In this post, we’re going to look at how to accomplish this in Bronto using our Direct Add feature in conjunction with a simple welcome message that leads the contact to the Manage Preferences page, which will act as step two of the process.

Step 1: Setting up your Manage Preferences page

The first step in the process is to make sure that your Manage Preferences page is set to collect the information that you would like to get after your contact signs up. This is as simple as adding the fields that you would like to collect to your standard manage preferences page. We’ve covered this in previous posts on Brontoversity, so I won’t go into much detail. If you need a refresher on editing webforms, please check out the following post:  Getting Comfortable with New Webforms.

Step 2: Setting up your welcome message

The second step in making this work is to create the welcome message you would like to use to point your new contact to the Manage Preferences page. You will create this message just like any other message in the account, by going to the Messages->Create New Message. The message can be any type, although plain text is not recommended because links do not work in plain text messages. We’ll be using the WYSIWYG editor for our example. As with any welcome message, you should be sure to thank the contact for signing up, and provide them with an example or description of they type of communication they will receive from you and when.

When using the welcome message as the gateway to the second step of the signup process though, you’ll want to ensure that you feature a prominent link to the Manage Preferences page. To link to the manage preferences page, just type the text that you would like to be your link, highlight it, and click the Insert / Edit Link button in the WYSIWYG editor. In the pop-up, select Manage Preferences URL from the Link List drop-down, and then click Update. This will create a link to the Manage Preferences page that is customized to whatever contact this message is sent to.

Once this link is in place, and you are happy with the look and feel, content, and subject of the message, go ahead and Save and Close the message.

Step 3: Setting up your Direct Add URL

The next step in the process to to set up your Direct Add URL to send out the welcome message automatically, as soon as the Direct Add code is triggered from your site. Setting this up in Bronto is pretty simple, all you need to do is go to the Home>Settings and then click Data Exchange on the left sidebar. Once on the Data Exchange page, just check the checkbox next to Enable Direct Add for adding new contacts to enable Direct Add.

Once the setting is enabled, it is time to choose our settings for the current Direct Add URL. The URL that appears in the box below the settings is dynamic and will change as you modify the parameters using the checkboxes above. For our two step process, you’ll want to leave the Add contacts with “unconfirmed” status (By default all contacts are added with “active” status) box unchecked, and check the Send a welcome message box. You can leave the drop-down set to only when contact is new.

Checking the option to send a welcome message will expand the settings options. Here you can define the from name, from address and choose the welcome message you would like to send when a new contact fills out the form. You’ll want to choose the welcome message you set up in step 1.

We’re going to skip over the basics of implementing Direct Add on your site, as that has been covered in depth in a couple of previous posts, linked here for your convenience:

DIY Integrations: Direct Add
Adding Contacts to a Specific List with Direct Add

So once you’ve got your welcome message set up, and your Direct Add code embedded on your site, you should be all set. Now, when a new contact fills out your form and is added to your Bronto account, they will be automatically sent an email containing a prominent link to the Manage Preferences page where they can give you whatever additional information they would like.

Let us know if you have questions or comments on this post. If you are already implementing this method, let us know how it’s going in the comments below.

Lucas Weber
Bronto Client Services

Related posts:

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2. Adding Contacts To A Specific List With Direct Add A few months ago, Lucas Weber wrote a post called...
3. How To Send A Subscription Confirmation Message At Bronto, we’re very serious about permission based marketing. We...

Dripping Messages to Contacts

Drip marketing is a form of e-mail marketing where a company sends (“drips”) e-mail messages to contacts on a scheduled basis. You can create your own drip campaign in Bronto by employing date-based automated message rules. The rules that you use to create this type of drip campaign are based on the creation date of the contacts that is stored by default in the history of each of your contacts.

The Contact Enters Your Database

The entire process begins when the contact signs up on an add contact form that you provide. In this case, the contact adds themselves to a list by signing up for emails from The Widget Gallery.

You can see below that the contact is now in your contact list and has a creation date of 07/08/2010. This date is the key to your drip campaign. Each email sent will be sent on a date determined by a fixed number of days after this creation date.

Creating The First Rule

In this example, the first rule that you will create is a rule that sends each contact in your list a message 7 days after they were created. You will need to click on the “Automated Message Rules” link under the Messages tab in your Bronto account. Once there, click on the link that is prompting you to create a new rule. You will then be prompted to name your rule and specify what type of rule you would like to set up. I have chosen to name this rule “Week 1 Message” in an effort to keep this drip campaign organized. Choose Date-Based for the Rule Type. The application will then ask you for a couple of pieces of qualifying information concerning this date based rule. You will need to choose “Contact Created” for the field that contains the date you are basing this on. Then, you will need to choose your preference for “Type of Match” which, in this example, will be “Check Day, Month, and Year Every Day”. Once you have completed this, you can move to the next step in the wizard.

Choosing a message to send and setting it up is almost exactly the same as sending a regular message in Bronto. Once you have set your message up, you will be asked to establish your Timing Options. In this first rule’s options, I specify that the message should be sent at 10:00 am 7 days after the contact was created. I also make sure to go into the advanced options area and choose the name of my list that contacts are being sent to when they fill out the form referenced at the top. Once I do this, I am able to move to verifying my rule.

The Second Rule

The second rule in the campaign is set up as the same type of rule, with the differences being the message I’m sending and the timing option. Since I want the second message to be sent 2 weeks after the contact is created, I specify in the Timing Options area that I would like this message sent 14 days after the creation date.

Verifying Your Rules

Once you have created each rule, you will be asked to verify it. Bronto will give you a readable explanation of how your rule works. If you are sure your rule is set to do what you want, you will then be able to save and activate it.

