One of the exciting new features in StrongMail 5.0 is a Planning Calendar that enables you to view future and past mailings in a calendar view. From the Mailings screen, simply click the Calendar button from the action bar to view all your mailings in a calendar format.

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.

I just finished two days at ad:tech SF, where I had the opportunity to talk with many customers and prospects about our newly launched Message Studio 5.0. It was great to hear the positive “buzz” about all the new features and enhancements, and I was often asked to demo the top five enhancements. With over 50 new features and enhancements to choose from, it was difficult to choose "My Fav 5 for Message Studio 5.0," but here they are:

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.

Back in November, I explained how to keep mailing assets organized using Campaign Smart Lists in Message Studio. However, I’ve since been asked if there’s another easy way to keep things organized for customers who don’t happen to use the campaign functionality.

The good news is that as an extremely flexbile application, Message Studio also allows you to organize your assets by simply creating a List and manually adding assets according to your own organization requirements.

A StrongMail List is a lot like a traditional folder, but with the added benefit of allowing an asset to be referenced in multiple Lists without creating additional copies of the asset. So, if you want a particular asset to be included in several different Lists, you can go right ahead and add it with no impact on performance.

Creating Lists in Message Studio can be accomplished via these three simple steps:

• From the left-hand navigation menu, click on a menu option (e.g. Standard) under Mailings and select the Add button at the bottom of the menu. Alternatively, you can simply right-click on the Standard Mailings menu node and select Add from the drop down menu.


• Give your List a name that makes sense for the type of assets you will be adding to it.


• Now that your List is created, you can simply drag and drop assets from the List screens right into the List. Right-clicking the asset will also allow you to add it to a List.

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

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.

Each release of StrongMail EAS and Message Studio goes through a rigorous testing and certification process. From the software engineers who unit test their code to the quality assurance engineers who hammer on the application in every way they can think of to try to break it, StrongMail software gets put through the wringer in order to make sure that our customers get the most robust product possible.

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
  

Below is a short list of some of the new features that will be available to 4.2 Beta program participants

• 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
  

If you are interested in being 4.2 Beta program participant, contact us at product@strongmail.com.

This will probably be the last pun that I use to announce the release of a new version of StrongMail EAS and Message Studio (who am I kidding? It's not the last time).

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.

Message Studio

• 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.

The README files have much more information about all of the new features and bug fixes in this release, so be sure to review it to get all of the details.

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.

Testing elements of your mailings is one of the most effective ways to improve performance of your marketing campaigns and with email, unlike off line media (print, radio, TV) there is almost no additional cost associated with deployment.

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

This is a great way to try out new elements of your mailing. The A/B testing feature in Message Studio lets you send the test to all or part of your subscriber list, so you can test a particular change with just a sample of your list (e.g., 20%) without affecting everyone else. After you send the tests and determine the winner, you can easily assign those parameters to the remaining unsent recipients and then launch. There's no need to create another mailing or figure out who received the test email and who didn't.

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.

I just received an email from one of our partners which had a fantastic example of how to use a novel, yet relevant subject line to pique recipients' interest and get them to read your email. Here it is:


I get so many emails that either try to trick me into opening with a subject line that is unrelated to the actual content (Instantly Own your own Business) or is so generic (Missive: May 2008) that even if I know who the sender is and want their email, I am not motivated to open it because it doesn't stand out amid the other noise in my inbox.

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!

If your company has multiple staff members working on your email marketing programs, you are probably interested in learning more about Message Studio's role capabilities. Roles can streamline your work flow and insure that individuals working on your email only have access to the functions relevant to them. This is especially important for those companies that are governed by security processes or by compliance regulations.

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.

A description of each in included below.

• 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

But those are not the only roles you can have. Message Studio allows you to create roles using any of the permissions that are available for each functional area. Below, you can see all of the different permissions that are available.

You can create roles specific to your business or based on the needs of different types of users. For security reasons, only super-users and administrators can create and edit roles, so you don't have to worry about unwanted roles popping up or existing roles changing beyond their intended scope.

If you are a marketer (or support a marketing team) that needs or wants to send emails in multiple languages which use different character sets, you can use Message Studio or EAS to accomplish that. EAS provides a bit more flexibility, since it allows users to set both the incoming and outgoing character set for an email template, but for most users, setting the outgoing character set is sufficient to meet their needs.

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.
  

Now that you are an expert in languages and character sets, let me clarify how you can send messages using different character sets. Like any mailing, you need content. In Message Studio, content has to be imported into the system in either ASCII or UTF-8.

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.

As with all mailings, but especially for content in foreign languages (at least foreign to you), make sure that you test the template and the mailing. Beyond the normal testing process you may have in place, be sure to view the message using the same applications that recipients will be using. This will aid you in avoiding any embarrassments should the applications that recipients use have rendering issues that would not be evident using your normal testing environment.