Zrinity Email Marketing Blog

It is a pretty rare occurrence that you will achieve email campaigns that get a 99.5% delivery rate, almost 80% open rate, %0 compliant and 0% unsubscribe rate. One thing I personally learned from this case study was that no matter what the size of the list, 1,000 emails or 10M emails, the value of the list is not dependent upon the size. A fairly small list from a fairly non-technical business person turned out to be one of the most valuable lists, per email, that you are likely to find in the entirety of the Fortune 1,000 world.

The thing is that the potential of this list was about to be lost due to the fact that the small business owner, Mark Klutchko, Owner, DiscountModels.com, was not aware of the fact that there is Fortune 1,000 technology at the disposal of small businesses like his for under $1,000 per year. After his very first send, he realized that his list was worth a mint.

Using Zrinity’s Campaign Intelligence Mark realized the full potential of his list, began to utilize the metrics available and began to increase revenue after just a few campaigns and in a fraction of the time.

More Resources: Campaign Intelligence, Email Best Practices, Full Email Marketing Case Study, Military Model Aircraft

Zrinity’s email systems are used by thousands of business managers and email marketers across the globe. In this particular situation Eldorado Resorts employed a team of business experts and conducted extensive research prior to choosing Zrinity. This research included word of mouth from other industry experts and an extensive investigative due diligence on the part of Eldorado.

The Eldorado Resorts’ E-Commerce Team began their search for a better email marketing system in Q4, 2007. The team’s goals were gain the feature set associated with ASP email service providers, but have complete in-house control of their business critical data.

Project Goals:
• Complete in-house control of email systems
• Reduce the complexity and of email campaign builds
• Better and more flexible integration with in-house business systems
• Decrease cost associated with email campaigns
• Increase delivery and acceptability rates
• Begin to plan behavioral email marketing campaigns

Full Eldorado Email Marketing Case Study, Email Best Practices Resources

Both real time and post campaign intelligence are critical to conducting successful email campaigns. Real time metrics and analysis might include server responses to campaigns such as possible delays caused by the YAHOO email servers, or other email providers. Real time analysis is critical since campaigns that have been initiated, especially those with large lists, can be paused temporarily or halted permanently while email delivery experts analyze the situation on a case by case basis. Bounce information can be analyzed real time as well as almost every metric of email delivery. The ability to collect metrics over time, is also critical. Using the Zrinity system, companies like Freewebs, can use the reporting tools to track individual users over the course of multiple campaigns over time.

A powerful capability to conduct multivariate testing gives Freewebs the ability to test multiple versions of the campaign to provide delivery and other critical metrics before the campaign is initiated. With this more advanced system, email campaign managers can actually gauge delivery metrics, and possible issues with campaigns before they initiate the campaign sends. This adds a very important tool in the layers of tools to test and deliver emails to the most appropriate recipients and servers at the right moment in time to ensure opens, reads and sales, or signups for email campaigns.

Mission Critical Goals:
• Reduce the complexity of email campaign builds
• Better integration of system with existing business systems
• Decrease time to email campaigns
• Decrease cost associated with email campaigns
• Increase delivery and acceptability rates
• Conduct proper bounce management
• Better list hygiene for more valuable lists

Full Email Case Study, Email Best Practices Resources

There are a number of pitfalls that organizations can encounter when it comes to email campaign delivery. Each, however, can be avoided through careful maintenance and monitoring. The four primary perils that most organizations run into and ways in which your organization can avoid them include the following:

1. Every domain, or www.abccompany.com, has a corresponding IP address which is unique to that particular site on the Internet. All email also has a corresponding IP address. Your IP address(es) are your online identity. What organizations must understand is that it is possible for anyone within a firm to get his or her organization’s IP address on a blacklist. This method used to combat SPAM essentially blocks that IP address from ever being able to deliver email to recipients, essentially rendering email campaigns a lost cause.

2. By not respecting the delivery policies set forth by recipient organizations, your organization will likely be listed as a spammer, as unfriendly or ever as a hostile email distributor. Not only will your emails end up in a SPAM folder that will likely go unopened, but you can also be removed from what is called the ‘whitelist’, a term used to represent those email distributors in good standing, and in turn added to the blacklist. It is important to note that email that is dumped into a SPAM folder does not generate notification to the sender, so any resulting reports will also be erroneous.

3. Running SPAM checks is a practice with which you want to be particular cautious. Recipient firms might think that your message is SPAM and actually mark your organization as the unfriendly sender. If you maintain your standing on a whitelist, this check will prove to be unnecessary.

4. Although a scary thought, it is possible for your competitors to spoof your email address and either use it to send SPAM or to plant spyware on your computer, turning it into a SPAM email server. This latter action will result in your IP address being blacklisted by a large number of people rather than just one, wreaking havoc on any email marketing efforts.

There are ways to avoid all the perils listed above through a couple of simple, albeit critical measures. For one, your organization will want to ensure there is a system of checks and balances in place for email dissemination. Make sure that there is only a set amount of employees, or better yet only one employee, that handles this form of communication and that they and/or he/she understands the proper protocol to keep your organization’s name (and IP address) in good standing. Second, if outsourcing this function make sure to utilize the services of an ESP that is not only bonded but can provide you with assurances against their use of practices such as running SPAM checks. A good ESP can also assure that they abide by the rules of recipient servers, eliminating the possibility of being blacklisted.

