Brontoversity

Overriding Frequency Caps

Lucas Weber — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:47:23 +0000

One of the features that Bronto provides is the ability to set Frequency Caps on your emails. Frequency Caps limit the amount of email that can be sent to your contacts in a certain period of time. You can set these frequency caps to limit the number of messages sent to each contact on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This is a great way to help prevent contact fatigue, which is when contacts unsubscribe simply because they are getting to much email from a particular sender. While Frequency Caps can be a great tool, sometimes you’ve got a message that needs to get to everyone on your list, regardless of whether they have already been sent 5 emails this week. This post will walk you through how to override the frequency caps on a per-message basis to ensure that your important messages are sent to everyone who needs to receive them.

Setting Frequency Caps

Before we look at how to override Frequency Caps, we’ll take a very quick look at where to go to set them up in the first place. By default, Bronto does not enable any Frequency Caps in your account, so they will need to be set up manually. To set up or check Frequency Caps that are currently in place, just go to Home->Settings and then choose General settings from the left sidebar. Your current Frequency Caps settings can be found on this page.

Overriding Frequency Caps

Overriding Frequency Caps is actually very simple, and can be done on regular or automated messages in your account. For regular messages, during the first step of the send process and after you’ve set up your From information and scheduled your message, there will be a link at the bottom of the screen that says Show Advanced Options. Just click the link and the Advanced Options menu will appear. From there, all you have to do is click the checkbox labeled Contact Frequency Caps Override. You can then scroll to the bottom and click Next to move on with the sending process.

For Automated Message Rules, overriding Frequency Caps is even easier. On the second step of creating an Automated Message Rule, there is the Override Frequency Caps checkbox in the Sender Options section right at the top of the page. Just make sure that checkbox is checked and this Automated Message Rule will override any Frequency Caps you have in place.

That is all there is to it. Simply checking the override Frequency Caps checkbox in either of these locations will allow this particular message to bypass any Frequency Caps that may be set on your account.

Lucas Weber
Bronto Client Services

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Getting Comfortable With New Webforms

John Gunther — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:20:52 +0000

Bronto’s Spring 2010 Release is finally here, and with it, comes many new exciting features. One feature that we are particularly proud of is the new Webforms. We have re-designed the Webforms creation, editing, and integration work-flow to make it easier than ever to create and use the Webforms you want. In the next few weeks, we will be gradually rolling out the new Webforms to give you ample time to test out the new creation process, decide if you want to use them, and then begin actually integrating the Webforms into your email marketing efforts.

New Webfoms…Take Me There!

As part our effort to make your transition to the new Webforms as smooth as possible, we decided to roll out this feature over a few weeks to provide you with plenty of time to get comfortable with them. Initially, you can get to the new Webforms by going to Content->Webforms. From here, you will see this message at the top of the All Webforms page:

Click Learn About New Webforms to continue on. You will be taken to a page that explains the new Webforms and lets you know that a transition to new Webforms is entirely up to you. The current Webforms (now known as Legacy Webforms) that you have created and the creation process you used to create them will continue to exist and function as normal, regardless of whether you decide to start testing the new Webforms. So basically, if you aren’t ready for a change, fine by us! Feel free to continue business as usual. However, if you want start testing out creating some new Webforms, click Take me to new webforms.

Create Create Create

After your have clicked Take me to new Webforms, you’ll be brought to the new All Webforms page. Here you will find a table containing the default Webforms for each type of Webform you can create. To begin creating a new Webform, click Create Webform. From here, you can begin playing around with the new Webforms creation process.

If you get stuck or need a little bit of help, check out the sidebar help. Here you will find tutorials describing how to create new Webforms, as well as a video that will walk you through the basics of creating new Webforms, editing the CSS, and changing the form settings.

Take Your Time

As I said before, we are giving you a few weeks to play around with the new Webforms so you can get comfortable with creating them. After that time, you can choose to activate the new Webforms and begin using them in your email marketing efforts. The decision to activate the new Webforms is entirely up to you. You may continue to use the Legacy Webforms if you see fit to do so.

We hope you take the time to explore the new Webforms feature. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

John Gunther
Technical Writer/eLearning Specialist
Editor of Brontoversity

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It’s Coming! The Bronto Spring 2010 Release

John Gunther — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:43:34 +0000

It’s been a cold and snowy winter and all of us here at Bronto are anxiously awaiting the spring. One of the best things coming this spring, other than the weather, is the Bronto Spring 2010 Release. We’ve been working hard all winter to bring you some new and improved Bronto features. Here is a list of some the new things coming your way soon:

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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Are You Aware of Direct Unsubscribe?

