The Creative Side

After receiving two emails today from very reputable marketing industry newsletters with “frozen” animated GIF images, I felt I needed to post on this. Unfortunately, Outlook 07 will not render the animation of an animated GIF image… It will only display the first frame.

In the case of the newsletters I received today, the images were from customers who paid for this advertising space. In one newsletter, the image was just a big empty black box.  In the other, an advertisement displayed as a big blue banner with a small logo in the bottom right corner that I’m sure would have remained throughout the animation.

If you are going to use a GIF animation in your email, make sure that you contain any important information in the initial frame.  Look at the first frame as if it was a still image because that is how it will appear to many contacts on your list.  Feel free to continue the animation from there… just don’t start with an empty box!

Today we launched Listrak 4.2 with some amazing new features that you can use to take your email marketing campaigns to the next level. Listrak users now have the ability to take any contact level report such as opens, reads, or URL clicks from a message or a group of messages in a campaign and create a profile segment from it.  Using GeoTracking, you could literally target contacts that clicked a specific link in New York between 1pm and 2pm on a specific day. Dynamic profiling gives you the power of data manipulation directly within Listrak without have to export reports, work with the profiling data externally and re-import.

The addition of dynamic profiling to the list of Listrak features essentially closes the targeting and segmentation loop within the system.  From an initial engagement campaign, you could assign profiling attributes based on click behavior. Specific areas of your next message could use this segmentation data making use of the dynamic content system to show creative that is specifically targeted to the initial user behavior. Further segmentation could be assigned based on the behavior exhibited in this message and be used for future dynamic content. This will enable you to generate content that is extremely targeted and relevant to each contact.

The Profiling Summary Report now allows Listrak users to drill down to view contact reports that will display all contacts that have a value for an attribute.  You can even take this a step further to generate a contact level report for only those contacts that have a specific value assigned for the chosen attribute. It is extremely convenient to now have access to these reports directly in the Listrak application rather than having to export data in order to expose it.

A new visual tracking feature went live with Listrak 4.2: Heatmaps.  Heatmaps allow you to visually identify the areas of your HTML creative that received the highest click through rates by a “heat index color” overlay. This report can assist you in deciding what adjustments need to be made to your message creative in order to achieve the desired click conversions.

Another feature that went live is the option of adding a list unsubscribe to the header of your messages. Microsoft’s Live Mail is the only email provider that is actively using this header at the moment, but other’s like Yahoo and Gmail have discussed implementing it in the future.  If this option is enabled, any Live Mail contact that would receive the message and has added you to their safe sender list would see an unsubscribe link rather than the report spam link.  This unsubscribe link would have the same functionality as the normal unsubscribe link in your email, but would be labeled in Listrak reports as List-Unsubscribe.

There are a number of other additions that have been made.  Check out the release notes under the support and information menu to view the full list and links off to the help system for each new feature.

In case you missed it, we have posted out the “Dynamic Content in Action: DiscountBeautyCenter.com Case Study Webinar” that took place yesterday.  If you are interested in learning about how to take your email campaigns to the next level by using segmentation and extreme targeting to increase the relevancy of your email to each contact, I would highly suggest checking it out. The results of the Discount Beauty Center Case Study speak for themselves.

Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have.  Over the next two months I will be attending the EEC Email Evolution Conference in San Diego (Feb 11-13), the MarketingSherpa Email Summit in Miami (Feb 24-27), and the Search Engine Strategies conference in NYC (March 17-20).  If you will be attending any of these events and would like to meet up, please let me know!

To kick off the New Year I thought I’d put together a Listrak specific post of 50 tips, tricks, and Listrak features (in no particular order) that you might not have known about.  With an advanced application of Listrak’s size, there’s bound to be things that even the most experienced users might have missed.  My hope is that both novice and advanced users alike will find a few gems in this list that you can immediately use to improve your email marketing efforts.

