Bronto Blog

If you haven’t caught word already, then allow us to be the bearer of less-than-good news: Outlook 2007 is going to cause (minor, but curable) headaches for email marketers.

What’s happened?

Previous versions of Outlook used the Internet Explorer engine to render HTML emails. This allowed designers to employ sophisticated, CSS-based designs with predictable results: if the message looked fine in IE, then it would look fine in Outlook.

Instead of using the IE-based HTML rendering engine, Outlook 2007 will use the MS Word HTML rendering engine. (Seriously. We’re not joking.) Considering the inherent HTML rendering limitations of MS Word, this basically signals the end to many of the tricks that email designers rely on to create professional, appealing email designs.

For example, take a look at our recent Best Practices Webcast announcement in a Mac Mail email client.

Next, take a look at the same message in an Outlook 2007 email client. Yikes.

The good news is that these issues are solvable, so keep reading.

What will be different?

For a quick overview of the highlights, read below. (Note that many of these changes affect HTML-level elements in your email design.)

1. No background images in DIV tags and TABLE cells.
2. No nested background colors. A background color in a DIV or TABLE cell displays fine. However, if you nest another TABLE or DIV within the element, the background color vanishes.
3. No FLOAT or POSITION attribute in DIV tags. In other words, CSS-based layouts won’t work in Outlook 2007. Tables only going forward.
4. No FORM tags. Quite simply, embedded email surveys will not work in Outlook 2007. What’s even worse, Outlook 2007 actually strips out the form elements, so your recipients will not be able to tell if a form was there to begin with. (We suggest mitigating this with a “Problems with the survey? Complete it online.” link at the top of your message.)
5. No animated .gif files or Flash content. Animated .gif files just won’t animate. With Flash, you’ll just get a big red X.

If you are a web designer, we suggest that you read the complete, sleep-inducing overview of the design conventions that will not be supported in Outlook 2007. Also, Microsoft has provided a downloadable validator that will help you validate your HTML for the Outlook 2007 engine.

What does this mean for me?

If none of that made sense, then you’re probably not a web designer. In which case, you need to know the following:

1. Don’t panic. The whole world isn’t going to switch to Outlook 2007 overnight, thus, you have plenty of time to re-think and re-work your email design(s). Given that many of your recipients will migrate to Outlook 2007 over time, you and/or your designer should obviously take these restrictions into consideration going forward.
2. Email design isn’t dead. These restrictions will not bring back the days of ASCII text in a telnet terminal. You’ll still be able to convey your brand and “design” in your email marketing communications, you just might have to jump through a few more hoops to get there.
3. Some Bronto templates will need an overhaul. For those of you that use Bronto’s default templates, we’ve already identified those that we will need to re-design in order to adapt to these changes. We’ll get started with these soon, so stay tuned for an update.
4. Test! It just wouldn’t be a post on the blog if we didn’t emphasize the importance of testing. We suggest that you download a free trial of Outlook 2007 and add it to your testing routine, if only to familiarize yourself with the differences.

As always, contact Bronto Support if you have any questions. We’re happy to help.

We just wrapped perhaps the most exciting webcast in Bronto history.

Not only did we have 85 participants and a great success story from Jon Bishop of the Durham Bulls - we also had a very unexpected and VERY LOUD fire alarm test in the middle of the call. Though the “mute” button offered a tantalizing escape from the deafening scream of the alarm - and the opportunity for Bronto to plug our collective fingers into our ears - we carried on like the determined email marketing troopers that we are.

Thanks to everyone that listened in and especially to Jon from the Bulls.

Stay tuned for a recording of the webcast and much more.

No matter your objectives for using Bronto - driving sales revenue, cultivating donations, etc. - message deliverability is critical to reaching your goals. Quite simply, the greatest content, design, and execution amount to nothing if your message doesn’t make it to your contacts’ inbox.

Lucky for you, the friendly folks at Bronto are here to help you navigate the treacherous delivery path your messages must travel. In addition to the numerous deliverability enablers included in your subscription (ISP relations, feedback loops, DomainKeys authentication, etc.), we’re happy to recommend the following concepts and best practices that will help you maintain clean lists, minimize unsolicited email complaints, and, in turn, improve your overall deliverability.

DJ Waldow, Account Manager to the Stars, drew from his experience working with our top customers to aggregate these suggestions. Enjoy Part 1 of a 4-part series today and stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.

All Natural, Organic Lists

Deliverability starts with a good list. A good list is comprised of contacts that have given you permission to send to them - they know why
they are receiving your messages and recognize you as a company when
they see your message in their inbox. A good list is not bought or rented, but instead organically grown through an opt-in, permission-based form on your website or from your database of current customers and prospects. A good list is a valuable asset for your company, an accumulation of all of your customer relationships - not a group of nameless contacts that you “blast” (We hate that word…) when you need to communicate information or make your revenue quota.

If you don’t have a good list, then you’re not going to realize good delivery…and you’re going to fail as an email marketer. Simple as that.

Crystal Clear Communication

Take the time to set frequency and content expectations for your subscribers. Clarify the types of communications they are opting in to receive from you on all of your web forms and within the body of all of your messages. Be vigilant in following these expectations. If you communicated that they will receive a monthly newsletter, do not send an email once per week. If the expectation is for updates on specials, do not send the monthly newsletter. Honor the individual’s preference and work like crazy to create outstanding content that they’ll happily consume.

Also, make sure that there is not a long delay between messages, especially the first one. We suggest that you customize Bronto to deliver an automatic message to contacts right after they sign up. This keeps your company name and brand fresh in their minds.

Bounce the Bounced (and the Inactives)

Use Bronto’s Clean feature to maintain good list hygiene. By removing invalid and inactive contacts from your account, you protect yourself against the ding on your reputation you receive each time you send to invalid contacts. Plus, you guard against the unsolicited email complaints that come from old contacts that may not remember you or remember opting in to your list(s). Depending on your sending frequency, we suggest that you disable contacts that have not opened or clicked in the last 10 or 20 messages.

The good news is that Bronto helps with this automatically. Once an email address bounces 5 times, we automatically change the status from Active to Bounced, immediately making the email address inactive.

Bronto just wrapped up a game called Assassin. For those unfamiliar with the game, it breaks down like this:

• Everyone at Bronto is an assassin.
• Each assassin receives a plastic dart gun and the name of a their target.
• In order to assassinate their victim, the assassin must hit him/her
  with a dart. If the hit is successful, the assassin then pursues the target of his newly slaughtered prey.
• The office is a DMZ. Everywhere else is fair game.
• Assassins are encouraged to play secretively. There are to be no public acknowledgments of your target or your killer.
• Trust no one. Kill everyone.

It is fair to say that the game brought out the absolute worst in all participants. Though some Brontos died quickly and uneventfully - others went to great extremes to avoid their would-be killer or to construct the perfect crime. For instance,  Michael killed DJ while DJ was in muscle pump class at the YMCA. Truly a dastardly deed. (This, by the way, was after he showed up at DJ’s residence to try for the kill house-call style.)

The Engineering team protected their family a la the Corleones…and also banded together for a terrified dash out the front door every day for lunch and then again for quitting time. Matt actually conducted an extended stakeout from the 2nd level of the parking deck in order to nab Sean on his way back from lunchtime workout.

Some Brontos suffered great physical harm as a result of their participation. Todd skinned both knees pretty badly after running down Andrew Rambo-style in the parking lot. Michael actually broke his wrist after attempting some sort of roll manuever while attacking his prey. At least his unfortunate physical investment yielded a spot in the final shoot-out with Matt and, ultimately, the victor’s trophy - an iPod shuffle.

Congratulations, Michael. And get well soon.

Now that you’ve got a great feature like reporting groups, how do you start using it? We suggest the following:

Start small. Begin with a reporting group that collects data for your recurring mailings, such as your monthly/weekly newsletters. You may need to take some time to back-populate your group to include the messages you’ve already sent. Once you have a few deliveries in place, start asking yourself some questions:

How have my metrics trended over time? How many total clicks have you seen in the past six months? How can I use this information to make decisions going forward?

Make it a habit. The more you use reporting groups, the more value you’ll find. Make it a part of your routine to assign deliveries to a reporting group. The “Assign to Reporting Groups” link on the message reporting page should make it easy.

Be creative. You can create as many groups as you like, so think creatively to devise new ways to aggregate and compare delivery data. Groups that aggregate monthly or quarterly campaign stats are a great place to start, but only scratch the surface. Why not use a reporting group to compare performance by subject lines? Or to assess how delivery time impacts your metrics?

Look closely. Look beyond the aggregate numbers and the delivery graphs. Take the time understand why Message A has a higher open rate than Message B or why your click-through rate has slowly increased/decreased over time. Addressing these questions can transform a good email marketing program to a great one.