VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

Your Email Campaign Launch Checklist

The following was recently posted and is a MUST for all of us that are launching email campaigns whether its thru our stand-alone app, the AppExchange version or any other version for that matter. 

There are right ways and wrongs ways to get the best results from your email marketing campaigns, but if you're not doing the below, you're not even giving yourself a chance for doing things the right way.  As always, if you have questions about the below please post them, but if you want to chat with one of our customer support specialists, we'll be waiting to help you out.

Good marketing!
-Alex

Your Email Campaign Launch Checklist

To avoid nasty email campaign mistakes we created an easy to use checklist internally here at VR that we're happy to share. Never make a mistake again (or at least come close to never, no one is perfect.)

Print this out and pin it up!

Newsletter Dates - If you copy a campaign and include a date in your content make sure the date has changed.

From Label - Make sure that the From label is correct for the email you're sending.

Postal Address - Ensure the correct postal address for the sender is at the bottom.

Preview for Images Turned Off - View what the email looks like with images on AND off (you can do that in VR) - I will send myself a test with my images turned off to see it as well.

Image Text - Make sure all images have alternative text so that when images are turn off your recipients have some context of what should be shown.

Links - Test that all links go where you want them to - click on each and every one.

Images Linked - Make sure all images are linked that need to be.

Subject Line Review -

• If you copy a previously sent campaign make sure you change your subject line.
• Make sure the subject line relates to the content of the email.
• Make sure your most important information is at the beginning so it won't get cut off in the email reader.

Preview in Email Readers - View in email clients Yahoo!, Gmail, Outlook, MacMail and AOL.

Forward to a Friend - Make sure this feature is turned on, it can't hurt to get a few more subscribers.

If you've got any you'd like to add, let's put them on the list!

Download this in PDF.

To avoid nasty email campaign mistakes we created an easy to use checklist internally here at VR that we're happy to share. Never make a mistake again (or at least come close to never, no one is perfect.)

Print this out and pin it up!

Newsletter Dates - If you copy a campaign and include a date in your content make sure the date has changed.

From Label - Make sure that the From label is correct for the email you're sending.

Postal Address - Ensure the correct postal address for the sender is at the bottom.

Preview for Images Turned Off - View what the email looks like with images on AND off (you can do that in VR) - I will send myself a test with my images turned off to see it as well.

Image Text - Make sure all images have alternative text so that when images are turn off your recipients have some context of what should be shown.

Links - Test that all links go where you want them to - click on each and every one.

Images Linked - Make sure all images are linked that need to be.

Subject Line Review -

• If you copy a previously sent campaign make sure you change your subject line.
• Make sure the subject line relates to the content of the email.
• Make sure your most important information is at the beginning so it won't get cut off in the email reader.

Preview in Email Readers - View in email clients Yahoo!, Gmail, Outlook, MacMail and AOL.

Forward to a Friend - Make sure this feature is turned on, it can't hurt to get a few more subscribers.

If you've got any you'd like to add, let's put them on the list!

Download this in PDF.

Integrating Web-to-Case into a Newsletter - Issues with Outlook 2007

Recently one of our users asked a question in the Salesforce Community Forums that prompted an exchange worth sharing. By the way it's a great place to post questions, we monitor the topics all the time. Here is the recent question that drives today's topic:

__________________________________

POST:
Greetings.  I'd like to incorporate the web-to-case functionality into an email newsletter I'm sending out via VerticalResponse.  Most everything works well  -- just generated the HTML in SFDC, then added it into the free form email template.  Except for one thing:

 

When you click on the Submit Query button from within the email (which succeeds at creating a case in SFDC), it then launches your browser, opening to the following url:

 

Link:   (which is within the header, presumably to guide the whole web to case functionality).

 

My intention is for it to follow this code (but it does not):

 

<input type=hidden name="orgid" value="00D30000000144Y">

<input type=hidden name="retURL" value="http://www.mysite.com/thanks.html">

 

Any insights?

 

Many thanks!

________________________________

VR REPLY:

My name is Chris Carpio and I'm from VerticalResponse. I would be glad to help.

To start I'd like to state that generally HTML email best practices do not recommend the use of forms within an email itself. The reason for this is that a few email clients do not support it (specially web based clients such as Hotmail). Instead what we recommend is hosting the form on a website or landing page and providing a link within your email to that site.

However, this doesn't sound like the problem you're experiencing. If it's creating a case for you (it is submitting correctly), it's probably not a problem with the email client but something within the HTML. My guess it's something along the line of the return url (check that the path is absolute).

<input type=hidden name="retURL" value="http://www.mysite.com/thanks.html">

Shoot me an email at chris@verticalresponse.com with your VR username (which is your email address) and the name of the email campaign you're working. Also, include what type of email client you're using to test this on. I'll take a look and hopefully figure out a solution.

_________________________________

POST REPLY:

Thanks for your response.  I did a little more investigation and found that hotmail may not be the only problem (not as big of deal for business users).  Turns out that Outlook 2007 seems to no longer support some advanced functions, in the name of "security."  So, my checkboxes and submit button disappear and are replaced with non-interactive text or brackets.  This is more likely to be a problem with my mailing list over time, so I've nixed the form-within-an-email idea.

Thanks for your help.

A Final Say from Dreamforce....we promise :)

We hope you've all gotten over the post-show hangover that is the weeks following salesforce.com's annual love-fest.  If you didn't have a chance to attend this year, here's a final VerticalResponse video wrap up taken from the show floor.  Thanks to Dylan and our creative and marketing teams for putting this together!

--Alex