1. Google Analytics Integration
   If you currently use or would like to experiment with using the free site analytics provided by Google, you can have Listrak automatically pass click through data from your email directly to Google Analytics. You can enable this feature by going to Manage > List Settings and selecting the “Extend Listrak link tracking with Google Analytics for the following domains:” radio button from the “Third Party Web Analytics Integration” area. Next, just add any domains that you would like the data passed on to. For more information see the Listrak Google Analytics integration tutorial.
    
2. Brand Your Links with a Domain Alias
   In order to track click through information in an email, all links end up being replaced with a tracking link that passes data to Listrak. For both branding and deliverability purposes, all Listrak users should set up a Domain Alias so that the links in your messages use your defined domain rather than the standard generic default domain. These domains can be defined in the Manage > List Settings Branding Settings area. Your DNS and SPF records will need to be configured properly in order for the Domain Alias to work. See the Listrak Help System for in depth instructions.
    
3. Personalize the To-Name
   Would you like to use personalization tags to specify the exact to-name for your message? You can do this by selecting the “Yes” radio button on the Manage > Lists > List Settings page and then adding the personalization tags to the To-Name text box on the Author page.
    
4. Personalize Your Subject Line
   You can add personalization tags such as name or any other info like brand preference into the subject line by simply copying and pasting the personalization tag into the subject line where you would like the text to appear on the Author page. Additional subject line tips can be found in this whitepaper: Crafting a Must-Read Email Subject Line.
    
5. Add and Customize a Pass-Along Link
   Because different email clients can change the format of your email when using the default forward function, many Listrak users choose to add the Pass-Along feature that will send an exact duplicate of the email from the Listrak system to ensure the structure of your message is not changed. This can automatically be added by enabling the Pass-Along option on the Author page or the code can be inserted and customized by going to Support & Information > Code Support > Email Pass-Along Form to copy and paste the HTML. You can also edit the message that would be appended to the top of an email that is passed along by clicking the “Pass-Along Message:” edit button on the author page.
    
6. Schedule Your Message
   Once your message is ready to go, you always have the option of scheduling a message to be sent at a later time and date. You can choose the day and the time in half hour increments by enabling the “Schedule” option on the Author page. You can always edit or cancel a scheduled message by going to Authoring > Scheduled Messages.
    
7. Help Us Get to Know Your Team
   You can submit your team members as account associates by going to Manage > Account > Listrak Account Associates. Here you can list their contact information and identify their role with Listrak. This will help us to notify the correct people on your team with the right information when it is needed.
    
8. Organize Your Messages Using Campaigns
   When saving, scheduling, testing, or sending messages, it’s always a good idea to associate them with a campaign grouping. This can help you to organize and find your messages as well as view report totals for all the messages contained in a campaign. You can do this in the Message Settings area of the Author page by selecting an existing campaign from the drop down or creating a new one. You can always modify campaign groups later or add unassigned messages to campaigns in the Manage > Campaign Manager area.
    
9. Always Add a Removal Link
   A removal link can automatically be added by selecting the “Yes” radio button on the Manage > Lists > List Settings page for the “Automatically insert the list removal link at the bottom of the message?” option. Another option is to use the code that can be customized by going to Support & Information > Code Support > Email Unsubscribe Link.
    
10. Send International Messages
    If you need to send messages using a foreign language character set, you can turn on the “Enable Internationalization?” option in the Manage > Lists > List Settings area. Once this is turned on, the author page will display a drop down where you can choose the language to support. For more information on language support, see the Listrak Help System.
     
11. Insert a Browser Link
    Although you should be testing in multiple email clients and using best practices when designing an email, there may still be contacts that are not able to view your message in the exact way you intended. Many users add a browser link to the top of messages to make sure that contacts can click through to a web version of the message that was sent. This can be automatically added by going to Manage > Lists > List Settings and selecting the “Yes” radio button for “Automatically insert the browser link at the top of the message?” or you can manually add the code for the browser link allowing you to customize the exact text displayed by going to Support & Information > Code Support > Email Browser Link.
     
12. Create RSS Items With Your Messages
    With Listrak, you have the option to create a new RSS item posted to an RSS feed with any message sent through the system. To turn on the RSS functionality, go to Manage > Lists > List Settings and select the “Yes” radio button for “Enable RSS feeds within Author page?”. On the author page you will now have an RSS 2.0 Options area to define the properties for the RSS item. For more information on the RSS system see the RSS 2.0 System Walkthrough video.
     
