Just because you aren’t doing e-commerce doesn’t mean you can’t track your goals and it definitely doesn’t mean you aren’t making money. You can track pretty much anything that happens on your website. The most common examples are a sign up, whitepaper download, or really any event where people give you information.

Once you know what you want to track, it just comes down to editing the thank you or confirmation page. What we are looking for is a webpage that is shown when you are doing what you want to do. That’s the page where we’ll put in the conversion tracking code.

If you need a refresher, check out Setting Up Conversion Tracking Within Bronto. In this case we’ll probably be setting the type to t and then setting a description. Once it’s setup, you will start to see conversions tracked in your next email.

It’s that simple and you’ve just started down the path of proving the value of your emails! If you have questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

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Knowing the impact your email marketing has on the bottom line is huge. It can help you to justify more money, more time, or more thought on what is most likely a crucial part of your marketing mix. So how can you do that? One word gets you there – Conversions.

Within Bronto you can quickly and easily track conversions, and today I’d like to talk about strategies for getting the most out of tracking multiple purchases on your site. Keep in mind that conversion tracking within email marketing can be powerful, but it is usually there for segmentation purposes. Conversion tracking allows for a great way to track email’s value add or engage in remarketing, but it’s not going to replace the reporting you get from your ecommerce system.

With that being said, when you are implementing conversion tracking, you should consider your needs first. For the details on how to implement the actual tracking code, see our recent blog post on Setting Up Conversion Tracking Within Bronto.

Show me the money

If you are looking primarily to understand the total amount of money that is driven in, then I’d suggest you go with ‘Purchase Total’ tracking. In this method you will be tracking just one thing, purchase total. In fact, I would recommend just using “purchase total” as the actual description.

This will allow you to have a simple report that quickly and easily displays the value you are realizing from your email marketing. You will be able to segment your contacts on purchase amounts as well. Are you excited about the prospects of a High Value Customers yet?

A Segmenter’s Dream

If you have loftier goals of segmenting and targeting buyers based on their behavior, I would suggest going with a more granular approach. You can actually track multiple conversions on one page, and I would suggest doing one for each department they purchase within. You could track at the product level, but that can quickly become unwieldy, and frankly, almost impossible to segment on.

The departmental method will require that your ecommerce system (or an add-on created by your team) be able to break purchases down by department. However, once you have conversions tracked by department (with their corresponding spend by department), you will be able to segment you contacts by department they have purchased from. Now you’ve just opened a door to more relevant emails!

As you can see, there is no single set way to track conversions. You will need to put some thought into what you want to do with the resulting data. But don’t be too concerned, if you find that you aren’t getting the data you need, you can always change your conversion tracking.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

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It’s great how Bronto will automatically compare A/B splits and pick the winner for you, but sometimes you just want to try something out. You may have a hunch you want to try out – Would people react better to the color blue? You may feel the need to continually check certain variables – What’s a good length for the subject line? Or maybe you’ve hit a wall with the status quo – Ah ha, this is the perfect case for champion-challenger.

A fight against the status quo, especially when it’s not something everyone is on-board with, is definitely champion-challenger territory. Let me explain why. A champion-challenger tests involves running a new challenger group against the established champion and nothing more. That means that we are only going to try a change on a small percentage of your list. Hence, there is no risk of a large number of people getting this new variant.

If the test goes well for the challenger, you can try another test with a larger audience or move on to an a/b winner split. In the mean time however, we are limiting exposure and just getting a rough idea of how your audience will react with a champion-challenger split test.

Let’s look at another example. What if you have to change your email format to include more ads. Rather than roll out what just seems like it might be the best version of the new format, you can run tests for a few weeks with a challenger using the new ad-heavy format. This will help you to refine your strategy in order to provide an optimal recipient experience when you roll out the change to a larger audience.

So try out champion-challenger split tests. You may find that a quick test on a small number of contacts is the best way to ease into something new.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

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Whenever you create Dynamic Content within Bronto, we actually insert Dynamic Code into your message. If you feel comfortable around basic coding, such as javascript, then you now have a new tool at your disposal.

As you can see above, there are several different elements at play here. We start things out with a dynamic_code block. Everything inside of here will be considered part of this Dynamic Code. This is an area where you have to be careful. Any changes to the basic structure of the code will affect what output people receive. As with any type of code, it’s also possible to break Dynamic Code. So please be careful when editing it.

Inside a Dynamic Code block you will find some form of conditional, that’s the if and later on the else. Bronto also has an elseif available to users. This structure is completed with a closing /if. These are comparable to conditionals available in most other programming languages. In Bronto’s Dynamic Code, all of these special terms are enclosed in curly braces – that just makes sure we don’t accidentally confuse some of your text for a conditional.

Within Dynamic Code, you will enclose any actual content within literal tags. This tells Bronto to view this literally as content, not as Dynamic Code. Inside of those tags, you can have any html you wish. If you are using the WYSIWYG editor you can also click within this area and drop in images, special text, tables, or anything else you need.

So Now what?

Alright, so you understand the basics of how Dynamic Code works. If you play around with the Dynamic Code Wizard, you can check out all the available functions that can be used within an if or elseif.

You can then take that code and put it into a template or drop it into a message that you are creating via the API. You may also find that writing the code yourself will provide a bit more flexibility than using the wizard. At the very least, you now have the ability to tweak your Dynamic Content as you go, speeding up any edits you need to make. So try it out.

Don’t Forget To Test!

As with any Dynamic Code you create, it’s important to check how it looks. Once you have made changes to your Dynamic Code, you should look at the preview. We have added an option in the Fall 2009 Release that allows you to personalize previews to a specific contact.

You can select which contacts are available for preview on the individual contact pages. I suggest you select yourself and some other colleagues, then alter your data and list membership in order to see how your content looks with different data. This is also useful for testing out personalization.

So check out the new Dynamic Code feature and start delivering a better, more dynamic experience for your contacts.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

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• Social Network Sharing* – Enable your readers to easily share email content with their social networks. An additional button in our email editor will now automatically insert a link to share a web version of this message on the most popular social networks.
• Enhanced Dynamic Content* – Leverage dynamic content with simple point and click to create true one-to-one messages. We have extended this existing feature into all messages and added more flexibility to the targeting.
• Quick Action Navigation – Customize your account to include quick links to the pages you use most. All the tools within Bronto that you use the most are just a click away.
• Send Friendly Reports via Email - Now you can send message reports to management, coworkers, or anyone that is not a user of the system.

[FLOWPLAYER=http://brontoversity.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/email_vid1.mov,525,345]

Having trouble viewing this?
We hope you enjoy it! To see the other features you can take a look at the release notes which are available in the help section of the application

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

*Denotes that the feature is available in the Professional Edition only.

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You may have noticed Halloween displays at the local store, that’s how you know we are nearing the Bronto Fall 2009 Release. The release will be going live on Sunday October 4th. So what’s in store for this release? Well we’ve got a few items that I think you’ll enjoy…

Share Within Your Network (SWYN)

Now your contacts can post the web version of your email to their favorite social network. We’ve added a button to the WYSIWYG editor so you can add these links with just the click of your mouse.

Improved Dynamic Content

We know dynamic content is important to you, it’s often a key part of well targeted emails. The WYSIWYG editor got another button for dynamic content too. Our new dynamic content can be based off of lists, segments, or any fields you may have for your contacts.

Did I hear you say you wanted dynamic content in your api emails too? No problem! The new dynamic content is based off of a scripting language. So if you can handle basic scripting (like simple javascript), you can tailor your dynamic content to your needs and easily use it within your API integrations.

Get Around Faster

We’ve updated the tab navigation so you can more easily jump around in Bronto. If that’s not enough, we’ve also added a new ‘Quick Links’ dropdown as well. Go here when you are on a page if you want to create a link to that page. Later on, you can access the link you created from anywhere with one click.

Much more…

As always, we have added a number of other improvements to Bronto. This includes improvements to date segmentation tools, more accessible reporting, and more infrastructure improvements. We’ll make our release notes available before the release if you are interested in all the details.

So keep your eye out and get excited for October 4th!

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto Software

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What Are Remails?

Remails are messages sent out to your contacts based on their response to previous messages. Hello, boosted ROI! That’s right, these emails can really help to increase your conversions. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Check out this blog post on remarketing.

The way remails works is that your first message goes out normally, then after a day or two, we automatically send the email out again to those people who didn’t open it. The idea is to reach your contacts at a different time, and maybe with a slightly different message, to help get their attention this time around.

Let’s check out how you can leverage these powerful, ROI enhancing messages with just a click of your mouse.

Setting Up Remails In Bronto

When scheduling a delivery, click on the Show Advanced Options link at the bottom of the screen. You have several advanced options at your disposal, among them is remails.

If you choose the first option for remails, then you will be sending out the same email again to people who didn’t open it the first time. It’s up to you how long to wait before resending. One day is good, but depending on your contacts’ email habits, you may want to give it 2 or 3 days.

When using this option, you can also modify the subject line for the remail. Just click the checkbox and then add in a new subject line that will hopefully grab the attention of the people who didn’t open your first message.

If you want to put a bit more effort into remails, then you can go with the second remail option. This option allows you to select a different message to send out. It also allows you to select different criteria. Selecting a different criteria not only allows you to target those who didn’t open the email, but you can go even deeper and target people who opened but didn’t click or who clicked through but didn’t convert.

With Great Power Come Great Responsibility

One bit of advice is to not overuse the remail feature. It’s great to use it on an important or particularly profitable email, but using it on all emails can cause contact fatigue (i.e. your contacts receive too many emails and begin to unsubscribe). However, using this tool judiciously, you can bolster your email marketing efforts and continue to drive increasing ROI.

Got any questions about remails? Do you have a success story using Bronto’s remail feature? If so, we’d love to hear them in our comments section below!

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

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When you first import a list, we will add the contacts to your account with a status of Active. You now have an active marketing relationship with these contacts. From there, a number of things can happen. Take a look below for a quick overview.

When you import contacts, you also have the option to have them double opt-in. Choosing this option will cause them to be created as Unconfirmed contacts. When unconfirmed, contacts can only be sent messages that contain a confirmation link. Once they click that confirmation link, they will become an active contact.

Active contacts occasionally bounce, it’s just part of what happens out on the internet. That’s ok, we expect it will happen from time to time. However, if a contact starts to bounce too much, or if we get an Invalid Email Address bounce, then we will mark that contact as Bounced. Once a contact is bounced, you cannot email them. We do this to protect your deliverability and list performance.

Contacts not only bounce, but they also unsubscribe from lists. When a contact does this, we will mark them as Unsubscribed. This ensures that they will not receive any marketing messages from you. The unsubscribe relationship is very important, so even if you delete a contact, we will remember that they have been unsubscribed. This helps to ensure that any accidental re-additions of this contact to your account will not violate compliance.

Speaking of deleted contacts, we do maintain a contact’s information when they are deleted as stated above. If a contact is deleted, then the contact has a state of Deleted. These contacts cannot be sent marketing messages, and they do not count towards your contact count.

There is one last state which is quite special, Transactional. Contacts are added to your account as transactional if you have a business relationship, as opposed to a marketing relationship with them. These contacts can be emailed transactional messages such as receipts, confirmations, or other messages that relate to a business transaction.

Bronto will not allow you to send marketing messages to transactional contacts. An important thing to note is that you can send transactional messages to active contacts. They don’t need to be modified to receive transactional messages.

If you want to see what status your contacts have, you can look at the All Contacts page by going to Contacts->All Contacts. Here you will see exactly where each contact stands.

We try to make the contact lifecycle simple and unobtrusive so that you can always know where you stand with your contacts. Have any questions about the contact lifecycle? Feel free to ask them in the comments section below.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

Update: There was a question about which contacts count towards your Contact Count, it’s easy, only active contacts are counted up when we tell you how many contacts you have.

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There are many reasons why you need to monitor the replies to your email marketing, such as:

• List Hygiene – You may be receiving unsubscribe requests, which brings me to…
• Compliance – CAN-SPAM (as well as many other nations’ laws) require you monitor replies for unsubscribes. So it’s not only a good idea, but also legally required (see a post on CAN-SPAM updates)
• An Open Channel – Your recipients may be trying to rave about your emails or give you good ideas, but you won’t know if you don’t listen.
• Because You Should – Out of common courtesy for your recipients, you should be listening to what they have to say back to you.

At Bronto, we provide a full-featured reply management tool to make this process quite easy. You can take advantage of this by checking the Enable Reply Tracking option when sending a message.

Once you have this enabled, your replies will come into Bronto instead of your inbox. You will also be able to take advantage of the tools we offer to manage those replies.

Automatically Process Unsubscribe Requests

To turn on automatic handling of unsubscribe requests, go to the Home->Settings->Replies.

Before you turn this feature on, you will want to tweak the words we look for in the subject line to identify unsubscribe requests. It’s important to make sure that you aren’t using these words in your subject lines, because if you were, every reply would be identified as an unsubscribe.

Once you have had this option on for a little bit, you can enable automatic deletion of unsubscribe replies as well. It’s a good idea to keep them around for a bit to ensure that we aren’t catching any other replies as unsubscribes.

With Bronto automatically unsubscribing contacts, you will save some time and effort, but it doesn’t mean that you no longer have to look at replies. There will always be replies that we don’t catch or that just require a personal response.

Keeping The Clutter Down

It also happens that lots of other emails end up in the replies inbox. These come mainly from two sources. The first is automated replies, these are most often ‘Out of Office’ replies. The other type is spam, which is most often caused by your recipients inboxes being harvested by spam bots (learn more about spambots).

Both of these can be a major annoyance when trying to manage replies. That’s why we made it so you can enable the deletion of Automated Replies and Spam messages.

Again it’s important to first test out our automated message identification for a short period of time. To test this out, all you have to do is perform a couple of sends, then go into your replies and look for the symbols that denote spam replies and automated replies.

Once you feel comfortable that we aren’t catching false positives, you can turn the automatic deletion on.

Walking Through The Rest

Even with all the help we provide, you will still need to go through your replies on a regular basis. You can quickly unsubscribe a contact right while you are viewing a reply. This will also delete that reply for you and move you along to the next request, thus allowing you to quickly dispatch a large number of replies in a short period of time.

I hope I have shown how important replies are as a part of email marketing. They provide a simple mechanism for your recipients to unsubscribe, get in touch with you, or even just vent. Managing them can be simple and painless if you use the tools at your disposal.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

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Often times automated messages are sent as text only messages, chock full of info with a few terse sentences, as is often the case with purchase receipts. As a marketer, you see these not only missed cross-sell opportunities, but also as failures in brand building.

By utilizing the API and Automated Message Rules you will take control of content while gaining access to detailed aggregate statistics. Let’s check out how you set that up and what you get out of it.

Own the Content

With Automated Message Rules you own the message. Any information that you need in order to customize this message will be passed to you via API message tags. This allows you the freedom to make changes to the copy and creative of your emails without any development or tech resources.

API message tags (%%#examplemessagefield%%) are similar to personalization fields (%%firstname%%) and allow you to provide contact specific data that is only relevant for this email. The values for these api message tags will be provided via the API when a message is sent. In the example below you can see that we are providing the details of what you have purchased via an API message tag, as well as the last four digits of the credit card (it’s best not to store credit card details with your marketing data).

You now have the ability to recreate your emails within Bronto. But don’t stop there, now you can move things around, adjust creative and copy, and add in a few marketing aspects. Remember that this is a transactional message, don’t overload it with marketing copy. A few marketing touches will do.

Get the Reporting You Need

An API Automated Message Rule will allow us to make the connection between API calls and the message we just created. While setting up this Automated Message Rule we will specify an API Handle. This handle will be referenced later by the API call.

Once we start making API calls that use this API handle, Bronto will start aggregating reports. That means that all the opens, clicks, conversions, and everything else will be brought together into one report. With the ability to view data over time ranges (e.g. today, last 7 days, last 30 days, last 180 days) you can start to understand how effective these messages are.

Not only can you see the effectiveness of these messages, but you can work to improve their effectiveness by making changes and monitoring their performance over time.

With these tools at your fingertips, you can harness yet another communication mechanism that has been underutilized all this time.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

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