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Audience

Managing your audience lists

Your lists contain the names and email addresses of your customers, members or fans. They are people to whom you plan to send emails. You may create as many audience lists as you like, and edit, update and reorganise your lists as often as you need to.

There are two kinds of lists: Your Test list and additional lists you create and name. Use lists to create smaller sub-sets of your audience, then target those sub-sets with emails tailored specifically to their interests.

Your Test List

Every account comes with a Test List. Your Test List may contain up to 10 people. Those 10 people are your Inner Circle – your trusted advisors, friends and co-workers. We encourage you to use your Test list to – you guessed it – test your large mailings before sending them to the whole of the universe.

Rely on the people of your Test List to make sure your email looks and works like it should. They can alert you to any typos, broken links, overly big images or confusing copy. Oh, and be sure and add yourself to your Test List, since (if you're like us, at least) you're your own biggest critic.

Your Lists

Lists help you target different audience groups with different messages. To create a new list, simply type the desired list name into the field at the top of the list section and click CREATE. And presto, like magic, your list has been created. You may open it and begin adding names.

There is no limit to the number of lists you may create or the number of names a list may contain. You may create, rename and delete lists at will.

Adding people to your audience lists

You may add people to your audience lists one of three ways:

1. By manually adding individual members
2. By importing an existing list from an Excel spreadsheet or CSV (Comma Separated Values) spreadsheet
3. By letting people join your list directly from your audience signup (more on that below)

To manually add member(s) to a list, open that list and click the ADD ONE button (top right).' Create a new member record by typing in the first name, last name and email address, and select additional lists, if any, in which you'd like this member to appear. New members are set to 'Active' status, because we figure most people you're adding to a list are people you'll want to receive your emails. Set a member to 'Inactive' if you want to suspend their email address without removing them from the list entirely.

The four status types for audience members

There are four status types for an audience member. Here they are, with explanations:

ACTIVE

This person's email address is functioning normally and should receive any email you send to a list containing this person.

INACTIVE

Set a person's status to INACTIVE if you don't want them to receive your emails but you do want them to remain on the list. (Maybe you're sending a mailing to the list but you've already sent the email to this person, etc.)

ERROR

Our system automatically pulls members out of the ACTIVE list for one of two reasons: either the address isn't formatted properly and cannot work in its current state, or the address could not be reached the last time you emailed them. If you correct an error address, simply change his or her status to ACTIVE to return them to the active list (The system will not attempt to email addresses in the Error bin).

UNSUBSCRIBE

An account flagged as UNSUBSCRIBE means that person has requested to be taken off your email list. We don't automatically remove people from your list for you. Instead, we trust that you will honor your subscribers' requests to discontinue their subscription. Should a member of your list ask to unsubscribe and somehow change his or her mind (or be the victim of family-member unsubscription), you can reactivate that person's account by changing their email status back to ACTIVE. The system will not attempt to email people flagged as UNSUBSCRIBE.

Setting up your signup form

Your audience signup is a single Web page that lets recipients of your email (who are not already on your list) and visitors to your website join your audience list(s) directly. Your signup contains fields to collect a first name, last name and email address (custom plans may include additional fields), along with your logo (or image) and a brief welcome note.

To customize your Signup form, select the edit-signup option from your audience's main screen, then click EDIT to personalize the welcome note and add your logo. Your welcome note should probably tell people what kind of emails they can expect to receive by joining your email list (and how frequently you plan to send them). SAVE & PREVIEW your work, and your changes will immediately take effect.

Tying your signup form to your website

In that same section, you'll notice the TIE TO YOUR SITE option. On that screen you'll have the option to choose the list(s) to which your website visitors will be added, then generate a link that can be placed on any page of your website. Anyone who clicks that link will be able to complete the signup form and join your audience.

Tying your signup form to your outbound mailings

Once published, your audience signup will automatically appear to anyone who clicks the 'join our list' link in your emails. No further setup is necessary. Also, a person who receives one of your emails from a friend and decides to subscribe will be added to the list to which the original email was sent. That is to say, if you've sent a mailing to your Wine Lovers list, and someone on that list forwards your email to a friend, that friend, upon signing up, will be added to the Wine Lovers list.