Rob Slade — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:21:01 +0000

Typically contacts in Bronto can unsubscribe by either clicking the unsubscribe link contained in an email, or by visiting the manage preferences webform and clicking the unsubscribe link. Sometimes, however, you may want a contact to have the choice to unsubscribe directly by visiting your website. If this is an option you want to offer your contacts, you can use Direct Unsubscribe to accomplish it.

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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Welcome Friend! Adding New Contacts Using the API

Andrew Kanes — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:41:06 +0000

This post only applies to Legacy Version 3 of the API

You may be using the Bronto API to find out who is reading your deliveries or to send a message, but how about using it to add new contacts to your Bronto list? Using the API, you can add new contacts that you have in a system outside of Bronto. The Bronto API allows you to create up to 1000 contacts in a single request. After the request has been successfully processed, these contacts will be available in the Bronto application and the API.

Adding New Contacts

You create these new contacts using the writeContacts function. This function allows you to give as much or as little information about the new contacts as you have. The only information required to create new contacts using writeContacts is their email address, their status (active, unsubscribed, bounced, unconfirmed), and whether each contact should receive html or plain text messages. Naturally, you can also include other information such as source, any lists the new contacts should be on, and any member field data you have about the new contacts. Since the email address is a unique identifier in the Bronto system, you will not create a duplicate contact should you try to create an email address that already exists. You can, however, update current contacts based on the email address if you choose.

Advanced Features

What if you don’t know if the contacts you are trying to add are all new? What if you don’t want to overwrite contact information already in Bronto? As part of your request, you can specify the mode that writeContacts should use. This tells the API how to handle this request. You can use insert, update or insertUpdate. If you specify insert, the contacts will only be created. If they already exist in Bronto, their information will not be updated or overwritten. The update mode will update information of current contacts. The last mode, insertUpdate will allow you to create new contacts or update contacts if they already exist.

The listsMode attribute of the writeContacts function gives you the ability to add or remove the contacts from lists. The options for listsMode are replace, insertUpdate and remove. The replace mode removes the contacts from the lists they are currently on and adds them to the lists specified in the request. The insertUpdate mode keeps the contacts on any lists they may currently be on and adds them to the specified lists. The remove mode removes the contact from the lists in the request. You should always have a contact assigned to at least one list since you can only send to contacts on a list.

The fieldsMode allows you to specify how any member field data you send is treated. There are only two modes, replace and insertUpdate. The replace mode will delete any current field data the contact has, and add the field data sent in the request. The insertUpdate mode will only add data to a field if new field data is included in the request. It will leave any fields not specified in the request as they are.

Last but not least is the ignoreStatusChangeIfUpdate attribute. This parameter is really a safety net that keeps you from unintentionally changing the status of a contact. For instance, if a contact already exists in Bronto, but is bounced, this will keep you from accidentally updating them to subscribed and then attempting to send them a message. If you include this parameter with a value of 1 in your request, then a contact who is currently on your list will not have their status changed, regardless of what value you specify in the request.

Some Example Code (PHP)

Below is some example code you can use to get an idea of how the writeContacts function can be used.

/**

* Creates a contact with the data provided here.

*  This can easily be tied into a for loop to create many contacts at once.

*/

function writeContacts($binding) {

// Initialize emtpy arrays

$writeContact = $writeContactsHandler = array();

// The email address to add

$writeContact['email'] = 'user@yoursite.com';

// Preference for type of message: text or html

$writeContact['msgPref'] = 'html';

// For status the choices are: active, unsubscribed, bounced, or unconfirmed

// for a new contact, this should be 'active'

$writeContact['status'] = 'active';

// Where did this contact come from?

$writeContact['customSource'] = 'signup during purchase';

// insert, update, or insertUpdate, most of the time you want insertUpdate

$writeContactsHandler['mode'] = 'insertUpdate';

$parameters = array('contacts' => $writeContact, 'handler' => $writeContactsHandler);

$result = $binding->writeContacts($parameters);

return $result;

}

Add Away

Now that you have read about the power of writeContacts, we hope you will continue to leverage the power of the Bronto API and discovery new ways to use it.