13. Publish an Audio File with your RSS Feed
    By making use of the “enclosure” optional RSS item elements, you could push out an audio file along with your RSS item. For more information on the enclosure element, see the RSS Item Manager area of the Listrak Help System.
     
14. Add RSS Feed Subscription Chicklets and Links
    If you have RSS feeds set up, you can get the code to add subscription chicklets and links for some of the most popular RSS aggregators. This can be found in Support & Information > Code Support > RSS Syndication.
     
15. View RSS Activity Reports
    Open and click data is tracked separately for RSS feeds from the message tracking because they are different elements. This RSS tracking data can be found in Reports > RSS Feed Activity.
     
16. Create and Use Message Templates
    Do you have a standard email layout that you use repeatedly? Use the template system to create and save an email template by going to Authoring > Content & Media > Templates. To show the template selection on the author page, select the “Yes” radio button for the “Enable Template selection within Author page?” option.
     
17. Use Profile Segments Instead of Multiple Lists
    Listrak has always been very list-centric for a reason… it allows for better list management, unsubscribe, abuse, and bounce management, it reduces the chances of multiple receipts of a message, and much more. Rather than importing contact lists into multiple lists, create a new field to identify the specific segment to organize your contacts. When sending messages, set up a Profile Filter to send to your targeted segments only.
     
18. Send the Same Message to Other Lists
    So going against what I’ve stated above, there are many Listrak users who use multiple lists. In this case, if you would like to send a duplicate of a message that has been sent from one list to another, you can use the Reports > Message Reports > Message Summary report to do this. The message summary report will show all lists and all messages sent. If you have already sent the message, select the new list you would like to send it to.  Go to the Message Summary report and find the message in this report. Click the subject line of the message in this report and it will now open the message in the author page within the new list that is selected. There are some things to be aware of here though. Any profiling/personalization tags or filters will need to be the same in both lists for those tags to work properly. Also, when working with multiple lists, a suppression list should be used so that if an email address happens to be on more than one list and they unsubscribe, they are removed from all lists.
     
19. Set Up and Send Double Opt-In, Welcome, and Goodbye Messages
    To edit the double opt-in, welcome, and goodbye messages content and layout, go to Authoring > Automated Messages> and choose the message you wish to edit. In order for these automated messages to be sent, you need to enable them before generating the form code for your website. For the double opt-in and / or welcome message, go to Support & Information > Code Support > Subscribe Contact Form and select the checkbox for the items you would like to enable before clicking the “Show Code” button. For the goodbye message, go to Support & Information > Code Support > Unsubscribe Contact Form and select the “Send Goodbye Email:” check box before clicking “Show Code” button.
     
20. Use the Media Library to Host Images
    The Listrak Media Library makes it easy to upload and organize images to be used in your messages. It can be found in the Authoring > Content & Media > Media Library and can also be accessed from the Listrak WYSIWYG editor on the Author page. When using the media library, you should make sure you set up a Media Domain so that the default Listrak images domain is switched out with your branded domain. For more information watch the Media Library Walkthrough video.
     
21. Link to Files Instead of Attaching Them
    Because of the size of attachments such as PDFs and Word documents, linking to these files instead of including them in the email as an attachment can improve your deliverability. If you do not have access to your site’s server, you can use the Authoring > Content & Media > Media Library to host these files and insert the link into your message.
     
22. Be Careful of “Suppression Spider Webs”
    Suppression lists should always be used when using multiple lists so that if a contact unsubscribes from one list they are unsubscribed from any other lists connected to the suppression list. There are times though where different lists are being used for completely different reasons and you don’t want a contact removed if they unsubscribe from another list. Because you have the ability to use multiple suppression lists with multiple lists, you can end up with a cascading effect where a person is unsubscribed from a list and moved to a suppression list that is connected to a different list that is connected to that suppression and another suppression, it will then be added to that suppression and removed from any lists connected to it. Try to avoid these webs of suppression lists by limiting them to as few as possible.
     