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Emails

Creating campaigns using your design template

Your design template helps you create sophisticated html emails without using any html code. Instead, you click images to update them, and use the message editor to type, format and link your campaign's text.

There are three phases to email campaign creation: EDIT, (SAVE &) PREVIEW and SEND. In EDIT, you can name your campaign, add a subject line, add images and type and format your text. To update images, click on the images or image placeholders (Your Image Here, it might be called). To update your text, click the EDIT MESSAGE button to launch the message editor. When your campaign is ready, SAVE & PREVIEW. Then click SEND to begin mailing preparations (once saved, your campaign will remain on your account indefinitely, allowing you to create campaigns in advance and send whenever ready).

Using the Message Editor

The Message Editor, built using Macromedia Flash 6, makes text formatting, linking and personalization exceptionally easy. Here are a few tips on using it:

How to format your text.

Above the text field is a menu of formatting tools. To change the format of a word, phrase or paragraph, highlight the text and then choose your formatting option. The formatting options are: Font, Font Size, Font Color, Bold [B], Italicize [I], Underline [U] and Font Alignment (left, right or center). Neat-o: The Color picker displays a shortcut to the last color you picked in a little box; highlight your next phrase and click the box to repeat the color.

How to copy and paste text.

When pasting text into the Message Editor, use your mouse. (For Windows, right-click inside the text area and select 'paste' from the menu. On Macs, ctrl-click and do the same.) Flash doesn't recognise the CTRL-C and CTRL-V keyboard shortcuts. We also suggest copying your text from a program other than Microsoft Word, which can add strange and mysterious formatting tags that disrupt our formatting. (How could they?!)

How to personalize your email.

Dear Bob. Hello, Suzie. To personalize your greeting (or any other part of the email), use the PERSONALIZE menu. In the case of Dear Bob, type 'Dear' in the text area, then select [first_name] from the menu above. And remember: if you're personalizing by first name you'll want to make sure your audience list contains first names for every member.

How to link a word or phrase.

In the formatting toolbar, there's a field labeled "LINK." Inside the field itself, you see the beginnings of a URL (http://...). Highlight the word or phrase you intend to link in the body of your message, then click inside the URL field above and type your Web address. If you're pasting a link directly from your browser, be sure not to leave two "http"s in the address.

How to link your email address.

You sign your name at the bottom and want to make your name a link to your email address, for example. Here's how: Highlight your name, then click into the "LINK" field above. ERASE the "http://..." and type mailto:you@youraddress.com.

Help!

A few common issues and their corresponding solutions...

I pasted copy into the window and all I see is a tiny little box. (Eck!)

You're probably trying to use keyboard shortcuts (CTRL-C/V) to do your copying and pasting. Flash doesn't recognise those shortcuts. Instead, use your mouse (or ctrl-click on Macs).

I changed fonts but when I type new stuff it's in the old font. (Doh!)

Yep, this can happen. It's probably a good idea to make all of your copy changes first, then giving everything a final formatting for font, color, etc.

I linked a phrase and the link is "off" by a few characters. (Phooey!)

This happens occasionally when text created in Microsoft Word is pasted into the Message Editor. Take the hyphen, for instance. The hyphen is one character, but Word's *special* hyphen is actually a string of values several characters long. In the Message Editor, that string isn't showing up but that's what the editor sees on the back end: hence your links being thrown off a few characters. You'll need to delete the text in the Message Editor and try pasting your text in again – this time from Notepad or something other than Word.

I mistyped a link and now I can't change it. (Aaaaaaaaargh!)

This is something we've got the techies working on. Currently, to change a link you need to highlight AROUND the link itself – begin with the word in front or behind and take out a little chunk. Then retype the obliterated text and re-link the word or phrase in question. Tricky, yes. That's why they're called techies.

