Building Your Business

Keep your email subscribers happy with offering an automatic unsubscribe option for those that no longer want to receive your email. With Relevant Tools an unsubscribe link is posted in the footer of every email that is sent out. One click and the recipient is unsubscribed. The record is still in your database in case you need other information but Relevant Tools will automatically bypass all the unsubscribed email addresses when you send mailings.



In the case above the words remove are the link to the unsubscribe link but this can be customized as desired. Once the user clicks on the unsubscribe link their email address is immediately placed on the unsubscribe or do-not-send list. If you have specified a custom unsubscribe confirmation page then your own page will be displayed.



This process works well for anyone who wants to get off your list directly from the mailing but sometimes people want to unsubscribe directly from your own website. You can use Relevant Tools to generate the unsubscribe code to put on your own webpage.



When the unsubscribe form code is installed on your page you offer your readers another option to remove themselves from your list if they do longer want to receive your email.



Keeping your readers happy, perhaps especially when they no longer want to receive your email, is vital to maintaining a well performing list.

Labels: email campaign, unsubscribe, web forms

Follow these simple steps to email your message to your database of contacts with Relevant Tools. Before you get started sending your email you should first create your message. Then click on Database in the top orange bar and press the green display data button.



Confirm that you displaying the expected database. Then click on the link "email to this list":



Next select the message that you previously created:



You should always test by sending a copy of the message to yourself:



Double check that it is the right message and it looks the way you want it to. Any bad email addresses, previous unsubscribes or duplicate addresses will automatically be removed from the mailing.



Press the "Send Mailing Now" button and your mailing will be on its way immediately or you can schedule it to be sent at a later time.

Labels: email campaign

You can immediately see the results of your mailing after you have sent a mailing using Relevant Tools Email Campaign Management services. In your Relevant Tools account click on the results icon in the top tool bar:



Next click on the link 'mailings, sending/sent' to see the list of mailings that you have sent or are in the process of sending.



On this screen you can see the status of the your mailings. The status column will show Sent for mailing that have gone out. Other status flags are pending or sending. As you refresh this screen you will see the status update along with the counts for the number of emails sent.

When you submit your mailing to be sent, Relevant Tools automatically eliminates any records that have no email addresses or bad (improperly formed) email addresses. Your mailing list is automatically dedupped so that if there are duplicate email addresses in the list, each email address will only receive one email message. Anyone who has previously unsubscribed is automatically eliminated from the mailing.

The total sent column shows how many emails were actually sent. The bounce column shows the number that were undeliverable for any reason. The number of email messages that bounced will grow for a short period after your mailing has been sent as reports are processed from the receiving mail servers.

To see more detail on a specific mailing, click on the mailing name.



On the detail page you can get a list of the bad email addresses or the email addresses that have bounced. If you sent an HTML message you can also see who opened your email. If you enabled click through tracking you can see who clicked on the links in your email.

Let us know if you have any questions about your mailing results.

Labels: email campaign, send email

There is no reason to waste your resources sending email to people who don't want to receive it. If you do not honor unsubscribes requests you are in violation of the law and opening yourself up to potential complaints. Using Relevant Tools it is easy to automatically handle unsubscribe requests.

Every email that is sent by Relevant Tools has the unsubscribe automatically inserted into the footer. We do offer the option to customize your footer if you don't like the default footer. Each person receiving your mailing has an unsubscribe link that will place them on the unsubscribe list with a single click. Dave Chambers of Sideways Wine Club does an excellent job of maintaining his email lists and offering his customers a smooth integrated unsubscribe process. This example shows the unsubscribe footer from one of his email updates.



When I click on the unsubscribe link I am immediately added to the unsubscribe list and see the custom confirmation page for Sideways Wine Club. If you don't want to setup a custom confirmation page on your website you can always use the default one offered by Relevant Tools.



On Relevant Tools you can run a report showing your unsubscribe list. The unsubscribe list is a 'do-not-send' or suppression list so that even if you upload the same email address again in a different database that email address will never receive email again. Records remain in your database until you elect to delete them.



But what if you unsubscribe by mistake? It is easy to get back on the list but to honor the unsubscribe process Relevant Tools verifies all resubscribe requests before they are processed.



