The Email Marketing blog

dotMailer's Christmas and New Year opening hours

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer Blog) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:34:00 +0000

Just a quick update on our opening hours over the Christmas break.

All 3 of our offices will be closing at 12pm on Christmas Eve, remaining shut until Dec 29. We'll be running a skeleton support service (by email) from Dec 29 to 31. We then close, reopening on Jan 4 for business as usual.

Have a great Christmas break!

dotMailer monthly invoices are now downloadable

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer Blog) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:36:00 +0000

Hot news from our Accounts Department... you can now download your monthly dotMailer invoices, for your convenience.

Just click on MY ACCOUNT in the top right hand corner of your dotMailer screen, then choose 'My Sends Invoices'. A full list of all your current and previous invoices for the year will be displayed.

Click on the Preview icon to open a printable PDF of each invoice.

By the way, paper invoices will still be sent to you by post, and paying by Direct Debit means you need take no action.

dotMailer forecasts your next month's numbers

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer Blog) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:21:00 +0000

We've introduced a nifty new reporting feature for dotMailer white label account holders.

Called 'Predictions' the reports use your previous week's email sends and billing data to estimate your next week's and month's numbers.

To access these reports for your dotMailer white label account, just go to Admin in your account, choose Statistics, then choose Predictions.

Remember, dotMailer can handle all your invoicing for you, free of charge - all you have to do is collect the money. If you're not already taking advantage of this service, call your Account Manager on 0845 337 9170 to find out more.

Getting the best performance from your systems and our API

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer Blog) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:49:00 +0000

At dotMailer, we provide a rich and versatile programmer's API which can be used to integrate any system with dotMailer.

It's really popular with users, and we're keen to make sure you're getting the best performance out of the API - so we've introduced a 'usage monitor' to your account.

If you use our API to integrate with other systems, the usage monitor will show you how many 'calls' your software is making to our API. A 'call' is an exchange of data, to and from your system and dotMailer.

We don’t impose any limits on the number of API calls you can make (unlike other large software-as-a-service businesses), although a fair usage policy applies.

The monitor located under ‘My Account -> Current Month Activity’, so if you use our API, keep an eye on this section to see how your integration is performing.”

API partners sought

We are always looking for partnerships with any developers wanting to build a connector to dotMailer. If you have any ideas you'd like to discuss, please give us a call on 0845 337 9170.

New dotMailer feature - triggered emails following 'free trial signups'

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer Blog) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:27:00 +0000

We've just released a new feature in dotMailer that is perfect for dotMailer White Label account holders.

Our new Trial Signup triggered email option enables you to set up campaigns that dotMailer will send automatically, following any of your prospects signing up to a free trial of your white labelled email marketing service.

You can set up a single triggered campaign, or a series of campaigns that are sent automatically over a period of time/milestones.

For example...

1. Right away after a prospect signs up on your website to an email marketing trial through your dotMailer white label account, they are automatically sent a personalised HTML email. Your email thanks them for signing up, offers them document links to useful quick start guides and provides reassurance and contact information to encourage them to start using the trial.

2. Five days after your prospect signed up for the trial, they are automatically sent an email with practical hints and tops for successful email marketing, and some useful downloads.

3. One week before their trial is due to expire, they are automatically sent an email reminding them of this, and offering them the chance to call you to extend the trial or get more help.

You can set up as many triggered emails as you choose, and subject line split test them to determine the most effective series.

All these steps can help to increase your conversion rates and build profitable prospect and client relationships for your business - without you having to lift a finger.

How to set up your Free Trial triggered campaigns in dotMailer

It's so easy to set up these triggered campaigns. Just create your content as a normal campaign, and in Edit Settings, choose Advanced Settings and Campaign Type as Triggered.

Next, go to Triggered Campaigns in the right hand menu, under Campaigns. Choose 'Add New', and at stage 2 select TRIALACCOUNTCREATED as your data field.

For detailed guidance on setting up triggered email campaigns download our Triggered Email Quick Start Guide or use the Help option in the app.

