Recently, Delivra announced that it would be the first ESP to integrate with TabSite by Digital Hill Multimedia. The goal with this integration is to allow Delivra customers a way to easily create an email sign up form for their Facebook Fan Page and it allows new customers to sign up for Delivra email marketing services through TabSite.
With today's blog post, we'd like to clarify what this integration means for you and how you can make the most out of it!
1. TabSite Account. In order to use the two systems, users must have a TabSite account. The great part is that TabSite is modestly priced and even offers a FREE option as well.
2. Email Icon. Next, find the email icon in the TabSite toolbar. Once you click on the Email Icon, an information box will pop up.
3. Sign In. The pop up allows you to :
a. Not a Customer: Sign up for Delivra email marketing services.
b. A Delivra Customer: Sign in and get access to your Delivra account.
4. Form Code: Once you've gained access to your Delivra account, you can access your signup code under Utilities: Web Forms: New Subscribe Form. Click Get HTML. Copy the code and then paste it into your TabSite Page Manager.
From there, TabSite will ensure that the form works on Facebook and those that sign up via your Facebook Fan Page will automatically be added to your email marketing list in the Delivra application. What's even better is that you can take that signup form and brand it with headers and graphics to make it easier to find and act upon within your Facebook page.
Need help getting started? TabSite wrote a blog post that outlines these steps with great graphics.
Still having trouble getting started? Check out the TabSite How To section!
Lavon Temple | Marketing
E-mail campaigns lead recipients to landing pages for a variety of reasons: to provide the customer or prospect with additional information, a video or registration for events, to get them to sign up for white papers or enter contests; or to request that they fill out a credit card form or take a survey, among other reasons.
Landing pages have some kind of mystique about them. Some e-mail marketers don't really understand the mechanics behind how a landing page is built, so they tie up precious resources of their IT department and Web team to create landing pages for campaigns, or pay their e-mail service provider (ESP) an extra fee for a landing page creator.
There is an easier way. As marketers create e-mails for campaigns, they can use their ESP's e-mail editor to create a separate HTML e-mail that will function as a landing page. The landing page can be stored in a content library, and an e-mail can link to the file.
Besides saving money and resources, there are many benefits to using the "e-mail as a landing page" method.
To find out the other benefits and read the rest of the BtoB article, click here.
For more information on landing pages, check out these other Delivra blog posts:
Make Your Own Landing Pages
Successful Landing Pages: 3 Tips
When working with HTML in emails it is very important to know what works and doesn’t work. Below are some tips that can help make sure everything is readable and works well in different email clients.
1. Maximum recommended mailing “weight” is 50kb, which includes the actual HTML document (10kb or less is ideal) to be delivered and all referenced images (40kb or less). Minimize mailing weight as much as possible through image optimization, markup refinement, the removal of all embedded comments and indentation, etc.
2. Layouts should not exceed a web-standard 600-pixel width limit. Layouts should accommodate the resizing of copy by recipients changing their default font sizes.
3. Do not rely on BODY attributes (i.e. – background image, background color, text color, link color, etc.) or markup present in the HEAD of HTML documents, as web-based clients tend to filter out such layout cues prior to final presentation.
4. Do not use any form of stylesheets, whether it be in the HEAD tag (e.g. - CSS) or inline stylesheets.
5. JavaScript should be avoided as many email clients filter it out.
6. Avoid reliance upon the background image attribute. Any kind of background image whether it be in <body>, <td>, or <table> may not render properly in all email clients.
7. Avoid using Image Maps. Many email clients strip out all Image Maps.
For more tips on how to improve your emails, click here for some from our design experts.
These tips are just a taste of the knowledge of email that Delivra has. Contact Delivra today and be in the hands of email experts to make sure your mailings look great and get out the door.
Patrick Love | Marketing
I have the exciting opportunity to partner with a client who is literally starting from scratch. No e-mail content to send and no e-mail addresses to e-mail the content to. What a fantastic situation to be in!! First, it answers the age old question “How many e-mail addresses do I need to have in my database to sign up for Delivra services?” Apparently you do not need any. Second, starting from scratch gives them the opportunity to start with best practices from day one, think through and determine their long term goals with e-mail marketing, establish what is going to be the most effective way to grow their list, design a branded HTML template to mirror the website, and set benchmarks for success.
