Boomerang.com

Try Our Automated Blog Email Newsletter, More Affordable Than Ever

If you're reading the Boomerang Blog you're looking at our Blog Newsletter tool.  Have unlimited employees contribute to your blog and schedule an automatic newsletter to be emailed out in a newsletter format, as often as you like. 

We'll design, create and host a branded corporate blog for you and create a professional looking newsletter template.  You'll receive an automated proof for approval before activating the newsletter based on your schedule. 

Setup has never been more affordable!  For a limited time take advantage of our new low setup fee and reduced monthly plans which include the cost of email.  Please call 800 779-7792 x 2 or email sales@boomerang.com to learn more or get started.


 


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New Beta Version of SalesForce.com Integration Mass Email Tool Available

Boomerang's BlastWizard for AppExchange just released a new beta version for existing customers and free trial users.  The home page has a new look.  Customize your own dashboard to see data that's of interest to you including your last five jobs.

Professional Edition users will particularly like the enhancements made to the segmentation tool.  We've added 'OR' cabability by using a (,) in the filters for the following operators:

• contains
• does not contain
• starts with
• ends with
• match any
• do not match any
• includes
• excludes                                
  

You can also now see the recipient's email address in your search results page. 

Addionally we no longer deduct previously unsubscribed, hard bounced, invalids, duplicates emails and records with no email data from your email account balance. 

If you're a current BlastWizard for AppExchange customer please check us out.  If you're considering integrating mass email and Salesforce.com take advantage of our free trial, no obligation.  To learn more or schedule a live demo call us at (800) 779-7792 x 2. 



 


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Using Entity and Numeric References in Your Email HTML

Someone had asked me the other day about using character escapes such as 'character entity references' and 'numeric character references' (NCRs) in their HTML email, and how these differ from HTML character encoding mentioned in my previous blog article. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published a great Q&A reference that explains in simple terms these differences and when one should use escape references. While the article primarily references web HTML, the information applies in large part to email HTML as well.

Click here to check out the full article.

Google Analytics: Tagging Links in you Email Marketing Campaign

Tagging your links is an important first step to making sure that relevant data are captured about your email or marketing campaign. Google Analytics uses a combination of five standard variables to tag captured data so that it is easily integrated into your Google Analytics reports. Those variables are:

Source
Indicates where the referral to the landing page originated. For your BlastWizard email campaigns, the source is defined as 'Boomerang'.

Medium
Used to qualify the source and provide more specific information about the origin of the referral. For you BlastWizard email campaigns, the 'medium' is defined as 'email'.

Term
Usually used to indicate the keyword for an ad or a search term. In the case of a BlastWizard campaign, this variable will have the anchor text for the link being tracked.

Content
The content dimension is usually used to differentiate the marketing campaign that resulted in the clickthrough. In the case of BlastWizard email campaigns, the 'content' variable is used to determine the email address of the campaign recipient.

Campaign
Usually used to describe the type for the marketing campaign. In BlastWizard campaigns, this variable captures the subject line for the email campaign or message received.

In order for your link tags to work properly, you need to make sure that the landing pages your links will lead to have the necessary tracking code (UTM JavaScript) embedded in their HTML. If you already have added the domains for those links to your Google Analytics component in BlastWizard (Version 7.1 only), you do not need to worry about URL tags. BlastWizard will automatically add all the tags necessary to track the email campaign for you.

You can also add those tracking tags manually to any URL as long as you have a 'website profile' setup for its domain in your Google Analytics account. Here is an example for a URL with all tracking added:

http://example.com/?utm_source=Boomerang&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=Click &utm_content=email_recipient&utm_campaign=Newsletter

For more information on how to use Google Analytics in your BlastWizard account, check out our wiki entry at:
http://mainwiki.boomerang.com/index.php/Google_Analytics

Click here to sign up for a free trial today.

Another 5 Star SalesForce.com Best Email App Review

Are you big on reading reviews?  If you're shopping for a mass email marketing tool that integrates with Salesforce.com you've come to the right place.  By having the most 5 star reviews Boomerang's BlastWizard for AppExchange was voted Best Mass Email Tool of 2008 by AppExchange users.  We rank high on ease of use, value and customer service.  After over ten years in production BlastWizard is simple to use, priced competitively and you can be assured someone at Boomerang will be available to help you.

You can reach us at sales@boomerang.com or call 800 779-7792 x2 if you have questions or would like to schedule a demo.  Check out what users are saying on our AppExchange page by clicking here.  Install and try us out for free, no obligation http://sites.force.com/appexchange/listingDetail?ac=reviewTabLink&listingId=a0N300000016b0YEAQ.

Are test emails not getting delivered to your inbox?

Inbound email messages where the 'from' address domain is managed by the recipient mail server could potentially get blocked. Email servers usually know which domains they are authoritative for or operate internally. An incoming email claiming to be from a domain that your mail server manages, but was generated externally, would be flagged as a spoof and blocked.

