Building Your Business

Databases need regular maintenance to maximize effectiveness and to reduce your costs. Each time you do a mailing detailed statistics are available in real time showing you how many records were selected for a mailing, the number of missing and bad email addresses, the number of prior unsubscribes and the number of duplicates. The total number of records to be mailed to is displayed along with bounces. A bounced email is an email that could not be delivered. This could be because the email address is no longer valid, the mailbox is full, or the message was rejected.



Each email address that can't be delivered to is added to the bounce list for the mailing. You can click on bounces to see the bounce list for a specific mailing. This is useful when resolving a delivery issue for specific email addresses.



You should periodically clean your database of bounces to reduce your monthly charges. Once an email has bounced, depending on the particular email address and the bounce reason, that email address might not be sent to again. A special bounce report is available to enable you to clean up your database and remove records that have bounced multiple times. The bounce report is located on the main database page in the special searches section on the right side of the screen.



Make sure you have the correct database selected as the current database. You can then select how many times you want the same record to have bounced and how many mailings to include in the search.



The search will display the list of records that have bounced that match your requirements. You can then delete these records using the 'delete this list' link.



You will have to confirm that you really do want to delete the selected list. We backup all data on a nightly basis so if you make a mistake you can contact us and ask for a restore.



Running the bounce report periodically and deleting bounced records will keep your bounce statistics low and improve your deliverability. You also will only be charged for good emails that are helping you to grow your business.

Labels: bounces, databases, email campaign, tutorial

You may be getting information from multiple sources and it is possible that you may have more than one record in your database for the same contact. Relevant automatically takes care of dedupping when doing a mailing so you don't have to worry about sending the same email address more than one message in a mailing. But you should periodically dedup you database to reduce your record storage costs and keep your database lean and fit.

Click on Databases and make sure the correct database is selected. The duplicates report is located on the right side of the main database screen in the special searches section.



Often the simple dedup report will work for you. Select the field that you want to dedup on, usually email address. Select display first only.



There are some cases where you need to dedup on more than one field. If that is the case try the advanced duplicates search. Click on the option 'show all but one' to delete all but one record.



Next you will see a display of all the duplicate records. Click on 'delete this list'. You can safely do this as assuming you clicked on display first only or display all but one you know that you are only deleting the duplicate record. And just to make you feel more comfortable about deleting data be reassured that we back up all data every night so we can always restore for you just in case. You also must always confirm before any deletions:



After you have deleted your duplicates the clean database will be displayed.



Let us know if you have any questions or need help.

Labels: databases, duplicates, tutorial

You can easily import your lists into your Relevant Tools Database. Collect your data in a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet should be setup with columns such as first name, last name, company, email, and so on. Each row should contain information for one of your contacts.



The next step is to save your spread sheet as either a tab-delimited text file or a comma separated values (CSV) text file.



In Relevant Tools, click on Database and then click on 'import'. On the import screen give this group of imported records a name such as 'March 2009 list'. Giving your records a name will help you find this group of imported records in case you want to delete them before uploading them again or if you want to take other actions.

Then select the file that you prepared - either the text tab delimited file or the CSV file.

For each column in your spreadsheet match it to the field name for the information in that column.



After you click the import button at the bottom of the import screen you will see the confirmation page telling you how many records you imported.



Display your database to see your imported list.



When you display your database you may see a record that contained the header information from your spreadsheet. That is often a useful way to check to make sure that you selected the right fields for each column but you can delete the header record now.



Now your database is ready for action. Click on the column headers to sort the data by that column.

Labels: databases, import, tutorial

Your Relevant Tools account comes with a contact database that you can customize or you can define your own databases. There are many different choices for the field types - text, text area, pulldown menu, checkboxes, radio buttons, integer, floating point, email, url, image url, and date.

Text is the most common field type. On a web form the user can enter a line of text. So for example if you have text fields first name and last name you can sort your database by last name by clicking on the last name column heading. Text area allows multiple lines of text to be entered. When a text area field is displayed as a result of a database search you will only see the first part of the text and you can click on the little 'v' to the left of the record to view the entire record.



Email, URL and image URL enables those fields to be displayed as proper links in the database display. If you have a field called website that is type URL you can click on the field and be taken to the website. Image URL generates the code for an image source so you can include images from other websites in your database. The email field will generate the html code to bring up a window so you can type in an email message. Fields that are type email also get some extra checking when the user enters them into a web form to make sure that the email address entered is a properly formated address.



Pull down menus allow you to enter a choice of items. In a web form the user will be able to select one. One of that standard fields Relevant Tools includes in the contact database is state. But perhaps you or many of your customers are in Canada and you want to include Canadian provinces. Click on Database and then click on 'create/edit/delete' fields in the database functions selection. Click on the state field. You can change the field name to call it State or Province.



Then click on Edit Field. Next you will see the list of states and you can select to replace them with a list of states and provinces or you can enter your own list of choices for your pull down menu.



Check boxes and radio buttons are defined in the same way where you enter the list of choices. The html code that is generated for your Relevant Tools form will display the check boxes and radio buttons with the options that you have specified.



Integer fields are for whole numbers and can be totaled when you display your database. Floating point fields are for decimal numbers, such as currency, and can also be totaled. When you specify a field as a date and then sort your database by the date field it will be sorted in chronological order instead of alphabetic or numeric order.



In addition to the common field types Relevant Tools databases can contain complex fields. Complex fields can be used to link to other databases or dynamically generate links using data from the current record. If you have special requirements ask us for more information as complex fields may be able to implement your solution.

Labels: databases, fields, tutorial, web forms