Actito By Citobi

Actito is a multi-channel marketing automation tool for marketeers and communication specialists. We entered the market in 2000 and have developed our solution, based on the needs of our clients as well as market needs. Actito is defined by its simplicity, its power and its ability to adapt to very specific needs. We are always available at the following address: [email protected] - phone [phone] - Twitter @ Actito_Mas www.actito.com

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Did you know about Automata?

Dear Readers,

The subject of today’s article is a more advanced Actito app. As you know, Actito is a powerful tool that allows for a variety of actions and returns a multitude of info. In order to keep a clear and structured vision of your communication, our advice is to start small and grow with certainty.

A concrete example of how to grow in your use of Actito is to start automate your actions.

Therefore, our platform has an inbuilt app called Automata.

What is it’s use? Automate all kind of recurring actions, after having tested them and optimized: send emails, manage profiles, create segmentations…

Some ideas?

Automatically send an email to your contacts on its birthday (it remains one of the best-performing emails)

Insert a contact into the segment “shavingtips” if he cliqued in an email on one of the links referring to the shaving tips pages

Send a confirmation email after having participated to a survey

Concretely, you define an automata with 3 points. 

An event: the action that will trigger the process. This action can be of different forms:

Profile: a profile was updated or created, did subscribe, unsubscribe,…

Emails: all kind of email interactions can be taken into account, clic or opening

Surveys: participated to a survey, did answer to one or several questions, you can even trigger the automate in function of the answer to a survey.

Alarmclocks: not only actions can trigger an automata, use also periodicities. 

An action: in reaction to the event, define an action. Those actions can take different forms.

Profiles: change an attribute, subscribe a contact, add a profile to a specific segment,…

Mail: send an email

SMS: send an sms

 A delay (optional) : Define a certain lap between the event and the action. E.g.: send an email with a satisfaction survey 3 weeks after purchase.

You want some concrete examples? Let’s start with the most universal ones

Birthday email

Birthday emails remain the most performing kind. But to perform, they should unite two conditions: strong personalization and sending around the birth date. You can certainly do this manually, it will only take about 15 min a day, 5475 min a year or 11,5 9-days of work. No need to say automata can make you win time and money.

How to configure it?

Event: wake-up, every day, the profiles whose birthdate is today

Delay: none

Action: send the email “birthday email” (that you prepared in advance)

Segmentation management

You want the management of your segmentation to be automated? Let’s take the example of our client Raz*War. One of it’s segmentation purposes is to differentiate between the clients, which are active on social networks (share the content of Raz*War on those networks) and those who aren’t. 

How to automatically push the sharer of an email into the segment “social sharer” ? 

Choose your email as event, and add a trigger criterion: “has cliqued on” one of the social sharing links.

Then, define as action: “change segment” and “add the profile to the segment “social sharer”. 

Answers to an event

You organize a seminar for your company, you obviously need some info to properly receive your guests. So you create an Actito form to collect this info. Once the guests have completed their form, you want them to receive a confirmation by email.

How to automate this?

Before launching the automation process, be sure your survey and your email (customized with the answers to the survey, for example) are ready!

Hint : In order to have access to your email in the automata app, don’t forget in the sending step, to choose “continuous sending”.

Then, in Automata, select as event your survey, and a specific trigger (participation created, participation completed or even profile updated)

As action, select email and then the email your prepared.

Then you want to go further and inform your colleague in charge of the booking for each reservation. Nothing easier: just copy the automata, but in the event window, insert the email of your colleague in “fixed email address”. All the emails will be sent to this address.

Hint : this specific option will also be very useful when you test your automatas.

As you can see, for more complex processes, combining automatas is possible and not difficult.

Before ending this article, a quick warning: when you start working with automated processes, one mistake can have large consequences, so don’t hesitate to test deeply your automatas and/or ask for counsel before and during the creation of your processes.

That’s it for the app Automata, if your Actito Pack doesn’t enclose this app, but you want to go to the next step, contact us

The Actito Team,

Always available

By mail : [email protected] - twitter @actito_mas – phone [phone]

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Euromut case - Extremely qualified leads at diminishing costs

THE CLIENT

Euromut is one of the biggest mutual insurance systems in Belgium, and a long term client of Citobi.

 For mutual insurance systems, enrolling new clients is a difficult challenge for two reasons:

There are strong regulations on the market. The granted premiums are thus standardized across the different clients and it is difficult to stand out against the competition.

These clients are very loyal; few will change their mutual insurance system and most children continue with the insurance system of their parents. Such a retention rate is double edged, and bringing in new clients is no easy task.

 For a better differentiation from the competition, Euromut focuses on two complementary insurances, which differentiate our client from its competitors: Dentalia and Hospitalia plus. Those two products serve as loss leader.

THE CHALLENGE

The objective of our client is two-sided: recruit new clients or upsale them, within the time limit (3 months). In other words:

Bring a maximum of quality leads while keeping the costs to a minimum.

Increase the value proposition of these customers.

The key questions to address was: who to contact and how to reach the different consumer groups.

Who?

A mutual insurance system is open to all, but won’t address the different groups the same way. So we needed to create relevant segments and deliver the best message to each.

Based on our experience, we knew how important it was, not to base ourselves on past laurels, but to continuously test and challenge ourselves, and use quantitative data instead of qualitative.

How?

For a mutual insurance system, entering a one-to-one communication mode is crucial for different reasons.

We are in a served market; high value marketing and powerful leverages are needed.

Health is a very personal and sensitive topic

The switch is perceived as a tough procedure

There is no spontaneous willingness to change.

How to reach each consumer group, guide them in their reflection and put  forward a value proposition that really fits their needs were thus crucial questions.

THE SOLUTION

As we didn’t want to rely on past laurels, we addressed these questions in a step-by-step approach, adapting the targeting progressively.

Our campaigns where thus continuously optimized with testings on the message, the used media and the targeting, at each step of the communication with the consumer.

More specifically, the action was built in two waves: a first one targeted a wider population, to make some learnings of the market. With these learnings, we then launched a second wave, more targeted, with better results and a diminished cost per lead.

 How to reach the client?

 Media to web

The first step was to reach the client. We contacted them first through e-mail campaigns on rented, optin partner databases: a first launch on a sample, a refining on the targeting and a collection of tests to continuously increase the conversion rates.

The message was focused on the advantages linked to the subscription to one of the complementary insurances and the financial risks when you don’t have one.

The goal was clear: convince the client of the practical and economical utility of the complementary insurances of our clients, as well as the financial risks they expose themselves to without these insurances.

Web to lead

The participants where then sent to a form in which they could make a budget simulation in function of their family status.

Thanks to the collected data, we could come up with a concrete and entirely customized offer.

The leads were finally contacted with a personal mail or if they asked for it, their data was transferred to the call centers of our clients.

For a continuous optimalisation of the rendering of our campaigns, each campaign was tested on 3 levels: Subject, Media and targeting.

THE RESULTS 

A first important point was the improvement of the performance through the different e-mail campaigns. Each campaign has been tested on the subject, the media and the targeting, at each step, enabling us to draw conclusions on all levels.

Thanks to these unbroken improvements, we could diminish the cost of the lead (brought to our client) by no less than 3 between the first and the second wave.

