Brontoversity

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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Free Emails for Haiti Relief

John Gunther — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:03:31 +0000

Like many of you, Bronto’s heart went out to the people of Haiti last week. As a result, we jumped to action to support the relief efforts in Haiti. It’s hard to imagine how long it will be before things return to normal. Although we are satisfied with the amount of money we were able to raise as a company, we want to do more.

We have partnered with the American Red Cross in their effort to raise funds for Haiti relief and have created an email template that is available for you to use in an effort to gather support from your customer base. If you choose to participate in this campaign and send a message on behalf of the Red Cross, the emails will not count against your allocation.

If you feel like your audience would be receptive to such a message, click here to learn more about how to take advantage of this opportunity. Thank you for your support!

John Gunther
Technical Writer/eLearning Specialist at Bronto

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Analyzing a Detailed Tracking Report in Bronto

Rob Slade — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:48:40 +0000

Whenever a message is sent in Bronto, the results of that delivery are recorded and shown in the message tracking report area. This report gives you the metrics of the delivery including open rates, click-throughs, unsubscribes, etc. Additionally, the report is very useful for reviewing the effectiveness of the delivery. Sometimes, however, you may want to dig even deeper and get an in depth look at a contact by contact level. This is where the detailed tracking report becomes a fantastic resource in your Bronto account. Let’s take some time and go over what information is contained in the detailed tracking report.

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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Keep Your Eye On The Sparrow: Using The API To Retrieve Conversions

Alex Durzy — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:53:48 +0000

Since conversions are in many cases the purpose for sending an email, they have been covered in great depth in previous posts. You may to start with the basics of conversion tracking and how to set it up by John Gunther. Also, as Adam Covati recently wrote, a conversion doesn’t necessarily just mean a purchase.
Don’t get me wrong, the Bronto reporting tools are great! That said, rather than cover the what and how behind setting up conversion tracking and the reports in the Bronto application, let’s look into how we can use the API to create a custom reporting app or mash-up that gives you exactly what you want, how you want it, when you want it.

Whiz-Bang

So we don’t know how to get the conversion data yet. First, let’s determine what we’re going to get, in order to see what we could possibly build with it. Ultimately, at the individual contact or delivery level, we’ll be able to retrieve the IP, URL, type, description, revenue, and time created for a conversion. You can group by URL or revenue amount, or add an IP locator to track from where in the world you get the most conversions. Hopefully there will be lots and lots of data, because that means your contacts are clicking through and converting.

Tools Of The Trade

If you’re already using the API to do some contact management or some other custom reporting, then you have most likely already used the functions related to contacts and deliveries, namely readContacts and readDeliveries. In order to get to the conversion data, we’ll need to reference either a contact or a delivery by ID. Both of these functions return the IDs for their respective objects. Note: all of the object IDs remain static, so if you have a particular contact or delivery you are watching, there is no need to re-read the object to retrieve the ID.

The only other functions we’ll need are readStreams and readStreamViews. For each object in which you are interested(a contact or a delivery) you need to first call the readStreams function to retrieve the click stream instances. Then for each of these, you will need to call the readStreamViews function with that particular stream ID. Something to consider – each time you call the readStreams function for a deliveryId you will get all of the click streams, not just the new ones since the last time you called the function.

If You Write It They Will Come

Small automatically run applications or scripts are great at getting data and transforming it into a customized format, so you don’t have to do any of the work manually. As we have seen, the API has the necessary functions to get at all of that great conversion data that you see in the Bronto application. Why not take advantage of it and create your own report-wizard-gizmo-script-gadget-formatter-application? Let us know how you’re using the data(and what you named it!)

Alex Durzy
Support Engineer at Bronto

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Getting Integrated: Integrations In Bronto

Frank Chapman — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:02:48 +0000

At Bronto we believe in always trying to make our product better. One of the ways that we attempt to do this is by creating partnerships with companies and products that we can integrate with. Here are some short descriptions of a few of the companies that we have active integrations with.

