We recently announced the addition of our Google Analytics feature to Publicaster.  This feature allows you to track clicks from your Publicaster email campaigns to your website activity in your Google Analytics account.  

After receiving valuable feedback from our clients, we are moving this feature to be an option under the Account Preferences section in Publicaster.  As of today, under Account Preferences, you will be able to choose whether or not you’d like the Google Analytics feature to appear on your Send/Schedule Emails screen.  By default, this option will be turned “off”. 

To read more about this feature, read our blog post.

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

How do you match up to your peers?  We’ve added a BSF quick survey to our monthly newsletter.  Take our most recent survey on what matters most in email marketing.  Once we’ve collected all the results, we’ll report back on the outcome.  Check back in to see how you compare to your fellow marketers!

When your email hits the inbox, does it stand out from the crowd? Is your email creative rendering correctly across all email clients? Are you up-to-date on all of the latest best practices of email design?

Join us for our “Design for the Inbox” webinar to learn how to design emails that make a real impact.

This webinar is for you if:

• You want to maximize readability and visual interest
• You are interested in increasing your email return on investment
• You are new to email marketing design, or want a refresher on best practices

Click here to register!

Details:

Date: Wednesday, May 14, 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

You may have noticed a new addition to the more recent issues of our newsletter, Factory Direct.  By adding BSF quick surveys to our newsletter, we hope to provide you a way to stay up to date with the most recent email marketing trends. Our first survey focused on our readers’ daily email behavior and activity.  Listed below are the questions along with our readers’ responses:

·  On average, how many hours each day do you spend writing and responding to emails?
o  6.3% spend zero hours
o  68.8% spend 1-5 hours
o 18.8% spent 6-10 hours
o  6.3% spend more than 10 hours

·   On average, how much of the time you spend on email each day is with a Treo, Blackberry, or other smart phone?
o 56.3% spend no time
o 31.3% spend 25% of their time
o 6.3% spend 50% of their time
o 0% spend 75% of their time
o 6.3% spend 100% of their time

·  On average, how many e-newsletters do you read or scan each day?
o 6.3% read 0 newsletters
o 62.5% read 1-5 newsletters
o  18.8% read 6-10 newsletters 

Stay tuned for more surveys and results!

Last month, we announced the addition of our Email Folders feature to the Publicaster Email Library.  After receiving valuable feedback from our clients, we will be moving this feature to be an option under the Account Preferences section in Publicaster.  As of this morning, under Account Preferences, you will be able to choose whether or not you’d like the Email Folders option to appear in your Email Library.  By default, this option will be turned “off”.

Another improvement we have made is that your Email Folders, should you choose to use them, will be listed in alphabetical order. 

To see a sample of how the Email Folders feature would look in your account, please click on the image to the right.

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

One of the most important aspects of any successful email marketing program is having a clean list. Last week in Media Post’s Email Insider newsletter the Email Diva (Melinda Krueger) responded to a question from a non-profit email marketer about spam traps and list hygiene.

Spam traps, in short, are published email addresses that are created for the sole purpose of tracking spam. These email addresses are not used by anyone, so there is no possible way that someone could use it to opt-in to your list. Sending emails to spam traps is highly detrimental to your sending reputation, and can cause deliverability problems with many ISPs.

To read more about spam traps and Melinda’s solutions for cleaning and maintaining your lists, please click here.

I am excited to announce that we have just became a silver sponsor of the Email Experience Council.

“The eec is a global professional organization that strives to enhance the image of email marketing and communications, while celebrating and actively advocating its critical importance in business, and its ROI value.”

I originally met Jeanniey Mullen and Ali Swerdlow at the ClickZ Specifics: Email Marketing event in NYC last October, and most recently at the Marketing Sherpa summit in Miami. They are doing an incredible job with the rest of the team in fostering industry support and creating awareness of the important impact that email marketing has on any organizations marketing mix. If you check out the news page, you will see just some of the work the eec has been up to, publishing research, surveys, white papers, etc. Lots of good stuff.The eec also has many roundtables going to address industry issues and best practices. And one of my favorite initiatives is the recently launched EmailStatCenter, a site dedicated to nothing but stats around email marketing.

If your involved in email or online marketing in general the eec is a great industry organization to join. They are making things happen and making us all smarter marketers. You can register here, and if your not ready to join today I would at least sign up for their weekly email newsletter that never disappoints.

We look forward to getting actively involved with the initiatives that the eec is working on.

ClickZ is producing its “Click Z Specifics: Email Marketing” conference on Oct 24 & 25th in NYC. I will be doing a talk titled “Cut Through the Clutter Creatively.” I am looking forward to it and am excited about the topic. As cluttered as the inbox can be these days its more important than ever to have a well balanced creative message that gets delivered, read and acted on. I will be presenting some examples of what works in the inbox, and what you should avoid altogether.

In addition, one of our clients Doug Broujos who is the SVP of Client Services at TIG Global will also be speaking on the 25th on “Switching ESP’s - Painlessly.” Doug will talk about his perspective on what considerations and steps to take when switching your email service provider.

We hope to see you up there, drop us a line or a comment if you will be in attendance.

The Email Experience Council recently launched…which has the potential to be a real positive addition within the Email Marketing Industry.

As they state, their mission is to…. enhance the image and celebrate the ROI value of email marketing through the proliferation of email and digital marketing best practices, trends and cutting edge technologies through the demonstration of applied success.

It’s great to see this effort, and we look forward to helping them achieve their goals!

Email marketing continues to evolve….this new council will no doubt help foster Email Marketing’s continued positive growth.

Great article by David Eldridge in DM News on Database Management.
“Does Your Database Measure Up”

Database Management has really picked up steam in ‘06 as companies are beginning to realize how much opportunity there is to mine their data for $$$!! We’ve always been told that the most important asset we have in business is our customer data, so it’s logical that the online channel provides unlimited opportunity to exploit this asset like never before. The technology keeps getting better and better, making it easy for even the smallest companies to jump in!

David’s article may provide a bit more info than the average company has to deal with right now, but many of the issues he raises are critical if marketing departments really do want to leverage their data and use it effectively.