advanced and ad-hoc reporting
  

I am excited to announce that the latest release of StrongMail EAS and Message Studio software is now available. This is an exciting release with many new features and security enhancements, including certification on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, versions 4.4, 4.5, and 4.6.

You can download the new version from the StrongMail FTP site. Just download the installation file(s), unpack them and then install at your convenience. Specific instructions for installation are included in the README file. For questions or for further assistance, please contact StrongMail Support.

Included below are details about many (but not all) of the big enhancements.

EAS

• A new HighPriority mailing class has been added that allows Message Studio users to specify high priority for specific mailings.
• Load balancing across Virtual IPs. Users can now distribute the load across IPs within a Virtual Server Group by designating a percentage of the total volume of messages to be sent through a particular IP address.
• A new Feedback Loop report is now available. This report displays the count of FBLs received, categorized by ISPs.
• A new failure category (8xxx) has been added for invalid addresses.

• Ability to send mailings using Normal or High-Priority (related to the EAS enhancement above).
• Ability to filter and sort templates in the Content tab of create/edit mailing screens. This feature allows users to include or exclude approved/unapproved templates and to sort the template pick list by last modified date.
• Ability to do mass deletes on all list screens. This allows users to select one or more rows in any screen that displays multiple items and then click the delete button to remove all selected items at once.
• Ability to copy a template or a content block from one department to another department within the same organization.
• Campaign SmartLists: the most mailing assets (data sources, targets, lists, templates, mailings, etc) can now be assigned to a campaign. When a user does this, a new SmartList will be configured that contains the assets assigned to the campaign.
• StrongTools menu: users can add a web application to be displayed under the StrongTools drop down menu and when clicked will be opened inside a Message Studio tab.
• Enhanced the scheduling options for recurring mailings to allow very flexible options for launch cadences.

Got an idea for an enhancement you would like to see in a future release of EAS or Message Studio? Send an email to product@strongmail.com.

When I talk to customers and prospects, I often ask if they are currently doing or planning to do any A/B testing of their messages. I am always surprised when they say that they want to, but don't. Most of them cite time and effort as the main reason, but some also say that it's too difficult to set up the data and track everything.

Pishaw!

A/B testing your email program doesn't have to be a cumbersome, laborious task. If you aren't doing any testing, it's easy to just try one or two things to see if they have any effect. And if you are thinking that it requires re-working your content, there are other aspects of your mailings that you can test that don't require any effort from your creative team.

In Message Studio 4, doing A/B testing is a piece of cake. Message Studio takes care of splitting and randomizing the data and makes it simple to configure each test with the variables you want to evaluate.

You can create between 2 and 20 splits in a single mailing, though if you are just starting out with A/B testing, I recommend that you start with a small number of splits, say 2-3. Within each split you can control a variety of variables including:

1. Template
2. Format (HTML, Text or multi-part)
3. Headers (From Name, From Address, Subject, etc)
4. Launch date and time

A/B testing doesn't have to be a one-time process either. You can test and tweak as much as you like. Once a month, week or day. Each time you do, you get valuable information about your subscribers and what they respond to in your emails.

Once you have mastered testing single mailing elements, you can move on to multivariate testing to learn how you can fine-tune your email campaigns even further.

For more details on how to configure an A/B split mailing in Message
Studio, check out pages 129-130 in the Message Studio 4.1 User Guide.

This example above demonstrates what you can do (with minimal effort) to improve the visibility of your message. I wanted to open it just to see what they were talking about. The subject line, while somewhat cryptic, made sense to me based on who the sender was (click on the link to see the whole header and top of the content window). The offer inside wasn't my cup of tea, but I forwarded it to some folks who would be interested.

My next post will be about how you can do very simple, very easy tests on your subject line to determine which ones perform best. you can use this to try out a bunch of new ones or just compare a new one against your existing subject line.  Just because it's new doesn't mean that it's better.

Stay tuned!

In Message Studio, a role is a collection of permissions that is assigned to a user. A role belongs to a single organization, but is available across that organization’s sub-organizations.

Message Studio includes four pre-defined roles: Approver, Content Manager, Data Manager, and Mailing Manager, each with different permissions across the functional areas of the application.