Omniture

Omniture’s primary product, SiteCatalyst, helps clients measure Web site traffic, visitor activity, advertising effectiveness, and e-commerce transactions. Using our integration you can track the paths of the traffic and see conversions generated by your email in the Omniture interface. You will also be able to create targeted lists from your Omniture data to use in your marketing Initiatives. It is important to remember that you must have an Omniture Genesis account to implement this integration.

Baynote

Baynote delivers the industry-leading recommendation engine for products and content websites, intranets, and portals. This allows you to better understand your contact’s intent and context. Using this information, the integration automatically displays the best content and products in an email sent to a specific contact. This is extremely useful for including recommendations in transactional emails after a purchase has been made. You must have a Baynote account to employ this integration.

Ticket Return

TicketReturn™ delivers flexible ticketing solutions for venues of all sizes, with secure access to Box Office, outlet, and online e-ticket sales. When integrated with Bronto, you will have access to many different pieces of data for all of the contacts that have purchased tickets to your event using the TicketReturn service. This allows you to send transactional emails to contacts before or after events, or segment them based on purchase or attendance history. To use this integration you must be a client of TicketReturn.

Google Analytics

Google analytics is a cost efficient web analytics tool. It will show you how people found your site, how they explored it, and how you can enhance their visitor experience. With this information, you can improve your website return on investment, increase conversions, and make more money on the web. With a Bronto integration you will be able to create your emails so they contain links with information that is recognized by Google Analytics. Using these links you will be able to view how your contacts respond to your email and move through your website. You must have Google Analytics set up on your web site to properly use this integration.

Future Plans

As time goes on we will continue to look for partners that will give our clients a marketing edge. These are just a few of the integrations that we have available now. If you are interested in implementing any of these integrations, please contact Bronto Client Services.

Frank Chapman
Bronto Client Services

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Tracking Non-Commerce Goals

Adam Covati — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:14:06 +0000

I recently covered a couple different ways to track conversions. That’s all fine and well if you want to track purchases, but many times our goals aren’t always as simple as that. That doesn’t mean it can’t be tracked with conversion tracking, and it doesn’t mean you can’t prove the value of email.

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

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

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

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

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

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Importing Contacts: Updating Existing Contacts And Adding New Contacts

Brad Gurley — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:05:56 +0000

Often times, when managing your Bronto contacts, you’ll want to create a new list for a specific marketing campaign or group of messages. You might have a CSV file full of addresses ready to import into that new list. However, there’s a slight problem. Some of those contacts are already on other lists in your account. What’s the best way to make sure those contacts get added to the new list, but don’t get removed from the others?

Getting To Know Unique Contacts

To answer that question, it’s best to understand how Bronto views unique contacts. Whether a contact is unique or not is determined by email address. A single email address is counted as one contact. This is the case no matter how many lists the contact is on. Because of this, adding an existing contact to a new list is actually an update, not an addition.

Importing Contacts

So just how does that apply to your CSV file? During the contact import process, after you’ve selected your file and clicked Next, you’ll see the following screen:

Here, you’ll want to choose the default option: “Update existing contacts, Add new contacts,” then click Next. On the following screens, choose whether you’d like to inform your contacts of their addition or update, then map any contact fields you have in your file. Once you are done mapping your fields, you’ll be asked to choose where to add your contacts:

Select the desired list, then click Next again. On the following page, you can choose whether to delete the contacts from any existing lists. If you only want to add them to the new list, just click Next.

You can then enter your email address to be notified when the import is complete. After you confirm your selections, click Finish to process your import.

Choosing update existing/add new contacts ensures that during an import, an existing contact is updated and included on the list(s) you choose, and a new contact is added to the list(s) you choose. As always, if you have any questions about managing contacts, feel free to post in the comments or open a case from the Support link within your account.

