Online Marketing Business Blog

Landing Pages: The Key To Your Email Campaign's Success

Email marketeers spend all their time working with you, the designer, in coming up with relevant and great looking campaigns. Both you and your client do countless tests on subject headers, and ensure sharp targeting of the recipient profiles.

All set? Campaign launched and you see great results and click through performance. Yup, you got the email portion down pat. But your client isn't seeing any great increase in sales. And the reason is, only half the battle is won through email, the click-through to website conversion was lost along the way. Welcome to the world of landing pages.

What's That All About?

Recipients of your client's email campaign may click through to different areas of their website. This page which they land on is called the "landing page". Yes, practically any page on the website could be a landing page (and that's a very important consideration as well when designing a website). The important part is what the visitor should do next. Strong call-to-actions are staple here. As with all websites, landing pages have the task of funneling the visitor towards a goal, defined by your client.

The potential here is, through email marketing, you control the pages which recipients enter from. Many researchers have found that a web page that does not match the look and tone of the email can lead to visitors leaving the site.

One of the best stategies is to repeat the same offer on the landing page. Use the same or similar promotional copy that you did in the email. Things brings a sense of familiarity to the recipient/visitor and they are more likely to explore further and eventually convert (they did click the link in the first place didn't they?). The natural path is from clicking to converting, and for this instance, it starts at the email, all the way through to the website's goal point.

What This Means for the Designer

Since you can dictate the landing page from the email, you'll be able to put specific content on the landing page through a design that encourages the visitor to do what you want them to do. Design the landing page to fit with the goals of the email marketing effort that got the visitor to land there in the first place.

Creating custom landing pages for various promotions or communications can create a huge impact for marketing results. And your client will love you for it!

As a web designer or agency, you'll be presented with exciting challenges in conversion: designing for visitors to take a desired action. This naturally means and up-sell on your email marketing and design services, leading to additional revenue.

There's some highly focused design agencies who have specially tailored packages that includes email design together with landing pages. They're doing to right thing for themselves, and their client. Results breed recurring business. Helping your client achieve better results through their email marketing efforts is a win-win situation for them, and you.

Why You Need Email Authentication

Email is essential to our daily business lives. And for an email marketeer or any design/communication agency providing email marketing services, it is their livelihood. Email has been a convenient and cost-effective way for us to communicate, be it through peers, work or engaging our clients. Unfortunately, email is also very easily forged.

Email authentication proves the authenticity of your email and its source.

And the great thing is, its starting to grow in popularity amongst the large ISPs and corporate email servers in their effort to control incoming spam. This gives legitimate email marketeers and opportunity to differentiate themselves from spammers, and aids in better deliverability.

Authentication Methods

There are a number of popular authentication methods currently being used at the moment. SPF and SenderID looks for a file on your server that they can cross-reference with.This helps prove that the "From" address is legitimate according to your website domain. SPF and SenderID are easy to implement as it requires you to add a few extra lines to your domain records.

The 2 other popular methods, Domain Keys and DKIM, embeds code directly in the email itself. These methods make it much tougher to forge emails, but can also be tougher to implement for the sender, and the receiver.

Due to the various methods being used currently, empoaying all authentication types would perhaps be the safest method until a certain authentication standard has been reached and widely accepted among all the major ISPs. 

The Email Sender and Provider Coalition has provided a handy checklist for major ISPs and their authentication methods.

BlinkCampaign's Support for Email Authentication

To help your email campaigns look more reputable, and thereby increasing deliverability (not to mention aiding our server's sender reputation) BlinkCampaign supports multiple authentication methods to cover all bases:

SPF is automatically setup for all client accounts in BlinkCampaign. You can, however start to setup the DomainKeys / DKIM and Sender ID authentication methods for all your client's email campaigns.

To setup authentication, under your Agency Console, simple edit any of your client's account info. Look  for the Sending Domains Authentication box on the right. Provide the domain of the "From" email address that your client is using to send their email campaigns, and follow the next few simple steps to add those records in to the DNS records.