23. Use Dynamic Content to Target Your Messages
    Setting up a dynamic content message can take a lot longer to set up than your normal email, but the results from the relevancy that is generated can be extraordinary. To read about dynamic content in action and the kind of results that can be seen, take a look at the DiscountBeautyCenter.com Dynamic Content Case Study or check out these whitepapers: “Email Marketing Best Practices: Creating Relevant Email Campaigns with Dynamic Content” and “Dynamic Content Strategy Guide: Five Essential Email Campaigns“.
     
24. View Data On Each Dynamic Content Combination
    By clicking the dynamic content container icon in reports like Message Activity and Message Delivery, you can see these reports for each recipe or combination of dynamic content containers that have been sent.
     
25. Use Dynamic Content for A/B Split Testing
    Dynamic Content can be used to test specific segments of your message. For an in depth overview of how this can be accomplished, see my previous post “Using Dynamic Content for Email Campaign A/B Split Testing“.
     
26. Attend Listrak University
    All of the whitepapers, case studies, and tutorial videos that we have published are available for direct download to Listrak users by going to Support & Information > Listrak Resources. Here you can access this information and download the PDFs without having to fill out a form. We are continually adding new content, so check back often!
     
27. WYSIWYG Tip: Code Snippets
    By clicking on the “Insert Code Snippet” icon in the WYSIWYG editor, you can choose to insert the following tags: 
    1. Recipient Email Address - The email address of the recipient would automatically be inserted to replace this tag
    2. List Name - Inserts the Listrak List Name
    3. Date Stamp Long Format - Thursday, January 03, 2008
    4. Date Stamp Short Format - 1/3/2008
        
28. WYSIWYG Tip: Custom Links
    Using the WYSIWYG editor, you can easily insert code that you would normally need to retrieve from the code support area in the custom links drop down. These links include the browser link, unsubscribe link, pass-along link, and the double opt-in link.
     
29. Use Links or Email Addresses as Personalization Tags
    There are many creative uses for personalization tags, but one you may have not thought about is using the tags to show a link or email address. An example of this could be a specific sales rep that is assigned to a segment of your list. A profile attribute reflecting the email address of the sales rep could be both displayed as text and passed through in the HTML code so that the email address is linked.
     
30. View Your Billing Information
    You can view invoices from previous months as well as the current month’s activity from Manage > Account > View Invoices and Manage > Account > This Month’s Invoice Activity.
     
31. Set Up Your Credit Card for Auto Billing
    To set up automatic monthly credit card billing from Listrak, you can store and modify your billing information within the Manage > Accounts > Account Settings area.
     
32. Remove Abuse Complaints from All Lists
    Abuse complaints usually result from a contact clicking the “report spam” button in their email client. To improve your deliverability, it’s a good idea to remove abuse complaints from all of your lists. This option can be enabled in the Manage > Account > Account Settings Subscription Management area.
     
33. Remove Bounces from All Lists
    In the same manner as the abuse complaints, making sure bounces are removed from all lists can help to improve your deliverability. This option can also be enabled in the Manage > Account > Account Settings Subscription Management area.
     
34. Import Your Excel 2007 Files
    In case you missed the announcement, in addition to .txt, .csv, and .xls files, Listrak now also supports the .xlsx Excel 2007 format. You do not need to save as an older version any longer.
     
35. Let Listrak Fix Bad Addresses
    There are many common email address mistakes and misspellings (like yahoocom instead of yahoo.com) that Listrak can attempt to fix automatically for you. To enable the List Hygiene feature in the Manage > Lists > List Settings Subscription Management Settings area, select the yes radio button for the “Enable bounced email list hygiene for this list?” option. You can see the results in the Reports > Contact Reports > Contact Hygiene area. This is a Listrak Pro and Enterprise level feature only.
     
36. Find A Specific Contact
    Looking for an email address but not sure what list it’s on or if it’s even subscribed? Use the Contacts > Search For A Contact page. If you need to look everywhere, select All Lists and check the Subscribed, Unsubscribed, and Banned check boxes.
     