Brad Gurley
Support Associate at Bronto

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Data Retention At Bronto

John Gunther — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:06:35 +0000

With a new year comes the promise of new beginnings and an “out with old in with the new” mentality. Coincidentally, at Bronto, we apply a similar mentality in regards to the data we keep. In our view, if data is no longer relevant, then it can be removed. Hence, we have implemented our Data Retention Policy to help remove this irrelevant data.

What Is The Data Retention Policy?

At a really high level, the Data Retention Policy simply outlines which pieces of your data we permanently keep and which pieces we delete after a set period of time. The default “Retention Period” for all Bronto customers is 90 days. You may elect to purchase an extended Retention Period of 180 days or 365 days by contacting your Bronto Account Manager.

What Data Does The Data Retention Policy Affect?

The following table summarizes the data types contained in the Bronto application and their applicable retention time frames.

Retained for the Data Retention Period	Retained for the life of the account
	Users and Account Settings
Contact history	Contacts and all associated field data
	Lists and Suppression Lists
	Templates and Template Folders
Message replies The “online version” of a message linked to in messages	Messages and Message Folders
	Automated Message Rules
	Campaigns
	Hosting Content
	Headers and Footers
	Webforms
	Feeds
“Detailed Reports” Data (sent/opened/clicked/converted contact-level data contained in detailed reports) User generated reports	Aggregate and summary reporting data

How Does The Data Retention Policy Affect Application Functionality?

Data subject to the Retention Period may limit some functionality in the application. In particular:

Segments can not be built based on contact-level sent/opened/clicked/converted data older than the Retention Period.
Automated message rules can not be built based on contact-level sent/opened/clicked/converted data older than the Retention Period.
Reports based on contact-level sent/opened/clicked/converted data older than the Retention Period will not display any data.

How Can I Keep Records Of Data Subject To The Retention Policy?

If you would like to keep the information subject to the Data Retention Period forever, you may do the following:

Message Replies – Export the replies using the “Export Replies” button on the replies screen.
Contact History – Use the API and the readUpdates call to retrieve a contact’s history.
Online Version Of A Message – Preview the web version of a message and save the web page. Next, create the message as a web page and use the “send web page” functionality.
Detailed Reports Contact-Level Data – Navigate to each message report for messages whose data you want to keep and click Detailed Report. The contact-level data for that message will be in the detailed report.
User Generated Reports – Download the report from the Report Downloads page.

This is a lot of information to take in, but hopefully you have a better understanding of our Data Retention Policy. If you have any additional questions, you can leave them in the comments section below or contact support at (919)-595-2500.

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

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Fast Access To Messages And Reports

John Gunther — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:14:54 +0000

As 2010 approaches, many of us will be plotting our often ambitious, seldom completed New Year’s resolutions. Before you get too down on yourself, I’ve got a simple resolution that will give you something easy to aim for and make your life as an email marketer that much easier. So here it goes, for 2010, you will be a more efficient email marketer by utilizing one-click access to your messages and reports.

The Super Easy Setup

In our Fall 2009 release, we introduced a feature called Quick Links which allowed you to create a link to most pages in the application. What many people don’t realize, is that this feature also applies to messages and reports. So let’s say you have a report or message that you need to access on a regular basis. All you need to do is navigate to that report or message and create a quick link for that page.

To create a quick link for the page you are viewing:

Move your cursor over the Quick Links icon.
Click Add this page.
A notification will appear on the screen letting you know that a Quick Link for the page you are on has been added.

Some Possible Suggestions

As I said before, you can create a Quick Link to any message or report you create in the application, but it is especially useful for recurring messages and reports. Automated Messages and Reports that continually accrue data over time, such as the Sender Rating Over Time report, are especially useful to create Quick Links to.

Creating Quick Links to messages and reports may only eliminate a few clicks and save you a few seconds per day, but over the course of a year, those seconds add up. So why not make 2010 that much faster and efficient by creating Quick Links to the messages and reports you view most.

John Gunther
Technical Writer/eLearning Specialist
Editor of Brontoversity

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