Andrew Kanes
Support Engineer at Bronto

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Previewing Your Dynamic Content

Frank Chapman — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:53:16 +0000

One of the marketing tools that we are most proud of at Bronto is the ability to use dynamic content in your messages. Previously, John Gunther described in depth how to leverage this tool in his post The Logical Way To Send Email: Dynamic Content. I’d like to show you how to test this content in real time inside the Bronto application.

Setting Up Test Contacts

The first action that you will need to take is to create a couple of email addresses that carry the characteristics that you are basing your content on. When you create these contacts, be sure to check the box next to “Use for dynamic preview”. Once you have this checked, make sure that your contact is on the list or has the field information that would qualify it for specific content to be displayed.

Viewing The Previews

Once your message has dynamic code in place, you will want to choose the show preview button from the editing screen to see how your content looks. This view will show up in a pop-up window over your editor. The top of this window will have a drop down box. This box will contain the email addresses of any contact that has dynamic preview enabled. If you choose any of these addresses, you should get a preview of what that contact’s email should look like.

In this example, here is the preview of a message that will go to a list named “Winners”.

Here is the same message as it appears to contacts that reside in the “Losers” list.

It’s important to note that there is also an option in the drop down list for the “Default” view. This is the view that contacts will receive if they do not fit in any of the criteria that you have specified in your dynamic code.

More Dynamic Options

If you feel like you have now become an expert on dynamic content in Bronto, maybe you should read our blog post Cracking The Dynamic Content Code to see how powerful this feature is. Remember to contact support at Bronto if you have any issues or questions.

Frank Chapman
Bronto Client Services

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Separate Your Way To Success

Alex Durzy — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:55:34 +0000

This post only applies to Legacy Version 3 of the API

Would you tow a trailer with a sports car? Would you tighten a bolt with a hammer? Would you eat soup with a knife?

Many of our clients, either by design or due to allocation of resources, have a separation of responsibilities in regards to their email marketing activities. This is especially true when an API integration is involved and the developers handling the integration may or may not also be involved on the marketing side.

The Bronto API is a powerful tool that allows you to control your entire work-flow, from contact management, to message creation, to message sending. From a development standpoint, this is great in that you have all the power in your own hands. While this may suit your needs perfectly, you may also want to ask yourself what parts of your work-flow are best served by your custom integration, and what would make more sense to save for human intervention in the Bronto application. Developers and marketers sometimes view things very differently, so let’s look into a couple of places where you can make some choices to affect how you ultimately end up sending messages.

No Code Changes Required

So your developers have integrated your contact database with Bronto. Messages are being triggered off of various activities on your website. Marketing messages are being sent regularly to the various lists managed by your integration. Transactional messages are being sent with a fury from all the purchasing that is occurring on your site. Unfortunately, the messages look like an old paper plate that someone wrote on. If your developers don’t also double as email marketers and graphic designers, then perhaps you want to pass control of that portion of the process. We talked about how message creation, data population, and sending can be separate activities in Give Them What They Want. Your designers can create a visually appealing emails and your developer’s custom integration can continue to trigger the sending of messages and managing contacts. You shouldn’t have to make any code changes because you want to update the look of a message.

Sending through an API Triggered Automated Message Rule, as we talked about in Owning Automated Messages is another way to not only get great reporting for your triggered deliveries, but to allow more choice for your marketing team. You can turn an AMR on and off, schedule it to expire, control lists of ineligible and eligible contacts, override frequency caps, and control throttling, all without having to make a single code change. Often this type of control is tied into the code that was written by your developers, but Bronto also allows you to make these changes directly from our web application.

Allowing your developers and marketers to do what they do best is one way to get maximum performance from everyone and hopefully yield a successful marketing campaign. Don’t eat soup with a knife. It burns and you’ll probably end up buying a new shirt.

Alex Durzy
Support Engineer at Bronto

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Feed Me, Seymour! Using RSS Feeds Can Give Your Message New Reach

Brad Gurley — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:31:47 +0000

In the past few years, web technology has provided us with many new ways to send and receive information. One method that has consistently gained popularity is the RSS feed. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) technology allows Internet users to “subscribe” to websites that provide RSS “feeds”. The RSS feeds provide a list of content, a brief description, and a link to the web page with the full article. This allows subscribers to read the latest news through bookmarks in their web browser or through an RSS reader.

If you’re sending emails through Bronto, you may have noticed the “Assign to Feed” option in the Message Overview. Clicking this link will bring up a list of the feeds you’ve created and allow you to add the desired message to a feed. First, though, you’ll need to create your feed.

