CEO's Letter

We hope you were able to attend our webinar “50 Tips, Tricks, and Hidden Features” yesterday afternoon. If you missed it, the recording is available on our website. The webinar was a follow up on Brent Shroyer’s popular blog post that gave a quick snapshot of 50 different items that email marketers must pay close attention to – branding settings, customized links, complaint removal and management, etc. These tips will help ensure your reputation remains positive, and will even give you some short cuts to decrease design time. It’s really informative and everyone, regardless of their experience level, will learn something new. Check it out.

Continuing our educational webinar series, next month Matt Elliott is presenting “Creating Effective HTML Email Campaigns” on May 28. Matt will discuss the dos and don’ts of HTML coding techniques to maximize renderability across multiple platforms, and he’ll offer up some exciting tips on what you can do to ensure your emails are delivered with all design aspects intact.

Ross Kramer, CEO

CEO's Letter

Same newsletter - new look! We have revamped the look of our newsletter, but it still contains all of the important news that you've come to expect from us. Highlights of this issue include our free Dynamic Profiling webinar on March 26 and our Goodmail partnership announcement. To see if you qualify to send certified mail, or to learn more about it, contact Matt Elliott. We are also updating our website with a complete list and description of all of our features with a breakout of which features are included in which levels of service. It's a great tool and worth checking out.

Listrak customers, don't forget that you can print March’s invoice and set up automatic monthly payments right from your desk! Log in to your account and go to Manage > Account > View Invoices to view your invoices online.

We are also finalizing the schedule for our 2008 Email Marketing Days conference. We have added sessions from some of our industry's leaders, including the ESPC and Habeas, as well as enlisted several customers to present case studies. More information will be sent out in the upcoming weeks announcing the full list of speakers and the schedule.

Ross Kramer, CEO

CEO’s Letter

Launching Listrak 4.2

We’re sending a belated Valentine out to the Listrak community today – more awesome features to make you an even better email marketer. You can read about each one of the new features below, but two of my favorites are Dynamic Profiling and Heatmaps. Dynamic Profiling is a behavioral targeting tool that allows Listrak users to dynamically create or update profiling attributes based on a contact’s actions – open, read, click, etc. Our new heatmap feature is a very cool new tool that will allow you to quickly gauge click response from a visual perspective. We’ve also implemented several other new features that you’ll want to read about below.

Don’t forget about our API Webinar this week as well as our next month's webinar where we recap all of the new features released in 2008. Additionally if you happen to be at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit in Miami later this week please stop by our Dynamic Content Clinic hosted by our own Matt Elliott.

Regards,

Ross Kramer
CEO

CEO’s Letter

Listrak Users' Conference Announcement

Today marks the official public announcement of our 2008 Users’ Conference. We're extremely excited to be hosting this event, which I'm sure will prove to be invaluable to Listrak users. We've already confirmed a few stellar speakers for our event. David Daniels, Research Director for Jupiter Research will kick off the conference as our keynote speaker, and we will also be joined by many email experts from different industries. The 2008 Email Marketing Days web site has been launched and more information, including registration, can be found there. We hope to see you in Philadelphia in September!

Regards,

Ross Kramer
CEO

CEO’s Letter

Full Speed Ahead for 2008

We’re off to great start so far in 2008 with lots of exciting news to share. First and foremost, we have announced our Listrak Users’ Conference to be held September 7 - 9 in Philadelphia, PA. Right now we’re soliciting feedback from customers to understand what would interest you most at the conference. Please take a moment to take our survey. Secondly we have launched a few new features including the ability to lock templates. Lastly our Product Manager, Brent Shroyer has assembled 50 fabulous tips, tricks, and hidden Listrak features which can be found on his blog.

From all of us at Listrak we wish your email marketing efforts great relevancy and deliverability at just the right frequency in 2008!

Regards,

Ross Kramer
CEO

CEO’s Letter

Deliverability Outlook for 2008

This month we’re looking ahead to the deliverability landscape for 2008.  We’ve assembled a terrific deliverability guide, entitled Outlook for 2008: Essential Email Marketing Deliverability Guide.  This whitepaper is a compendium of deliverability knowledge that every email marketer needs to not only know about but also implement within their own email marketing programs.  The guide covers everything from measuring and assessing your reputation to implementing authentication methods to evaluating which accreditation service might be best for you.