37. Change an Email Address Across Multiple Lists
    If an email address has been changed and you need to do it across every list, use the Contacts > Change A Contact’s Address page. Here you can select to change it on only the selected list or across all lists.
     
38. Tie Listrak Into Your Custom Application
    Enterprise level Listrak accounts have access to the Listrak API. This SOAP compliant API exposes Listrak data for direct integration with custom applications. For more information, see the Listrak Integration Services site.
     
39. Manage Other Users in Your Account
    If you are the administrator for your Listrak account, you can create other user accounts with their own login and password by going to Manage > Account > User Manager. Here you can choose the specific lists and templates they should have access to as well as grant access to specific Listrak functions. If you have a team member that should only see reports and not have access to any other functions, simply only check off the “Report Access” option in this area.
     
40. View Opens, Reads and Clicks on a World Map
    The Listrak Geo Tracking feature allows you to see geographical details on contacts that have opened, read, or clicked on a message. By going to Reports > Message Reports > Geo Tracking, you can click on the “View” icon in the map column to graphically view this data on a United States, Europe, Canadian, or World map.
     
41. Multiple Report Export Options
    In addition to the plain text export, we recently added the ability to export as a Microsoft Excel file or an XML file. The Excel export retains collapsible campaign groupings.
     
42. Export Reports as PDFs
    By clicking the “Print” icon on any Listrak reports, you can generate a clean PDF of the report in it’s current state that can either be printed or saved to your PC.
     
43. View Visual Overlay of Click Data
    You can view the layout of your message with overlay boxes showing the click percentage and amount over each link. This is an great visual way of seeing the click through data in relation to the email layout. Keep an eye out… we have some new data visualization features coming soon!
     
44. Evaluate Message Activity Data Over Time in a Graph
    From Reports > Message Reports > Message Activity click the Graph icon to see delivered, opened, read, and clicked counts in a graph. You can change the date range and choose to only see data on messages in specific campaigns. This can assist you in visually identifying trends in your data that can help you to evaluate your message activity results.
     
45. View Click Data as a Graph
    Another way to visually identify click information for a specific email is to view the Message Tracking Chart. You can navigate to this graph by going to Reports > Message Reports > URL Tracking then click the URL icon to take you to the Message Tracking Report. From here, click the “Graph” icon in the Report Functions. You can change the chart type to doughnut, area, or column graphs.
     
46. View a Comprehensive Report on All Lists, Campaigns, and Messages
    While most Listrak reports are limited to the selected list, the Message Summary report is an exception. By navigating to Reports > Message Reports > Message Summary, you can view all lists and campaigns as roll up rows containing all messages that have been sent as well as message activity data on each message.
     
47. Detailed Contact Reporting
    Two of the more hidden reports in Listrak are the ability to view campaign history (open, reads, and clicks) and click history for individual contacts. You can access these reports by clicking on the email address of the contact you wish to view in any of the contact reports, from the view subscribed, view unsubscribed or search for a contact areas. In the popup, you can choose the “Campaign History” or “Click History” tabs to view these reports.
     
48. Pull in Content From a Web Site URL
    By using the tag #Listrak\Content URL=”http://www.yoursite.com”# to point to a page on the web, you can pull the HTML from this location directly into an email. The content will be pulled and used in the email at the time of the send through the Listrak system.
     
49. Questions? We’ve got answers…
    The Listrak Help System contains in depth details on every Listrak feature. It can be found under Support & Information > Help System. For easy navigation, it is organized by menu location and most pages have a help icon that will link directly into the area of the Help System for that specific page.
     
50. Need More Help?
    You can always contact our Listrak support engineers or begin a live chat session from the Support & Information > Listrak Support area.

The new dynamic content system that was launched with Listrak 4.0 has opened up new possibilities for Listrak users.  I would like to do a series of posts discussing various uses of the dynamic content system that will make your email marketing campaigns even better.