I do want to keep receiving email from Sideways Wine Club because I always learn something new and Dave offers such interesting wines at great prices.

Labels: email campaign, tutorial, unsubscribe

Launching your first email campaign with Relevant Tools is easy. First you must create your newsletter or email message by using one of the methods available in the message area. You can upload your message, mail it in, create a text only or image email, upload a file or use a specially designed template. Once your message has been created you are ready to send it out to your database. Click on Mailings in the top navigation bar and select your message.



Your mailing will automatically be assigned a mailing name that will be used for viewing the mailing progress and results. You can change the mailing name if you would like. Next you will select who the mailing will be sent to. Many times you will be sending it to everyone in a particular database but you can also select people who signed up in a particular time period, from a particular signup form, or do one or more searches on your database to select people by any parameters you would like.



You should ALWAYS TEST before sending or scheduling the real mailing. Enter your email address to receive a test message.



After sending the test message you should look at the statistics displayed for the mailing. It will show how many records are selected, the number of deselected records due to duplicate, bad or missing email addresses and the number of records that have been previously unsubscribed. Verify that the database is the right database and this is the number of records that you are expecting.



You should have also received the test mailing in your inbox. Verify that it is indeed the message that you want to send. Do not be alarmed when you see that the unsubscribe link in the footer of the email is not your own email address. The system randomly selects a record to use for the test mailing.

You can choose to either send the mailing now or schedule it for later. When you schedule a mailing for later everything associated with the mailing - the message and the records selected for the mailing - are copied over to the mail server queue and held until the specified date and time. If you change the message in Relevant Tools or records are added or changed in your database that will not be reflected in the mailing unless your delete the scheduled mailing and submit it again.



When you send the mailing out now it is immediately submitted to the mailing queue. Depending on how many other mailings are already in the mailing queue it may start going out immediately.



You can track the results in the results area and see real time how many messages have been sent. If you have open and click through tracking turned on you will also be able to see how many people are reading your message and taking action.

Labels: email campaign, email messages, send email, tutorial

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

Email is one of the most cost effective methods for reaching your customers and prospects. In addition to being economical it has the advantage of being a green technology that doesn't cut down any trees unless your email is so valued that it is printed out.

Email messages can be personalized for each person. Direct mail has been using personalization for years but email has the added advantage of letting you learn a great deal about what happens to your email. Does the person receiving the email open it? Read it more than once, perhaps on different computers? Click on any links? If so, which ones? Did they order your products? Forward the email to others? Unsubscribe? Using the information collected about your users behaviors enables to you target them more specifically with offers that are likely to be of interest to them. And if they are not interested you know and you can automatically eliminate them from your lists and focus your attention on the customers more likely to generate a return.

Most email campaign management services have a low entry point. Relevant Tools starts at $10 a month for up to 500 emails, $30 for up to 10,000 email, and $50 per month for up to 50,000 emails. Service is month to month making it easy to give it a try without locking in to a long term contract.

With a challenging economy where businesses of all sizes are looking to reduce costs and increase return on investment it makes sense to increase email marketing budgets. This year 78% of marketers are significantly increasing email marketing investment for customer acquisition. Many businesses, small and large, are leveraging email campaigns to build their businesses.

Labels: email campaign

Each of us can make small changes every day that will help stop global warming. At the same time these steps can also save money. Here are a few suggestions for small changes that businesses can make:

• Switch to compact fluorescent lights. For a cost study refer to Get Energy Smart Now. Make sure to recycle used light bulbs properly. If your office is in a commercial building with overhead fluorescent lighting try turning off the overhead lights when there is sufficient daylight to further reduce your energy expenditure.


• Use recycled paper and green office supplies. Shop local for these items if possible as many office supply stores carry recycled paper. You can also find additional green office products at The Green Office, Dolphin Blue, and Tree Cycle.


• Reduce paper and energy wasted by stopping junk mail. If you use direct mail yourself make sure to maintain your lists and target mail campaigns effectively or try email campaigns instead.


• Use email campaigns instead of direct mail to effectively reach your target audience. You will save money at the same time you save natural resources and reduce energy expenditures.

For more assistance check to see if your local area has a program such as the Bay Area Green Business Program. Each of us making small changes can make a difference.

Labels: email campaign, global warming