emm

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Canada’s Anti-Spam Bill

Here’s what you need to know about Canada’s Anti-Spam Bill that was recently introduced. Three are some significant differences between this and the US CAN-SPAM legislation that businesses will want to keep in mind as they pursue their marketing plans involving email communications with customers and potential customers alike.

Canada’s Electronic Commerce Protection Act (ECPA) is expected to have rules regarding opt-in and opt-out procedures, consumer privacy and sender identification. Of course will all legislation, there is some ambiguity in the wording so you should use the links at bottom to make your own interpretation or contact counsel.

Permission is Required
The primary difference between ECPA and CAN-SPAM is inherit in the acronyms. The US version does not require advance permission to send the emails. Basically, you CAN SPAM provided you follow the rules that allow for opt-out mechanisms as well as real-world contact information. ECPA on the other hand prohibits the sending of commercial email without prior permission from the recipient. There are provisions however for implied consent so long as a relationship (business or non-business) can be established between the sender and the recipient.

SMS Messages Require Advance Permission
The ECPA lumps text and SMS messages into the same category so keep the elements of this law in mind for this type of communication as well.

Unsubscribes Must Stay Active for 60 days
You will be required to maintain active unsubscribe links in your outbound emails that are active for a minimum of 60 days. This is not a problem with EMM since the unsubscribe links are persistant.

Unsubscribes Must be Honored in Timely Manner
More importantly, they’ve set a deadline of 10 days in order to act on any unsubscribe requests. Note that CAN-SPAM allows for 10 business days while ECPA does not so you have less time under this proposed Candadian legislation. EMM will assist you in this manner in that the unsubscribe links embedded in the emails will automatically unsubscribe users when they click on it. This should be strong encouragement to also manage your bouncebacks to ensure that your customers don’t try and unsubscribe by replying to your mailing.

Individuals Can Sue Violators
ECPA contains provisions that allow for a “private right of action” that allows individuals to sue spammers up to $200 per item. This could have huge effects for businesses in violation as individuals could join together for class-action suits to create a substantial settlement. Of course, the government can also sue; in this case for up to $10 million!

How Do I Identify A Canadian Address?
Easiest way is to identify the addresses that end in .ca which is the Canadian Top Level Domain. You can easily target or exclude these addresses using our custom query feature if you wish to engage in a permission campaign on the external customer list. If you are collecting geographic information in your external mailing list, you can use Zip/Postal codes or state/province information to identify these addresses. Lastly, you can do IP address lookups on the site visitor’s IP address using a tool like ip2Location.com but again, if you are sending to your customers in ASPDNSF you should be fine as they have explicitly opted in.

Bottom Line
If you are working with our EMM product and working in your ASPDNSF customer base, you are covered. If you are using the external user base, you need to tread more carefully if the names were not collected on an opt-in basis. Between now and when the bill passes, you might wish to engage in a permission campaign to convert these addresses to a opt-in addresses.

EMM and AspDotNetStorefront v8.0.1.1

UPDATED:

 If you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, you can do the following to all of the xaEmm*.aspx.cs files in order to get this working with your website:

Add a Using reference to AspDotNetStorefrontCore to the top of the file as shown below:

 

 

I’m sure purists might insist that you actually replace the AspDotNetStorefronCommon line with the AspDotNetStorefrontCore line but I haven’t fully regression tested that to make certain all works as expected. Other than that, you should be good to go! Please report back here if you experience any problems after your upgrade or use the Contact Us form for more support.

Original Posting: 

There are some changes in the core programming concepts in v8.0.1.1 of ASPDNSF that will prevent EMM from working. If you upgrade from v8.0.0.0 (or any previous version) please be aware that until I’ve completed my work in updating EMM, the Enhanced Mailing Manager for AspDotNetStorefront will not work.
 I’ll have more information on this available as the weekend progresses. 

POSTSCRIPT:
I’m not certain what happened to the image that is supposed to appear up above but the information is that you basically replace every instance of “using AspDotNetStorefront;” in any of the asp.cs files with “using AspDotNetStorefrontCore;”

UPDATED:

Please find below a copy of v1.0.1.1 of EMM that has been modified to work, out of the box, with v8.0.1.1 and v8.0.1.2 of ASPDNSF. Note, support for v9.x is forthcoming.