To kick off this series, I’d like to discuss using the dynamic content system to do A/B Split testing. While this may not have been the first use that comes to mind when thinking about dynamic content, it is a great way to experiment with different offers, message content, or calls to action.

The first step we’ll need to take is to define our test.  What kind of conversion do we want to test and what baseline do we want to test against?  What goals do we have? Do we want to segment our list for the test and send the winning version to the remaining contacts or do we want to test against our entire list to use the resulting data in future sends?

As an example, we might have a “5% off if you buy $50 or more” offer that has been performing reasonably well in past campaigns, but we would like to see if a “10% off if you buy $75 or more” offer would increase conversion rates. We could decide to use metrics built into Listrak reports to track the click through rate as the success metric.  However, because it is a transactional increase that we are looking at, a better success metric would be to consider the dollar amount.  Using Listrak’s Google Analytics integration, we can use the Google Analytics conversion amount tracked back to the link from the email campaign.  In order to make this clear, we would be sure to give our link a title tag so that it is reflected in Google Analytics. We should also account for bounces in our success metric, so a formula we could use is Revenue per Delivered Message for each version.  He is the formula to calculate this:

Revenue per Delivered Message = Total revenue generated from the version / Messages delivered of the version.

To set up the split test using dynamic content in Listrak, we would first want to segment our list.  The easiest way to do this is to export the list, open it up in excel, add a new column called Test Version, and evenly split the values between A and B. We would then re-import the list into Listrak using the “Update the specified attributes” option in the import wizard.

Now that the data is ready to go, we need to set up the creative.  In my example, I would use a linked coupon image with a title tag on the link to identify the specific version. We would set up both blocks of HTML in the Listrak content Library. Next, we would go to the author page and enter our HTML content into the HTML message area minus the content we want to test.

The next step would be to add a new dynamic content container for our test.  For help on setting up a Dynamic Content Container, see the Dynamic Content Tutorial video in the Listrak Resources area under the Support & Information menu.  Here, we would need to set the baseline 5% off coupon as the default version and set up a filter that would use the “Test Version” attribute equal to B to show the 10% off version. Once the Dynamic Content Container is created, we would need to insert the container tag into the area in the HTML that we wish it to display.

Now we have an A/B Split test ready to send.  As our sample size increases we reduce the signal to noise ratio in the data and the confidence in our results rise. For that reason, we will send to our entire list and use the data we collect to formulate a strategy for our next email campaign.

Once we have given the send enough time to collect data, we will want to calculate the results to see what kind of lift our test version “B” has against our baseline “A” version.  To calculate the lift percentage, use this formula: 

Lift Percentage = Revenue per Delivered Message from B version - Revenue per Delivered Message from A version / Revenue per Delivered Message from A version *100

We would love to hear about your experiences with testing or using the Dynamic Content system.  If you have a story you would like to share, email it to me at bshroyer@listrak.com.

This is just one of the many uses for Dynamic Content that can take your email marketing campaigns to the next level. You can read more about Dynamic Content in our whitepapers Dynamic Content Strategy Guide: Five Essential Email Campaigns and Email Marketing Best Practices: Creating Relevant Email Campaigns with Dynamic Content.  I hope to put together more posts on ways to benefit from the Dynamic Content system in the near future.

This morning we launched Listrak version 4.0. To get an overview of the new features, you can read my previous post.  You can also check out the release notes for direct links to both the help system and available tutorial videos on each new feature that is available.

There are new whitepapers available relating to the new campaigns and dynamic content features.  They are titled “Email Marketing Campaign Development: Optimize Management, Tracking, and Analysis” and “Email Marketing Best Practices: Creating Relevant Email Campaigns with Dynamic Content.” Both whitepapers can be found within the Listrak system under the new Support & Information menu in the Listrak Resources area without having to fill out a form.

Also available in the new Listrak Resources area within the Listrak application, you can find a walkthrough video of the 4.0 features and a Dynamic Content and Campaign Library video walkthrough. If you are interested in setting up a dynamic content email, I highly suggest watching the walkthrough to get a good understanding of the system.