The second big success of this campaign concerns the quality of the lead. We saw a considerable increase of the conversion rates coming from our funnel. Why?

We identified two reasons:

A relevant and appropriate targeting

The contacted leads where well informed about the conditions or the budget of these insurances. The subscription was the logical following of the preceding steps. The client was prepared, our client simply needed to help them make the choice.

This is it for today's article

 Keep on transmitting your ideas of articles

Actito Team,

Always available

By mail : [email protected] - twitter @actito_mas – phone [phone]

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Data Management - Import without headache

Actito takes your database most seriously. After all this is the core of your business. Actito focuses on marketing so no need to provide unnecessary data into it.  You should have (only) actionable data, which provide high value to your people.

 One of the biggest challenges of the marketers is to start a one to one dialog with his contacts. This is achievable by providing relevant content to each individual.

 In our desire to help you become each day a better Actito user, we share a procedure to follow in order to make import actions as easy and smooth as possible.

Importing profiles is something you need to pay a lot of attention to as it can really impact your business. So we have three counsels for you:

Proceed with care

If you’re not sure of what you’ll do, contact us

Don’t hesitate to export your full DB before: you won’t avoid mistakes, but fixing them will be a lot easier.

Follow the steps, and read all the content and counsels on the screens.

1. Prepare your import file

There are many ways to import data in Actito, this will be the subject of a future post. Today, we focus on imports coming from Excel files... 

First of all, your database should already include all the elements present in your file. Indeed you cannot create an attribute directly in the import app.

Your file should be organized in columns, with as column title, the name of the attribute (‘emailadress’) and as value on each line, the value of the attribute (‘[email protected]’,…).

TIP: sort the column and erase all blank lines 

When importing profiles in Actito, there are some constraints. Those are meant to qualify your data and allow you to use it easily and correctly in the future.

 3 info are (usually) compulsory in Actito:

A subscription

An email-address

Motherlanguage

A. Subscription, what is it?

The subscription is similar to the Optin :  it is what defines the authorization you have of contacting one person. The advantage of a subscription in comparison to an Optin (yes/no, Boolean attribute) is dual:

Subscriptions are historicized: you can have a look at all the interactions of the user: when did he subscribe, unsubscribe, re-subscribe... This can be very useful to measure the engagement rates of your content.

You can have multiple subscriptions in one DB: someone can subscribe to subscription Y but not X

e.g. :

- A media company sends daily and weekly newsletters. A profile can be interested in daily newsletters, but not weekly.

- You send two types of emails: promotional ones and transactional ones. Some customers will want to receive both, others only of one kind.

Subscriptions can also be seen as different communication channels, define a different subscription for each channel of communication.

How to implement?

The first thing to do is to define a subscription in your Database, through the app “manage DB structure”, found in “Catalog> Profiles> Manage DB structures”, in the tab “subscriptions”.

You will then have to add a column in your Excel file, called « subscriptions », and fill :

Every profile that has subscribed with the name of the subscription

Every profile that has not subscribed (or di unsubscribe in the past) with a blank cell

NOTE : If you have more than 1 subscription, the procedure is exactly the same : name a second column subscriptions and fill the cells with the name of the subscription (for profiles that have subscribed) or leave blank.

2. Emailadress

In most of your DB, the email-address will be a « key » attribute, this means :

This attribute is unique throughout the DB (you won’t find twice the same email-address)

It will serve you as key to update your profiles in the future

Email-addresses are thus also mandatory in Actito, so you should make sure each profile you want to import has an email-address.

3. Motherlanguage

For obvious reasons, knowing the motherlanguage (or contactlanguage) of your profiles is of high importance. For motherlanguages, you can define a default value if, for example, you know the entirety of your DB will have a specific language.

Import Procedure

To start with, go to the import app (Catalogue=> profiles=> Import profiles)

Select your DB

Upload a file

Load saved configuration

If you often make the same imports, you can save an import configuration and load it at this step.

Upload file

Choose the file you want to import.

You can choose between different formats 

Microsoft Excel

The most common, and easiest way to import.

Csv (comma or semi-colon separated)

Csv is a more compressed format than Excel, the values can be separated with commas or semicolons.

If you choose « csv », you’ll have to choose between different encodings.

UTF-8 is the only format allowing all kind of specific characters (&éù…), but Excel on Apple doesn’t recognize all of them.

Attribute Mapping

The goal of this screen will be to map the columns of your Excel file with your attributes.

When the name of the Excel Column is exactly the same as the name of the attribute, Actito will automatically make the mapping (as for lastName, emailAdress,…) Otherwise, you’ll have to map it manually, as shown hereunder for « Sexe ».

Note: you can ignore some columns of your import file, as for line 8: just leave “ignore this column” as mapping.

Import configuration

Import Behavior

 You have 3 options :

create only : will only add new profiles to the DB

update only : will not create new profiles, but only update existing ones

update/creation : will do both: update and creation (pay attention with this mode

 For the first two steps, you will need a key attribute (see above) in your import file.

In each case, the profiles that couldn’t be imported will be identified, and you will be able to download those after the import.

In function of the type of import you make, you will choose different import parameters. In order to make it clear for everyone, here are some scenarios and how to handle them

Basically, you can have 3 types of scenarios

1. you only add new profiles in your DB

If you only import new profiles, you can choose « create only » mode.

2. You only update existing profiles

If all your contacts are already in your DB, but you want to update part of their data, you will choose the “update only” mode. 

What should you pay attention to? Ask yourself the question, for each attribute: “Is the data more recent/correct in my excel file than in Actito?”. Then only import the attributes for which the answer is “yes”.

Typically, for the subscriptions, the data will be more recent and relevant in Actito than your Excel file, you will thus ignore the column “subscriptions” in update only mode.

3. Mixed mode

 If you have a file with profiles that are already in your DB and others that are not in your DB yet, of if your don’t know exactly if they all are in your DB or not, you could think the best way is to use the creation and update mode.

Except there is a risk: if some profiles unsubscribed themselves in your last email, and you import all your file (with the subscription data) in the update and creation mode, you will re-subscribe them all. You may not do this.

How to avoid that?

You have to act in two steps:

Step 1: update without subscriptions: You will choose the “update only” mode and make an import without selecting the “subscriptions” column. All the contact already in the DB will be updated except for the subscriptions.

Step 2 : add the « subscriptions » column in your import file and make a second import in « creation only ». Here, only new profiles will be added to the DB, with the subscription value as designed in your import file.

Error processing

You can choose here between two modes:

Ignore errors : Lines in errors will be set aside so that you can download them afterwards

Cancel import : if one line is in error, the import will be canceled

Attribute updates for multi-valued attributes

As its name suggests, this applies only for multi-value attributes. Subscriptions are mutli-valued attributes. You can choose between

Overriding existing values: it will delete previous values an replace it with the new ones from your import file

Add the value : it will add values to the existing ones

Simulation of the import

The bullets in the “status” column can be of 3 colors:

Green=> everything alright

Orange=> corrections can be made, but it won’t block the import.

Red=>corrections must be made (otherwise the profile won’t be imported)

To correct errors, click the pencil on the left of the screen

The mapping can be compared to the search and replace in Excel, it is just a little easier. Once attributes are mapped, click “save”.  The red bullet will become grey.