For those looking for more deliverability content we’ll be hosting a free deliverability webinar as an adjunct to this whitepaper at 1PM EST on December 18th.

From all of us here at Listrak, have a safe and enjoyable Holiday Season!

Regards,

Ross Kramer
CEO

CEO’s Letter

Learn How to Increase Your Click-Through Rates 41%

We’re publishing some exciting research today – our first case study on our all new Dynamic Content feature.  We worked with DiscountBeautyCenter.com, on a preference-based dynamic content email campaign that included two distinct dynamic content containers that displayed variable data based on past purchase history.  The results of using the preference-based dynamic content version versus the non-preference based version were compelling:

15% increase in open rates
27% increase in read rates (opened for 5 seconds or more)
41% increase in click through rates

The case study is available for free download here.

If you think dynamic content might be for you you’ll be interested in reading Brent Shroyer’s blog post, “Using Dynamic Content for Email Campaign A/B Split Testing.”  It offers a practical approach to using our dynamic content system for email testing.

If you’re looking for ways to boost your response rates for your upcoming Holiday Season campaigns it’s not too late to consider using dynamic content.  Contact a Listrak email marketing expert to learn more.

Regards,
Ross

CEO’s Letter

The Case for a Clean List

Many email marketers continue to live with the myth that the bigger the list size the better. These email marketers are the ones that don’t pay attention to the recipients that are bouncing on their lists - how many times a person has bounced and what the exact bounce reason is for each bounce. Lately we have been seeing Listrak customers improve overall ROI by using behavioral segmentation to target their most active subscribers. Many smart email marketers are now taking a closer look at who has opened, read, clicked, etc., within the past year and are targeting just those subscribers for their campaigns. When doing so, our customers are seeing a boost in deliverability due to a decreased percentage of invalid emails (bounces) sent to the larger ISPs. The net result is that overall ROI increases because a larger percentage of their mail is delivered to their best customers. Now that’s smart marketing.

Regards,
Ross Kramer

CEO's Letter

Listrak 4.0 Is Here

Drum roll, please…

I’m happy to announce that the much anticipated release of Listrak 4.0 is finally here!

This morning, just before the light of dawn, the Listrak engineers quietly rolled out the brand new 4.0 code. With this launch comes a plethora of content that will help educate you on all the new capabilities Listrak 4.0 has to offer.

For starters, the Listrak marketing team has written two new whitepapers. Both papers are well done—one explains the features and benefits of Listrak 4.0’s dynamic content. The other paper provides powerful new ideas on email marketing campaign development.

You’d rather watch it than read it? No problem; get debriefed on Listrak 4.0 by viewing a smart new video. Our first video offers an overview of the Listrak 4.0 feature set. The second video specifically focuses on how to use Listrak’s Dynamic Content module to increase response and customer communication by providing more relevant messaging techniques.

Get ready—Listrak 4.0 is about to take your email marketing to the next level!

Regards,
Ross

CEO’s Letter

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

Last month we had hoped to launch our Listrak 4.0 release by August 1st. But in an effort to ensure that our clients receive the best of the best, our development team is currently finalizing some last minute adjustments to 4.0—and let me assure you, it’ll be worth the wait. We’ve packed some significant upgrades into Listrak 4.0 including a completely redesigned Dynamic Content system. At this time we are preparing for a soft launch on August 20th with the official launch happening on September 3rd.

Listrak Professional Services Grows

This year our professional services team has steadily grown in both manpower and the ability to take on new clients.  We’ve been consistently producing winning campaigns—both large and small—for clients of all sizes.

At the same time, economic cutbacks are forcing many marketing departments to do more—with less staff.  As a result, many firms are struggling to find staff that possesses both a strong background in email marketing as well as graphic design and layout. If your firm repeatedly finds itself in a jam, unable to get the production of your email campaigns completed on time—and on budget for that matter—contact Listrak. We have the manpower and expertise that will save you time, money and hassle.

On a parting note, I hope that everyone reading this has been having a safe an enjoyable summer.  It’s hard to believe that by the time you read our next newsletter the sounds of school buses and marching band practice will fill the air.  If you haven’t already, get out there and enjoy the warm weather!