What's new in dotMailer?

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer Blog) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:59:00 +0000

Here's a quick catchup on just some of the new features and tools we've added to dotMailer over the last month or so.

'Email Client' analysis tool.

Do you know how many of your recipients use, for example, Outlook 2007 or Hotmail to open your emails, or are viewing your emails on their iPhone or Blackberry?
Our new Email Client analysis reporting tool will tell you.
Now you can focus on getting your templates and campaigns right for your own users, ensuring your emails are designed for maximum impact within your key email clients, with images switched on and switched off.
Access your Email Client Analysis report by clicking on the magnifying glass icon next to the Unique Opens link in your campaign reporting overview screen.

Website sign up forms can now include field validation

We've made it easy for you to make sure your website visitors complete all the form fields you require when signing up on your website.

Just tick the 'Require all fields to be filled in' in the Contact Forms tab under Contacts: Advanced features.

For detailed guidance on how to create web signup forms using dotMailer, click here.

ATOM & RSS Feeds

dotMailer now allows you to add RSS & ATOM feeds in your email campaigns. You can specify the address to call the feed from and on sending your campaign dotMailer will include the items in that field.

You control the number of items shown and the format of the item. Easy peasy content for your campaigns!

Just use the Insert Action button at the top of the Editor and choose the RSS Feed tab on the far right. It really is that easy - a classic example of dotMailer's 'NASA technology, with a Fisher-Price interface'!

New, even larger file size limit for the dotMailer Document manager
We've just scrapped the 5 mb upload limit on our dotMailer document manager, and increased the limit to 10 mb.
Now you can host even larger files online through dotMailer, and your contacts can download them directly from your emails.We've loads of new features for dotMailer planned for 2010. Keep watching this space.

dotMailer's Inside Knowledge seminar returns for 2010

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer Blog) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:24:00 +0000

Our hugely popular 'Digital Marketing Inside Knowledge' seminar returns this January 21st to London.

This half-day seminar is for every marketer who wants to learn the industry secrets, tricks and techniques for getting more response, more web traffic, more conversion and more business from their email and digital marketing.

Create emails for maximum response
Drive quality search traffic to your website
Convert more visits into more actions

Three practical sessions from digital marketing experts at the dotDigital Group

1. Email Effectiveness in Practice

dotMailer Director Tink Taylor kick starts the afternoon with Email Marketing - Effectiveness in Practice.

Providing a checklist for email best practice alongside the results from our Hitting the Mark email marketing benchmarking study, Tink reveals the practical lessons to be learned from the expose of over 40 major e-tailer's email marketing campaigns.

2. Making your email marketing campaigns work for you

Skip Fidura - MD of website design agency, dotAgency- shows you where, how and why you should be using triggered email campaigns to up sell, cross sell and convert your site visitors and customers.

This session will open your eyes to the potential for your business to create highly effective, targeted, automated email marketing campaigns and maximise your ROI.

3. Search - the 10 things you need to know for 2010

Alex de Albuquerque, Head of Search at dotSEO - dotMailer's sister SEO agency - takes you step by step through your top 10 rules for effective search marketing in 2010.

Stay for drinks with the dotDigital Group team

Make sure you stay for drinks and the chance to talk to Tink, Skip, Alex and digital experts from the dotDigital Group, as well as other guests at the seminar.

During this time we will also be providing a practical demo of dotMailer Enterprise and showing you how to use the platform to build powerful triggered email campaigns in double-quick time.

Hurry - Limited number of free seats

Initial free places are limited for this seminar. To reserve your seats contact us now at marketing@dotmailer.com or call us on 020 7654 8664.

Central London venue to be confirmed. Seminar starts at 2pm on the 21st January and winds up at 5pm.

Digital marketing company jumps 174 places in a year

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer Blog) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:39:00 +0000

dotMailer is part of one the UK's most successful digital marketing agencies - called the dotDigital Group.