How Do I Know The Rule is working?

Once you save and activate your automated message rule, it becomes active. You should now be able to see scheduled messages in your delivery calendar that will let you know that your rule is running every day.

Stopping The Rule

If you would like to deactivate your rule, just head over to the Automated Message Rules list and choose the rule that you would like to stop. You should see the link below. Just click on the link to Deactivate and your rule will stop functioning.

You now have all the tools and knowledge that you will need to create a successful Drip Marketing campaign in Bronto. If you have any questions on this, please feel free to comment below or contact client services.

Frank Chapman
Bronto Client Services

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2. Automatically Sending Welcome Messages When a contact sign’s up to receive messages from you,...
3. How Are You Running Your Campaigns? We all know that viewing the message tracking reports for...

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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We are implementing this in an effort to make sure your information is only accessible by your username. When you request a password reset, the application will ask you the security question that you chose, and you will need to respond with the correct answer that you previously supplied. Make sure to be careful, though, as the answer that you supply is case sensitive.

If you are sharing a username with another user, you may want to consider stopping this practice. We strongly recommend that each username have only 1 user responsible for it. If you need more users, please contact your account manager. If you have any questions regarding the security question, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

Frank Chapman
Bronto Client Services

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The new function and its related functions deleteAccounts, readAccounts and updateAccounts allows you to maintain your client accounts from outside the Bronto application. The arguments for this function fall into generalSettings, contactInformation, formatSettings, brandingSettings, repliesSettings and allocations. You can use these new functions to integrate Bronto into an external application where you preform other work, there by cutting down on the time you spend switching between applications. To do this you would need to generate a SOAP message like this:

Of course, after you create your client accounts, you can do a readAccounts to display information about those clients accounts in another application. Then using updateAccounts, you can update a client account and maintain it without having to switch over to Bronto. You could also set up an automatic system to examine your client accounts on a regular basis and alert you if any are approaching a limit, such as maximum number of contacts allowed in the current allocation period.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

Andrew Kanes
Support Engineer at Bronto

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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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As technology advances, so to do your needs for immediate results. As a user of the world wide web, you have become conditioned to expect your news and social status in real time. We have taken this into consideration and have implemented instant chat as a support option in the Bronto application. We are now available from 8am to 8pm EDT to answer any quick questions you may have right in your browser.

Where Do You Start

For example, if you are working in the application and have a question concerning navigation, just click the live chat link in the top right hand corner of almost any page. 

The Live Chat box will pop up in it’s own browser window. The application will ask you for a couple of pieces of information. Please enter your name, email address and a short description of your issue. Make sure these fields are accurately entered and click the “Start Chat” button.

Start Chatting

You should now be connected to a representative in the Client Services section. You can pose your full question to them and they can assist you with your issue. In the example below, Lucas instructs me on where to upload the images that I wish to use in my message.

Let’s Keep It Simple

Please remember we are emphasizing that this chat function is for quick on the go questions. If you have a more in depth issue or a question concerning the API, we suggest that you open a support case from the support link in the top right corner of any page in Bronto. This will assure you priority and a way to track the progress of your issue. If you have any questions on this new feature, please do not hesitate to contact Bronto Client Services.

Frank Chapman
Bronto Client Services

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Direct Import allows you to post (or send) a file over http without having to interact manually with the contact import forms in the Bronto web application. Why is this so great? Well, without having to do any API programming or much of any setup at all, you can create a system that automatically sends a file with your contacts’ email addresses and any additional information you have, to Bronto.

Using a scheduling utility, such as cron on unix based systems, and an http posting library, such as curl, you can setup a scheduled process to keep your contact data fresh. These are tools that are familiar to most system administrators, so you should be up and running relatively quickly.

Do you have the ability to automatically create exports of your contact data from your local database, but have been logging into Bronto to keep your contact data up to date? Let Direct Import take care of that for you. You’ll always have the most up to date information about your contacts and you’ll only have to set it up once.

So, head on over to the help topics in the application for all of the information and setup options that you’ll need. Less manual work, and fresher data. We hope you’ll like it.

Alex Durzy
Support Engineer at Bronto

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Before we begin, please note that this guide will not tell you what changes to make to the CSS, simply where to find it in the new webforms builder.

Step 1: Choose your Webform

The new webform builder allows you to edit the CSS for any of the webforms available to you, from an Add contact form to a Manage Preferences page. The first step is just deciding which form you would like to edit. When you’ve decided, you can click either the name of the form, or the pencil icon off to the right.


Step 2: Click the ‘Styles’ link

The next step is to simply click on the Styles button on the upper right of the form editor screen. This will bring up a lightbox that contains all of the CSS code for the current webform. You can see that the CSS is well commented, which means you should be able to tell which selector controls which portion of your form content.

Step 3: Check the checkbox

In order to make sure that you are able to edit the CSS, you’ll just need to make sure that the Use the custom stylesheet below checkbox is checked. This will enable the text field with the CSS in it, and you will be able to make any edits that you would like.

Resetting the form

If you make a few too many edits and accidentally hide your email address field or something, we also offer a quick way to revert back to the default CSS stylesheet. If you need to do this, just click the Styles link one more time and then click the link at the very bottom of the lightbox, the link is pictured below.

Hopefully this post illustrates the ease with which you can now find and edit specific styles on your webforms. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

Lucas Weber,
Bronto Client Services

Related posts:

1. Getting Comfortable With New Webforms Bronto’s Spring 2010 Release is finally here, and with it,...
2. Creating New Webforms Coming soon to a Bronto near you, our new webforms...
3. Webforms and Subscriber Confirmation Back in February, Lucas Weber gave us a great post...