Official Authentication Standards

• DKIM.org
• DomainKey Library and Implementor's Tools
• Sender ID by Microsoft
• Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

Get 500 BlinkCampaign Credits for Free

For the month of June, tell us what you like or don't like about the new BlinkCampaign and get 500 credits on us. Drop us an email (please use the email link here) to tell us what you think, and we'll present you with your free credits within a few days. Be sure to let us know what features you'd like to see in upcoming releases as well!

Be sure to include your BlinkCampaign account information as well so that we can send the credits over to you.

Each account is entitled to this offer 1 time in the month of June.

BlinkCampaign v2 Release

If you're wondering if we were on a long holiday or simply won the lottery (though we wish you were right on both counts), we've been busy finishing up on BlinkCampaign v2, which was officially released this morning.

Along with a new, cleaner look, usability tweaks and performance upgrades, we've addressed other key areas that you've been asking about.

So what's new?

Loads actually. Some of which you won't be able to see (such as delivery and code tweaks), some of which you'll feel (performance), and some which are important to you (white labelling and customization).

New Dashboards

Less clutter, more functions, quicker loading. The new Dashboards in BlinkCampaign boasts way faster loading speeds, as well as a quick links box to help you get to your tasks more easily.

Improved Performance

For the tech geeks, we've overhauled all the markup and optimized the entire application, both on the frontend, as well as our delivery engine.

By the way, we've dropped support for IE6 for its horrendous performance and lack of good CSS support. We hope the browser dies a quick death soon.

Customizing Your Signup Process

Back in 2008, we released some APIs for you to create a signup form on your own website to allow site visitors to signup straight into BlinkCampaign's subscriber lsits. We've added the ability for you to define your own custom error page for the signup process, just in case the user somehow gets an error along the way.

All BlinkCampaign Pages Reflect Your Domain

Yep, we know that some of the system messages had our domain in it. We've cleaned it all up now and your unsubscribe, opt-in, error pages etc, all use your domain instead of ours. On top of that, all system emails (such as your client retrieving their password) will be using your name and email address instead of ours.

Email Tokens Are No Longer Case Sensitive

No worries though, your existing templates will still work. All BlinkCampaign tokens are now case-insensitive to prevent coding errors and errors in generating those dynamic content or links.

What's Next?

There's a whole ton of other stuff that we've done which we won't list here and bore you with. All through this month, you'll be seeing little upgrades and improvements along the way so be sure to watch out for them!

Subscriber List Signup API & More Email Credit Management Features

The BlinkCampaign team has just released a minor update to address some of our most commonly requested features.

Creating a Subscriber Signup Form

Start creating more email marketing opportunities for your clients! Now, you can add a signup form to any webpage and link it directly to your subscriber list. Each list has its own unique API so that you can still manage multiple list for each of your clients. The opt-in process is simple:

 

Of course, you're able to customize the entire process:

• Confirmation webpage
• Verification email (as well as the To and From addresses)
• Final confirmation page

All these features can be accessed under the subscriber list for each client. Just look to the right for the new options.

Managing your client's credits on a "per campaign" basis.

Previously on BlinkCampaign, we provided you the functionality for limiting your client's credits on a monthly basis. This lets you charge your client's $x, generating recurring revenue each month, without having to worry about them going over the limit, and possibly depleting the credits for your other client accounts.

We're happy to introduce a new mode of control: credits per campaign.

Now, you'll have the ability to set x amount of credits for each campaign for a particular client. By doing so, you can limit the amount of emails going out on a per-campaign basis, ensuring your client doesn't burst the credit bank before the month ends.

This flexibility also allows you to charge your client on a multiple tier level:

Base cost + 1st tier cost (after exceeding base) + any subsequent tier

Your base being the x amount of credits for each campaign. We'd love to hear more about other business models or ideas you may have on how you're charging your clients for email marketing services!

Coming soon: credit limit on a one-time basis, due to be released mid-February.

Permissions in Email Marketing: Educating Your Clients

Its a tricky situation: selling your email marketing services and educating your clients about permission based email marketing. Sure you'd love to close the deal, but just because your client's got a fishbowl full of business cards doesn't necessarily make email marketing right immediately.

Whether your using BlinkCampaign, or any other ESPs for that matter, permissions are taken very seriously and most ESPs have a zero-tolerance anti-spam policy.

Permission is simply determined by individuals who has given permission to contact them via email regarding a topic they've explicitly signed up for.

This usually comes in 2 forms:

• mailing list sign up through your client's website
• dropping a business card which states that your client will be contacting them regarding various offers, promotions, etc.

Of course, you'd also need to check out the CAN-SPAM definition for more detailed definitions.

But I've got tons of addresses collected over the net through the years!

So they say. To your client, it may seem that each address is an opportunity cost. However, spammers work on the same principle of throwing a wide net to hook a few. It works (and therefore SPAM is still around) but its not right. Needless to say, it doesn't bode well for your client's reputation as well. ESPs (us included) will cease to support such practices and essentially, you and your client will be back at square one.

Selling the idea and benefits of permission based email marketing

Your client's options may seem limited for the on-start and they have to understand that building a good list takes time. However,with patience and good practice, the benefits or email marketing really start to shine.

Subscriber retention and loyalty

People who have opted in, would usually stay on your list, provided content is relevant to what they've opted in to in the first place. Send your subscribers newsletters if they've signed up for it. Not promotional emails. There's tons more on this in an earlier post.

Hook, line, bait and sinker

As you have more people on your list that are starting to get engaged, they're also likely to be more interested in what you have to say. Soon, further interaction could come in the form of preferences, polls, feedback as well as segmentation by interests or profiles.

Benefits all around

Subscribers get relevant information, your client improves customer relations and loyalty, your services are retained based on excellent reports, and the ESPs continue to deliver timely content on your behalf with less deliverability issues. Its a win-win situation all around.

Take a step back (you, and your client) and have a look at your junk mail folder. You and your client wouldn't want your content to end up there. Its valuable time and money wasted which could've been put to better use in building a solid subscriber list.

More Generic Domains To Deliver From

BlinkCampaign has just released a set of generic domains for you to choose from.

Under your Agency Module, simply go to Customize > Settings:

Select one of our 3 new generic domains:

• emailmkting.com
• poweremailcampaign.com
• simpleedm.com

Your login URL as well as the web version links, unsubscribe links, etc will reflect this new domain.

Do note that any existing campaign will generate an error once you swap to a new domain so ensure that all your campaigns have expired before making a switch.

Deciphering Those Bounce Error Codes

If you've been conducting some campaigns recently, you might've notice the new swanky  (but rather daunting) bounce reports being generated from BlinkCampaign.

Here's a quick low-down on what those error codes really mean:

500

The recipient's email server is not recognizing the email that was sent out or was not formatted in the way the server expected. This could occur for longer emails.

501

This is due to syntax errors in the email address, outside of those that are automatically cleansed by BlinkCampaign. Some of your client's email servers may not recognize, and do not have addresses with underscores for example. This is also indicative of an invalid email address.

502

The mail was not delivered because it is not supported by a particular server. This may the case for email campaigns with a HTML only version (no plain text version) and the recipient's email server can only receive plain text format.

503

This usually indicates a problem with the network and communication to the recipient's email server.

504

A particular valid command was not implemented on the recipient's email server, and thus, cannot deliver the mail. This is a rare issue.

550

This is probably the most common bounce error you'll receive for your email campaigns. Basically it means the mail was not delivered due any number (but not limited to) the following reasons in plain English:

• The account doesn't exist (The recipient might have closed the account or left an organization
• The recipient's email server requires authentication (which has to be manually setup and varies from server to server
• Certain ISPs require you to have the same From address as the domain where the mail is being sent from
• The recipient's server is down and has given up retrying x number of times

552

In a nutshell, your recipient's mailbox is full and needs some spring cleaning before your email campaigns can get through.

553

This error code means the email address is invalid. The difference from a suspended or closed account is that this email account never existed in the first place.

554

Yet another sort of invalid email address or does not exist anymore. This error is quite typically specified and returned from Yahoo:

554 delivery error: This user doesn't have a Yahoo.com account

554 delivery error: Sorry your message to [email address] cannot be delivered. This account has been disabled or discontinued.

Other less common bounce errors you may encounter

421 - the email server or ISP is unavailable. This may be caused by many things such as the server administrator stopping the mail service, or rebooting the mail server.

450 - The email server could not access the recipient's mailbox. This could be caused by a process on the recipient's email server tidying up the mailbox (think archiving in Outlook), the mailbox could be corrupt, or the remote mailbox may be stored on another server which is currently offline. It may also be caused by the remote mail server not wanting to accept the mail (user may have blocked the domain, blacklisting, etc).

451 - The email has bee aborted by the recipient's server due to overload. This is due to high traffic at certain times and prevents the successful delivery of the message.

452 - Insufficient disk space on the recipient's email server. This can occur when an ISP's mail server goes down, and when it comes back up, there is a huge spike in traffic as mails may have been queued for delivery or frequent attempts to re-try mails for the ISPs email account users due to the downtime.

We hope this analysis of bounces helps you understand your subscriber lists better. Analyzing your bounce mails is a great way to further profile your subscriber list and also help you determine which time and day would be the best delivery day for your email campaigns.

Aug - Sept Product Updates

Bounce Reporting

We know how important bounce management is. Properly and accurately tracking your bounce can help your client further analyze their subscriber list and integrity.

The BlinkCampaign team has just released a more detailed bounce report integrated into each campaign's reporting module. With the new bounce reports, we have further broken down your bounces into error codes, as well as bounce by domains. We also hope to achieve further transparency in our delivery services with this information.

More Sub-Domains

Yup, we've already got'em, as well as the ability to create your own custom domains. In the coming months, we'll be registering more generic domains for you to use on BlinkCampaign, especially for those of our users who don't have the ability at the moment to create their own custom domains, or are really unsure how. As we start implementing more domains, simply click on "Customize" under your agency module and select from one or more of our generic domain names.

Bulk Appending Your Subscriber Status

Keeping your subscriber list up-to-date and relevant is one of the most important points in email marketing. Also due to be released in mid-September, the BlinkCampaign Team will be rolling out a Bulk Append feature to allow you to update your list through uploading an updated CSV file. This is especially useful for managing large lists, especially when your client has just sent over an updated list of unsubscribes that they happened to uncover from another separate system. We really hope this new feature will take the pain out of your work in trying to marry and merge various subscriber lists from your client.

Email Campaign Integrated Spam Assessment

Paid for some spam tests elsewhere previously? That's hogwash in our opinion. Coming soon, you'll be able to run your campaign through our online spam assessment engine. With the relevant results, you can help enhance the deliverability of your campaign by tweaking your subject headers and copy straight within your Campaign module. Besides analyzing text copy, we'll also be helping out in throwing in a little spell checker and link validation, just to help make life easier.

Again, these features and updates are free for all BlinkCampaign users. Heck, BlinkCampaign is free for anyone to use for sending email campaigns for up to 5 recipients, just so you can have a go and experience what its all about.

If you're interested in signing up for a free Blink Campaign account or learn more about how BlinkCampaign can help you (that means you, web designers, developers and creative agencies) generate more revenue from email marketing. check out our website and learn how others like yourselves has taken email marketing to a whole new business level.

Online Marketing For Web Designers: Its Getting Implicit

As the web matures in sophistication, the technical demands from web designers have been increasing rapidly. Back in 2000 when most of us designers were simply concentrating on HTML and some javascript, its hard to ignore the demands of our clients for other services such as implementation of Content Management Systems (CMS), Blogs, Forums and other web applications and platforms. Of course, SEO and online marketing have become the norm in many web projects as well.

Stemming from the creative circle, I tended to shy away from such requests and instead, left the research and work to web developers, who were in a much better position than myself to be dabbling in such technologies.

So what's the big deal to web designers now? Loads when you have to seriously consider the advent of technologies like AJAX, and factor functionalities into your design. Its not just pure aesthetics (and should've never been in the first place, though many of my industry colleagues in the advertising field would beg to differ) anymore.

Getting into the game

Though we're trained designers by profession, that shouldn't stop anyone from upping their game and improving their net worth. Understanding the quirks and fundamentals of online marketing can seriously put you ahead over the next freelancer (or web agency). We are in the business of the web after all.

Thankfully for us less tech-savvy and mildly experimental sort, there are tons of web applications out there that have greatly aided us creative people in further pushing the envelope and delivering solutions, not just designs, to our clients. Incidentally, the easiest and most relate-able service we can provide to our clients is online marketing.