The From Line
Sending, Managing & Monetizing Email
Impressive increase in ROI is attributed to advanced email features.
A recent study from Marketing Sherpa asked a thousand email marketers about the services they use to build their email campaigns. Over 40% of those polled said they take advantage of an “advanced web based system” that’s customizable and includes advanced reporting features and unique IP addresses. This is not surprising; marketers are finally realizing the potential of a sophisticated email marketing campaign and are unlocking emails ROI by using advanced features.I love reading studies like this, especially since email is often seen as the “cheap” way to market online. It would be easy to be insulted by the connotation; however, the meaning of “cheap” as it applies to email marketing has changed drastically. It is not cheap because it has the lowest initial cost compared to other mediums; it is cheap because it has the highest ROI, attributed directly to marketers making use of their ESP’s advanced features. It would appear that marketers are finally catching on to this shift and are altering their budgets accordingly. They have finally seen the value that a sophisticated and customizable email solution brings to their marketing program and are reaping the rewards it produces.
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Say goodbye to the days of needing a routing number or credit card to pay a store or vendor electronically. Say hello to a real game changer in electronic payments that combines mobile email, SMS and QR codes. Big banks are partnering to allow phone-to-phone, bank-to-bank payments.
Read more to learn what this means for merchants, e-tailers and marketers...
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Marketing Trend
Our trendwatchers are seeing a growing need for even the savviest of marketers to educate themselves on workflow improvements. The concept of how to mass-produce automated marketing campaigns (without reliance on excessive human interaction) is not difficult to implement, yet many businesses aren’t aware of the right strategies. Furthermore, while the cost of marketing mediums has decreased due to the rapid growth of online advertising opportunities, production costs have skyrocketed. This leaves marketing budgets vulnerable to what our experts call The 21st Century Marketing Paradox – a cost shift from channel to production.
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AddThis – Social Media/Sharing
Gold Lasso is very excited to announce our partnership with AddThis, the #1 bookmarking and sharing button on the Internet. This partnership enables us to offer Social Media Integration for your email campaigns. This integration is seamless, fully customizable and can be accessed through the new and improved toolbar within the HTML message editor.
RSS to Email
RSS (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary”) is a Web feed format used to publish or announce frequently updated works such as blog entries, news headlines, audio and video.
The only information that you need to get started is the link to your RSS file. In Twitter you can simply click the orange RSS icon under your list of people that you are following, in WordPress it's listed with your "Site Meta" and in most other sites you simply click the RSS icon and it will take you to the necessary page. Copy and paste that link into the RSS wizard in eLoop and you are well on your way.
What does this mean for you? It means that if you have a website, blog or a WordPress site, Twitter account, or anything else that can generate an RSS file, you can automatically get that information to your recipients in a few easy steps. There are two options within eLoop to help you accomplish this goal and you only need a few pieces of information to get started.
The first option is to setup an ongoing campaign based on time intervals and updates of your RSS stories. This feature would be used if you wanted to send out updates of your RSS stories to your recipients daily, weekly, monthly, etc.. We have built in the ability to check to see if your stories have been updated before the campaign is executed to ensure you aren't sending the same information multiple times to your followers.
The second option is to simply include your stories from your RSS directly within a message (using a datapoint based on an RSS profile) i.e. have your last five tweets in your monthly newsletter. I have included an example of that technique at the bottom of this message from my own Twitter account.
This is another awesome addition to our system because it's just one more "Really Simple" way of getting new information out to your recipients quickly. You setup a campaign and do what you normally do, update your stories, tweets, content etc. and watch your click rates climb. This new feature will be available to all users by Friday August 7th. Please keep your requests and feedback coming, we welcome and encourage your input!
To start adding RSS to your communications, simply click the icon within the editor and follow the simple steps.
Real-Time Autoresponder Campaigns
This feature allows you to send real-time autoresponders based on your eLoop landing pages, as well as any existing form that you already have implemented on your website(s). You can accomplish this through an "auto" campaign triggered by either a submission of a Landing Page or by using a query string. This process differs from Time Released Campaigns because you can send multiple emails to the same recipient unlike the Time Release Campaigns which will only allow you to send to the same recipient once per campaign. Recipients can fill out the form multiple times and receive a message for each submission. In addition, the message is sent immediately upon submission of the form/query string instead of waiting for a time release campaign to kick off every few minutes. This process is faster to accomplish real-time sending instead of batching, queuing, and then sending when the campaign criteria is met.
Image Map Tracking
Even though image maps are not as widely used as they once were, they are still popular enough to warrant tracking capabilities. Now designers can map out coordinates in an image pointing to multiple URLs without having to slice the image in to multiple pieces. It's a simple way to save time when creating messages. Please keep the comments and suggestions coming, we value your feedback! If you have any questions on these new features, please contact Client Services at
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What is email throttling?
Throttling is the ability to control your campaign sending at a more granular level by limiting the number of messages sent to a recipient’s mail server based on time intervals. In other words, the throttling process slows down an email on your server or through your service provider over the course of several hours.
What are the benefits?
Throttling typically results in improved deliverability and fewer bounces. But its success depends on a number of factors. There’s no magic formula for when to throttle, how many to throttle, or who to throttle to. It’s a constant process of tweaking, testing and analyzing data — but the effort should be rewarded with a concise set of metrics and analytics to work with. After a few campaigns, you should begin to see what times of the day are more successful for your transmissions as well as which recipients have improved deliverability. Keep in mind that all of this depends on the cleanliness of your lists, the content of your messages and your sending reputation.
How does throttling work?
Gold Lasso uses two kinds of throttling — at both the hardware and software level — for even greater control. At the hardware (Mail Server) level we use settings that have been researched and tested based on how ISPs are configuring their mail servers to throttle. By the same token, the recipient mail servers are configured with a threshold as to how many concurrent connections as well as how many transmissions per connection they will allow. If you exceed these levels, your messages can be throttled back to the originating (sending) mail server with the possibility of deferment or bouncing of the messages. If the messages are throttled properly from the onset, however, you limit your risk of this happening.
How do I plan my throttled campaign?
Planning is essential to a successful campaign. Your campaigns should be set up to go out over a specified time (e.g., 10,000 messages per hour over a 10-hour period). You don’t want to spread your campaigns too thin so that they run in to one another. And you may not want your campaigns to go out all night long either. Here’s a good rule of thumb: divide your campaign into 10 equal parts over 10 hours. If your lists are smaller you could send every 30 minutes over a five-hour period. And if timing’s not a priority for you, you could “trickle out” your emails over several days.
Who should use this feature?
Everyone should use it to some degree, especially if you have a large number of emails that are going to the same domain (e.g., 20,000 @yahoo.com addresses.) Because Gold Lasso uses both hardware- and software-level throttling, all of our clients get the benefit of hours of research and tweaking on the hardware side. And even though Gold Lasso is automatically throttling on the hardware side, it’s a good idea to throttle at the software level as well for even better results. Even if you’re only sending out 1,000 emails in your campaign you may see improved deliverability. The only exception to this rule is if your lists are extremely clean. But even with an extremely clean list, you may get even better results by throttling. It’s definitely worth a shot!
For more information on throttled campaigns, please contact your designated eLoop Account Manager.
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