EMMv1.0.1.1-For8.0.1.1AndUp.zip (55.14 kb)

Next Version of Enhanced Mail Manager for ASPDNSF

Here are some of the ideas on the roadmap for the next version of EMM:

  • Attachments ? Originally we didn?t include this due to our previous experience as a mail service provider for thousands of clients, serving millions of emails a day. By not sending attachments, the likelihood of acceptance by a wider range of mail servers is higher and the risk of spreading viruses is eliminated. However, these concerns may not be shared by all and there are certain situations where this feature might be useful. My initial thoughts are that it would require a Super Admin account to turn this feature on and it will be off by default.
  • Scheduled Jobs ? I?m not sure if I?ll be able to squeeze this into this version. This might be a feature that requires the ability to run a service on the server that is hosting the machine; limiting its usefulness to those who have dedicated or virtual servers. I?m investigating a way to simulate a service using ONLY what is available to ASP.NET.
  • Daily limits ? The AppConfig variable has existed for this since the first release but we haven?t been utilizing it. This feature hasn?t made much sense to include until the scheduled jobs feature is enabled.
  • Archive of emails/newsletters for presentation online
    • Allow viewing/listing on a per-campaign basis
    • Define if it shows inside or outside the site framework (lytebox?)
    • Set expiration date for campaign to be listed/viewed
  • Fix a bug in the editor (long story)
  • Support locking down the Track.Click action files to prevent their sue by spammers by limiting them to internal links. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/01/open-redirect-urls-is-your-site-being.html

Do you have any other features you?d like to have us consider for inclusion in the next release of EMM? If so, please use the comments section below to speak up. Or if you have any questions or thoughts about the features mentioned above, please do use the comment section to continue this discussion.

EMM And Email Deliverability

I received an email from an EMM customer today asking about how best to advise HIS client when it came time to talk about the value of Enhanced Mail Manager for ASPDotNetStorefront versus hosted services like Constant Contact. Aside from the obvious cost discussion (a HUGE factor for many small businesses) here is the rest of what we discussed via email:

Thanks Jonathan for your continued support of EMM.

Has your client done side by side testing of open counts with their mailing list in Constant Contact and in EMM? Seems to me this would be the best possible comparison. It would give them a solid foundation for a discussion about where they are getting the most bang for the buck.

I’ve done everything in software that I can to minimize the likelihood of filtering based on common information (ie : it is better to NOT encode graphics as attachments, always have a text and HTML version done as multi-part, include proper CAN-SPAM support, etc).

However, there is much about filtration that cannot be addressed in software and must be addressed by either a service bureau (like CC) or by the organization doing the mailing. The following items will all contribute to mail getting through:

  • Ensuring that the IP address of the sending mail server is not on any real-time blacklists or shared by any spammers if in a shared hosting environment. IF your website is hosted in an environment that has strikes against it for clients who spam, you would want to use the mail settings in ASPDNSF to ensure that your mail is going out through that mail server rather than through the web server’s SMTP server.  This is one of the services I?ve used in the past to check up on this: http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
  • Ensure that your mail server can be matched forwards and reverse DNS to eliminate "No Reverse DNS Pointers Found" type of bounces.
  • Setting up proper SPF and SenderID DNS records for the sending email domain. SenderID and SPF are becoming more and more critical for acceptance of email at ISPs and corporate email hosts. You can learn more about it here: http://www.openspf.org/SPF_vs_Sender_ID
  • Keep your mailing list clean. This means immediately remove not only manual unsubscribe requests, but probably more important is to process bounce backs immediately.
    • While EMM will accept one-click unsubscribe requests (as required by CAN-SPAM requirements) it doesn’t automate processing of bounce backs or manual unsubscribes. We do, however make it easy by accepting a list of email addresses to unsubscribe as well as attributing the type of unsubscribe to a specific mailing for reporting purposes.
    • By running a "dirty" list, you will find that your emails are much more likely to get bounced since ISPs have been known to "shut the door" temporarily or permanently to mail servers who consistently attempt mail delivery to large numbers of old or invalid mailboxes. This helps protect not only against dictionary spam attacks but also against old data lists.
  • Consider subscribing to reputation system/service. While I’m not certain if these actually work or not, there are a number of people who swear by their effectiveness. An example of this is GoodMail: http://www.goodmailsystems.com/. Nothing against the quality of their service, I?d have to have a pretty darn good reason to subscribe to a service like this as I feel that just contributing to a system that could tier email deliverability based on how much money you want to spend is just plain wrong.

