Missing In Action

By Eleanor Workman

Email delivery can be every email marketer's best friend but also occasionally biggest headache. Recent research from Goodmail found that 20% of B2C messages to qualified email addresses don't get delivered to the inbox.

Over the past few years we've seen stats that suggest up to 14% of emails are missing, yet to be delivered, floating around in hyper space. Goodmail's research over Q1, 2009, placing this missing figure at 15% shows us that nothing has changed. The ISPs are still as stringent as ever in blocking emails, whether this is due to volumes trying to be delivered or simply ISPs are not liking the emails we are sending, it still comes back to the fact that this "missing" figure has not improved and we need to work together to prove to ISPs we are responsible email marketers.

But, as ever there is answer. Goodmail Certified Email. Prove to Goodmail that you are a responsible email marketer, that your data is continually cleansed, that your recipients have legally opted in and you are sending targeted and relevant emails that they want to receive and they will accept you on their Certified Email Programme. For a small price per thousand Goodmail will deliver your emails, directly into your recipients Yahoo, BT and AOL inboxes with images enabled.

And even better, Goodmail has now Goodmail Video tokens, allowing email marketers to embed video within email itself, without negatively impacting deliverability.

Help is here through the Goodmail programme, but as email marketers the one thing we need to remember is targeting. Smaller segments but much more relevant content. It may mean a little more work for some us (dynamic content is a godsend, and dotMailer email marketing platform allows you to report on individual segments of your data and dynamic content insertions so you don't lose out on your response analytics) but your emails will be well received and the ISPs will like you more.

The country's best email marketing workshop hits Nottingham

By Cliff Guy

For those of you who know about Ready Steady Email - The DMA's extra special email marketing workshop (really practical and hands on, really good fun) but havent had a chance to attend one yet, here's some breaking news.

The Ready Steady Email workshop is coming to Nottingham on July 2nd. If you're in the vicinity and you're in marketing, you should be in there!

If you don't yet know about Ready Steady Email or havent heard the buzz, click here to find out more.

dotMailer heads up the M6

By Eleanor Workman

Last week some of the dotDigital Group Executive team headed up North to our Manchester offices to host our Digital Marketing Inside Knowledge Seminar.

Attendees to our third Inside Knowledge seminar arrived in droves (extra chairs had to be purloined from adjacent meeting rooms just to meet the demand) to learn more about the key factors for success in the email marketing and digital journey.

Also in Manchester... our Technical Director Simon Bird presented a preview to our soon to be released Hitting the Checkout ecommerce site benchmarking report at the first ECommerce Expo North.

The third report in our hugely successful series of digital marketing benchmarking reports, the report and presentation centred around how to maximise ecommerce site revenue and add value to visitors.

The report is due to be released in the next few weeks - register to be the first to get it at www.dotcommerce.co.uk/hittingthecheckout

Watch out for further details of the next Inside Knowledge seminar where we will wow you with the industry secrets you need to know - coming soon.

Mind your language!

By Cliff Guy

Email marketing knows no national boundaries, and dotMailer has clients from across Europe and the globe sending campaigns to contacts in their own countries, in their native languages.

No surprise then that we’ve had a lot of requests from clients asking us to include translations of the Unsubscribe and Forward to Friend links in their emails.

Initially, clients asked to provide their own translations, some using in-house language skills others using tools like Google Translate and Babelfish, to turn the English language text into their mother tongue.

Lost in translation

However, like a game of Chinese Whispers, it transpired that some attempts at translations by clients lacked something in the quality control area.

Mentioning no names of course, one client even submitted a translation for their unsubscribe link that should have read ‘Please provide your email address’ but actually read ‘Please provide your girlfriend’!

While some other email service providers appear to be continuing down the route of leaving the headache of producing translations to their clients, I’m pleased to report that we’ve put a far more client-friendly solution in place at dotMailer.

dotMailer goes multi-lingual

We took the all the related text for our unsubscribe and forward links to a respected, professional translation agency, with the brief to produce a completely reliable translation of 27 different phrases into 13 different languages.

These accurate translations we then loaded into a brand new feature in dotMailer, that automatically inserts the translated text into your email marketing templates when you use the ‘Insert Action’.

dotMailer chooses the translation to insert, based on the language settings on the PC of the dotMailer user. Clever stuff, n'est pas?