When you edited all the attributes, click on “apply corrections” and the bullet will become green. You can “download the corrected file” to keep a corrected version of your import file. 

When all the bullets are green or orange, you can go to the next step.

Import confirmation

In this sub-step, you can launch the import an/or choose to save the configuration of the import, in case of repeated imports of the same kind.

Import results

This step gives you the results of the import.

For each failed lines, Actito provides an explanation. You can download all the failed lines in a single .csv file to identify the errors and correct them in case of need.

Congratulations, your import is finished.

If you have further questions on this more sensitive action in Actito, do not hesitate to contact us! Better safe than sorry :-)

The actito team

Always available

By mail : [email protected] - twitter @actito_mas – phone [phone]

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Calls-to-Action: What? Why? How?

Dear readers,

Today, we share our experience of Call-to-Actions. Those essential elements of each e-mail campaign in which you want to have even the slightest influence on your readers.

CTA’s come under different forms, and should be used wisely for maximum impact. What are the strengths and weaknesses of these different forms, and how best to use them, is the objective of the article of today.

The first role of a CTA will be to push him to act. In an email, this means a click that will redirect the reader to a specific page of your website in order to find information, buy a product, fill a form, … possibilities are infinite.

Why does it matter?

If the goal of some email campaigns is to inform, in most, you will want to convert the reader: have an influence on him, make him act…(let him find more info on the product, buy, subscribe,…)

 The other advantage of a CTA: It’s a link. And a link in Actito is an information you can track. In the reporting, you will see which CTA’s have been most cliqued, by who, and draw conclusions both on the interests of your readers and the power of your CTA’s.  [AG1] 

Which CTA for which Action?

A CTA can be of different forms: simple text, highlighted text, button, image…each form has its specificities, strengths, and weaknesses. Let’s identify them.

Images

No need to make a long story out of it. THE strength of an image is the emotion it brings: images create a strong bond, evoke emotions, attract the eye… Your image will create a unique bond between your brand and your customer.

Another strength of the image: it structures the email and gives it rhythm. It will both lighten the image and highlight the important content. 

But images also have weaknesses.

First of all, most email clients will not automatically download your images, which means that readers will see your email without its images. How do we handle this?

Two things can be implemented, an alternate (commonly known as “alt” and background color. Both are standard in Actito

Alternate or alternative text : The alternate is a small text that comes “behind” the image. So when there is no image, the reader can see a description of your image, and you can keep the incentive of the image. The alternate is the “view video CRM” hereunder.

Background color : the background color, as its name suggests, is a color that comes behind the images. When the image is not displayed, this color will take the exact same place as the image, and keep the structure of the email as defined.

Other elements against the use of images are their working cost, the fact they are copyright protected or their size, and the time needed to download them (certainly on mobiles)

Then, don’t exaggerate on the use of images. Indeed, the lower your text/image ratio, the higher the risk of being considered as SPAM. Spam tests are standard in Actito, this ratio will always be given to you.

Button

If you compare a button and an image, you should compare it on two different levels: technical and marketing.

Technically, buttons can be created as images, they will thus have the same behavior as images (and won’t be displayed if images are not displayed). But you can also have something that looks like a button, acts like a button, but is “only” a background color, with text on it (the “explore” button). The advantage being: it will always be displayed in all email clients, even when images are not displayed.

On the marketing level, what are the advantages of buttons?

 -The strength of the button lies in its visibility and the action character that lies behind. You can add a clear and straight message, showing the customer the “what’s in it for me”.

-You can personalize it easily

Text (highlighted)

 A portion of text in another colour, everyone understands it, it’s a link? Why use simple text if buttons and images are so powerful?

Text will be used to:

-repeat CTA’s

-propose another action, not directly linked to the main CTA, without cannibalization.

The linkedin example hereunder is clear: one Principal CTA “Send invitation” and two links, allowing for action, without influence on the clearness or strength of the main CTA. 

Which CTA to use for what type of message?

Images serve emotions: it

L’image sert l’émotion, elle allège, aère, rythme…mais doit être utilisée intelligemment, sans excès, en sachant qu’un partie des lecteurs ne les verront pas. Préférez l’image pour un CTA de type émotionnel.

Le bouton est toujours visible, c’est le plus grand incitant à l’action directe et peut donc être utilisé pour des actions directes, avec une proposition de valeur claire.

Enfin, le texte, vous permettra de rappeler certains CTA et de proposer des actions annexes.

Some counsels for CTA’s

Minimise the number of CTA’s: don’t ask the reader to make too much choices in one single email.

Keep-it simple :  A CTA’s text should be short, obvious. The reader should directly understand

What action is linked to this CTA (subscribe, book your ticket,…)

The value proposition (the what’s in it for me)

 Highlight them!  If the CTA is no clear button or an image, you can always add a sign to help the reader understand it’s a link, that he can act! ( ‘>’, ‘=>’, ‘>>’, ‘…’)

Use personalization: buttons and text allow for personalization

Eric, book your free demo

What, why, how:  Your CTA should answer 3 questions, and explain the readers : What they should do, Why they should do it and how they should do it.

« Above the fold » :  you should always have a clear CTA in the “above the fold” part of the email. It’s the superior part the email, that the reader will directly see when he opens the email.

Always have at least a text version of your CTA, in case images are not displayed..

Repeat your CTA’s: in different places, under different forms.

This article is certainly not exhaustive, there is a multitude of tips on how to use CTA’s and test them. Our goal is also to launch the discussion. We are and remain hungry for remarks, comments or questions.

Don’t hesitate to contact us!

By mail : [email protected] - twitter @actito_mas – phone [phone]

Kind regards,

The Actito Team

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The power of templates

In our previous articles, we presented the new way of sending HTML trough Actito.

We will now discuss another way to enhance your email conversations with your contacts, with the templates.

A template, as designed in Actito is more than a template: it is an addition of different “blocs”, in a way or in another way that allows to create the right email for the right communication, both on design and functional levels. You can consider a bloc as an element of a certain type: a bloc with or without image, a bloc for a quote,…

You can easily add, remove or re-order those blocs. The goal is to have a perfect combination of flexibility and consistency.

Flexiblitity because one template gives you plenty of possibilities. You can for example create a welcome email with the template but use the same template to build a very long and complex newsletter.

Consistency because you can also fix some elements to ensure consistency through your sendings (and gain time). You also have the guarantee that the user will keep with your corporate brand book and only use the blocs you have defined and provided him.

The good news is: you decide what is fixed and what isn’t. We will share with you our expertise and guide you to the process of building the most suitable dynamic template.

So what is a template? It is an addition of blocs (header, content, footer,…), each of them divided into several elements (articles, images, promotions,…) and in the end, you find some simple blocs (text, links, pictures,…) easy to fill in.

Each element can be moved, added, deleted or even conditioned to personalize your content and create an ever more One to One communication. 

What are the main advantages of using a template?

No code: Main advantage of our templates: you don’t need to code a single line! Templates are designed for marketeers, no technical skills needed…geek or caveman, you’re all equal in front of our template and will be able to go from creation to sending in a fast, easy and intuitive way.

Consistency: The use of a template will guarantee some consistency through your sendings, with the application of the structure we would have defined together.

Multilingual: With our templates, you can easily build one campaign in different languages, allowing you to have only one campaign to handle and launch and to keep all the reporting centralized in one report.