Some of these items are set once and forget it kind of things while others will require a little bit of work on the part of merchant to keep their reputation clean. That is why it is always good to immediately monitor the results of each mailing (true for in-house or outsourced). You can spot trends in your bounce backs as well as in your open rates using EMM’s reporting features.

I hope you find this information helpful. If I can help in any other way, please feel free to shout!

MJG

Install Service Now Offered for xaEmm

Looking to give the Enhanced Mailing Manger for ASPDNSF a try but don't have the time to do the install yourself? As many of my clients are consultants and programmers working for others, many find it easier to pay a small amount to have EMM installed right, the first time. Or perhaps you are a store owner and want to add EMM to your system but don't want to go back to the original programmers that built the site for you to implement this for you?

Well, Exhibit A Communications has listened to your pain and come up with an answer for you. We now offer installation services as low as $75 per installation (when purchased at the same time as a license) or for $100 per installation for the trial version. Scratch that, during this introductory period, we are going to offer install services at the low $75 rate regardless of whether you purchase the license or not!

Pay for EMM registration via PayPal, Credit Card or Google Checkout In order to take advantage of this offer, you will first need to go to our BUY page for EMM and choose the payment option you are interested in. Then you would need to provide us with the following information:

  • Domain Name (as define in AppConfig LiveServer value) to register EMM to
  • The full URL to the admin section of the website
  • A temporary administrative login/password to the admin section of website
  • The Full URL for FTP access to the site (to upload files)
  • An FTP login and password for the above URL.

Once we have this information, and your payment of course, we can proceed with installing EMM on your behalf.

Thoughts or questions? Please use the comments section below if you'd like the conversation carried on in public or you can always use our Contact Us page to send us private comments or questions.

What Would You Add to Enhanced Mailing Manager?

In the interest of making EMM the best tool possible for all my customers, I thought I should be working harder to get more feedback from you all on what we you would like to see the package do. You can always send me e-mails about future feature requests, but perhaps this forum would be a better way to do that? Please feel free to use the Comments at the bottom of each post here on the blog to push your ideas up, not just for me, but for other users in the community to comment on.

I was recently asked by a new customer Dan if we previewed the email addresses that a given audience would send to BEFORE you actually sent it. I’m thinking this is a great idea but am wondering how people would use it. Would having a count be more important than actually seeing the addresses? One of my early concerns was to minimize the likelihood that an unscrupulous customer service representative in your organization uses this to do some data mining or to get around the built-in restrictions to prevent email from being sent to people that have unsubscribed.

Thoughts are always welcome using the comments below!

Email Marketers Meet and Share Ideas

Those who’ve known me for some time know that I kind of have a love/hate relationship with MarketingSherpa and the information they provide. At times they provide great support and numbers from the industry to use when crafting your own campaigns. At other times, they frustrate me no end when I find that I disagree with their conclusions…

All that being said, they recently released a short summary on the Email Marketing Summit 2008. Below are some of the top dozen takeaways:

  1. Don’t get caught up in only being a marketer – Put on the hats of those in your organization that you are trying to co-opt to your way of thinking. How can what YOU do assist those above and beside you in the organization.
  2. Landing pages are becoming de riguer – Most marketers wouldn’t think these days about testing a marketing campaign without having strong landing pages associated with them. Suggestions include building the landing page as soon as the offer and message are defined to ensure that the work gets done before the emails go out.
  3. It is message, stupid – stick to your message at every step of the campaign. This includes the subject line, the text and images of the message and the landing page itself. Tips: Landing pages shouldn’t carry all the site navigation elements to prevent distracting from the message in the offer.
  4. Don’t waste too much energy worrying about deliverability – while important, this is becoming less and less of a concern as opposed to ensuring that your message comes across to those who do get it.
  5. Segment your audience – One size doesn’t fit all and you’ll find that many small, targettable lists will out perform a massive but unspecific list any day.
  6. The rumor of the death of email is just that, a rumor – don’t give in to talk that email marketing is dead as email loses it’s day in – day out value to Internet customers and users. A resurgence of email availability is seen with the large swings of consumer to connected devices like Blackberries, iPhones and Windows Mobile devices.
  7. Be Interesting – Give your targets a reason to open your emails. You can do this by trying different subject lines across your segmented list (you are segmenting your list, aren’t you? If not, see #5 above). Be irreverent, be obtuse, just please be something other than predictable or boring.
  8. Close the door on Open Rates – While there is some value to open rates, this is being too short-sighted. You need to keep your aim a little higher. You should be concerned more with conversion rates or click-through rates; depending upon your goals.
  9. B2B, or not 2B – The answer to this question is that B-to-B email marketing is on the upswing but keep it targeted, interesting and directly personalized to get recipients engaged in the message of the campaign.
  10. Ask and ye shall receive – Use the communication opportunity to your customers to ask questions about anything you can think of. These provided great opportunities to learn more about your customers and targets alike.
  11. Get Mobile – Reaching out to mobile users with your message will become a key target in the coming years as the penetration of email capable devices continues to grow over the next few years.
  12. And lastly… TEST, TEST, TEST

Interested in how EMM can help with these? Here’s the high points:

  • Need to segment lists? Use Custom Queries to create repeatable groups of campaign recipients. You can slice and dice your users by network, by zip codes or just about any data point available in ASPDNSF customer records. With some SQL creativity, you could even target your lists at customers who haven’t bought recently (or ever) or even ones who bought a specific product.
  • Accountability? Track not only opens, but more importantly, use the click tracking to monitor the success of actually driving your customers to your landing pages, site or other location
  • Mobile ready? Taking full advantage of multi-part messaging available in EMM to reach mobile devices of varying email capabilities by letting the device sort out which of version of your campaign to display.

If you have any thoughts on this, or any topic, please DO use the comments feature below start a dialog with MJG or any other readers of this blog!

EMM WYSIWYG work complete

By utilizing the built-in RAD editor that comes bundled with the ASPDNSF storefronts, we've been able to quickly and easily adding a WYSIWYG editor into EMM. By utilizing the included RAD editor, your staff won't have to relearn a new editing interface.

WYSIWYG Editor

The new editing system allows you to flip to full-screen editor and back, just like you get in the ASPDNSF as well as being able to flip back and forth between WYSIWYG and HTML editing mode. The editor will also respect the TurnOffHtmlEditorInAdminSite appconfig parameter so that if you have this turned off system-wide, we'll honor that request here. We've even provided in the code a simple override for this so that if you wanted EMM to use the opposite value than the rest of the site. And best of all, the Insert links work regardless of which mode you decide to use.

This new feature will appear on March 1st when version 1.0.0.1 is released to our current customers along with the other changes to be integrated into the product.

On the Map, So To Speak… Part Two…

Well, we’ve gotten the GASS product product listed up on Google’s Enterprise Solutions Gallery… and now we’re proud to announce something similar for EMM… We are now listed on the ASPDotNetStorefront Marketplace page!

Click here to go directly to our info page in the marketplace

Hopefully in the near future, we’ll also have more information to share about another location where EMM will be profiled. The more people we get exposed to the application, the more we get them using it. The more we get using it, the more improvements we’ll be able to offer so buy early and buy often!

Enhancements Planned for EMM

plans are on for Enhanced Mail Manager (EMM) for ASPDNSF 1.0.0.1 to be released no later than the end of February (yikes, now that I’ve committed to this in writing, I’d better get on the stick). This next release will include the following features:

  • Freely downloadable demonstration copy available
  • WYSIWYG Editor support for the creation of the HTML portion of an email campaign
  • Support for newsletter sign ups from the website. Site administrator would control the following AppConfig settings:
    • Is newsletter sign up single or double opt in? (defaults to double opt in)
    • Will newsletter sign ups be added as new ASPDNSF customers or as records in the external customers database? (defaults to customer records)
    • Will sign up form force the collection of first and last names? (default is yes)

If anyone has thoughts or comments on how features they’d like to see added to the EMM application, please use our Contact Us form or by leaving a comment below or by leaving your recommendation in the EMM support forum.