Click here for our wiki entry on this issue and find out what you can do to resolve it.

Triggered Email Surveys Get Much Better Results

Want to ask your customers something?  Obviously you can call them, mail them a survey, or email them a survey.  Of course there are other ways but the fastest, most cost-effective, and most expedient is to email them a survey.  The results are available immediately for you to make quick decisions.

Want to improve response rates to your survey?  Offer to give them something for taking the survey.  We find the best "rewards" when we send rewards surveys are simple and cheap like Starbucks or iTunes cards or even Amazon certificates.  We send them all the time for our clients: Rewards Surveys.

Want to really improve your results?  Automate your survey.  Call it what you want: triggered, transactional, event-based, or drip.  The idea is to survey your customers immediately after an event.  Response rates can go up by an order of magnitude by tying your email survey to some interaction the customer just had with you.

The event can be as simple as opening an email, visiting your web site, finishing a customer support request, or taking delivery of a FedEx package.  The types of triggers are endless.  The point is that the customer is much more likely to respond to an email if they have just had an interaction with you.  Strike while the iron is hot, as they say!

We have numerous examples of how triggered surveys have improved responses.  But perhaps our own is very close to home.  We send out customer satisfaction surveys as soon as a Creative Services ticket is close at Boomerang.  We consistently receive higher than 30% response rates without offering ANY reward!  And, as a direct result of these surveys, we have continually improved our customer care services to where our average response rates us at 4.93 out of 5.  We have learned more about our clients, improved our services, and can now respond very quickly to a problem or crisis.

If you want better response, consider automating your surveys.  I can guarantee you'll see better results.

Technorati Tags: email marketing, triggered surveys

Currently Using BlastWizard for Email Marketing AND You're a Salesforce.com User?

You may not be aware that the BlastWizard you know and love fully integrates with Salesforce.com.  You'll have access to the same functionality, top-tier delivery and reports but now you'll choose your email recipients from your Salesforce database.  Best of all your delivery data will be written back into each lead and contact record under activity history.  No need to upload reports into SFDC, we do it for you!  Our award winning BlastWizard for AppExchange allows you to send emails on behalf of yourself, SFDC record owner or a 3rd party.  Upload and store your own graphics and logos and documents.  We can also transfer over your existing data, documents, lists and reports. 

Please go to our Appexchange page to learn more or view a tutorial.  Live demos are also held on a regular basis.  You can also call us directly at 800 779-7792 x 2.

 

 

Shady Characters in your HTML email?

The Problem
When HTML email is rendered in the email client, odd looking characters and question marks show up out of place in the body of your message. In other cases, strange characters will appear in place of accented characters or other symbols.

The Cause
The letters, numbers, or symbols that make up the text of your email might not be uniformly encoded (using the same character set) throughout your broadcast chain. The broadcast chain for HTML emails starts with the HTML editor and ends with the email client, however, there could be other stops in between where your email text gets manipulated and/or interpreted.

Character encoding is the way letters, numbers and symbols are expressed in numeric values that the computer can understand. In a character set (charset), each character is represented by a series of bits (0's and 1's) that define a group of one or more writing systems. The two most popular are iso-8859-1 and UTF-8. Both of these groups encode Western European characters, bu are very different from one another. This is why applications or computers need to know the character encoding of the data being transmitted when communicating with one another.

The Solution
To avoid this problem, it is important that you save your HTML document in the proper encoding format. Many HTML as well as text editors allow you to save files in different character encoding formats such as the Western European ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8. You also want to make sure that you select the right encoding option when uploading your HTML document into your email marketing application. BlastWizard, for example, uses the Western European ISO-8859-1 (aka Latin 1) as its default format, but offers a whole range of character encoding formats to match with your document (dropdown menu on the 'upload new document' screen).

In addition, always make sure that your document has a "Content-type" <meta> tag in the <head> section of the HTML code (such as charset=iso-8859-1 in an XHTML/HTML meta tag, or encoding="UTF-8" in an XML declaration statement) that properly declares its character encoding. Here are examples:

For HTML:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

For XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

Adding New Email Contacts to your Lists from Trade Shows

Collecting email addresses at trade shows is a great way to increase your contact list but you don't necessarily want to assume you can start "blasting" to any email address you obtain.  There are a few guidelines you should keep in mind while compiling your lists.

Best practice is an opt-in approach.  When scanning a badge at a trade show or collecting a business card make sure you let the person know they can expect an email from you.  Within the first email make sure to mention where or how you met that person and what types of emails and how often he or she can expect to hear from you or your organization.   Don't wait too long to send an email.  If you wait too long your new contact will have forgotten about you or lost interest in  your products or service you offer.  Most importantly always include an unsubscribe link.  

Boomerang's BlastWizard offers tools to help you manage your opt-ins and unsubscribes.  To learn more visit www.boomerang.com or call 1(800) 779-7792.