Sources: Email Best Practices, Email Marketing Systems

Zrinity Inc., a Utica, New York-based email marketing server provider, produced a white paper titled, “Improving the Buyer Experience (and ROI) Through Transactional Email Marketing” in which it addressed the mandatory presence of six components in every transactional email. While the components individually are not earth-shaking, the necessary combination of all six in each email may come as a surprise to many.

A transactional email, in short, is a company’s opportunity to utilize a communication that must already be distributed to a customer (i.e. order confirmation) to further promote the company, sell additional products or services, or build brand loyalty. Zrinity, however, is raising the bar by announcing that businesses must be especially careful when constructing transactional emails to ensure that they are meeting the goal of building rapport without burning bridges, which can occur if any of the six components Zrinity has found to be crucial, are not present.

The six components are divided amongst two categories: Content and Delivery.

Content

1. Relevance—Content must speak to the relevance of the transaction. For instance, you do not want to send a promotion of a fur coat in a transaction email confirming the purchase of an “I love PETA” t-shirt. Customization options, such as those offered through Zrinity’s Campaign Intelligence allow businesses to access the type of profile information that makes these more customized emails possible.

2. HTML Formatting—Research shows that recipients are more receptive to HTML formatting than standard text. This allows for improved visibility, appearance and usability through links. It also provides more tracking options for the sender.

 3. Urgency—Use of phrases such as, “Purchase now and for the next 20 minutes, you’ll also get XX for free,” implies that the recipient must act now before losing the opportunity.

4. Brand Consistency—Ensure that you are using your brand consistently in every message. Not only should your email communications match each other, but they too should match other communications where brand is represented including Websites, brochures, etc.

Delivery

5. Real-time—Timing is everything, so companies must ensure that relevant messages are also timely, which usually means less than a 24 hour time frame from the original transaction time.

6. Testing and Tracking—test, test, test, and then track everything.

More Sources: Email Marketing Server, Transactional Email Marketing

Zrinity Puts a New Face on a Common Practice…

Zrinity recently announced the integration of Google Analytics into its Behavioral Email Marketing Strategy. The result of the winning combination is a heightened ability of email marketers to monitor the behavior of their recipients through strengthened metrics and data compilation.

Formerly known as Urchin from Google, the new Google Analytics assists businesses in monitoring performance data. That data can then be used to improve upon existing campaigns and sites. But that’s not all. Google Analytics also allows businesses to track the performance of ads, referrals, search engines, promotions, and a number of offline initiatives as well.

At one time, it was thought that those metrics obtained from Google Analytics were stand-alone and had no ties to other email campaign metrics. In other words, businesses would monitor campaigns through the Zrinity site and then watch Google Analytics for other measures. Zrinity, however, has changed all that by tying Google Analytics directly into its Behavioral Email Marketing Strategy.

Now, having connected the two, delivery coders have enabled Zrinity to pass all campaign metrics directly to Google Analytics. Thus, businesses not only have the means to track bounce rates, delivery rates, and campaign testing, but also the ability to continue tracking site movement once the campaign is completed. From email metrics to site metrics – now it’s all accessible by one click.

This combination is highly critical to Zrinity clients. Behavioral email allows businesses to group individuals/recipients by their past patterns or actions. In other words, a business can look at those individuals who used a credit card to make their purchase in one group, those who opted to receive a newsletter in another, and so on. Part of Zrinity’s new Behavioral Email Marketing Strategy also includes monitoring email for pricing purposes to help ensure that those clients without delivery issues are not paying the same as those facing this challenge.

Utica, NY (PRWEB) — Zrinity, Inc. based in Utica New York, provider of email software solutions, today announced Freewebs, based in Silver Spring, Maryland, chose Zrinity Email Marketing System to power its email marketing communications. Freewebs partnered with Zrinity to improve delivery rates, delivery speeds, and conversion.Freewebs’ customers have built over 17 million websites using Freewebs free “do it yourself” web publishing tool that makes it easy to add blogs, photos, videos, music, e-commerce and more. Email communications is a mission critical component of the Freewebs marketing strategy. Email serves as a primary channel for Freewebs to communicate with customers. Each month, Freewebs sends millions of emails to its member base about product improvements and other news, and deliverability is critical to retention and revenue.

Prior to Zrinity’s email software solution Freewebs used email minimally as a marketing tool. In instituting email as a core marketing activity, Freewebs set out to find a solution that was versatile and scaleable. Freewebs required an in-house email delivery solution that could easily deliver to its millions of members, scale for continued growth, and support transactional messaging in the future.

“Zrinity gave us a great solution that was fast and easy to setup. The team at Zrinity was always up for any and all challenges,” said Victor Prince, head of marketing at Freewebs. “We considered solutions from many firms. Zrinity’s combination of product, support and pricing was a clear winner over Zrinity competitors. The Zrinity Email solution is a quality product from quality people. Zrinity has been a fantastic partner.”