I believe that anyone can theoretically start from scratch. What would you do differently if you had a blank slate? What process would you change? Template would you redesign? Benchmarks you would set? The good news is
that you can start over one change at a time. The new client and I are not making all these decisions all at once and you don’t have to either. Just change one thing.
- Ask for a quote on a personalized custom template (or make some changes to one of our new templates).
- Set up an automated Welcome Message.
- Talk to your account manager about determining benchmarks for success.
- Brainstorm with your team about opportunities to capture new e-mail addresses and demographic information (ask us about a profile form if you do not have one).
Little changes can make a big impact. Need help figuring out what to change first? Call us. That’s what we are here for.
Rachel Rewerts | Account Management
I always get excited when we can devise a new way for a client to build a list and communicate with their subscribers. In this case it is a franchised hotel.
Background
The hotel had done little marketing in the past. They are located near a major airport and business demand kept the rooms full and the food service facility busy. However, economic conditions have reduced business travel and business.
Marketing Goal
The hotel marketing manager was looking for a high ROI method to build sales. Email was on her list but she was unsure of how to proceed. With 200 email addresses in hand and no previous email marketing program the task looked daunting. In addition, the facility did not have authority to post anything on the franchiser's national website.
Needed
Before you can market with email you need a recipient list to mail to. How do you build a sizable list of email subscribers interested in receiving site specific information (in this case the airport hotel) and with offers that are relevant and timely?
Solution
The solution required connecting four marketing tools. Print, web, email and smart phone.
Printed announcements are to be placed in all guest rooms and maintained by the housekeeping staff. The printed offer sends hotel guests to a one page web site hosted by Delivra.
The web site has a subscribe form with text boxes for email address and optional name. Plus the offer is reinforced on the site. Revisions to the web page are easily performed using simple editing tools already in the Delivra solution.
An emailed coupon is delivered in real time to people who complete the web site subscription form.
Using any smart phone that displays HTML or text email, a guest can merely display the coupon to hotel food service staff who redeem the offer.
Payoff
The hotel gets an instant boost in sales from current guests plus they build a list of email addresses for an email newsletter aimed at encouraging return visits.
Neil Berman | President & CEO
Tales from a poor confused artist who thought school was finally over
I’ve been working at Delivra since last summer. I started with a basic e-mail marketing I.Q. of about 12, and considering how lost I get during conversations within the company or with other big-wigs of this particular market, that number does not seem to have changed much. Fortunately, as a designer, my job is relatively straightforward and simple, but it does come with some memory-testing challenges.
The whole process seems to be like a never-ending finals week. You spend a few days studying (building the email), turning in homework (sending the client your drafts), you take the pre-quiz (send the test email), then panic your way through the final exam (send the email). It’s stressful, nerve-wracking, and worth everything when it results in a perfect A+ (a happy client). And while it probably isn’t as nail-bitingly terrifying as that Psychology exam you just found out about, it is enough to give you nightmares about being eaten alive by HTML.
Fortunately, cliff-notes and study-guides are available in the form of blogs. Those come in really handy when an HTML-monster project comes along, and your usual weapons of choice aren’t cutting it. There aren’t many challenges out there that another designer hasn’t overcome, and they’re more than willing to help a clueless fellow out.
Before your next test (email), here are some things to memorize that'll help you out:
- Paragraph and Header tags are evil. They sound like a brilliant idea, but really, they are not to be trusted. If you’re wondering why you have so much space between text, images or just space that doesn’t need to be there, chances are there is a <p></p> or <h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6></h> somewhere in your HTML code. P-tags will just show up uninvited if you hit enter after a sentence. Instead of enter use shift + enter; this will enter a break tag or <br />, which will move the cursor to the next line without inserting space that has no business being there. Also, instead of using header tags, just resize the text to match the size of your choice. Painless and a lot less hassle.
- Keep your tables simple. You would be amazed how much havoc a complicated table can wreak. I got a lot of hate from an email I was working on, and could not figure out why until fellow designer Celeste looked at my code and pointed out how ridiculous my table was. I had all kinds of merged cells and spacing issues that looked ok in Dreamweaver, but neither email client or web browser were feeling it.
- CSS: Embedded and External = Bad, Inline=Good. Styles in e-mail are becoming more and more common, but knowing which ones can or can’t be used is a little tricky. Not all email clients are created equal, and most clients treat CSS like a weird cousin who wasn’t invited to the family reunion but came anyway.