Dynamic content will take a lot more pre-productions and planning than a normal email send, but the benefits are worth the extra effort. Targeting specific segments of your email to your contact’s profile allows for a more relevant message and can lead to higher clicks / conversions and a higher retention rate.

Many months of hard work went into these new 4.0 features and I want to personally thank the Listrak development team for their efforts.  They have enabled a new level of email marketing power that is now in your hands.

I’d love to hear feedback from Listrak users who set up dynamic content messages. What kind of dynamic content containers and filters did you set up? What challenges did you encounter? What kind of results did you see? Email me at bshroyer@listrak.com and share your story.

Over the past few months, we’ve been extremely busy putting the final touches on our new Listrak version 4.0. Today, we are pleased to announce that current Listrak clients can now access our version 4.0 beta by logging in at http://v4.listrak.com/admin.

One of the first things you will notice is the menu drop downs have changed.  In order to better organize features and enable future additions to Listrak, this was necessary with the launch of the new version.  You can see a comparison of the old menu to the new 4.0 in this “Listrak 4.0 Menu Changes” PDF.

To help make it easier to get assistance with Listrak, the manual has been completely rewritten and converted into a help system.  You can navigate through the help using the table of contents in the left frame as well as view the index or search all of the documentation.

We believe that continuing education and publication of best practices is important to Listrak users.  To meet this need, many white papers have been written over the past year. Previously, the only way to get to this information and download the PDFs was to fill out a form on the front end of Listrak. Now, Listrak users have direct access to the whitepapers as well as training videos, articles, webinars, and newsletters within the Listrak application.  These links can be found under the new Support & Information menu as Listrak Resources.

Also new under the Support & Information menu are Feature Requests and direct access to our three Listrak Blogs.  The Feature Request form allows our Listrak users to provide feedback on features that they would like to see in the system.  This will help us gauge interest in features to be developed into future versions of Listrak.

One of the behind the scenes changes with Listrak 4.0 is a completely rewritten sending engine.  Speed increases and deliverability enhancements have been made.  This new sender also paves the way for future developments like Event Triggered Messaging.  Look for much more information on Event Triggered Messaging coming from Listrak in the future.

To help you organize your messages within your lists, Listrak 4.0 introduces campaign groupings.  This can help you categorize or separate out multiple sends into groups for better reporting functionality.  When authoring a message, you can choose an existing campaign or create a new one to assign the message to.  The saved messages and scheduled messages areas will organize your emails by the assigned campaign grouping.  Reports now show the campaign row as a roll up with totals for all emails sent in that campaign.  There is a new plus / minus icon next to each campaign name in order to display the data from all emails contained within. A Campaign Manager is now available under the Manage menu giving you the ability to move saved, scheduled, test, or sent messages between campaigns, add new campaigns or delete ones that are no longer used.

All Listrak reports now have additional export functionality. Plain text exports include the addition of a column for the assigned campaign. Microsoft Excel and XML exports are also now exportable options.  The Excel export includes the campaign rows with included rollup functionality. The print option now exports a nicely formatted PDF version matching the appearance of the report you see in the application.  Whatever campaign rows you have open and parameters you have set in your current view will be what is shown in the PDF that is generated.

The old Monthly Summary report is now expanded to become the Message Summary report. This report is now an account wide overview with list name row groupings in addition to the campaign roll ups.

Message Tracking Reports are now able to separate out multiple links to the same URL.  In order to better organize your URL reports, I highly suggest using a title tag for your links.  The Listrak reports will use the text in the title tag instead of the URL in the reports if this exists for the link. This allows you to give descriptive names that can be easier to see when viewing detailed reports.

I’ve saved what I consider the biggest new feature for last.  With the launch of Listrak 4.0, you will be able to put together dynamic content messages that display full HTML and text blocks in your message based on profiling filters.  You could target an area of your message based on region, sex, past purchase history… the list goes on and on.  The only limitation is the profiling information you have stored with your contacts.