Creating an RSS Feed

To create an RSS feed, click the Content tab, and then click Feeds. You’ll see a list of your existing feeds and the Create button in the upper right of the screen.

Clicking the Create button brings up the RSS Feed creation screen. Here you can give the feed a name and description. You can also choose whether you’d like posts to remain in the feed for a certain number of days, or to keep the last x number of messages posted to the feed.

Clicking Save will return you to the list of RSS feeds. You will see your newly-created feed in the list. To view the RSS feed at any time, click the orange RSS icon on the right side of the page.

Once you’ve created your RSS feed, you can place the link on your website to encourage readers to subscribe to your feed. While viewing the RSS feed, copy and paste the URL from your web browser’s address bar. This is the link to your RSS feed.

As always, if you have any questions about RSS feeds, feel free to post in the comments or to open a case from the Support link within your account.

Brad Gurley
Support Associate at Bronto

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Setting The WYSIWYG Editor To Basic Mode

John Gunther — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:48:03 +0000

Bronto’s WYSIWYG editor is a fantastic way to create and design your messages without having to deal with HTML and CSS. Our WYSIWYG editor is packed full of buttons that allow you to easily do just about anything you want in order to create your message. Sometimes though, you don’t need or want all the bells and whistles that come with the WYSIWYG editor by default. Perhaps you have a new user and you want to ease them into creating messages, or maybe you simply want to limit what a user can do with the WYSIWYG editor. Whatever your reason, this post will show you how to set the WYSIWYG editor to basic mode for a given user.

What Does The WYSIWYG Editor Look Like In Basic Mode?

You can think of the WYSIWYG editor in basic mode as being a stripped down version of the editor in default mode. Below is a screen shot that compares the WYSIWYG editor in the basic and default modes.

The WYSIWYG editor toolbar in basic mode provides buttons for basic text editing, spell checking, and tag addition. You’ll notice that many of the more advanced buttons, such as adding images, copy/paste options, and dynamic content are not included.

How To Enable The Basic WYSIWYG Editor For A User

You can enable the Basic WYSIWYG editor on a per user basis.

To enable the basic WYSIWYG editor for a user:

Go to Home->Users.
Click on the name of the user you want to enable the basic WYSIWYG editor for.
Click Edit Permissions.
Click Messages.
Click the Use of a basic editor rather than the full What-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editor check box.
Click Save.

Bronto’s WYSIWYG editor is a powerful tool, but it’s not for everyone. If you’ve got a user who doesn’t need all of the buttons contained in the default WYSIWYG editor, use the steps above to limit what they can do.

John Gunther
Technical Writer/eLearning Specialist at Bronto
Editor of Brontoversity

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How To Send A Subscription Confirmation Message

Lucas Weber — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:08:48 +0000

At Bronto, we’re very serious about permission based marketing. We want to make sure that the people receiving mail from our application actually want to receive it. One of the best ways to ensure this is to have your contacts double opt-in. In this post, I’ll be walking you through how to import your contacts as ‘unconfirmed’ and automatically send them a message that includes an opt-in link. Contacts imported using this method will remain in an unconfirmed status until they click the opt-in link and confirm their desire to receive emails from you.

Step 1: Prepare Your Message

The first step in sending your contacts a subscription confirmation message is to have your message set up, tested, and ready to go. Creating messages is covered extensively in the online help, and will not be covered in this blog post. Instead, we’ll be focusing on making sure that the message we want to send has a Confirmation URL in it so that our contacts have some way to confirm their subscription.

We actually have a Special tag that can be placed on any element in your message, whether it is an image or a simple text link. The Special tag you’ll need to use to create a click-able confirmation URL is %%!confirm_url%%. Here is how it would look as part of a text link:
Click here to confirm your subscription

Step 2: Import Your Contacts

The second and final step is to import your contacts. This can be done just as normal, the only exception is that on the fourth step of the import process, you’ll choose to send the contacts a subscription confirmation message, as seen below:

Be sure to select the message you have prepared with the confirmation url link in it. The system will not allow you to select a message that does not have this Special tag in place. Once you’ve specified which confirmation message to send, fill in the From Name and From Address fields, and then follow the rest of the normal import steps. As the system processes the new contacts into the account, it will automatically send them the confirmation message you specified. The contacts will be imported with a status of ‘unconfirmed’ and will not be able to receive any further email from your account until they have clicked on the confirmation link in the message they were sent.

That’s it! Now all you have to do is enjoy the benefits of a truly opted in list.

Lucas Weber
Bronto Client Services

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