Today, I am excited to officially announce our acquisition of North Carolina based nTarget, an email marketing firm specializing in electronic communications, with a focus in the hospitality, travel/tourism, retail and ecommerce sectors.

We are very pleased to announce this partnership, and could not be happier with the fit with our organization. The nTarget staff shares the same values around providing stellar customer service, and working towards the best interest of their clients. We are excited to have them all on board here at Blue Sky Factory. As a result of the deal, we will now operate and maintain an office right outside of Charlotte, NC, where the nTarget team will remain.

nTarget has proven to be a market leader in the travel / tourism and hospitality space, a vertical which we also have great traction and a solid client roster within. As a result, our combined clients will benefit greatly from the knowledge and experience gained over the years working in these key industries.

All of the current nTarget clients, as well as all of our current clients, will soon be migrating to the latest release of Publicaster, our leading web based email marketing platform, due for release this August. We look forward to bringing the latest and greatest in email marketing and on demand communications to our combined client roster. We will be posting more on our upcoming Publicaster release over the coming weeks. Lots of good stuff to come.

From the entire staff at Blue Sky Factory, we say “Welcome nTarget!”

You can read more about this exciting news on the official press release from our website.

A few months ago we added the capability to use Google Analytics tracking with emails sent through Publicaster.  This allows you to click a check box to add a piece of Google Analytics tracking to the end of every link in the email to then track clicks to your website. 

It has recently come to our attention that some websites do not accept links that include Google Analytics tracking.  Several clients have reported that SurveyMonkey is one of these sites.  If you use Google Analytics tracking for a launch and the email includes a link to a SurveyMonkey survey, the website will re-direct the user to the homepage rather than sending them to your survey.

It is possible that other sites will do this as well.  For this reason we strongly urge that you test every email in its final form, including adding Google Analytics tracking if necessary.

If you have any questions about this recent development, please contact your Account Manager or email Customer Support.

Email has the highest ROI of any other online marketing medium, but if you don’t continue to reach new subscribers, you’re missing out on potential revenue. 

Join us for our “Grow Your Subscriber Database” webinar to learn how to acquire new subscribers and keep them engaged.

Join us to learn:

• How to grow your list organically
• How to optimize the opt-in and subscription management processes
• Strategies for keeping your new subscribers engaged

Click here to register!

Details

Date: Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Time: 3:00 PM - 3:30 PM EST

Presenter: Melanie Sims
System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.3.9 (Panther®) or newer

As we tread deeper into the buzzword-infested waters of Web 2.0, we often hear terms that sound vaguely tech-related and desirable but we have no idea what they actually mean. One of these words is integration. There has been an industry-wide increase in web service integration as of late, making this the ideal time to jump on the boat.

By the time you are done reading this article, my aim is to help you understand what integration is, how it works, and why you should want it.

What is integration?

The term integration when used in the context of web applications is usually referring to the act of establishing a relationship between one application and another. The most widely used protocol for this kind of relationship is SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). This protocol is based on its spiritual predecessor, XML-RPC (XML Remote Procedure Call), which uses the same kind of HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) connection that your favorite web browser makes to Google.com (for example) to send data back and forth.

SOAP was intentionally designed like this to enable it to bypass corporate firewall restrictions by fooling the corporate firewalls into thinking that it’s just web traffic. This is one of the main reasons that the protocol has become an industry standard today. SOAP messages are specified in XML (Extensible Markup Language) and contain both the data itself and information about how the data is structured (metadata).

How does it work?

The basic premise behind integration is that applications provide services. For example, Google offers web search services, Flickr offers photo sharing services, and Facebook offers social networking services.

The way we normally access these services is to get on the website and instruct the application what to do by clicking a bunch of buttons and/or filling out form fields. But did you know that the website you see is just a façade? It’s not the application itself. Rather it is an interface to the application, a visual representation of your interaction with the application.

The application doesn’t care whether it’s getting instructions from a website visitor or from another application. All that it cares about is getting instructions that it can understand so that it can provide the services that it offers.

That sounds great, but how does that help me?

Have you ever wondered if it’s possible to automate at least some of the interactions that you have with other web applications? Well I have news for you, the answer is most likely yes. To give a real example, there is a client of ours who has a weekly newsletter. Their weekly newsletter is templated so all that he has to do is fill in the content. He grabs the content manually from another source and copy/pastes it into the email creative. However, there is a lot of content. This process takes him about an hour.

With the power of web services, this client can now automate the entire process so that all he has to do is glance over the final email before sending it out. That’s a fairly significant gain in productivity, reducing a 1 hour task to a 1 minute task.

So how do you know what kind of things you can automate this way? To answer this question, think about the things you do daily that are tedious and repetitive. Most likely, an application could be doing those things for you. Do you have a bi-weekly subscriber list upload, a weekly opt-out report, or something similar? These are all examples of things that can be automated using web services.

One thing to note with doing this kind of integration is that it requires a small amount of work from your tech team. They will need some information about the web services that the target application offers. Typically they need the API (Application Programming Interface) documentation and information about the security method employed(if any) for the application. Usually, secure SOAP transactions employ TLS (Transport Layer Security) and some kind of credentials in the SOAP message itself.

For the Publicaster API documentation, click here.

This article has only scratched the surface of what integration and service-oriented architecture are capable of. We predict that this trend will continue to grow and allow us to build web applications that are seamlessly interconnected and provide us with feature-rich content and services.