- Convert Word Document or Copy to Plain Text before pasting into HTML editor. Doing this helps to prevent weird symbols popping up randomly throughout your email. No more question mark apostrophes for you! Not sure how to do this? One way that I often do this is to drop the text into Notepad, which is an application listed under your Accessories of your computer (Start | Programs | Accessories). You can then select Edit/Paste from Notepad and take it right into the HTML editor without any pre-defined formatting that might not otherwise work in an HTML version.
Hope this helps you as much as it helped me!
Peace out!
Abby Alexander | Design Services
Your landing page is the stepping stone between your clicks and conversions. Your email content may be expertly designed and written, but if little thought is given to the Web pages that your email leads to, all your efforts are wasted.
Earlier this month, our own Support specialist Todd Weymouth blogged about the ease of creating your own landing pages using our HTML Editor. Taking that a step further, below are 3 simple tips on designing your own successful landing pages:
- Keep it relevant. In the world of email marketing, relevance has always been a key component. Create a customized landing page that ties in specifically with your email offer. If your beautiful, targeted email is simply dumping your recipients on your homepage – leaving them to navigate to your offer themselves – you can bet most of them will give up quickly.
- Reinforce the call-to-action. Make it absolutely clear to the recipient what steps they need to take next. The less guesswork you leave to your recipients, the more likely it is for them to convert. Break your content into key points that make your information clear and skimmable; lastly, keep pertinent information above the fold. The more “fluff” your recipients have to scroll through to get to the point, the more likely you are to lose them.
- Keep the design flowing smoothly. The look and feel of your landing page should match that of your email content. Convince your recipients that they are on the correct page with a second’s glance by keeping your branding, imagery, colors and fonts similar to that of your email content.
Did you know that in addition to customizing landing pages, we can customize other pages available with Delivra? Your Forward to a Friend page, your profile form page, your surveys, triggered mailings – these can all be branded with simple elements like your company logo and colors. If you’re looking to create something a little fancier, you can also hire the help of Delivra’s design team! Your account manager can give you more details.
Questions? Have another email design topic you want to hear about? Feel free to shoot me an email.
Celeste Odell | Design Services
Gain Subscribers Through Social Media
It's become common for our clients to insert links into email content that drive recipients to social media sites (Facebook pages, for example), and for good reason. Brand pages on social networks are an excellent way to continue, en masse with your most engaged subscribers, a conversation that began with an email.
But something we don't see nearly as often is the use of social media pages to acquire email subscribers. Facebook and the like are well-designed for mass, bi-directional communication with customers, but nothing beats email when it comes to sending targeted, personalized messages based on the recipient's interests,
behaviors, or demographics. Why then, do social media marketers not focus more effort on acquiring email opt-ins from their social media fans who are already engaged with their brand?
I suspect that many don't realize that it's possible. Major ESPs (including Delivra) give their clients tools to generate HTML for a subscription form that can be embedded in a web page. Less well known is that Facebook allows one to insert HTML onto one's page. I just added a simple subscribe form to the new
Delivra fan page using a Facebook application called
Static FBML that allows embedding of HTML. Delivra users can generate their own subscribe form HTML in the Utilities section, under Web Forms--just like I did!
Chris Broshears | Product Development
It's OK to adjust your plan
I was excited to launch our video integration with Cantaloupe after six months of development. I'm sold on the value of video over plain text/html content and was anxious to collect some real world data. Our newsletter announcement last Friday would be a test to see if the market shared my enthusiasm.
Even though Friday is not traditionally the best day to mail I was astonished at the results received by Monday afternoon. We experienced the highest open rates and highest click rates of any recent email campaign plus the addition of video viewing stats was revealing. This just goes to show you that best practices are simply that, methods that have proven to work in the past. However, marketers must always balance best practices with the needs of the audience. Based on these results, I believe I share my excitement with many of our customers. Video can be an engaging tool to reinforce your message.
Lastly, but certainly not least, our push was to not only to announce the new tools but also to fill a webinar on September 30. Within minutes of sending the email that happened too!
Not everything in business works this smoothly so it's a nice feeling to see the dream become a reality for many. It also proved a valuable lesson for every email marketer, know your audience and the information they want to know. We can't wait to share the video integration with each of you later this month.
In case you didn't get a chance to sign up, here is the link: http://www.formspring.com/forms/?702491-XXiAsEuFzr
Neil Berman | President
Powered by Compendium