Cost: Of course a template takes more time to create than an html, but think on the long run: no more goings and comings with the agency, no creation, no integration, only action. Our experience tells us that the creation of a template is always profitable for all structural communications.

Keep it inside your company: With templates, no need to work with third parties: you can do everything on your own. As you have the knowhow, this is the right thing to do.

Compatibility and rendering: All our templates respect W3C standards and we test them to offer the best rendering on the majority of the email clients.

Unlimited possibilities: Each element in a template can be conditioned to be seen only if the reader matches some specific criterias. We can also define the template to allow for more complex testings on the content…

Enough talk, let’s show you how it works.

First of all, the editor zone in Actito is divided in 3 parts:

1) Overview zone, is where you see to rendering of your e-mail but also where you can access the content elements.

2) Tree structure display: opens a window on the left of the screen with the content of the email in a tree structure. This is generally used by technical users, to have a clear vision of the structure of the email

3)  Input area display: opens a window on the right of the screen where all the blocs are represented and you can edit the content of your email. 

Our counsel is to work with the edition zone only. This way, you can:

Click in the preview zone

Automatically land on the right article in the content zone

Edit your content

Save

See the results in the preview zone.

How to edit the layout of your templates?

Add elements

Simply by clicking the “+” button.

When designing your template, you can choose how many times a bloc is to be used in each email.

With a simple click on the red cross.

The mechanic is simple: if there is a red cross, you are allowed to delete this bloc…if there isn’t a red cross, this bloc has been defined as mandatory.

Change the order of your elements

With a simple "drag and drop"

Templates are thus not as rigid as one could think. They are just a way for simple marketeers to create awesome email campaigns, on their own like grown-ups.

 This is the end of today’s long article.

Don’t hesitate to contact us for specific requests

The Actito team

Always available

By mail : [email protected] - twitter @actito_mas – phone [phone]

[actitobycitobi-en-blog]

Enhance your brand awareness with Actito - temporary promotions

Looking for Brand Awareness, traffic generation, … Have a look at our solutions…

Actito offers advertisings solutions through direct emails or advertising display.

We developed two different solutions to help you convey a message…not a mass mailing: contact only to the audience you wish to target.

Direct e-mails:

Our solution is called One to One Display it allows you to send an email to a highly targeted population.

Thanks to our large database and partners, we are able to provide a very qualified Database, allowing you to send an email to the exact part of the population you want to reach.

The advantages:

A profound targeting, based on one or several relevant criterias: age, sex, postal code,…

You only pay the opened emails, so you only pay if the message effectively reached the person

Each campaign is optimized through powerful algorithms

We provide a reporting after the action

Display:

Insert Banners in the newsletters of our media partners. You will be present in some of Belgians most famous media companies: Elle, RTBF, RTL, Sud Presse,…. 

Advantages:

Get exposed to the right audience

You only pay when your message is displayed

You can reach million of users and expose your brand

Example of a man/woman segmentation: split your campaign to reach men and women in a different manner

You can also use animated gifts to increase click rates

Each campaign can refer to an Actito form, allowing you to ask the right questions, make your DB grow or enhance it’s quality.

Contact us before may the 1st at 12PM to enjoy great conditions

How?

By mail ([email protected]) or phone [phone])

Enjoy the day

The Actito Team

Always available

By mail : [email protected] - twitter @actito_mas – phone [phone]

[actitobycitobi-en-blog]

Condition the content of your emails for a 1 to 1 communication

Dear readers,

Today’s article is about a more advanced functionality of Actito, that allows for almost unlimited possibilities. Thanks to the content management in Actito, you have the possibility to add display conditions on your content, and communicate in an always more one to one way.

In concrete terms, with Actito, you have the possibility to condition     the display of certain content, in function of some criterions linked to your contacts.

If, for example, your product range is built with more women oriented and more men oriented products, you could build one single email, but display only the man products to the men and the woman products to the women.

In the same way, some of our media clients set conditions on articles to display them in function of the client’s interests (sportive content for one, more economics or politics for another…)

Here is the case we will use for our demo: Reservations for an event were made with Actito. Some of the participants are VIP. Part of the information of the email will thus be the same for all participants, another part will be different (VIP have access to a parking, a free bar,…)

How do I do this in one single campaign? With different blocs/articles:

The first one with the info shared to all (will always be displayed)

A second one with the info for the VIP only

A third one with the info for the non-VIP

I will then put a condition on the two last articles to display Article 2 only to VIP’s and article 3 only to non-VIP’s.

How to set-up a condition ?

The first step will be to have your article created (image, texte, links…. 

In the present case, the article was created, we will thus create the last one and set conditions on the two articles.

Step 1: creation of the article

 To create a new article, click, in the content edition zone, the “+” button.

Fill your article with content

Step2: set-up a condition 

To add a condition, add a bloc called “condition” in the content editor (zone on the right), the same way you add a link or article.

A condition bloc will directly appear, with some research criteria (for the moment, none).

If you click on the condition (or in the white frame), a pop-up window will appear, in which you can define the criterions on the basis of which you’ll condition the display of your blocs.

In the example here above, the article will be displayed only if the reader is “VIP” in the segment “customer type”.

Step 3 : Add a condition on the first article 

As for the previous article, you will add a “condition” blok in your content editor and will define as research criterion “Segment Customer Type = non-VIP”.

Verify the coherence of your conditions

Before sending, you will want to verify your conditions are consistent. In this case, a well designed testing group, representing the full scope of the conditions.

In our case, the test group is composed with 3 profiles: Thomas, Jonathan and Arnaud. One is VIP in the segment, another is non-VIP in the segment, and the last one is not in the segment. The three possible conditions are included.

For an easier management, you can, when updating your test groups, add a comment for each test profile (see red frame here above). The “target” column of this table indicates if the test profile is in the targeting your defined in the previous steps.

To modify your test groups, click the green pencil, or go to “Catalogue > Profiles > Testing groups”. We will soon write an article about how to create and handle testing groups.

How to test?

There are two ways to test:

1. Directly when creating your email, modifying your test profiles. The display conditions will be applied in the preview zone (one the left) in function of the test profile you chose. You can see the difference when we select Jonathan or Thomas.

As explained, in the preview zone, you will see the email as the test profile would see it. On the opposite, in the content edition zone, you will always have the full list of the articles, allowing you to modify them all (and not only the ones displayed in the preview zone) 

2. A second test is always a good idea. You can send yourself test emails with the different test profiles to verify the good, global rendering of your email.

Hint: you can send all the emails to one single emailadress, through the box in the red frame here under.

 In conclusion, some advntages of using advanced content management tasks instead of creating 2 or more campaigns.

You save time

Less risks of error when targeting profiles

Centralized results of one campaign (clicks, opens, bounces, ...)

Relevance of One to One content.

That's it for today's article

Next week, we will discuss the email templates

Would you want us to discuss some other subjects...just ask !

By mail: [email protected] - twitter @actito_mas – phone [phone]

The Actito Team

[actitobycitobi-en-blog]

Better know your audience with A/B Testing

Find hereunder a more inspirational article on testing and A/B testing in particular. (3 min reading)

A specificity of email marketing is the quantity and variety of data it can collect. Leaving you the opportunity to test a huge amount of factors through your sendings, learn to better know your audience, and provide them with what they want.