We’d like to hear people’s perspectives and viewpoints on the issue. Contact us with any questions or to share your thoughts.

This week the Federal Trade Commission released new rules under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. After years in the proposal stage, the FTC has finally put forth a revision of the original act, which aims to stop “SPAM” (Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing.) These changes were created to clarify the existing rules and they require the following:

1. Email recipients must not be required to do anything but reply to an email or visit a single web page to opt out of mailings. They must only provide an email address to opt out.

2. The definition of “sender” has been altered to make it easier to determine who of multiple named parties in an email are held responsible for the advertisement.

3. Senders can use a valid post office box or personal address as a physical mailing address.

4. The law now includes the term “person” to not limit the act to just natural persons.

Although the changes are not drastic for responsible mailers, the first new requirement is one to acknowledge. If you are currently requiring your subscribers to do anything but reply to an email or click an unsubscribe link, you can be held accountable under the law.

For more information, visit the FTC’s website.

Our monthly quick surveys continue! This month we are asking everyone to tell us more about their use of email on mobile devices.

How much do you use your mobile device to view emails? Click here to take our survey and see how you compare to your fellow marketers!

Survey Results:

A couple of months ago, we inquired about what matters most to you in regards to your email marketing campaigns. The results are officially in:
* In general, what’s most important to you when you sent emails?

1. 25% answered Open Rate
2. 37.5 answered Click Thru Rate
3. 25% answered Conversion Rate
4. 12.5% answered Delivery Rate
5. 0% answered Cost
-Others also specified that response rate, replies, and testing were most important.

Be sure to tune in for the results of our mobile device usage survey!

Used properly, prospect and customer data is one of the most valuable assets a company owns.  All companies have the same goal with their data: increase customer acquisition rates, maximize customer retention, and increase sales (at the lowest cost possible). As more and more communication and commerce take place online, there’s no better time to use this data to help accomplish their goals. Online marketing continues to prove itself as the most profitable channel available. Yet many companies continue to struggle in their efforts to collect, organize and leverage their data.

For the companies that do take the time to explore their options and commit to doing more, they will learn that the process doesn’t have to be complex. With today’s impressive marketing technologies, it doesn’t have to be expensive either. It represents the best chance to maximize marketing’s return on investment. Click here for tips on utilizing data.

Are you receiving our monthly newsletter, Factory Direct? If not, click here to subscribe!

I came to work for Blue Sky Factory less than one year after I completed my undergraduate college program. Finishing school and entering the corporate world was quite a shock, in more ways than one. During my college experience, the social networking site Facebook exploded. Just 5 years ago, many people may not have known about Facebook. Nowadays, it seems impossible that someone might not have at least heard of it. After graduating from college, I continued to Facebook faithfully. Like many other young professionals, I was using Facebook to keep up with friends without having to make that dreaded phone call, look at their photos and post my own, and keep tabs on people from the past.

Within my first month of working at Blue Sky Factory under our CEO, Greg Cangialosi, I learned that social networking communities could be used as a marketing tool and not just to keep up with old friends. I observed our company’s branding consistently grow through social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. I had never thought of the possibility of using social networking to build professional relationships, not to mention increase business exposure and branding! Not only does Greg use his personal page on Facebook to network and communicate with other professionals in the industry, there is a completely separate page for Blue Sky Factory.

The page features everything about our company that anyone would need to know - from our company’s overview, to upcoming events and recent blog updates. The page is maintained as a marketing vehicle and notes are frequently added regarding company news, stories from our monthly newsletter (Factory Direct), and other BSF updates. We use the page to not only educate people about our company and industry, but we also keep it up-to-date with information that people can use and that will keep them coming back. Our employees, clients and others who have an interest in our company are “fans” of the Blue Sky Factory page. To check out the BSF page or become a fan, click here. You can see who’s a fan of the page (maybe someone you know?), top stories, events, notes, and discussions.

As a new addition to the company, it is important for me to stay on top of the latest technologies and branding opportunities. I have learned that what I use in my personal life can be leveraged in the workplace as well. As more and more professionals and businesses join Facebook and other social networking sites, we will continue to see marketing opportunities present themselves in places we may not have thought of before, but that make perfect sense.

If you need another reason to clean up your email list, here’s one.  AOL recently announced they are refining their process when it comes to high invalid or unknown user rates.  What does this mean for you?  It means that if you have an above average number of invalid or bad email addresses on your list, you could begin to see poorer deliverability to AOL.

So what can you do about this?  Be diligent about cleaning your list of people that consistently bounce.  These are the bad email addresses contributing to your unknown user rate.  Cleaning your list of bounces, both hard and soft, is easy and automatic in Publicaster.  To read how, click here.

Keep in mind that AOL will also be looking at other factors when determining if they should allow your email to the Inbox.  These include CAN-SPAM compliance, authentication protocol set up and adherence to general email best practices.  Following the rules, keeping up on best practices, and maintaining a clean list will all help improve your deliverability to AOL.

With all the social networking sites popping up lately, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.  However, we’ve found one that anyone in the email marketing world should join - the Email Marketer’s Club!

According to the site, the Email Marketer’s Club allows you to “network and share knowledge with email marketers across the globe.”  Create your own page with info about yourself and then connect with others in the email marketing space.  You can contribute to and learn from discussion forums, join groups specific to your areas of interest, read the club newsletter, catch up on the latest events, and even find your dream job on the job board.

Click here to sign up for the club.  Once you’re there, be sure to search for your Blue Sky Factory friends.  We’d love to chat!