Sending your campaign

To send an email campaign, select that campaign from the Emails screen, then click SEND. Your default RSVP/from address will appear for you to use or change for this particular mailing. Keep in mind that your 'from' address needs to be a working email address, since the recipients of your mailing will be able to reply to that address. You may send to one list or many of them all at once. And if a member is on more than one list you're emailing, The system will make sure that member receives only one copy of the mailing (no duplicates at all).

What if a list member can't read html emails?

No problem. the system automatically creates two versions of your outbound email: an html version (what you see in the Preview mode) and a text-only alternative. When delivering emails, the system checks to determine whether or not an audience member is set up to receive and view html emails; if they can, the html version is delivered, and if they cannot, the text alternative is delivered, and they never really know the difference.

Currently, only a fraction of email users cannot receive html email (at last count, 98% of Internet users could...). Keep in mind that any text versions of a campaign that are sent will be counted in the Total Delivered but will not appear in the tally of Emails Opened. The System inserts special code into each email in order to track what happens to it, and it's not possible to insert that code into text-only emails.

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Response

Your response section is designed to show you everything you need to know about the emails you send, all in one easy-to-read screen.

Viewing your response data

As soon as you send a mailing, tracking the response begins– how many emails are sent, received, opened, forwarded, etc. The top of your Response page tells you when the emails began sending, and the date and time the data you're viewing was tabulated (The 'Current as of...' time).

Your response is broken down into several important categories, each showing a total and a percentage. An overview of each:

Emails sent

The number of emails sent. If you mailed to a list of 1,000 active members, ,000 emails will have been sent.

Undeliverables

The number of emails that were undeliverable. An email may be undeliverable if the recipient's email address is improperly formatted or no longer in use, or if the recipient's server is down or experiencing problems.

Emails received

The number of emails that successfully reached their destination. In short, the number of emails sent, minus the un-deliverables.

Emails opened

The number of emails viewed by recipients.

How we do it: Each html email that goes out contains an invisible graphic – a dot, if you will – that is housed on our servers. When a user opens the email from his or her in-box, or views the email in their email program's 'preview' window, the email calls our server to 'pull' that dot. We track those calls and register them as opens. Sadly it is not possible to track opens for people who receive the text-only version of your email or those who download their html emails for offline viewing.

Emails forwarded

The number of emails, as a percentage of all emails delivered, that were forwarded to a friend using the forward link.

Now, there are two ways a list member may forward an email – the old-fashioned way, by using their mail program's forwarding option, and by using the Forward-to-a-Friend link likely included in your email. Emails Forwarded tracks only the latter. Since we know many email recipients will choose to forward emails the old-fashioned way, you may assume that your emails are being forwarded more than your Response page indicates, though this tally still gives you a good idea of just how many people are passing your message on.

Website visitors

The number of recipients who clicked on at least one link in your email. A recipient may click on multiple links, but this statistic only counts each person once.

Total clicks

The number of times people clicked on the links in your email. Since a single person may click on several links (or even visit one link more than once), this number will likely be higher than the number of website visitors you had.

How we do it: Just like the invisible 'dot' that calls our server each time someone opens your email, we insert an tag around your URL – invisible to the recipient and to you – that calls our server on the way to the real destination.

Clicks by individual URL.

The system automatically tracks any link you include in your email. The numbers here show how many times each URL was clicked, as a percentage of the total clicks your email received.

Unsubscribes

The number of recipients who asked to be removed from your mailing list by clicking the unsubscribe/opt-out link in your email and then confirming their intentions by clicking the unsubscribe button that appears.

Sad, yes, but with each mailing you send it is likely that a few members will ask to be removed from your list. Maybe they're no longer interested, maybe they moved or maybe they're un-subscribing to re-subscribe at a different email address. Though everyone hates losing audience members, the upside is that by letting people who aren't likely to respond to your message anyway leave, you're able to zero in on the people who DO want to hear what you have to say.

Help, I forgot what the email campaign looked like!

No problem. the system stores the results from past campaigns. It also stores the campaigns themselves. To view the email that generated the response data you're currently viewing, click the 'view it' link beside the campaign name.

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