A powerful Dynamic Content feature so new, it's still got that plastic film on...

If your business is ecommerce or multi-line online selling, then this blog post is for you.

We are currently beta testing a brand new feature in dotMailer that can transform the way you customise your email campaigns with dynamic content.

Catchily called External Dynamic Content, this smart new tool enables you to feed very large amounts of data into your dotMailer email campaigns from external data sources such as your CRM or fulfilment system.

Now you can easily create custom, dynamic content in your email campaigns, based on large chunks of transactional or website behavioural data, for example.

Using this tool you'll be able to personalise content like 'product recommendations' - for really powerful messaging. Imagine being able to use dotMailer to:

• Show recommended products in emails to your customers, based on their previous browsing history in your online store
• Show top news stories to your email contacts, based on their specific news topic preferences - eg 'show me stories about mobile phones, the dairy industry and Australian books!
• Show the user the most recent photos and results for their selected sports team

If this feature could be of use to you in your email marketing then contact your Account Manager on 0845 3379170 about taking the beta version and working with us to power-up your dynamic content.

Changes to dotMailer terms and conditions

Coming soon, we'll be making some changes to the dotMailer T&Cs we ask you to accept when you sign up to and use the service. Don't worry - it's all good.

We'll make sure we send you an email in advance of these changes, giving you 30 days notice before the new terms take affect, and outlining the changes themselves and how they should benefit you.

We'll also put a notice when you login to your dotMailer account, drawing your attention to the forthcoming changes.

So keep a look out for these notices, and give your account manager a shout if you have any queries.

Prank Mail

If there was ever a story to make sure that you get full opt in for a particular campaign it's this one...

Toyota are currently being sued $10 million for a prank terror multi channel marketing campaign.

Toyota advertised for contact details of friends to play a 5 day prank on. The friends were sent a personality test, during which they were opted in to the campaign. 5 days of terror later, using personal details and a variety of channels including email and phone, they were sent a video telling them it was all a hoax.

One $10 million lawsuit later Toyota's attorneys are claiming that Toyota is not liable as the recipients agreed to participate.

A lesson to take away for us less controversial marketers - make sure your contacts know what to expect, when and have 100% legally opted in.

Google Wave – it’s just another channel

Google Wave launched earlier this month and the surge of anticipation that followed the initial unveiling of the new product in May (see above), only seems to be growing.

Google Wave is a new platform, which the media are calling ‘email 2.0’. Some are even going as far to say this could be the ‘end of email’.

Of course, we’ve heard this all before. Last time it was social media that was going to end email, now its Google Wave, tomorrow it’ll be something else…

But social media didn’t kill email – it’s just another channel and, if anything, smart marketers have developed ways to integrate social media and email to great effect.

Google Wave will be the same. The platform integrates a number of commonly used applications - word processing, spreadsheets, slide presentations, email, real-time live chat and broadcast web conferencing, with a very slick user interface. It’s a great collaboration of collaboration tools and marks a major turning point in the development of communication technologies.

For the many brands beginning to experiment with networks like Twitter, this will be a natural development to their existing marketing strategies, and help them justify why Twitter is important!

But email will not disappear, even if Google Wave gains major traction (and it is way too early to tell whether it will). For marketers, email will continue to be key to their strategies, the same rules will still apply, and the same techniques will still work.

In fact, the good news is that – if Google Wave does take off – email as a technology could experience something of a rebirth, making it more popular than ever and used more frequently.

Brands should also be able to increase real-time interactions with recipients, bringing more social media and 2.0 elements to traditional email marketing.

Whatever happens with Google Wave, you can be sure that we will be on top of developments and the first to communicate best practice techniques to our customers. So, stay tuned, and in the meantime, if you get a beta account do please let us know what you think.

by Tink Taylor

5 golden rules for successful social media sharing

Recent research published by Experian shows that email marketing messages shared through social networking links deliver, on average, 5 times more forwards than an email with just a single 'forward to a friend' link.

That's a significant uplift, and it's crystal clear that integrating social media into email campaigns is something we should all be doing.

But how can you make sure you're taking advantage of that additional 24.3% reach that social media can potentially deliver?

Follow these 5 golden rules to help maximise the social network 'shareability' of your email campaigns:

No 1 - Know the networks that your contacts and target market use

There's no point linking your email to LinkedIn if your target market love Diggit. Take some time to research the social networking habits and preferences of your target market. If in doubt, put a short online survey together, and ask them how they use social media.