I'm proud to say dotDigital has been enjoying a great deal of press and accolades recently, the latest of which was our receiving a prestigious Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA award at the end of November.

We were awarded with a Fast 500 ranking last year, but this year we jumped no less than 174 places, from number 456 to number 284 in the list of the top 500 fastest growing technology companies.

So much of dotDigital's phenomenal growth is down to our dotMailer email marketing customers coming back to us for help with developing their websites, SEO and ecommerce solutions - all services we can provide through dotDigital.

So a big "thank you" to all our dotMailer users who have already discovered that there are many more ways we can help you succeed in your digital marketing, and have helped to put dotDigital Group firmly on the map.

What do days make? Prizes!

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer Blog) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:37:00 +0000

By Cliff Guy

We've had some great feedback on the digital advent calendar game we're running right up until December 25.

Users are liking the fact that it's not a gimmick - we really are giving away a stack of prizes every day - each one hidden behind our special advent calendar windows.

We launched the dotDigital Group advent calender on December 1st and after 4 days we've already given away...

A Fortnum & Mason's luxury Christmas hamper

14 £5 Amazon vouchers

25 dotMailer Site and Survey builder licences

17 dotMailer Lead Vision licences worth £150 each

34 personalised Christmas e-cards - worth £99 each

42 bundles of 10,000 dotMailer email sends - worth £225 each

1 email health check from our Consultancy team - worth £500

44 SEO health checks

48 website health checks

306 Digital Marketing Guide downloads

All that, and we're only on day 4! Eat you heart out Father Christmas.

Online 'games' like this are a great way to interact and engage with your customer base. We've had lots of really positive comments from people using the calendar, and several enquiries from clients who want us to create a similar calendar for their own business next year.

If you haven't registered on the dotDigital advent calendar yet, then waste no more time. There are still 21 days of prize giving left, as a write this blog.

To checkout our prize-packed digital advent calendar and to register to play, go to
http://advent.dotdigitalgroup.co.uk/

Email is social and is here to stay

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer Blog) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:52:00 +0000

by Tink Taylor

The above video is a portion of a talk given by Clara Shih, CEO of Hearsay Labs and author of "The Facebook Era", who was speaking at a recent Enterprise 2.0 conference in San Francisco

Shih asserts that email is being taken over by social technologies (she mainly focuses on Facebook and the iPhone), especially amongst younger generations.

There is nothing particular revolutionary or groundbreaking here, the growth of Facebook and other social networks is hardly news and I think most marketers agree that social media marketing is becoming important.

Her comments on email and its demise are, again, not anything we haven’t heard before. But, I think Shih’s reasons for its demise are interesting, however this does raise some points for discussion:

Email is social

In many ways, email is the original social technology. Email has always allowed groups of people to communicate and for users to share content with their friends or colleagues.

Extending this one-to-one or one-to-many concept from email into other social media channels isn’t difficult, and in fact email has a number of big benefits that elevate its position

Email isn’t going anywhere

Email has big advantages and these are unlikely to diminish. The main one is its ubiquity. Email is a tried and tested platform; the vast majority of us have an email account (probably more than one) and use it frequently. This is in stark contrast to social networks. Whilst increasing numbers of people are participating on social networks, there isn’t one centralised platform – messages need to be distributed across different networks to reach as many people as possible.

Email, by contrast is an open protocol, meaning that it can be used by different software or platforms. If anything, open technologies like Google Wave will pose a bigger threat to email than social networks [you can read my thoughts on this here…].

So, if we come back to the issue of distribution of content across dispersed networks, Email still has a big part to play. Whilst brands can do some of this initial distribution themselves (using Twitter profiles or Facebook fan pages) it is far more effective if it comes from the consumer (or prosumer)…

Email + social media = powerful marketing

This nicely brings us onto integration. If email remains the best way to get a message out to an audience because of its ubiquity, including social media bookmarking links within these messages and encouraging recipients to tweet or share the content on Facebook or Twitter et. al. is a great way to build up distributed content on social media channels.

