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.