Blocks of text and HTML content can be put together, organized, and named in the new Content Library. Within the author page, you can generate dynamic content containers and set different content versions to show base on the profiling filters you set up. In order to see the dynamic content container options, be sure to set the radio button to yes in the List Settings area for “Enable Dynamic Content within Author page”.  The dynamic content container will be inserted into the text or HTML of you message by pasting in the named dynamic content tag.  This can be done manually or using the new dynamic content icon within the WYSIWYG editor. When you preview dynamic content messages, you will have the ability to select from drop downs the version for each dynamic content container to display for the preview.

Once you send a dynamic content email, that message row will display a dynamic content icon within any of the Listrak reports.  If you click on this icon, you can drill down into the individual recipes (or combination of dynamic content versions) detailed information.

While dynamic content is meant for advanced users, if you follow the documentation and try a few experimentations, you’ll be ready to generate full dynamic content messages in no time.

For more information on all of the new features, log into the beta version of Listrak 4.0 here: http://v4.listrak.com/admin and view the Release Notes area under the Support & Information menu.  Direct links into the help system documentation are listed here with each new feature description.

If you see any issues while using the beta version, please email support@listrak.com with detailed information on the issue.

Currently, we are looking at early September to take version 4.0 live.  In the next few weeks we will be putting together training videos on the new 4.0 features. I will post the links to the training videos here as well as the resources area of the application.

We hope you enjoy these new features.  Keep an eye out for many more Listrak enhancements and features to come in the future.

I’ve been in communication with many companies over the past few years that have fallen behind in their email marketing campaigns because of a lack of time and / or manpower needed to dedicate to a quality campaign.  There have also been many cases where a marketing team is new to email marketing and lack the experience to launch a successful email marketing campaign.

To help with these and many other similar situations, we have launched our Listrak professional services program to outsource email marketing campaigns to our creative team.  Listrak now has a team dedicated to taking on your email marketing campaign goals and will execute a campaign backed by our expertise and extensive knowledge of email marketing best practices.

From consulting and training to list management / hygiene / suppression to the creative design / formatting / personalization / segmentation / testing and final send, our professional services team will be lead by a team member dedicated be your point person and key contact at Listrak.

We have also put together a new whitepaper entitled “Guidelines for Outsourcing Email Marketing Professional Services” to help guide you through the procedures to get started.

For more information on how you can outsource your email marketing campaigns, contact one of our email marketing experts.

A big advantage of our Google Analytics integration is that every time Google Analytics improves their systems and adds new features, Listrak email marketing customers benefit from it. Today, Google announced a list of new features added to Google Analytics.

One of the new features that I’m excited about is a feature that existed in the older version of Google analytics but did not make it into the last build.  They have brought back the ability to use Hourly Reporting. Reports now will have a “View by: Daily/Hourly” switch allowing you to switch between the data over time views.  Are conversions happening first thing in the morning, over lunch, immediately following your send? Do your customers prefer reaching your goals in the evening hours? You can now have a better understanding using this new level of exposed information.

Also, for those of us who get annoyed by paging and like to see all of our data at once, Google has increased the number of data rows per page from 100 to 500.

There are a number of other new features listed to check out.  If you have not set up the Google Analytics integration for your Listrak account and would like to, be sure to check out the Google Analytics Integration Tutorial.

In other news, the development team here at Listrak is busy working on Listrak version 4.0.  I can’t wait to start talking about some of the great things you will be able to do with the new systems.  Be on the lookout for our official announcements of all the new features that will be coming soon!

In the past month we have seen a lot of interest and new customers coming on board that were previously using Microsoft’s bCentral’s List Builder product for their email marketing initiatives.  Microsoft is officially shutting down their bCentral services including the List Builder product. We welcome our new friends and invite others looking for a smooth transition to contact one of our email marketing experts to take a tour and receive a free demo of Listrak.

The analytics that Listrak provides will help former bCentral clients maximize their email marketing efforts and drive additional traffic to their website. Customers that have made the switch from bCentral’s List Builder have found that Listrak provides better delivery, more detailed message activity metrics, and a first class customer care team.

To learn more about what Listrak can do to help you make the soft landing for all jolted bCentral List Builder clients, watch our Listrak video tour now and contact one of our email marketing experts today.