And consumers are more likely to share email addresses with brands than information about social media. A recent study from Pontiflex found that only 12% of online adults said they’d be willing to provide social media information (like a Twitter handle or Facebook name) to marketers online, while 96% of those surveyed had provided their email to brands to receive special promotions or more information.

This is not a ‘them and us’ discussion, but we need to be aware of when, where and how consumers like to use the different communication methods at their disposal. Marketers that are really excelling in this exciting new digital world are those that are able to link up different marketing tactics and strategies across all marketing channels.

Email delivery to BTINternet.com addresses affected on November 12th

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer Blog) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:11:00 +0000

By Tom Corbett

Anyone who sent email campaigns to BTInternet.com addresses between about 09:00 and 15:30 on Wednesday Nov 12, ran a risk of their emails not being delivered.

Please don't blame our client support guys - this was completely out of dotMailer's hands. The problem was a BT related issue, due as far as we can tell to their difficulties with some BT Yahoo mail servers.

For more detail please see the BT help page which hints at the problem:

12 November 2009
09:31 AM
Consumer email issue
We are aware of a temporary problem with emails which may be causing some customers problem with sending/receiving emails via their web client. We're sorry if you've been affected. Our engineers are now working to fix the problem, and we expect to have the service back to normal as soon as possible.

BT marked the issue as resolved around 11am, but the changes they made took a while to propagate across the net.

If you're in doubt about your sends to BTInternet.com addresses on the 12th then check your soft bounce reports for 'DNS failure' reason codes. If necessary you can save these as an address book and resend your campaign to them.

dotMailer and dotDigital group team winners at the 2009 National Business Awards

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer Blog) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:02:00 +0000

By Cliff Guy

At 1.30 this morning our MD sent me a text saying "We won".

I knew exactly what he meant.

Last night the awards ceremony for the National Business Awards 2009 was held at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London, where dotMailer (part of the dotDogital Group) were nominated in the 'Best Growth Strategy' category.

And I'm very pleased to say our MD was there to collect the award, when we were announced as the winners.

It was by all accounts a business-star studded event, headed up by the Chancellor Alistair Darling taking to the stage.

The award we were presented with went to the organisation who 'demonstrated an organic growth strategy that has achieved outstanding levels of sales and market share improvement'.

The category was fiercely contended and we had to jump through several major hoops just to get to the short list, so we're all a bit chuffed to have won.

In many ways this award goes out to all our dotMailer email marketing clients and users, along with our website design, ecommerce and SEO clients. It's the trust and belief that you all show in our services and your willingness to recommend us to others that's helped to drive our growth. So here's to you!

I think it's also a tribute to our understanding of how to use email and digital marketing to really drive growth - because our sales and marketing model is pure digital. That's the knowledge we can share with you, to help your business be a part of the success story too.

Now, how's that Champagne chilling?

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

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:40:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:16:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:26:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:33:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:17:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:20:00 +0000

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…

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:30:00 +0000

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

Does size really matter?

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:28:00 +0000

We recently ran some interesting reporting from dotMailer, looking at campaign open and non-open rates versus number of sends, across the whole dotMailer user base.

The results

Our reports showed that for email marketing campaign sends to address books containing 500 to 5,000 contacts, the average non-open rate is 69%.

That’s an average 31% open rate, which is above the average overall DMA benchmark open rates*.

The average open rate in our report includes a range of campaign types and senders, including client campaigns and campaigns to ‘colder’ prospect data, so as an average open rate it's a healthy one.

Niche campaigns

We then looked at the average non-open rate for campaigns sent to between 50 and 500 contacts.

For these campaigns, we found the figure drops to 61%. So for campaigns where a smaller group is targeted, open rate increases by an average of 8%.

We can make an assumption here that these campaigns are sent to smaller groups because they are more targeted, niche campaigns, with more relevant content (rather than bulk, blanket sends).

Based on this assumption, the reporting seems to clearly back up the assertion that targeted email leads to better response metrics.

Large scale campaigns

To test this point further, we next looked at the metrics for campaigns sent to address books of more than 5,000 contacts.

Here, we found that the non-open rate grew to 74%.

That’s 13% less openers than for campaigns sent to a target group of 500 or less.

Overall the average open rate of 26% across all campaigns in this 5000+ contacts category is a number these senders should be pleased with, as it takes into account both client campaigns and prospect campaigns.

The takeaways

The key message here is not that you should mail small or large groups of people.

It is that you should apply the same level of targeted messaging and content to large target audiences as you would to a very small group.

Use data segmentation and dynamic content to tailor your offers, your message and your subject line so you are not emailing one large data set, but a series of smaller segments with differing profiles and needs.

And always use subject line split testing. An advantage of sending to large groups is you have a larger sample to split test against, and can pull more accurate split test results.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity afforded here, to maximize your open rates.

* DMA National Email Benchmarking Report Q4, 2008: Average unique open rate for acquisition campaigns = 15%. Average unique open rate for retention campaigns = 19.5%.

Build it or buy it - a developer's tale

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:00:00 +0000

By Andrew Gretton

Here in the development team, we're always kept on our toes by the pace of dotMailer’s growth. (dotMailer recently passed the 10,000 user mark, and our user base continues to increase rapidly).

As well as adding new features, we're all eager to trim down on the resources taken up by our existing code, to make your sending, segmenting, and surveying happen faster than ever.

This optimisation is something we managed to do in a really big way recently.

Because we're an ESP, you probably think of us as an email sender - and we're proud to say we're very good at it!

But we are of course an email receiver too - not only do most email marketing campaigns generate reams of "out of office" messages, bounces, and replies - but we do get sent a fair chunk of spam too. One of our big challenges is to make sure you get all your replies, and none of the spam.

Until recently, we'd been using a great piece of software developed by another company - this handled our inbound mail very well.

Software development is constantly about the "build it or buy it" dilemma, and whenever the development team has a requirement, we'll first check out what's available already.

If we find a good commercial or open source solution, that's great - it can speed up delivery times of the features you're all requesting.

Several years ago, we felt happy that buying was the answer for this part of our infrastructure. As our client base has increased, though, it's become clear that we needed a solution that could grow as fast as we are.

So we sat down and built our own.

And so the LIME was born: the Lightweight Inbound Mail Engine. This nifty piece of software performs the same task as the old one; but it uses only 5% of the resources, and runs much faster too.

All of which means that behind the scenes we're continually developing a faster, leaner, meaner dotMailer, to make sure you can turn your campaigns around in double-quick time, and get fast efficient reporting.

All this, no matter how many thousands of your fellow marketers are using dotMailer at the same time!

New research on email marketers' 'pain points'

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:55:00 +0000

By Cliff Guy

Last week we sent an email to several thousand email marketers, inviting them to take part in a survey designed to benchmark how they rate their email marketing activity.

The survey called for a certain degree of honesty from our fellow marketers, as we were asking them to score themselves (or their organisation) from weak (score of 1) to strong (score of 4) against 7 key aspects of successful email marketing.

In short, we wanted to know where they were comfortable, and where they were feeling some pain.

I'm glad to say that email marketers are an open and honest bunch and we had a great response to the survey. There are some revealing trends in the results, that show where marketers know they need to be doing better with their email marketing, or what they need to be doing more of.

The key areas where email marketers highlighted 'room for improvement' on their own part were the use of database building and segmentation, dynamic content and triggered email campaigns.

55% of respondents rated their use of database building with a score of 2 or less, out of 4

65% rated their use of data segmentation with a score of 2 or less, out of 4

87% rated their use of triggered email campaigns with a score of 2 or less, out of 4

So clearly, you are not alone if you think you should be using triggered email campaigns more!

It seems to me the bottom line of the findings from this research is that marketers know they should be sending more precisely targeted campaigns.

Some may be struggling here because of a knowledge gap about what they can do and how to go about it.

For those in this group, I recommend you download dotMailer's storming, definitive guide to great email marketing - our annual Hitting the Mark email marketing benchmark report.

