1.8.001 Released With Improved Segment Automation

arpReach 1.8 released

What’s new in version 1.8.001?
We’ve made segment automation more flexible and powerful

arpReach (& #V2) has always had one of the best and most flexible segmenting and trigger driven action capabilities of any autoresponder. The new segmented driven actions enhancements take those capabilities to a totally new level giving you lots of options and flexibility to manipulate segmented contacts lists quicker than ever before.

As an example, in previous releases, if you wanted to add a totally new ‘Tag’ to a selection of existing contacts (as opposed to automatically adding a tag to individual contacts using thr existing ‘Triggered Actions’ capability), the process was;

  • create a segment to identify the contacts who would get the new tag
  • export those contact’s email addresses in a CSV file
  • create the new tag
  • import the CSV file of email addresses and assign the new tag at the point of import

The new capabilities make it easier, less frustrating and much quicker. All from the ‘I Want To…’ dropdown. Here’s how

  • create the new tag
  • create a segment (or use any existing contacts Filter) to identify the contacts who would get the new tag
  • Select ‘Trigger Action for Matching Contacts’ from the I want to drop-down
  • Select which action or actions you want triggered and applied to the selected contacts and press the ‘Trigger Action’ button.

Yes you can apply and trigger multiple actions

In fact you can also ‘stack’ multiple events to be triggered one after the other.

The new Trigger Action page allows you to choose one or more existing actions to be applied for each matching contact from the segmented contacts list. This is something customers have asked for and wanted for some time.

You’re now able to segment your list and then;

  1. add/remove a Tag, a Category
  2. add to / remove from the Suppression list
  3. add a new Subscription to specific Autoresponders
  4. drop/delete a Subscription or ALL Subscriptions
  5. setup Custom field values in a batch
  6. send the Contacts data with HTTP post to a specified URL. This would allow to export contacts of a segmented list into a 3-rd party software.
  7. And finally this allows you to run a User Function for each contact from a segment list to manipulate any contact’s data and do virtually anything you want with it.

You can find out more about these new segment automation capabilities in the manual

And it that wasn’t enough power and flexibility have a look at the new ‘Send to non-openers’ capability now available to #V2 clients.

To see what other improvements and fixes of been made see our changelog here

If you don’t own arpReach yet you should order your license today from here

Top email marketing trends for 2017

email_marketingAt one point it was thought that email may have had its day.

But in 2017 this is certainly not the case.

In fact we have 5 reasons that email should be a priority in your marketing strategy.

  1. Email marketing has an AMAZING ROI
  2. Emails nurture leads cost effectively and effortlessly
  3. Emails convert better than social media and many other marketing channels
  4. It’s estimated that over 67% of consumers use a smartphone to check their email
  5. Email can seamlessly integrate with other marketing strategies

So, now you know the value of email marketing, what are the top trends for 2017 ?

 

The Top 4 Email Marketing Trends for 2017

Like any other strategy, email marketing is constantly evolving to reflect SPAM laws and best practices. As we enter a new year, take these new trends into consideration to help you grow your email list, engage with your clients better, and build your client base.

https://www.digitaldoughnut.com/articles/2017/january/the-top-4-email-marketing-trends-for-2017

5 trends Email marketers need to stay on top of in 2017 and a couple of things you can safely ignore…

As we move from one year to the next, the heart of email marketing remains the same. It is about providing customer-centric experiences. For email experiences, this is the mantra of right message, right person, right time. The closer you get to this the better the results.

http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/email-marketing-trends-2016/

 

The Future of email marketing – 2017 edition

Email is a mainstay in the marketing toolbox, but marketers need to continuously evolve their email tactics to cater to a changing audience.

http://www.emailmonday.com/email-marketing-future

 

With this clear vision of the future of email it’s the ideal time to consider the management of your emails.

With No monthly fee, No per-message charges and No fee rises as your list grows. arpReach makes your email marketing targeted, automated and more profitable !

Discover how it will help your business grow by clicking the link below.

Buy arpReach

 

Make your Business a Success on YouTube

YouTubeYouTube gets over 30 million visitors and 5 billion videos watched PER DAY !

With this vast audience at your fingertips you can see that it is a vital marketing channel for your business.

It is also widely known that video can bring your business the following benefits:

  1. Boosts Conversions and Sales
  2. Builds Trust
  3. Helps SEO
  4. Great to help explain your messages
  5. Has the ability to engage with all audience demographics
  6. Encourages Social Shares and increases audience reach

 

But now onto the tricky part! How do you turn your YouTube video channel into a business success? 

8 Powerful Reasons You Need to Use Video Marketing

Video marketing is one of the newest additions in your promotion toolbox. If you have any doubt of its benefits then check out these 8 reasons that you should have video in your marketing mix.

https://www.dreamgrow.com/8-reasons-why-your-business-should-use-video-marketing/

 

How to be successful on YouTube: The 3 steps

Once you have your video created your next step is to understand how YouTube can make it a success!

https://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/04/the-3-steps-to-success-on-youtube/

 

How to be Successful on YouTube in 10 Easy Steps

No longer strictly the domain of film geeks and funny video aficionados, the network, which boasts more than 30 million visitors per week, can also provide a low-cost to no-cost way to create a social marketing channel for your business.

If you aren’t effectively leveraging the network, you’re missing out !

http://www.bluefountainmedia.com/blog/how-to-be-successful-on-youtube/

 

The Complete Guide to Building a Successful YouTube Channel

You can find literally any type of audience on YouTube, which means that just about any business can find a way to benefit from marketing on it.

https://www.quicksprout.com/2016/01/22/the-complete-guide-to-building-a-successful-youtube-channel/

 

Take the advice from our fellow experts and you could see your YouTube channel significantly increasing your email subscriber list.

Discover how arpReach can help convert your new audience into customers by clicking the link below.

Buy arpReach

 

 

 

Making your Webinar a success

Making your Webinar a success

First of all its important to define exactly what a webinar should deliver.

‘A webinar is a presentation, lecture, workshop or seminar that is transmitted over the Web using video conferencing software. A key feature of a Webinar is its interactive elements: the ability to give, receive and discuss information in real-time.’

I know we all know what a webinar is but this last sentence is really important to note before you create your plan and content.

The second thing to consider is what you want to get out of your webinar before you get started.

So in today’s post we have collated some great information from fellow experts on how to create a successful webinar, how to make it work for your business, as well and common mistakes to avoid!

 

The Secret Formula for Webinar: Presentations that Work Every Time

A must read if you are tackling a webinar for the first time!

http://l1.osdimg.com/online/dam/pdf/en/resources/wp/Gihan-Perera-GoToWebinar-The-Secret-Formula-for-Webinar-Presentations-that-Work-Every-Time-eBook.pdf

 

How To Make Webinars Work For Your Business

Running webinars gives you and your business an opportunity to reach out to customers, demonstrate your expertise and the effectiveness of your products, and engage with them.

Now find out how to make it work for you business…

http://blog.andromedaconsulting.co.uk/how-to-make-webinars-work-for-your-business

 

5 Most Common mistakes made when running a webinar

There’s no doubting the huge benefits of using webinars. However it’s important to plan for success. You want, people to attend, be interested in what you have to say and to interact. It’s worth bearing the following common mistakes in mind when planning and putting your webinar together.

http://combinedmedia.ie/2014/01/5-common-mistakes-made-running-webinar/

 

Take the advice from our fellow experts and you could see webinars significantly increasing your email subscriber list.

Discover how arpReach can help manage your email subscriber list by clicking the link below.

Buy arpReach

 

 

 

arpReach 1.6 is available & can help increase signups by 17%

email marketing software version 1.6 releasedVersion 1.6 of the arpReach email marketing software adds a host of new API‘s that will help marketers integrate even more third party tools and allow developers build new useful services to enhance email marketing activities.

We have also made some significant improvements to the core framework in preparation for an upcoming major version release which will allow arpReach to run with PHP 7.

And … we’ve included a new feature which has increased signups by an average of 17% over the previous two months testing while at the same time increasing the optin confirmation rate by 11%.  Plus we’ve fixed a number of old bugs.

The changelog for those in a hurry can be found here http://www.arpreach.com/changelog

A deeper look at the improvements

Probably one of the more helpful improvements for busy marketers in this release is that we’ve set the default tracking of HTML emails set to On.  (I can hear the cheers for this and I know I’m in great company when I’ve sent out my broadcast only to find out that I’d forgotten to turn on the open rate tracking when it can to checking the reports.  No more face palms for this 🙂 )

html tracking on by default

Reporting and tracking brings us very nicely in to some of the new API functions.

With so much new tech released and on the horizon, tagging, segmenting and reporting has never been more important to all business owners and marketers, not just those specializing in email.

arpReach has always had one of the most powerful engines for tagging, categorizing and segmenting your contacts in to highly targeted broadcast lists and the new API functions allow you to remotely call that power.

The new API‘s allow you to not only create and call ‘Tags’ but to also list contacts with specific tags, identify who opened which emails, clicked which links and with what Tag or Tags.  You can even set date ranges.

Some of you will already be drooling at the possibilities you’ve now got as an arpReach user.  For those wondering why this is so good let’s look at just a few things that can be done to save you time and make you more profit.

Imagine being able to capture not just a name and an email address during a signup but also, at the same time, being able to automatically Tag that person with what they like, what they want, what they bought.  May be what advert they clicked. And all they gave you was their name and email address.

Then imagine being able to send your contact emails tailored to what extra you know about them while at the same time being able to change your re-targeting campaign so your contact see a more relevant ad based on the actions they have already taken at your site. The power these API‘s give you is huge.  Plus you can customize your reporting with more relevant data to identify what’s working and what needs improving or stopping.

And then when you start thinking about creating logic funnels … oh my 🙂

How has arpReach increased signups by 17% and confirmations by 11%?

The first thing to say is that the improved results we have detailed were not what we expected.  In fact what we implemented out of ‘necessity’ we were expecting to kill our signup rate.  So why did we do something that might cripple our list building activities.

Here’s the back story.

Part of what we do for some of our clients is monitor email delivery networks and test their mailings against various commercial spam filtering services.  Like many other companies we also filter our own inbound email.  Don’t get me wrong, we’re marketers and keep in touch with all of the launches but lets face it … we all get spam .. and in a technical sense spam changes from day to day.

Given that many businesses for one reason or another use or rely on monthly paid autoresponder services, it was a massive eyebrow raising moment when I discovered back in August that the very reputable InfusionSoft had been back-listed by SpamHaus.  I need to point out it wasn’t just emails sent from InfusionSoft that were being blocked. Other monthly service providers were not making it through the blocks and spam filters either.

infusionsoft blacklisted by spamhaus aug-2016

OK, I’ll admit that I was more than a little happy that big names in the industry were blacklisted.  I’ve been saying for years that those serious about email marketing should take control of their own lists and delivery which is what arpReach allows you to do.  But …

But how the heck did these major players screw up so badly?

With so many ‘wannabe email marketers’ uploading ‘high quality lists’ to some of these services, their sender scores are not always as good as when you take control and manage things yourself.  Yes their lower sender scores do mean that lots of emails trigger some of the spam filters but an outright blacklisting by Spamhuas ….  this was a story.  It’s known as Subscription Bombing

A quick search lead me to a post by Laura Atkins “Subscription bombing, ESPs and Spamhaus” After a scratch of the surface it soon became very plain that this was Major.  But it wasn’t about spam emails as you normally think about spam.  This was nasty.  This was using spam as a weapon. More specifically this was about bots using lead capture signup forms across multiple networks to 10’s of thousands of email confirmation requests, per hour, to specific people and organisations in the private and public sector with the sole intent of inflicting damage.

The industry players pulled together quickly to try to solve the attack after Spamhaus got the markets attention by taking some drastic action  (blocking major players will do that).  And the upshot is that it became obvious that doing something to help protect our server’s reputations, our lists and the wider industry from fake and automated signups was the right thing to do.

We already use arpVerify to screen out mistyped and garbage email addresses but there was another step we could use before an email address gets checked.  Use Captcha on the sig-up form itself.

Never say never.  Test it first.

I know that pretty much every article I’ve read by marketers says that every additional action you make a user take reduces the effectiveness of your signup form and that adding a capcha kills sign-ups but that is not what our testing has shown.

We expected that adding Google reCapcha to our signup forms would reduce our signup rate but we found the exact opposite.

As a result we have included an optional setting for you to use Google reCapctha in your forms.

Use Google recaptcha in forms

Why do you think including reCapcha improved our signups and optin confirmations?  Is there a perceived increase in value?  Share your thoughts in the comments.

More about our test results

We applied Google reCaptcha to the main pages of our site.
The form content has not changed throughout the test (with the exception of adding reCapture)
recapture was added to our form in October (yes it looks ugly)
Monthly unique visitors vary through out the test by an ave +/- 2%

add recaptcha to sign up form results

See it in action

Without any custom styling this is what (and hopfuly still will be when you see it 😉 … we love net gremlins :/ ) a basic arpReach form with Google reCaptcha looks like. (Like we say, not the pretiest of things but you can’t complain at the results)

While you’re here sign up and try it yourself.
(Yes we’ll look after your details, there is a sequence of 7 emails and we mail out currently one a week)

(We would love to know what you think.  Share your thoughts in the comments below.)

How do you upgrade to arpReach 1.6?

We’ve provided instructions for existing licensed users of arpReach Gold or Standard here: How do I upgrade to arpReach 1.6

Where can I order arpReach 1.6?

click to order arpreach

You can order arpReach 1.6 here

How do I upgrade from arpReach Standard to arpReach Gold?

You can upgrade arpreach Standard to Gold here

Upgrading to 1.6

upgrade email marketing software to 1.6Upgrading to the latest version release of arpReach is a simple process if you follow the basic process outlined below. While a little technical knowledge will help anyone can perform an upgrade.

If you are uncertain, worried or just don’t have the time, we recommend you seek the help of a third party professional. Licensed users are welcome to contact the support desk who will provide you with a list of partners we work with on a regular basis who can perform your upgrade for a reasonable fee.

Important Notes:

The 1.6 upgrade cannot be used to upgrade versions below 1.2.002 or pre-release (beta) versions.

! Make sure your server meets the minimum requirements !

– PHP 5.5.x – PHP 7 (but not including 7 … yet)
– register_globals OFF
– safe_mode OFF
– max_execution_time = 0
– cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 (for CGI/FastCGI)
– php-cli module – (PHP 5.5 or greater is needed at the command line)
– imap extension
– mysql extension
– cURL extension
– GD extension
– JSON extension
– Open SSL extension
– Ports 25, 587 and 465 (SSL/TLS) need to be open for inbound and outbound traffic when using third-party ESP’s
– We recommend at least 256M of memory is allocated to PHP, but you may need to set it higher depending on how large your list is. The memory MUST be applied to both http PHP AND php-cli which is used for cron tasks.

The 1.6 release includes a significant update to the CI framework paving the way to a new major version release in 2017 supporting PHP 7.  It also includes new database tables and settings. We strongly urge you to back up all files and your database via mysqldump before starting your upgrade.

 

The Upgrade Process:

1. Login to hub.arpreach.net and click on the Download Latest Software link

download software

2. In the To upgrade existing installations of arpReach from 1.2.003 – 1.5.xxx to 1.6.00x section click on the download link

upgrade existing arpreach to 1.6

 

3. Read and accept the usage terms agreement.

agree eula terms

4. The system will build your download and then present an OK button. building licensed download

6. Click OK to begin your download and save the zip file to a location you can access on your computerclick ok to download

We can’t stress this next part strongly enough. Back up, Back up, Back up.

7. BACK UP your arpReach database and then back up all of the files and folders of your existing arpReach installation. Keep these in a safe location in case you need them. Your hosting company will be able to provide you with the details you need, these vary from server to server and as a result we are unable to provide help with this element.

8. Ensure your version of arpReach is 1.2.002 or above. The version number is shown at the bottom left of every screen in arpReach.

9. If you have made changes to any files in the  /application/language/ directory, BACKUP the directory

10. Using your FTP software, login to your live installation  and delete the /system directories – Make sure you did a backup!!

11. Using your FTP software, login to your live installation  and delete the /application directories

12. Unzip the arpreach_upgrade.zip file you downloaded and saved to your computer. This file contains the file arpreach_upgrade_files.zip, a change log txt file and a txt file called README-FIRST. Read the read me file for version specific upgrade instructions and the changelog so you know what’s been fixed.

13. Unzip the file arpreach_upgrade_files.zip you downloaded and saved to your computer.

14. Using your FTP software, upload the contents of the arpreach_upgrade_files zip file in * binary mode * to the server directory containing your arpReach installation.

15. When asked to replace existing files, choose yes. Do not choose any option that would delete existing files or directories apart from those being uploaded.

16. If you saved your /application/language/ directory re-upload the files you previously changed.

17. Using your FTP software, download the file: /application/config/config.php

18. Using Notepad or a similar TEXT editor (not Word) Open /application/config/config.php
Around line 385, search for:

$config['sess_save_path'] = NULL;

Change ‘NULL’ to either ‘/tmp’ or the temporary folder associated to your server.  Check with your host what this folder is if you are unsure.

The line should now read:

$config['sess_save_path'] = '/tmp';

Note: The single quote marks are important.  Do not delete them by mistsake.

Save this file

19. If you are signed in to arpReach, sign out then sign in again. This step is important as it updates the database tables.

20. You may now see a message telling you ‘A new activation code is needed’.

activation code needed

15. