VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

Using the Custom Email History Object

I’m writing this blog post while eating turkey and mashed potatoes, so my apologies in advance if I accidentally drop any food into the article.

As noted in my last blog post, VerticalResponse tracks opens, clicks, bounces and unsubscribes.  And you can easily access all this data through your VR Email or VR Statistics tabs.  But did you know you can also see this info on your individual lead & contact records?  We provide Custom Email History Objects that display every single email an individual has received along with the details on exactly what they did with that email.  If you click on the name of the email, we’ll even show the content.  The custom object should look like this:

But as nice as this object is, it’s unfortunately not visible by default within your Salesforce account.  So if you (or your admin) didn’t know this reporting was available and haven’t made the object visible on your Lead / Contact page layouts, then you are missing out on one of the most useful tools available with the integration between VerticalResponse and Salesforce. 

How can you make the Lead / Contact Email History Object visible within your page layouts if don’t already see it in your records?

1.  Click Setup within Salesforce.  Note that you must be an admin to make the changes noted here.

2.  Expand the Customize menu under App Setup.

3.  Expand Leads.

4.  Select Page Layouts.

5.  Select which layouts you’d like to alter:  the layouts for everyone in your Org or layouts for specific groups you’ve created within your Org.  Click Edit.

6.  This will open up Edit Page Layout.  Scroll to the bottom of this page.

7.  Now you should see the Related List Section on the left of this page and a "View" drop down menu with Lead Fields selected on the right. 

8.  Use the "View" drop down menu to choose Lead Related Lists. 

9.  Click & Drag the VR Email History Lead box from Lead Related Lists to the Related List Section. 

10.  Click on VR Email History Lead now that it’s in the Related List Section.  Then click the Edit Properties button. 

11.  This will open the Edit Related List dialog box.  Use the Add button to move Available  Fields you’d like to display to the Selected Fields column.  We recommend adding Email Name, Sent, Opened, Clicked, Clicked Links, Bounced, Unsubscribed and Mail Date. 

But you can add whatever you like since you can always come back and change it later.

Click OK when you’re done.

12.  Click the Save button on Edit Page Layout.

Now you should see the info packed Email History Object as part of your Lead Records.  To add this object to your Contact Page Layouts, just go to Setup > App Setup > Customize > Contacts > Page Layouts and follow the same steps shown above. 

And note to push data to these Email History Objects, you should select the emails whose stats you want to see updated from the VR Statistics tab and then click the Update Statistics button.

For more help adding this Object to your page layouts, watch this short help video:

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Take Advantage of Advanced Reporting

If you’re a VerticalResponse user, you’re probably already well aware that we track the  opens, link click-throughs, bounces and unsubscribes for any email sent out through our service.  What you may not be aware of is that we offer even more advanced (and free) tracking options that need to be activated before you can use them.

These advanced options are Click to Conversion, Click to Sale, and Google Analytics Integration.  What are some of the reasons you’d use these options and how can you activate them?

Click to Conversion

With Click to Conversion tracking, VerticalResponse provides a snippet of HTML code that you can add to any page on your website.  If someone clicks a link in an email you send out and then makes their way to a page that contains this code, then they’ll be tracked within your account as a Conversion. 

This code is perfect for a thank you / confirmation page that follows a purchase, a white paper download, an event registration or anything else along the same lines.  In this way if you send an invitation out regarding an event, for example, you’ll see exactly how well that invitation performed based on the number and percentage of people who clicked a link in your email, filled out the registration and made it to the thank you page.  They successfully registered for your event and so therefore have “converted” by doing what you wanted them to do.

To activate Click to Conversion tracking, go within your account to VR Email > Account Information > Analytics Settings > Click-to-Conversion.  Then use the Enable drop down menu to select the Click-to-Conversion option.  Now simply add the tracking code that appears beneath this drop-down menu to any page (or pages) on your site.  Anyone who clicks an email link and makes their way to a page that includes this code will be tracked as a conversion.  Be sure to click the Submit Changes button before leaving this page.

Click to Sale

Click to Sale tracking allows you to see how much revenue is generated from people who make a purchase on your site after clicking a link in an email.  It also includes a Return On Investment calculator (which can be found within the reporting for each email campaign under VR Statistics) that compares generated revenue against the amount of money you spent on the email campaign itself.

To activate Click to Sale tracking, go within your account to VR Email > Account Information > Analytics Settings > Click-to-Conversion.  Then use the Enable drop down menu to select the Click-to-Conversion + ROI Calculator option.  You’ll then need to add the provided tracking code to the thank you or confirmation page that follows a purchase on your site and set things up so that the total purchase amount can be inserted into the code where we’ve written the words PURCHASE AMOUNT.  This is not too complicated, but is more advanced than Click-to-Conversion, so it will require more work on your end to set this up.  Also, be sure to click the Submit Changes button before leaving this page.

Since people can (and do) block cookies occasionally, this will not necessarily show you all the money that was spent by folks who clicked a link in your email.  The same issue applies to Click-to-Conversion tracking.  Both are simply additional tools you can use to gain a better understanding of an email campaign’s success. 

Google Analytics Integration

Our Google Analytics Integration takes your tracking past the initial email link click.  With this integration activated, you’ll be able to log into your Google account and see exactly what each of the specific people who’ve clicked a link in your email have gone on to do on your website.  We’ll automatically add the necessary Google tracking code to your links and let you choose what information about each individual clicker you’d like to see merged over to your Google account (you’ll be given this option right above the Launch button for every email you send out).   

To use this option you must have a Google Analytics account and have already added the Google provided tracking code to your website.  Accounts are free and are a great way to track activity on your website (we use Google here at VR).  You can learn more about Google Analytics here:

http://www.google.com/analytics/

Activate Google Analytics Integration by going within your account to VR Email > Account Information > Analytics Settings > Google Analytics.  If you already have a Google Analytics account, skip directly to Step 3 and check the Add Domains box.  Enter any domains you’re tracking via Google and click the Submit Changes button in the lower right hand corner.  After this is done, you’re all set.

As noted above, these “more advanced” tracking options are free to use.  The only real limitation is that none of these three tools currently integrate directly into your Salesforce reporting.  You’ll only see this data within your VR Statistics area and, in the case of the Analytics integration, within your Google account.

Are you having success with any of these tools?  Do you need help?  Let us know in the comments!

Richard Huffaker, Community Education & Training Manager

HTML to Avoid When Building Your Email

If you've spent much time creating and mailing your own custom email messages, you've probably noticed that not every email client is displaying those messages in the same way.  What looks great in Yahoo or Outlook 2003 may appear broken in Gmail or Outlook 2007.

This root of this problem is the variance among email clients in the level of support for CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).  Unlike web browsers, there is no real standard for what an email client should support and how it should go about supporting it.  Every email client - and there are significantly more commonly used email clients than there are commonly used web browsers - takes its own approach to rendering HTML and CSS. 

So how can you or your designer ensure a design remains consistent across all these different email clients?  

1.  Avoid linking to an external .css file.  This will simply be ignored or stripped by many email clients.

2.  Refrain from using CSS within the <style> section of your HTML code.  Similar to an externally referenced .css file, many elements from this section will be stripped or ignored by a number of email clients.

3.  Since you should avoid external or header CSS, all of your styling should be done via inline style attributes within the body of the document (i.e. < p style="border:1px solid #c00; font-size:12px;">).

4.  Email layout should be done via table tags instead of div tags.  This is no longer common in web design and may sound archaic to anyone who has been designing web sites over the past several years, but it is the only way to be absolutely confident that your layout isn’t going to break somewhere.

5.  Don’t rely on background images within your design.  These are sometimes ignored, so you’ll end up with a plain white background instead of one that shows off your lovely background image.  A background color will be more reliable than an image, so use that instead.  But even then, consider how your message will look against a white background, because it’s possible the background color will be ignored occasionally as well.

6.  Be careful using graphical HTML editors, even great ones like Dreamweaver.  They generally default to use external CSS or header CSS to style the design (which is only natural, since this is exactly how you should create the style and layouts for a website).  So no matter how good the design looks within the editor itself, you’ll end up running into issues with various email clients.

7.  Stay away from posting forms, such as opt-in forms or surveys, within your message.  Many email clients do not support forms, so the submit button within the form won’t do anything when your recipient clicks on it.  You should link directly to a form as an alternative to including it in your message.

8.  Don’t include videos within your message.  A number of email clients have trouble with Flash (which will almost certainly be the format of the embedded video), and this will lead to the video either not working or being stripped out of the email entirely.  As with forms, you should link recipients to the video so they’ll definitely be able to watch it.  A great method for doing this is to use an image overlaid with a play button (as you would see on a YouTube video before you start playing it) so that recipients automatically think to click the image to start the video. 

The lack of support for Flash also means, of course, that you should not use Flash elements as part of your design.

9.  Don’t incorporate Javascript into your design.  Javascript will be treated as a security risk by any number of email clients and will be stripped out.  Javascript could also potentially generate a warning to recipients that your email is dangerous - few folks who receive such a warning are likely to want to open another email from you in the future.

10.  Try not to send out emails that are image only.  It’s tempting to do this (and fairly common for a lot of mailers) because it’s far easier to control the design of an image than it is an HTML document.  But the problem is that many email clients turn images off be default, requiring the recipient to click a link to turn the images on.  An image only email will essentially appear to be an unsubscribe message to these folks - giving them little reason to turn the images on and every reason to just unsubscribe.

If you’re interested in learning exactly which email browsers support what (in terms of CSS, at least), take a look at the excellent Email Standards Project.  They breakdown exactly what CSS is supported by most of the commonly used email clients.

Any comments or further design suggestions?  Let’s hear ‘em in the comments!

Richard Huffaker, Community Education & Training Manager