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.

Despite it being April Fool's Day, this is no joke. It's 4.1 on 4/1.

StrongMail EAS and Message Studio 4.1 are now available for download. These latest releases of the StrongMail software have a lot a great new features that will appeal to a wide range of users. Customers using Message Studio 3.2.x will be especially interested in the new Migration Tool that we have included which will make the transition from version 3 to version 4 a snap!

Here's a quick breakdown of some of the new features in each version--

StrongMail EAS 4.1

• Overflow to Disk
  Customers can now configure their injecting applications to send SMTP messages to a StrongMail server at a high sustained rate. The StrongMail server buffers the incoming messages to disk to avoid sending server busy messages back to the injecting application. There are two modes, Memory Queue and Disk Queue, that users can choose based on their business requirements.
  

• Pause/Resume Message Assembly API
  StrongMail has added the ability for applications to request that message assembly be paused temporarily but still allow the StrongMail server to continue to accept transactional mailing SEND requests and queue them up until a resume request is received. This enables users to make changes to the transactional mailing without having to shut down the entire transactional messaging process.
  

Message Studio 4.1

• Transactional Mailings
  Customers now have the ability to create, manage, and test transactional mailings through the Message Studio user interface.
  

• User-Defined Asset Lists
  Most menu categories now support user-defined lists. Users can select items and either right-click or drag-and-drop items into the list to create your a custom collection for browsing and organizing data.
  

• Expanded External Data Sources
  This release introduces support for connecting to the following external databases: PostgreSQL, Sybase, IBM DB/2.
  

• Automated Web Analytics Tags
  The Add Tracking Tags screen has been enhanced to allow users to easily add parameters to the tracking URLs that are utilized by web analytics applications. Users can create their own tags or modify the default tags for the following products: Omniture, Coremetrics, and Google Analytics. This feature works with any link-based web analytics software.
  

• Target Editor Enhancements
  The Target Query editor now supports grouping terms with parentheses and allows the of deleting specific terms from a query. Additionally, a data preview button allows users to browse the values contained in a database column and select the value into the query.
  

• Migration Tool
  A new migration tool enables the migration of data from existing Message Studio installations from versions 3.2.3 and 3.2.4 to version 4.1 (upgrades from 4.0 do not need to migrate any data). The migration utility is automatically invoked when you run the setup script for Message Studio 4.1 using the upgrade mode.
  

These are just the highlights. There's much more in each of these releases than I have room to list. If you are a current StrongMail customer, visit the Support Portal today or contact StrongMail Support to get ready for Version 4.1! If you are not a current StrongMail customer and want more information about version 4.1, contact our Sales team to learn more.

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.

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.