What is A/B Testing ?

A/B testing is a specific kind of test on your email. The goal is to easily and quickly test what works better on your audience. You differentiate your email with a criterion (e.g. by proposing a second subject), test which version works best and draw conclusions from it for further sendings.

Technically, when launching, Actito will send each version of your email to a subset of your DB and calculate which email works best. This email will then be sent to the rest of your DB (the ones that haven’t been contacted yet). 

In comparison with a testing on various campaigns, A/B testing limits the time bias, comparing two versions of one campaign at the same time.

How to configure it in Actito?

A/B Testing is defined when creating your campaign, while defining the “general Data”.

Two criterions must be defined: a differentiation criterion and a criterion to select the winning email. 

Differentiation

It is the criterion that will differentiate the A from the B version.

You define it in the general data: in the message headers, just click on the “A/B” icon.

The two fields that you can test are sender and subject: those are the two data which the reader will see first, even before opening the email, and are decisive in the opening behavior of the reader as well as the state of mind in which he does open the email.

Selection criterion of the wining email

Those are the different criterions, which will determine the winning version of the email. Actito needs four data .

1. Size of the test sample

 Your sample should be large enough to be statistically valid. Bear in mind that the number of profiles given represents the whole sample; each version of the email will be sent to half of this population.

 2. Decisive action: opening or click rate?

 Why would you choose one over the other? In function of the objective of your campaign: for informative campaigns, you will want to use the opening rate, if your objective is to maximize conversion, you will prefer click rates.

 3. Length of the test

The more your test is spread over time, the more significant it’ll be  (Actito will receive more data). On the other hand, keep in mind that if you send the email 72h after the test version, the receivers won’t be in the exact same conditions, with probable impacts.

 4. If, in case of significant results, the sending can be done before the end of the testing period.

This will be useful when testing over a large period of time. If a substantial gap arises between the two versions, and provided that there are enough interactions, to determine in advance the winning email.

Where do I find the results of my A/B Testing?

When looking for the results of the campaign, if you did an A/B test on it, you will find in the first step “summary”, a specific tab for A/B test results.

 In this table, you have:

A summary of each “campaign” (A version, B version and definitive version), so you can compare:

The differences between A and B version

If there is a significant difference between the test version and the winning version. In this case, there may be a need to review your sample size, or the sending time. 

The do’s and don’ts of A/B Testing

 Do’s

Plan your tests in advance, as a plan for example and formulate them as a question. This is a good way to stay consistent through your tests and draw some useful conclusions. Some examples of questions:

What kind of subject speaks better to my audience? (informative, interrogative, affirmative, imperative?)

Test two completely different subjects

Does personalization in my subject increases my opening rates?

Which subject will give a better opening rate: “free delivery” vs. “10% off your order”.

What day of the week will provide the greatest opening rate? 

Test a lot: everything can be tested, the more you do, the more questions you will ask yourself and the more info you will get on your audience.

Try other test types: A/B testing is not the only test you can do: here are some examples:

What is the best day to launch your emails? Send your email to 1/3 of your DB on Monday, to 1/3 on Wednesday and the last 1/3 on Friday.

Test the best timeframe, in the same way.

Dont’s

Test more than one variable at a time. At first, it is easier to focus on one question, answer it and draw conclusions.

Be influenced by your gut feelings. It’s the principle of testing to provide you with quantitative data that might go against your primary idea. 

Believe what you read on Internet: There are lots of cases with incredible results; fabulous click rates increases coming from small changes. This can happen, but seldom, and wasn’t tested on your, unique, audience.

Think you’ll win big with small changes: That could happen, but isn’t common. On the other hand, a lot of small changes will bring you a lot of small gains.

A testing plan?

A good testing plan should have the following elements:

Some long-term vision: the different questions you ask must follow a logical path.

Precise research questions

A validation process: one sending is not enough to draw conclusions, consider testing at least on 3 sendings for significant results.

That's it for this article on A/B Testing

Don’t hesitate to comment or ask questions, we love feedback !

By mail : [email protected] - twitter @actito_mas – phone [phone]

Kind regards,

The Actito Team

[actitobycitobi-en-blog]

Tips & Tricks - Subscriptions

Subscriptions are important in Actito, it serves several objectives: auditor of your success (part of it), responsible for a good deliverability,…handling this data well is essential, as well as exploiting it wisely !

That’s why we share today some subscriptions tips & tricks. 

Today’s question is:

How to deeper search on subscription statuses and fully exploit this data? 

A frequently asked question is how many profiles did subscribe in the last week/month/year…there are several ways to get this information.

To start with, hit catalogue > profiles > Manage profiles, select your DB and the tab “advanced search”

Regarding subscriptions, there are two types of search criterions: a specific, subscription related one (called Subscription “subscription-name”) and a general one (called “Subscriptions”), enabling you to go further in your subscription-related searches.

Our goal here is to identify profiles that have subscribed in the past, but aren’t anymore. Therefore, we will confront two criterions:

“Subscribed to” the subscriptions “AcceptsMarketing” “in the past”

“Subscription “AcceptsMarketing” “is false (the profile did unsubscribe)

You can of course change the criterion “in the past” with a different timeframe, such as “8 weeks ago”.

What to do next with the data?

Export the raw data, to work them further into Excel, or import them into another tool

In the “other operations” bar, at the bottom of the page, click “export”. You will then arrive on the export profiles task, while keeping your search criteria.

Create a chart.

Again from the “other actions” bar, choose View chart

You can then choose the chart type.

In the bar charts category, the last one is designed to represent subscriptions/unsubscriptions.

Select the timeframe and periodicity

Your chart is created, you can:

Copy/paste it for further use (right click, copy)

Export its data 

Create a shortcut to come back later and see the evolution of this chart. This can be done via the “other actions” bar at the bottom of the page. 

NOTE:

While we are speaking of charts, remember there is another way to see the evolution of your subscriptions over time, thanks to the DB report task, presented last week.

 Through this task, have a look at the net evolution of the different subscriptions. You can easily add or retrieve a subscription from the chart and concentrate on the most pertinent info.

That's it for today's Article, 

Don't hesitate to give us your questions !

By mail : [email protected] - twitter @actito_mas – phone [phone]

Kind regards,

The Actito Team

[actitobycitobi-en-blog]

The new database report inspired and created by and for you.

Dear users/readers,

As you maybe noticed, there is a new task in the profiles of your Actito’s catalogue. If you don't have it, give us a call or send us an email to [email protected] and we will activate it on your license as soon as possible.

This new task, called “DB Report”, will give you, in just one sight, a global vision of your DB, the evolution of its size, its qualification…The segments and subscriptions you defined in your DB, will allow you to switch from a global vision to a precise view of this data.

How is it represented? With new charts : nicer, clearer, dynamic !

How?

Start with clicking profiles in your catalogue and then DB Report.

Choose your DB

You will automatically land on the DB size evolution chart.

For more precise information, place your cursor on the chartline.

The column on the left offers you a set of possibilities:

     • Create a shortcut in your “favorites” tab

     • Add research criterions: select only one subscription or one segment of your DB, the charts will update automatically.