Regards,

Ross Kramer
CEO

CEO's Letter

The Listrak product development team has been busy this month preparing for the pending launch of Listrak 4.0. The Listrak 4.0 feature set paves the way to our Event Triggered Messaging platform which will be available later this fall. With Listrak 4.0, customers can look forward to a host of new features coming available in early August. The biggest improvement comes in the form of a completely redesigned Dynamic Content engine. We have added a new Content Library that allows Listrak customers to store content within their Listrak account to be used within the Dynamic Content framework. We have also overhauled our reporting structure to support larger datasets as well as the ability to group and sort messages within a campaign structure. We've also made Listrak easier to use by optimizing our menu structure for better workflow and usability.

Beyond what is available within the Listrak graphical user interface, we also continue to make improvements to our API. Full documentation and test scripts are available at http://webservices.listrak.com.

We're all very proud of the new features and improvements that will be available within the Listrak 4.0 feature set. We're looking forward to the rollout in early August. We'll have more information on Listrak 4.0 in next month's newsletter.

I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Fourth of July.

Ross Kramer

CEO's Letter

This month we're talking about email marketing metrics and the importance of understanding which key performance indicator matters most for your company. While the industry insiders are abuzz trying to standardize the measurement criteria for email marketing metrics, it's important for those of us deploying campaigns for our companies to focus on the metrics that will lead to the highest return. Speaking of metrics, this past month we announced our integration with Google Analyics. Google blogged about our integration in their official blog which I thought was pretty cool. You can learn more about how to integrate your Listrak email campaigns with Google Analytics in our quick start tutorial.

Cheers!

Ross

CEO's Letter

In February's newsletter we asked you what web analytics provider you were using and a majority of you told us you were using Google Analytics. This month we have an exciting announcement to share about our integration with Google Analytics. With fully automated Google Analytics integration in place, Listrak customers will be able to get a clear picture of post-click web site behavioral activity. An added benefit of using this feature is that Google Analytics will continue to provide click-stream data tracked to the individual level every time the person re-visits your site. The net effect will be higher response rates through increased relevancy.

Cheers to email marketing intelligence!

Ross Kramer
Founder and CEO

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Fresh Perspective on Email Marketing

The dull of winter is slowly being replaced by pockets of green, here in Pennsylvania.  Spring is underway and with it comes fresh new life in the form of vibrant flowers, budding trees and green grass.  If you’re ready for new growth in regards to your email marketing strategy—you’ve come to the right place.

Listrak has been working all winter long on our resource center, adding whitepapers and case studies that will provide an extra dimension to your email marketing approach.  Last year we helped hundreds of smart marketers drive response and boost customer loyalty, and now our email marketing experts are ready to share their secret with you.

Ross Kramer
Founder and CEO

Hey Lady! There's a Whale!

My wife and a friend recently visited sunny Puerto Vallarta Mexico while I went snowmobiling in Quebec. The girls choose Puerto Vallarta because at this time of the year many whales come to the area to raise their young. They were excited to see these whales so immediately after arriving at the resort they booked their whale watching tour. My wife's friend had been on a few of these tours before and quizzed the young Mexican tour operator on the captain's affiliations with marine research organizations. Her questions were met with a blank stare. Unfazed, she then asked what kind of high tech sonar-type equipment was onboard to detect the presence of the whales they were looking for. Again, her questions were met with a blank, confused look.

Finally she asked, "Well how are we going to know if a whale is out there?" With that the Mexican tour operator said, "Well, the captain will say, 'Hey lady, there's a whale!"

I think this story can relate to your email marketing strategy. Keep it simple. I've seen many firms go beyond the basics and fall into a traps that lead to information overload, process implosion or a complexity nightmare. Sometimes pieces of your email marketing strategy can be as simple as, "Hey lady, how many new subscribers did you add to your list versus the ones that were removed?" Keep it simple. I think you get the point.

To that end we've released several whitepapers and case studies within the past month that help email marketers cut through the clutter and better implement their day-to-day email strategy. If you're serious about using email marketing to help you achieve your marketing objectives then I strongly suggest reading some of our latest white papers, or calling one of our email experts at 717.627.4528 today to learn more.