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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• Central Integrations Page – We collected all of our integrations into one place in the application so that you can see the breadth of partner options available to you. Each integration includes a high level overview of the functionality provided, any configuration needed to enable the integration, and support and documentation to help you if you get stuck along the way. We are constantly working to expand our partnerships, and as we do, you will see them appear on the integrations page.
• Improved Webform Creation and Management – Our new Webforms are easier than ever to setup, style, and use. The creation process allows you to drag and drop content to setup the form, and then style it using standard CSS. Once deployed, the webforms give you more flexibility to manage contacts and their list subscriptions.
• Transactional Message Performance Improvements – Transactional messages, such as order confirmation and shipping confirmations, are a critical part of communicating to your customers. We’ve now made sending transactional messages faster and more responsive. We streamlined our transactional sending pipeline, allowing us to queue and send transactional emails in near real-time. In addition, we’ve enhanced the accounting for transactional emails so you can see how your overall sending breaks down between transactional and marketing messages.
• Expanded Dynamic Content – In our last release, we improved dynamic content for HTML messages. Now we’ve added that same powerful dynamic content capability to subject lines and text messages. You can now customize more of your message content to better engage your contacts.
• API 4.0 and Direct Import – For you Bronto developers out there, we’ve added and improved your options for moving data into and out of Bronto. First, we’ve created a new, more comprehensive API. Our new API will give you access to more Bronto objects and improved filtering of those objects. But don’t worry, the old API is still there unchanged. Your existing API integrations will continue to work. We’ve also added Direct Import — the ability to programmatically upload a file of contacts and their information. With these new options for passing data to/from Bronto, its easier than ever to enhance the relevance of your emails with data from your customer systems.

That’s some of the highlights, but there are scores of other improvements that come with the Spring 2010 Release. We are proud of the work done on this release and are excited to share it with you. Watch for the release communications in your email and look for the new and improved Bronto on March 7th.

John Gunther
Technical Writer/eLearning Specialist
Editor of Brontoversity

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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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• 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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If you aren’t doing any segmentation right now, I recommend starting small/simple. Of course, data is critical for segmentation, but most anything will do: Total Purchase Value, Gender, Region, or even Style Preference.

You probably have much of this data taking up space in your e-commerce database or any other data store. By importing that into your email marketing solution you’ll be opening up a world of opportunities. How easy is it to create a segment once you have that data? Dead simple.

For the Bronto Winter 2009 Release we’ve enhanced the functionality to ensure that our segmentation tool is even easier to use. So let’s look at creating a segment based off of style preference – the age old question of boxers or briefs.

Segmentation is as easy as building a sentence. In this case, we are choosing people whose field ’style’ is ‘boxers’. Done. Now I can easily customize content or mailings to those who prefer boxers. Something as simple as a recipient’s preferred undergarment may provide significant lift in conversions.

With on-the-fly calculations (133 in this case), you can see how each rule affects this size of your segment. Not only does this reduce errors and time spent tweaking, it also provides an easy way to gain insight into your contact database.

Once you’ve created a few simple segments you’ll be ready to start getting creative. Add a few rules together, see how they perform. You might get a few duds, but pretty soon you’ll be able to target whomever you want, and ROI will be on the rise.

This new segment builder, along with many other improved features, will be available next week as part of the Bronto Winter 2009 Release.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

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Known as “Contact Fatigue Prevention” in some circles, this feature provides the ability to limit how many emails a contact can receive. These limits are set per time period, providing the ability to separately limit how many emails someone can receive in a given day, week, or month.

Is this something you need? If you answered no, you may be surprised. As your email marketing program grows, you may find that you are sending more frequently. Over time you’ll be adding more diverse newsletters, targeted promos, autoresponders, and triggered messaging.

This is great, you’ve built a timely and relevant email marketing program! Of course anyone caught in the middle of it could be receiving email from several different promos, newsletters, and autoresponders. This is where that term Contact Fatigue comes in.

It doesn’t take long for your contacts to tire of so many emails. Setting frequency caps allows you to limit how many of these messages a person can receive. A good suggestion for a starting point is limiting emails to 3 or 4 maximum per week. Or maybe you like to take the long view, say 12-15 emails per month. It really depends on your email marketing program.

Now we’re not recommending that you send 3-4 emails every week. The goal is just to have an upper threshold for emails. Think of it as “annoyance prevention.”

For those of you worried about those important emails that need to be seen, you can always override frequency caps at send time.

We know you want to get started right away, but you’re going to have to wait a few more weeks for the Bronto Winter 2009 Release. The Bronto Team looks forward to your feedback on this powerful new feature.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

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This is a big release for us here at Bronto, we’ve really pulled out the stops. Here are some of the highlights:

• A slick new look and feel, providing easy access to all the info you need.
• Bigger, Better, and Easier A/B Splits, you’ll be testing in no time.
• Inbox Preview, so you aren’t surprised by Outlook 2007 ever again.
• Flexible Reporting to guide you to better email marketing, including your own custom dashboard.

Looking for a bit more info? I bet you are, so why don’t you check out this 4 minute overview video from John, Bronto’s very own eLearning Specialist. You can open in a new window if you are having problems viewing this.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

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In reality, these laws are a minimum bar, but we encourage people to far exceed these government imposed rulings. On occasion, you may forget to include your address or an unsubscribe link in your email. If it happens, we help prevent Uncle Sam from breathing down your neck.

Bronto has historically checked for an unsubscribe link for years now.  However, as of August 14th we’re also checking for an address. At Bronto we do this by providing several different tags you can use to either include your address all in one go, or to format as you wish. For current users you can just search our help for “Address Tags” and you’ll find all the info you need.

Remember, not only does this bring you in compliance with CAN-SPAM, it also helps present a better face to your customers, and that’s smart email marketing.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

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An Updated Interface and Help
An intuitive and informative application can have a big impact on your workflow. We have been hard at work updating our interface to provide you more information, including new dashboard pages, faster responses, and more streamlined processes.

This isn’t just about the look and feel, but also how things work. Well we’ve oiled the hinges and added some more easy to use features, like slide out quick help and page overviews that walk you through the application when you need it.

Easy Email Client Testing
Your emails need to look right in every client, it’s that simple. We understand that and that’s why we are introducing an Inbox Preview tool right inside of our current message overview page. You will be able to see how perfectly your email looks in every client with the click of a button.

A/B Splits
Step your testing up a level and perform some A/B splits. Whether it’s a subject line test or two entirely different emails, you’ll be able to quickly and easily carry out the test. With detailed reports that clearly show lift, you’ll be loving them in no time.

Reporting Made Even Easier
That isn’t the end of our additions to reporting, we’ve got more for both web analytics and existing response data.

For web analytics we now support full integration with Omniture, which includes easy remailing to abandoned carts and more. Using a different web analytics package? No worries as we are also adding a easy tool which will integrate with whatever web analytics tool you use.

We’ve got even more than that, so stay tuned for more information as we approach the release.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

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