     • Choose between the different charts: age pyramids, language or age repartition,…

If you go further down in this column, you can directly analyze the evolution of your segmentation and subscriptions.

Notes: The charts are generated automatically, click the different subscriptions to take them into account (or not) and the chart will automatically adapt. However, changes in your database (imports, modifications,…) are taken into account each night when the computations are made to create the charts. The last update moment of your chart is written in the down-left corner of each chart.

Last but not least, export your charts with the button in the top-right corner. The exports formats are multiple, from .svg to .pdf, and re-use them directly in future analysis or presentations.

To make it short, this new task allows you, within a eye blink,

     • A global overview of your DB…

     • A detailed overview of the different structural separators your DB…

     • …and their evolution

This is only the beginning... we built it for you so please share your feedbacks with us so that we can upgrade the task based on your concrete needs. Feel free to give us your feedback.

 - Share it now with with a quick e-mail [email protected]

- In the next few weeks with a survey.

Thank you so much for reading our articles and for your support

The Actito Team

[actitobycitobi-en-blog]

Quality leads for Toyota-Belgium

As promised, we enter today a new register with a case about a project of our consultancy team for Toyota.

The goal ? generate a maximum of quality leads and bring them into the network, and propose a test drive or a personalised booklet

This article will be divide in 4 parts :

The client

The challenge

The solution

The results 

The client

The Belgian automotive market is facing many challenges:

Household income is still on the decline

Fuel prices are volatile (fluctuation of the price fuel/benzine)

Legal benefits linked to clean engines were recently reduced

In this context, brands want to differentiate from their competitors.

Toyota has a wider and deeper offer than any other competitor and wants the consumers to realize it. Indeed, where most brands offer hybrid engines in only one or two segments, Toyota offers a wide alternative in terms of engine throughout its range.

The challenge

Toyota wants to guide the consumer and go hand in hand with him to choose the vehicle and engine that best sticks to his needs and desires.

Thanks to Toyota Belgium, choosing the engine that best sticks to your driving behavior doesn’t mean giving up on choosing the vehicle that best matches your tastes and lifestyle.

In other words, “No need for compromises with Toyota!”

The solution 

Our strategy was 3-fold:

Bring a maximum of quality leads to a dedicated platform www.mytoyotaprofile.be

Qualify the user needs and propose them the car model that matches those needs.

Capture the leads data and invite to book a test drive or order a specific leaflet.

Let us review those 3 steps:

1)    Direct the user to our lead-generation platform.

Taking contact with the users was done in four ways:

Our tool, Optinio One to One Display, allowing to place adverts (leaderboards) in daily newsletters of some Belgian media groups (RTBF, RTL, Rossel, Corelio,…)

Monitored and optimized use of paid e-mail lists (permission marketing).  In order to limit the budget and to maximize response rates, the reactivity of each database was previously tested.

The internal database of Toyota was of course also used

A very small part of the Media budget was allocated to banners on a car research website.

Each campaign was then « A/B tested »: two different campaigns are created (A and B) and sent to a sample of the target population. After a certain amount of time, or when opening rates exceed a certain amount, our tool chooses the most productive campaign, and sends it to the rest of the target population.

2)    Qualify the needs and give an answer

Our campaigns led to a single platform: www.mytoyotaprofile.be

Here, 4 questions regarding preferences and driving style (# of miles traveled, the % of time spent in dense traffic, fuel engine preferences...). Behind those questions, a powerful algorithm allowing us, through Actito’s technology, to suggest a model and engine that matches his profile.

3) The client could then book a test drive and/or order a specific leaflet.

In short, we headed quality leads to the network, to perform a test drive of their best-fitting model.

The results

In a total of 40.000 single visitors of the website:

Almost 65% of the visitor fully completed the form (25.000 )

A bit more than 7% of the test participants booked a test drive, and 8% ordered a leaflet

  Want to be the first to receive our next case?  Subscribe here

And remember that we love feedback !

By mail : [email protected] - twitter @actito_mas – phone [phone]

Kind regards,

The Actito Team

[actitobycitobi-en-blog]

Easy HTML Campaigns - Testing and sending

Last but not least, testing and sending. What makes part of the testing, how to organize it, how to verify your sendings,… find here below some answers to these questions.

Testing

Tracked links

First of all, you should give a name to all your links. The easiest way is to click on “generate names”, and Actito will automatically generate names (url1, url2,…). You can also name the links with smart names. It will then help you recognize your links for the reporting. 

Note: if you give the same name to 2 different links, the number of clicks in the reporting will be summed (Actito will consider it, on the reporting level, as one single link)

The first verification step is the link checking. In this step, just click “check links” and Actito will automatically check if the link refers to an existing web page. The ball will be grey, green or red:

Grey for the parameters

green if the page exists

red otherwise. In the example her below, one ball is red, and indeed www.actito.et won’t work as well as www.actito.net .

  Testing Groups

The first step of the testing is the selection of your testing group.

Testing groups are available in the profile folder under the task testing groups. You should have a profile for all the different versions of the email you will send. It is very important to spend the necessary time on this as it’s the only way to know that your job is done well.

Testing groups are also used to run tests for approval at the client’s side.

Your testing group should be:

Safe: put only co-workers, your own emailadress,…pay attention that this is e-mail wil be sent to those specific contacts

Representative: it should aim at representing the full scope of the personalization you usually put in your email (man/woman, different languages,…)

Smart: fill your testing group with people whose advise you want to take in consideration.

Note: you can update your testing group with the green pencil. If you want to create a new testing group, the path is: Catalog > Profiles > Testing groups.

Now that your testing group is selected, let’s have a look at the different information in the table here above… 

Test profiles: identify your profiles, and click their name to see their full profile

In target: is your profile in your targeting?

Language: emails will only be sent to profiles whose mother language is one of the languages of the email (if you checked the box in the targeting part)

Email address:  email of the test profile

Comment: when you create your testing group, you can add a comment explaining why this person is in this group (age, interests,…)

Test: gives you the real time status of the test email: not tested, executed, sent but not opened, opened, clicked

A/B: choose to send version A, B or A&B

Spam:  click here for a technical analysis of the spam level of your email. It will return 3 informations:

A color: green is ok, orange is risky, red…you shouldn’t send

A score: a bit more precise than the color, 0 is perfect, 5 has every chance of being seen as SPAM

If you want more info, click on the score a new window will appear, listing the different points that can be improved

Actions: click on the eye to have a preview of the email for this specific test profile.

To help you on the testing rounds of your campaign here is a short, generic checklist. Our counsel: use it, personalize it and improve it as you are testing. Use it and increase it as you are doing testing.

Subject and sender

Preheader: those are the first lines of your email, which will be seen in the preview with your subject and sender. They are thus almost as important as sender and subject

General design of the content: everything at his place? With and without images? And on my mobile?

All links send to the right page?

Alternate on every image?

Unsubscribe scenario (NOTE: if you unsubscribe on a test mail, the profile of this test mail will indeed be unsubscribed)

Webversion

… 

Sending

Last but not least, the sending screen.

You can only access the sending module if there is no more missing content in the e-mail. 

You will then arrive to this screen, where you can verify the target population, set up your A/B testing and schedule the sending

Verify the target population

Have a look at the summary of your target population. Pay attention to each detail, you don’t want to send this message to the wrong profiles.