Others may know what they need to be doing, and how, but simply not be able to find the time to do it. A managed email marketing service can help in these cases, particularly for major campaigns with significant revenue or outcome riding on them.

dotMailer can certainly help here with our Professional Consultancy Services and Managed Services.

The message is then, that if you're feeling the strain of not knowing exactly how to get where you want to be with your email marketing, or how to find the time to get there - you are most certainly not alone, and there are people here to ease your pain.

dotMailer finalists in National Business Awards

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:20:00 +0000

By Cliff Guy

Good news for all the dotMailer and dotDigital Group team today - we've been shortlisted as finalists in the National Business Awards 2009, in the Best Growth Strategy category.

There are 10 companies altogether competing for the award within our category. Check out the details here.

The awards themselves take place in November, offering an ideal opportunity for us to update the dotMailer email marketing Facebook profile with a fresh set of pictures of digital marketers in their dinner suits - hopefully toasting our new award! Watch this space.

A permission whitewash

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:15:00 +0000

By Cliff Guy

It's never a good idea to whitewash over the question of where you obtained an email recipient's contact data. And now it seems, there's been another whitewash in the Whitehouse!

Returnpath - dotMailer's deliverability partners - posted a blog recently about the implications of a hot story in the US. The Whitehouse stands accused of sending an unsolicited public information email marketing campaign that generated spam complaints.

Check out the news footage...

At dotMailer we have a feature we call our 'data watchdog' that constantly monitors the contact data our users are uploading, based on a complex algorithm.

The watchdog barks loudly if a user loads data that is potentially unpermissioned or from an unscrupulous supplier, so our system and our clients are protected from black listing issues. For this reason, we don't compel our users to include details of 'how you got on our list' in their email templates.

But barking dogs aside, email marketers themselves can take some straightforward and highly effective actions to prevent recipients perceiving their emails as being unsolicited.

1. Use a non commercial welcome email to establish or re-establish permission.

For example, having collected a new email contact, ensure the first message they receive from your organisation is a welcome email that:

Reminds them of where they gave you their details and their permission

Outlines what you're going to be sending to them

Highlights the benefits of being on your email list and the advantages and privileges they will be able to take advantage of

Sets out the frequency of your email messages, so they know what to expect and when

2. Ensure you stick to the frequency of messaging you have set out in your welcome email.

3. Keep permission current. Reach out to the people who don’t open or click, or to older internal lists that you haven't emailed for a while. Find out what these contacts want and collect their fresh permission to deliver it.

4. Don’t make assumptions. Just because a subscriber opted-in to receive monthly offers doesn’t mean they also want to receive your weekly newsletter or press releases.

5. If you're sending a message that falls outside the original permission grant, then let the recipient know this and include a prominent unsubscribe link.

For lots more practical advice in this area, check out our Email Revenue Booster Kit on the dotMailer website.

All fingers and thumbnails

noreply@blogger.com (dotMailer) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:16:00 +0000

By Cliff Guy

Interesting to read on the blog of one of our fellow email service providers yesterday, that they've just released thumbnail previews of templates.

Now, I'm proud to say that unlike a great number of other email marketing providers, dotMailer has featured live thumbnail previews for many years.

Even the 'old' version of dotMailer - replaced by our latest version in May last year - had long included this handy feature.

What's more (yes, I'm on a roll now...) dotMailer's template previews are generated instantly, so every time you save an email marketing template or microsite template, there’s a thumbnail immediately available. It's all part of the service.

That's not to say we didn't face a challenge building live thumbnail previews into dotMailer - through the sheer numbers involved.

We currently store over 1 million dotMailer campaigns and templates - which means a lot of storage space for all the related thumbnails.

Never ones to be beaten by a storage space challenge, we came up with a nifty solution that automatically deletes thumbnails from dotMailer that haven't been viewed for a while - and automatically generates and restores them if they are ever requested again.

That's a thumbs-up for dotMailer then!