And it works for clients with customised and branded Unsubscribe and ‘Forward to Friend’ pages too!

The list of language translations we have rolled out so far includes:

• German
• Spanish
• Finnish
• French
• Italian
• Dutch
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Swedish
• Chinese
• Hungarian
• Slovak
• Turkish

Where clients have bespoke messages that they specifically want to provide translations for then we can accommodate this, so if that’s you then please contact your account manager.

dotMailer in Best Medium Sized Business Award presentation

By Cliff Guy

Last Wednesday May 20th saw myself and 8 dotMailer colleagues and Directors enjoying a beautiful sunny May evening in the middle of Crystal Palace Football Club's Selhurst Park pitch.

No kick-around though - we were in a grand, white marquee as a guest of the RBS South London Business Awards, where I'm proud to say dotMailer were Highly Commended in the Best Medium Sized Business Award category, for our email marketing service.

A great night, so thanks to all who took part. (Especially to David 'Kid' Jensen!)

A unique new reporting feature in dotMailer

By Cliff Guy

dotMailer Enterprise now includes a powerful new reporting tool that enables you to mine your reporting data even deeper, and profile those who are opening and clicking through your email marketing campaigns.

Now you can get an even clearer, more detailed picture of how different segments within your database behave and respond to your campaigns, analysing the behaviour of your recipients by:

• The address books they are in
• The segmentation queries they are in
• The dynamic content they are shown
• Any single of group of variables that exist in your database

With dotMailer's new reporting tool, you can for example:

• Find out the contact details of all those in a specific address book who opened your email, and send them a highly targeted follow-up

• Build a segmentation query to define the profile of your top spending clients, then pull a report on all those who match that profile and clicked through from your last email. Then follow them up with a lucrative 'upsell' call.

Compare filtered reporting data, in a side-by-side view

Now, using dotMailer’s campaign performance comparison reporting, you can compare the performance of multiple campaigns, side by side, then drill down to compare performance according to recipient profiles and dynamic content, e.g:

• Compare, side by side, the response rates generated by different blocks of dynamic content within your email campaign, and use your findings to create super-performing dynamic content

See an example here.

For a walk-through of this eye-opening new reporting tool, speak to your Account Manager on 020 8662 2762 or contact us.

Our API gets dotMailer linked to your back office systems

By Cliff Guy

API stands for ‘application programming interface’. Put simply, it enables you to share data and information between dotMailer and for example your CRM system, your marketing database, or your website.

Using dotMailer’s API is a straightforward process for your IT team (or even just your IT person). With our API your IT people can automate previously laborious processes and take the pain and potential for inaccuracy out of manually updating your backend database.

For example, the API can be used to automatically update unsubscribes from your dotMailer address books into your backend marketing database, and to update dotMailer with ‘do not contact’ records generated from your direct mail returns or other direct marketing you undertake.

How our clients are using the API to save valuable time and resource

We have so many examples of how dotMailer clients have used our API to make their processes smooth and efficient.

• A major sports and health club using dotMailer took our API to integrate their membership database with dotMailer. Now, when new members join, the membership system tells dotMailer who they are, what sports they play and their level of membership. All the data their marketing team needs for sending targeted emails is populated in their address books – automatically.
• A mobile phone company uses the dotMailer API to capture detailed information from visitors to their website, feed the data into dotMailer and send targeted triggered emails back to the website visitors – automatically.
• A major software company feeds all their dotMailer reporting data back into their CRM system using our API – pumping their CRM with invaluable contact history and behaviour data to help them sell better, both on and offline.

dotMailer and Salesforce

For Salesforce users, dotMailer enables one-click integration – no API coding necessary. You can even integrate dotMailer into your Salesforce users screens as several of clients have already done. Find out more about Salesforce integration here.

Give us a shout

We’d love to know how you’ve been using the dotMailer API to make your processes smoother and your email marketing more efficient. If you’d like to share with us and your fellow dotMailer users how you’ve put the API to work then drop us a line and we’ll give you slot of your own in our newsletter.

For more detailed information on applications for the dotMailer API call us on 020 8662 2762 to get your API switched on, and go to http://apiconnector.com/API.asmx