Configure A/B Testing

If you make A/B Testing, choose the share of the population used for the testing. 

Determine the type of action that will determine which is the « winning version » (the one sent to the rest of the population) : % click or % openings

Choose the factor that will determine the launch of the remaining e-mails:

An amount of time, after which the « winning e-mail » is sent

A certain gap in the type of action between both versions

For more information about how to configure your A/B testing, subscribe to our newsletter and keep reading our articles, it will come soon !

 There are three ways for sending your e-mail: send the e-mail directly, schedule the sending for later or activate an automatic sending and activate an automatic sending and make it available for automation.

Scheduling your email will allow you to send it at a specific timeframe. The question of when to send your email comes often…would you like more info about this topic? Drop us a line

Once you have clicked one of these options, a confirmation screen will appear. If you confirm, the e-mail will be sent.

Congratulations, your email is sent or scheduled, and this long Article comes to his end.

If you didn't already receive it in your email, you will find, this monday, our first case. You don't want to miss the next one? Subscribe here

As usual, feedback is welcome !

By mail : [email protected] - twitter @actito_mas – phone [phone]

Kind regards,

The Actito Team

[actitobycitobi-en-blog]

Easy HTML Campaigns - Part 2

Last week we discussed the first steps of HTML Campaigns, today we will discuss the two next steps of HTML Campaigns: Targetting and specificities about html and Actito.

Reading time: 5 min

 Targetting

The targeting is a subset of contacts from your database to who you want to address a specific message.

Determining who will and who won’t receive your e-mail is of crucial importance: you don’t want to send your e-mail to the wrong person and make sure the ones who should receive your e-mail, receive indeed your e-mail.

To start with, subscription and languages. For legal aspects and deliverability, we highly recommend you to fill those info in.

  Define the subscription of the target population

Check the box “Send e-mails only to profiles whose language is: English, French” to avoid sending you e-mail to profiles for which the mother language attribute is not English or French or is undefined. (it is filled in by default)

NOTE: The subscription, as defined in Actito is similar to the Optin: it is what defines the authorization you have to contact someone. The advantage of a subscription defined in Actito in comparison to an Optin (yes/no) is dual:

Subscriptions are historicized: you can have a look at all the interactions of the user: when did he subscribe, unsubscribe, re-subscribe…

You can have multiple subscriptions in one DB:  someone can subscribe to subscription Y but not X

e.g.: a media company sends weekly and daily news. One could subscribe to the weekly news but not to the daily one.

A full article about subscriptions, how to handle them and their impact, will come soon !

Target population filter:

The goal here will be to target the population that you want to reach, you have several options for your targeting: in function of the type of data you want to use in your targeting, Actito offers different types of searches…for example:

You want to target your population in function of an attribute from your DB èchoose  “simple profile search”

Your search is based on the answer, or the participation to a survey è choose “Profiles having participated in a survey”

You want to contact only people that have (or have not) been contacted by a mail sending, and have had a specific type of interaction (clicked, opened, clicked a specific link,…) è choose “Profiles contacted via e-mail sendings”

…

You can go very far in the targetting by adding several criteria. Just click on the small ‘+’ button and another criterion will be added.

You can click the green “Refresh” logo below to see the number of profiles matching your search criteria.

Hint: in order to avoid sending the message before all steps are finished, we recommend using a sort of Watchdog.  What we usually do, is to add the criteria “profile ID” “is unknown”.

As this sequence is not possible (every profile in Actito has a known profile ID), the “number of targeted profiles” will be equal to 0, and if you send your e-mail by mistake, it will be sent to no one.

Profile ID?  The profile ID is a sequential number given by Actito to each and every new profile created in a licence. An unknown profile ID is thus impossible.

Content Edition

Lets now discuss the proper insert of your HTML code into Actito…

Creation

For the set up of your HTML, you can choose between two options:

Import a zip file. The zip will have images and html. The images will then be hosted in Actito

Edit/paste the code into Actito’s HTML editor. You will have to handle the hosting of your images.

The main difference between those two methods is the location of the images.

What does it change? When the images are hosted outside our servers, we cannot guarantee that they will remain available over a long period of time, and that the server won’t have problems if the amount of connections is high.

Import

When importing a .zip file in Actito, there are some basic requirements to avoid malfuncitons. For example:

The size of your file cannot exceed 1,4 MB

When zipping your file, your HTML file cannot be in a subfolder, which leaves you two cases:

The root of your HTML is directly in the zip and your images are in a subfolder

All files are directly in your zip folder

Edit/paste

The second option to set up your html in Actito is to enter your code directly in Actito. Indeed, Actito has an inbuilt HTML editor, which will highlight the different tags and identify errors. A red frame will then appear above the editor, identifying the error. 

Actito’s HTML rules are based on W3C recommendations in order to maximize user experience and minimize risks of malfunction. 

Obligations in Actito

When you send a commercial e-mail, you are legally obliged to give the opportunity to unsubscribe from your newsletter.

The unsubscribe scenario is automatically handled by Actito, but still, Actito will need two types of information to process the scenario:

A link to trigger the unsubscribe scenario

A parameter to bind the link with the scenario Actito activates

Therefore, the minimal coding you will have to insert is:

<a href="$unsubscribe" title="'unsubscribe" target=”_blank” > unsubscribe</a>

Our definition of “minimal” code is that with this simple code, the unsubscribe scenario will be functional, although regarding the design, there will only be the blue text displayed in the HTML.

  If you want to change its color and center your message, here is an example:

On a marketing level, the relevant part is “$unsubscribe”. In our HTML, a word starting with ‘$’ is a parameter that will permit you to personalize or customize your e-mail.

Personalization                                           

To access the customization Board, click on the “Customizations” button.

You will have a list of all the parameters present in your e-mail, allowing you to link each parameter to

an attribute from your database for content personalization

a fixed value

a gender test

a web form

an url to share your e-mail

an unsubscribe scenario

a web version

…

You can go very far into personalization with Actito, we will write a specific article on this topic in the weeks to come !

  Once your unsubscribe parameter is defined and linked, you can focus on the webversion.

  The rendering of an e-mail will depend on where this e-mail is seen, on a mobile or desktop, but also in which e-mail provider: gmail, outlook, hotmail, lotusnote…

Our expertise enables us to guarantee a good rendering for almost every provider, but still, we don’t create all the htmls sent through Actito and new providers arrive everyday on the market (or upgrade their current versions).

The goal of having a link to a webversion of your e-mail is double. First, if someone has a problem seeing your e-mail, he will still be able to see it as it was meant to be seen, in his web browser. Then, if your e-mail wasn’t intended for mobile, the webversion will allow a good rendering also on mobile.

  To insert a webversion, the procedure is exactly the same as for the “unsubscribe”, you should just use as name for the parameter: $webversion instead of $unsubscribe.

  Unsubscribe is compulsory for all B2C communication, unsubscribe and webversion are highly recommended for all e-mails: it helps for the delivery, and makes it more comfortable for the reader.

  Once those parameters are defined, you can go to the next step: testing.

  This is another story, which we will leave for our next post, coming very soon !

As always, feel free to contact us for feedback or new ideas!

