The correct format for the Success tag in Bronto is %%!success%%. Easy enough, right? Now, let’s say you are creating a Manage Preferences Webform (located under Content->Webforms.

1. Click Form Settings.
2. In the Message To User section, you will see a text box called Success Message. In this text box, you can add a message that will be displayed via the %%!success%% special tag. This special tag can be added to the page that is displayed after the contact submits the Webform. You will choose which page is displayed after the Webform is submitted in the Webforms Settings section.



3. From the previous step, we chose to send contacts to the “Default Thank You” Webform after the Manage Preferences Webform was submitted. On the Default Thank You Webform, we can add the %%!success%% special tag to display the text we added in the Success Message text box from the previous step.



4. After a contact submits the Manage Preferences Webform, they are taken to the “Default Thank You” Webform, which displays the text referenced via the %%!success%% special tag.

That’s all there is to it. Adding Success Tags is a quick and easy way to customize your Webforms and add in the content your contacts need to see when they submit your Webforms. Drop us a comment and tell us how you are using Success Tags to customize your Webforms.

Rob Slade
Client Services Specialist

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Using Field Tags And Special Tags In The From Name & From Address

Let’s say that you have a central list in your Bronto account, but different contacts are assigned to different sales associates. You want to send out a message to the entire list, but want the from name and from address to be the sales associate that’s assigned to that contact. In the past, you had to break up your list into multiple lists and send a different delivery to each list using a different from name and from address. Now, however, you can use a field tag or special tag to dynamically populate the from name and from address.

The data will be pulled into the from name and from address using field tags, which means you need to upload and store that data in Bronto in the Fields area. In this example I have two fields created, associatename representing the sales associate’s name and associateemail representing the sales associates email address.

When I get ready to send out my message, instead of typing in the name and email address of an individual, I can type in the field tags, %%associatename%% and %%associateemail%%. Optionally, I can also choose to add Special Tags. These tags will be replaced with the correct data as the message is sending.

**Important**

It is very important to verify the data in your fields area before using a field tag to send a message. If a field is blank or has incorrect data stored in it, the message will not be sent and you will see a message in your tracking report that states the message was Undeliverable. The email message itself, however, has not actually been sent, so it is not a true bounce and will not count towards your sending statistics or soft bounce statistics. It will however count towards your sending allocation and you will be charged for a delivery of that message.

Using Content Tags In The From Name And From Address:

Content Tags allow you to create reusable “blocks” of content that you can use in the body, header, footer, from name, and from address of your messages. We already covered how to create Content Tags in Reusing Content With Content Tags, so now let’s take a look at how to add them to the from name and from address.

To add a Content Tag from name and from address:

1. Create a new, or edit an existing message.
2. In the from name and from address of your message, add %%@thenameofyourcontenttag%%, replacing thenameofyourcontenttag with the name of the Content Tag you want to reference.

If you have any questions regarding the use of tags in the from name and from address, please leave them in the comments section below.

Rob Slade
Client Support Specialist

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Width

The first thing I want to go over is setting the overall width of your template design. Many people want to create an email template in the same way they would build a web page and set the width to be fairly wide. Unfortunately, many contacts are limited by the width of the display window of their email client, such as Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc. These display windows are usually fairly small and a wide email design forces the contact to have to scroll left and right to read the content of your message. We typically recommend building an email template design with a width of around 600 pixels or so. You can sometimes get away with a slightly larger width, but again, your contacts may have to scroll right to see the entire content.

Non-Supported HTML Elements

Building an HTML template for email is much different than building an HTML website. Many of the shortcuts we can use in web page design to cut down on coding are not supported by email clients that display the emails. A great resource for seeing which elements may not be supported by the various email clients is http://www.email-standards.org. Lucas Weber also did a great blog post explaining this site and how to use it, which you can find by clicking here.

So, for example, let’s say you want to create a simple table cell with some text and have 10 pixels of padding separating the text from the edge of the cell. In website design, the HTML might look similar to this:

Resulting in:

Unfortunately, the very popular Outlook 2007 email client does not support the padding style attribute and will ignore it, resulting in your text showing up incorrectly up against the edge of the cell. To write this code so that it correctly shows up in an email client that doesn’t support the padding attribute, we must use table rows and columns to set the spacing we wish to use. Our corrected code will look something similar to this:

Resulting in this:

As you can see, we achieved the same result as above, but we used rows with their height set to 10 pixels and additional columns with widths set to 10 pixels to create the “padding” we need in this table cell. This code will render exactly the same, regardless of which email client you view the message in.

Inline Styles vs. CSS Style Sheets

Another helpful tool web designers use in websites is CSS style sheets. These are usually added into the header region of the page and define styles throughout the web page. When you try to use these in email, however, some email clients will strip any information contained in the header section, including style sheets. This will force the content of the email message to default to whatever fonts and font sizes are set by default by either the email client or web browser you are using. To make sure this doesn’t happen in your emails, we recommend using inline styles throughout your HTML template.

Let’s say you wanted to set the font of one section of the template to 10 point Arial. Setting this as an inline style would look something like this:

Resulting in:

As you can see, the style attribute was added to the td tag to style the elements contained within it. You can add these styles throughout your template HTML code and the styles will hold in all email clients.

Required Bronto Tags

The last thing I want to talk about is adding the required Bronto tags for the unsubscribe link and physical address into your template design. The unsubscribe link and a physical address are required by CAN-SPAM in each of your email sends. If Bronto doesn’t see the correct tags to generate this information, it will automatically add it into the message for you. Typically the version Bronto adds will not look consistent with the rest of your template design. In order to incorporate the unsubscribe tag into your message, you will need to use the tag %%!unsubscribe_url%% as the URL in your hyperlink. The tag will be replaced automatically with the correct URL when you send out your message from Bronto. In the HTML code, your unsubscribe URL might look similar to this:

Click here to <a href="%%!unsubscribe_url%%">Unsubscribe</a>

Resulting in:

Click here to Unsubscribe

Adding the company address is very easy as Bronto has a tag that will add all of the required address information and format it in a popular style. The tag is %%!account_address%%. This does not need to be inserted into a hyperlink like the unsubscribe link, as the tag will be replaced at time of send with the account address. The formatting will look like this:

Bronto | 324 Blackwell Street | Suite 410 | Durham, NC 27701 | US

Conclusions

Wrapping things up, these are just a few tips you can use in your custom HTML template designs. For example code and more tutorials on building custom Bronto templates, reference the help section in your Bronto account and search for “Example Code For A Custom Template”. Good luck with creating your custom templates!

Rob Slade
Client Support Specialist

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Linking To Webforms

Linking to webforms is as easy as creating a standard hyperlink in your email message. In fact, it is just creating a hyperlink in your email. The question is, “What link do I use?” Bronto provides the correct link to your webform once the form has been created.

To access this link, venture to the webforms overview page located under Content–>Webforms. In this section you will notice a small magnifying glass icon to the right of each form.

Click this icon to take you into the section where the advance form usage elements are located.

Once there, at the bottom of the screen, there is a section called Public Link To This Webform. If you click this link, it will display your webform in a web browser. This is the URL you can use to link directly to your webform inside of emails or on the web.

You can use the WYSIWYG editor inside of Bronto to create a hyperlink or code an HTML hyperlink in an HTML email. For example, your HTML hyperlink may look something like this:

Embedding Webforms

Bronto also allows you to create webforms and then directly embed them on your website. Once the webform has been built, set up, and styled how you want inside of the Bronto application, we provide the necessary form code for you to copy and paste in the appropriate location on your website. Right above the section where you get the URL link to the webform, is a section called Embed This Form. In the box is the necessary HTML code which you can copy and paste.

Once you have added this to your website, the form is live and ready to start working immediately. If you’re more advanced in HTML coding, you can use the form code and style it more in-line with how your site looks. This will give you the flexibility to add a seamless looking form and blend it in with your site’s style.

As you can see, using your Bronto webforms in your emails and on your website is super easy and extremely powerful in supporting your email efforts.

Rob Slade
Client Support Specialist

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In Bronto, we have a link where you can go to preview the new webforms and start to get a feel for how they work. To access this link, jump into the current webforms area of your account and click on .

On the following screen, click Take Me To New Webforms. You should now see our new webforms area. This screen will look very similar to the previous webforms area with a list of the webforms you can edit, as well as the option to create some additional forms. Let’s take a look at how a contact add webform is created.

As you can see, it now looks very different. However, the new webforms area is designed to be much easier to use, with a more intuitive interface. Each section is now a drag and drop area, so when you create your webform, you will move the elements you want to your webform, and drop them where they need to go. In the left column, you will have the choice of moving rows with 1, 2, or 3 columns into the work area. Below the row selection, you can drag and drop your Fields, Lists, or any Text & HTML you want to be a part of your webform. At the top of the work area, there are some elements you will be required to add, such as the email address field, the submit button, and some optional elements like an email verify field or the Text/HTML preference option checkbox. Below is a screen shot showing the elements you can drag over to the webform work area.

In the next screen shot, I have dragged a row with two columns and added in the require email address field, submit button, and the fields First Name, Last Name, and City. The Email Address and Submit button are located in one column, and the fields are located in the second column.

Once you have added the elements to your webforms and set them up where they are going to be located, click the button to save your webform changes.

As you build your webform, you can also preview the layout by clicking the button located in the upper corner of the webforms page.

More elements of the new webforms will be available in the near future, but hopefully this gives you a quick insight into the way the new webforms are created. I invite you to spend some time trying out and testing some of the new webforms functionality, and please feel free to leave comments on what you think.

Rob Slade
Client Support Specialist
Bronto Software.

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What Is Direct Unsubscribe

Direct Unsubscribe lets you unsubscribe contacts to your site without showing the web application to the end user. This is accomplished by calling a unique URL through an HTML image tag. One thing to note is that this method does require some comfort with web programming to implement.

Setting Up Direct Unsubscribe

To setup Direct Unsubscribe, add the following HTML in your webpage, replacing example@example.com with the real email address you want to unsubscribe:

In most cases, you will want to dynamically add the email address to the URL. There are numerous ways to to do this in different programming languages. For an example on how to add values to a URL using JavaScript, see Dynamically Adding Values To Conversion Tracking URLs. Although this post uses the conversion tracking URL as the example, the concept applies to Direct Unsubscribe URLs as well.

You will also want to insert a form on your website that asks a contact to enter their email address if they wish to unsubscribe (aka an unsubscribe form). Once the contact enters their email address and clicks the submit button, the form should take them to a confirmation or thank you page.

Once the Direct Unsubscribe URL is set up, you can place it within the body tag of the confirmation or thank you page. It is very important that the Direct Unsubscribe URL is placed on the confirmation or thank you page so that the data that is inserted into the unsubscribe form can be passed to the URL string.

That’s it! Once the contact has reached the confirmation or thank you page, their unsubscribe request is passed back to Bronto via the string of code you inserted on that page. They are also made inactive in the Bronto account. Direct Unsubscribe is set up almost exactly the same way as Direct Add, so if you need another point of reference, see our blog post here.

Rob Slade
Bronto Client Services

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Generate the Detailed Tracking Report

Once you are inside of a message tracking report in Bronto, the detailed report can be generated by clicking the button. The report will be generated as a .CSV file and can be found in the Reports Download section in the Reporting tab.

Breaking Down the Detailed Tracking Report

The first section of the tracking report shows the date you compiled the detailed report and the list or segments you sent the email message to.

The next section is the message information. It displays the name of the message and the date and time you sent it.

The overview section gives you the number metrics of how many contacts were sent the message, as well as how many were delivered, undeliverable, or skipped due to a frequency cap. Immediately below this information is the number and percentages of open rates, click-throughs, and the number of survey responses if you included a survey in your message.

The next section breaks down the click-throughs, shows each link available in the message, and shows the number of clicks made per link. The total clicks is calculated below the list of links.

The final section of the tracking report is going to break down the individual action performed by each contact that the message was sent to. The time stamp indicates when each action took place. The Description, Recipient, and any Field Data (in this case First and Last Name) is displayed for every Action performed by the contacts. For any undeliverable message deliveries, a description is given as to why the email was unable to arrive at the intended destination. This information can help you to troubleshoot any recipient with deliverability issues. A list is also provided consisting of all email address that chose to unsubscribe from your latest campaign.

Well there you have it, the Detailed Tracking Report generated by Bronto, broken down section by section. We would love to hear from you, so please leave comments describing how you have used the reports to troubleshoot discrepancies with contacts, or ways you have used the data to change your sending efforts.