• Approver - An approver can edit, view, and approve message templates and mailings
• Content Manager - A content manager can create, edit, delete, and view message templates, attachments, and content blocks
• Data Manager - A data manager can create, edit, delete, and view internal data sources, external data sources, targets, suppression lists, and seed lists
• Mailing Manager - The mailing manager has all permissions pertaining to a mailing

You may be saying right now, "Ivan, you're right, I HAVE been wanting to send emails in multiple languages, but I don't know how." Well, let me get you started. There are few concepts you need to understand so that yo can make the right choices about how to best create your content and configure your mailings.

For starters, let's differentiate between a language and a character set:

• A language is the set of characters, signs, symbols, sounds of a communication system. It includes both syntax, semantics and phonetics that guide how the components of the language are used. English is a language; so are Hebrew, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Tlingit, and Chinese, just to name a few of the approximately 7000 living languages.

• A character set is a collection codes that reference characters/symbols of a language so that they can be used to display/process/store those characters/symbols electronically (typically in computer programs and in telecommunications. The character set is only a mapping; it does not contain any logic for how the characters are used.
  

ASCII is a character set comprised of the characters commonly found on keyboards in the United States. It is one of the most basic character sets and acts as sort of a minimum requirement for character sets. It supports most latin-based languages, but does lack some of the special characters of some languages.

UTF-8 is a super-set of characters from a variety of languages including single-byte characters like the ones in ASCII, as well as languages which use glyphs to represent whole words, such as Chinese. The great thing about UTF-8 is that it can be used to create content for many languages. The less great thing about UTF-8 is that it is not widely adopted in countries outside of the US and Canada.

Luckily, Message Studio (and StrongMail EAS) can both convert content from one character set to another. So, in order to send content to Chinese recipients using the Big-5 character set, you can create the original content in UTF-8, import it into Message Studio and then have Message Studio automatically send the message out using Big-5, which the email reader that the Chinese recipient uses can display properly.

The steps in the mailing work flow to do this require only a few extra clicks. When you upload the template into Message Studio, you open the ADVANCED section on the CREATE/EDIT TEMPLATE screen. You can then set the character set for both the headers and the body. When you launch the mailing, the message assembly engine will convert the characters from UTF-8 to the character set you specified and also set the appropriate header values.

1. Define the Compliance Token

Create a content block file named CanSpamTokenFile.txt (you can use whatever name you like, but make it easily recognizable) with a token called CAN-SPAM (again, you can name the token anything you like, but try to select a token name that is unique and recognizable) and upload it into the Content Block section of the Content Library in Message Studio. You can create the content block file off line using the text editor of your choice or just write it in the text box of the CREATE CONTENT BLOCK screen.

Here is an example of the text you could use in the content block:

CAN-SPAM {
##First_Name##, you are receiving this message because you visited the ##Company_Name## website and signed up to receive information from us. If you would prefer not to receive future communications, click or copy/paste the following URL into your browser: ##Unsubscribe_Link##  to be removed from this mailing list. All Mailings are provided by ##Company_Name##. Our address is ##Company_Address##.
}

NOTE: This is the format for creating tokens in content block files. You can learn more about tokens and content block files in this posting or in the Message Studio product documentation.

This example has tokens that references additional profile data from the target data source. If those token values do not exist in the target data source (First_Name, Company_Name, Unsubscribe_Email and Company_Address), the content block will not populate the values correctly.

To avoid having to put all of those values in every data source, you could create another content block file with tokens for Company_Address, Company_Name, Company_Address and Unsubscribe_Link, since those are not likely to change very often. Another option would be to eliminate the personalization within the content block.

2. Associate the Content Block File with a Template

After you have uploaded your template, scroll to the bottom of the EDIT MESSAGE TEMPLATE screen and click on the + icon next to Content Blocks. You will see the section expand and a shuttle control. The list on the left is all of the uploaded content block files. If you want to use a content block file with the template, select it with your cursor and then click on the right-facing arrow, which should move the selected content block file(s) to the list on the right. Then click on the SAVE button.

3. Insert the Token

Place the token into the email by inserting ##CAN-SPAM## at the appropriate location in the message template. You can do this in the template before you upload it, by manually typing it into the template via the Message Studio online editors or by using the personalization wizard. When the email is assembled, the token will be replaced by the contents of the content block file.

That's it. Now you have a compliance text block that you don't have to write in every version of your email. And you can use the content block in multiple templates, so it's always consistent, both in content and functionality.