By mail : [email protected] - twitter @actito_mas – phone [phone]

Subscribe here, don’t miss any information about Actito and get in exclusivity our first cases about one of our automotive clients.

Kind regards,

The Actito Team

[actitobycitobi-en-blog]

Easy HTML Campaigns through our new workflow

In this first article about campaigns, we will review the first steps of a campaign creation: how to create an e-mail, what are the crucial data, how to create the best type of subject and sender, and so on.

It should take you no more than 3-5 minutes to read this article.

First of all, you have to create an e-mail. Therefore, we can link you back to our last post about the task Manage e-mail campaigns (which you can find in Catalogue > E-mail campaigns > Manage e-mail campaigns). Once there, choose New campaign.

In the next screen, choose « Send an e-mail from an HTML».

You will then enter the e-mail creation module where you will find – as in all multi-step modules in Actito - a progression bar that will guide you through the different steps of the task, helping you to ask yourself the right questions in order to avoid mistakes.

A small tip about this task:

As you can see, the top-left corner of the steps’ icons can be of 3 different kinds: plain, folded or cut…what does it mean?

Plain: you are currently defining this step

Folded: the step is already defined, but you can return to this step whenever you like just by clicking on it

Cut: you still need to define some points in the previous steps to have access to this one. (e.g.: define general data before specifying your target group).

After completing all steps, you can be sure to avoid sending a campaign with undefined parameters.

To reach the next step, just click the “next” button on the bottom-right corner of your page.

General Data

In the screen General data, you are invited to define the general data of the e-mail, which are:

Campaign Name: the name of your campaign within Actito. It doesn’t have any impact on your campaign

Tip: try to find a clear terminology and stick to it! Retrieving your campaigns will become a lot easier (e.g.: YYMMDD-CampaignType-MainSubject)

Language: choose the language of your campaign

Target Database: your e-mail can only be sent to profiles out of one database. This database can be chosen in the dropdown

Sender: The name that will appear in the “from’” block in your clients’ mailbox

Subject: The subject of your e-mail

Sender and Subject are two very important data, as they are the first data your client will see of the e-mail. We will discuss the different types of action to upgrade these elements here:

On the right: A/B Testing

On the left: Personalization

A/B Testing

With A/B testing, you can create two versions of an e-mail, which differ by subject or sender. When launching the campaign, Actito will send one version of the e-mail to two subgroups of a sample of your database, chosen by you.

After a certain amount of time, or when a certain gap exists in the number of clicks/openings, Actito will automatically send the “winning” e-mail to the rest of the population.

Personalization

You can personalize your subject or sender with an element (attribute) from the DB to make it more personal.

e.g.: insert the first name, perform a gender test (Mr/Ms), …

  Customization offers different options:

Quick Customizations: basic, prefilled customizations

Gender Test: define a specific text that will change in function of the sex of the person (for example, “Mr.” for a man, “Ms” for a woman)

Advanced customization: allows you to go much further in your customization: you can personalize on the basis of an attribute from a Database, but also on the basis of an answer to a question in a form, a technical value… (see image below)

Add an existing customization: re-use a customization previously introduced by you

Advanced Options

On the bottom left of the « General data » screen, you can click through to « See advanced options ».

Those options are prefilled for normal use, but you might want to change them from time to time or in specific cases.

The different options you can change are:

Campaign groups: link campaigns of the same kind to get automated group results(e.g.: one group for all the business newsletters and another for all the non-business ones).

Note: To define those sending groups, go to Catalog > E-mail Campaigns > View sending group results

Character encoding: we advise you to keep it in International UTF-8, it’s the only format allowing all types of characters (ùé&,…)

E-mail reply: define a specific reply-to address for this e-mail, and a default subject for this e-mail

Sender e-mail address: choose between your sending domains (if you have more than one) and subject prefix (if you want a predefined subject in your reply e-mail)

We are already at the end of this first post on HTML campaigns. Next time, we will discuss targeting and HTML specifics.

Would you like any other subject, just ask !

By mail : [email protected] - twitter @actito_mas – phone [phone]

Subscribe here, don’t miss any information about Actito and get in exclusivity our first inspirational case about one of our automotive clients.

Kind regards,

The Actito Team

[actitobycitobi-en-blog]

The task Manage Email Campaigns has been revisited, check out !

Some of you may have already noticed, for the others, it couldn’t last long, a new “manage email campaigns” has appeared in your interface.

Its goal? Be the central point for all the task linked to campaigns: creation, sending, reports,…all this in an interface which is more ergonomic and more intuitive.

You can find this task in Catalogue > E-mail Campaigns > Manage e-mail campaigns

Let’s have a look at the different blocks and their functionalities.

In the left column, 4 different blocks, dividing your e-mail campaigns based on their status: Draft, Scheduled, In Progress and Sent.

On the right side, a “free search” text block will help you find your campaigns with ease.

Last but not least, you will find in the middle of this task the block containing your e-mail campaigns. As always in Actito, you can perform two actions:

-        Either you click on the e-mail campaign and it will automatically switch to the next best action (in this case, “Edit campaign”)

-        Or you check the box on the left side of each campaign in order to select another available option.

The number and type of options available will depend on the status of the campaign.

You always have the possibility to directly create a new campaign by clicking on the “New campaign” button.

Draft

When your campaigns are still being drafted, you can edit or delete a campaign, but also entirely copy a campaign still in the making.

 “Copy the campaign” is one of the several new functionalities that have emerged. This function will enable you to re-use or rework older campaigns in order to create new campaigns. You will copy, not only the content of your e-mail, but also the general data and the target group.

Scheduled

You can perform a range of action on your scheduled campaigns:

In Preview, you can have a look at the visual rendering of your campaign.

View Definition: you go over all of the steps to build your campaign, from the target population to advanced parameters, from inserting content to sending test mails.

Edit campaign groups: campaign groups allow you to gather campaigns of the same kind in one group in order to compare the sending statistics.

You can also Modify the planning i.e. change the sending moment of the campaign.

When you Pause a campaign, you stop the campaign from being sent at the pre-established moment.

When Restarting a campaign, you cancel the pause status of the campaign.

If you Cancel a campaign, it will return to a draft status.

By Editing the sending rate, you send your campaign a little faster or slower than planned.

Copy campaign: exactly the same function as for drafts.

  In Progress

Two more options for the campaigns in progress :

Finish. As you can guess, this task enables you to end a continuous campaign. The campaign can be retrieved in the Sent folder afterwards.

See results:  see all the statistics of your campaigns such as click rates, openings, bounce rates,…

Sent

The Sent status does not contain any extra tasks. What you do see in this task, as in In Progress, is a brief overview of your sending statistics.

To add columns to this table, just click the filter button, choose your columns and then click “apply”.

We have reached the end of this brief overview of our new Manage Email Campaign task.

What did you think of it? What would you want to discuss in the coming weeks?

> Tell us what you want!

By mail : [email protected] - twitter @actito_mas – phone [phone]

Subscribe here and don't miss any information about Actito

Next time, we will discuss html in Actito, its specificities and how to handle it...

Kind regards,

The Actito Team

[actitobycitobi-en-blog]

Actito is a marketing automation solution that allows Marketeers to communicate easily with their databases. The core of our solution lays in the contacts management, which empowers all your digital or paper communication. Feel free to book a live demo on our website www.actito.com