No 2 - Keep your messages simple

Remember, a complicated message will not be understood, read and definitely not shared! Keep the proposition in your email campaign a single-minded and understandable one.

No 3 - Talk to your tribes

Identify the different groups within your customer base and learn what motivates them and what makes them different from each other. Again, online surveys can help to build the picture and profiles you need.

Address these motivators in your targeted email content, to create compelling and 'group specific' content that was just made for social media sharing. If your message isn't relevant, it wont be shared.

No 4 - Give your recipients a reason to share

Ask yourself, why would someone want to share your email? Does your message add value to the recipient and their friends or colleagues? Will posting your email give them kudos? Or do you have a competition or promotion for people to enter? If there's no value to share, then you're starting out on a weak footing.

No 5 - Make it easy for recipients to post your email and for new readers to signup

Include prominent social network links in your email template. Use dotMailer's Add to Social Networks link to quickly choose which social networks to feature. And dont forget to include a prominent link to your subscriber page so new readers can sign up to your email list and help to build your database with relevant, engaged prospects.

The Year of the Connector

We're very proud of how 'connectable' dotMailer is.

In 2009 we developed our hugely popular and extensive API which has received lots of praise for how easy it is to use.

Recently we became aware that not everyone knew just how well connected we are! This inspired us to name 2010 ‘The year of the connector’.

Our API development team are on a roll, and we're looking for technology partners to work with us on a commercial basis to produce dotMailer connectors to other systems.

If you have the resource and the know how why not take a look at the API (http://apiconnector.com/) and its instructions (www.dotmailer.co.uk/api) and let us know what you are interested in developing.

If you'd like to help us develop and market more connectors for CRM platforms, ecommerce systems, accounting packages, CMS, anything social media based or whatever takes your fancy then contact us today and help us make 2010 the Year of the Connector. (We're happy to reach commercial agreements on these projects).

In the meantime - expect a dotMailer connector for Microsoft Dynamics in 2010.

Please unsubscribe…

Including an unsubscribe address in marketing emails is a legal requirement in the UK. But unsubscribing is not just a question of legal compliance.

Marketers who make it easy for a recipient to unsubscribe are taking an important step to keep their own database clean, cost effective and targeted, whilst building trust with recipients.

Why the unsubscribe link is better than the spam button

Graham Charlton at Econsultancy has published an interesting article looking at how easy (or not) eight UK retailers make it to unsubscribe from their marketing emails.

Of all the retailers assessed, only Topshop makes it obvious (interesting that Topshop also scored very well in our Hitting the Mark benchmark study this year!).

Graham makes a good point:

“If people want to unsubscribe from emails, it should be made as easy as possible, as the alternative for many customers is using the report spam option, something which can have an adverse effect on sender reputations with ISPs.”

If your recipients don’t want to receive your email marketing messages, then there is absolutely no benefit in making it difficult for them to unsubscribe, it will only create negative brand associations.

Remember, if a recipient doesn’t view your email as interesting and relevant, you may well be pushing them to unsubscribe.

Graham pulls out an interesting stat indicating that by putting the unsubscribe link at the top of the email in an obvious position, unsubscribes reduce from 0.47% to 0.39%. By demonstrating to the recipients that you are a legitimate mailer offering added value to the recipients, you will start to build more trust.

Better targeting = more engaged recipients

On a similar note, Chris Brogan has blogged to say he was delighted recently when, after deciding to change the focus of his email newsletter (away from social media), he received a significant number of unsubscribes.

Why was he happy?

“What this means is that I’m better defining my newsletter to appeal to the people who will follow me through the next big story arc, through the next big change. It means that people are self-defining, and that they are along for the ride for what we’re experimenting with, and what findings I’ll share with them.”

Chris knows there is no benefit in sending an email to people that wont appreciate the content – so it’s better that they unsubscribe.

If a recipient cannot unsubscribe they will complain - ultimately to the ISP - and these complaints could mean that you will run into deliverability issues.

Of course, in some cases, the recipients you loose will potentially be good customers. But rather than hiding the unsubscribe link, why not just ask them for their feedback on a regular basis? Why not offer alternatives, for example, reducing the number or frequency of mailings.

This will allow you to keep your content on message and make sure you are sending valuable, useful content. By narrowcasting – i.e. segmenting your database of recipients by different splits (e.g. sex, age, date of last purchase, number of previous purchases etc.) – it’s possible that a greater number of recipients will be engaged by what you send.

If you need a few pointers on how to get the most from your data, give us a shout and our professional services team would be happy to help.

by Tink Taylor