Rob Slade
Client Services Specialist
Bronto Software

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Purchased Last Year During The Holidays

The first segment we will look at contains any email contact that purchased from you during the holiday time period last year. In order to create this segment, you will need to store a last purchased date that is specific to this time period in your Bronto fields.

In this segment, we are pulling any contacts that purchased between 11/01/2008 and 12/23/2008.  Since we know these contacts purchased during this time last year, they may be inclined to shop with you again this year.  Sending them a special email might help trigger another purchase.

Last Minute Holiday Offer

Next we are going to take our previous segment one step further and exclude any contact that has purchased in the last month.  This segment can be used for targeting your contacts that purchased last year. You can use this segment to send an extra incentive coupon or discount to earn their business again.  The main difference in this segment is that we are making sure that your contacts that have recently purchased are not going to receive the discount after they have already made their purchase.  Our primary goal is to reduce the number of upset customers who missed out on the extra savings because they have already purchased prior to your email offer.

We kept the same criteria as we did before, but added in the criteria to exclude anyone that has purchased from you in the last month.

Targeting Contacts With Specific Purchase Amounts

In our last segment example, we are going to specifically target contacts that purchased from you last year, but spent less than a certain dollar amount.  In this example we are going after any contact that spent less than $100 during last year’s Holiday season.  You can also customize this segment to target consumers that have spent more than a certain amount (perhaps the big spenders you can count on for extra revenue).  To build this segment, you will have to have a data field in Bronto that reflects an order value total.

As you can see we are targeting the same group of contacts from the last two segments, but have excluded anyone that spent more than $100 from 11/01/2008 through 12/23/2008.

Of course, these are just a few examples of the near limitless ways you can segment your contacts in Bronto.  Hopefully these segments will show you how to create ways to specifically target your contacts.  Working with a Bronto Email Marketing Strategists can further help you to maximize your email sends and get the most out of your email marketing dollars.

Rob Slade
Client Support Specialist

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Sending Text and HTML Test Messages

Bronto has an option that allows you to send both the text and HTML versions of an email message separately. If you enable sending separate text and HTML versions of a message on the General Settings page, when a test delivery is made, two different deliveries will actually get created. One delivery will have the regular (HTML) version of the message. The other delivery will be the plain text version. Each delivery will be treated separately for accounting/tracking purposes. To turn this option on, click the Home tab and choose Settings.  Click General and check the box beside the option, “Send text and HTML versions of message separately.”

Differentiating Test Sends From Regular Sends

Test messages are displayed slightly differently in your account when looking at your sent list.  For instance, when you are reviewing a message and look at the recent deliveries for that message, the test sends will be indicated by a small icon with the word TEST on it.

Additionally, when reviewing the tracking reports for a sent message, you can select either the test sends or the regular sends in the drop down menu at the top of the message report.

Finally, one of the main benefits to sending test messages (aside from the obvious) is that they do not factor into your overall sender rating.  This means if you send a test message to two email addresses and one of your contacts doesn’t open the message, you aren’t stuck with a message with a 50% open rate.  Or, if you happen to misspell one of your email addresses and you get a bounce, the bounce rate of 50% will not cause havoc on your overall sender rating.

Leave us some comments and let us know what your test send strategies are in Bronto and how you utilize this feature in your own account.

Rob Slade
Client Services Specialist
Bronto Software

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As mentioned, with our Fall 2009 release, we now support relative dates in segments. This means you can now specify a number and a time frame (hours, days, weeks, months, years,etc) in a segment. The dates being used are relative to the time the segment is processed. For example, lets say you wanted to find any contact in your Bronto account that was created in the last 3 days. The segment may look like this: (Click the image to enlarge)

Another example might be to pull a list of contacts that have purchased in the last 30 days. If you are storing a last purchase date as a field in Bronto, you can use the segment builder to build a segment comprised of these contacts. An example could look like this: (Click to the image to enlarge)

Obviously, there will be many more uses for this new feature. For more information about segmenting on relative dates, click on the Creating Segments: Detailed Explanation help guide available on the Help For This Page on any of the segment pages in the Bronto application.

We would love to hear how you are implementing this feature in Bronto and what success you are having with it. Leave us a comment and share your thoughts!

Rob Slade
Client Support Specialist at Bronto

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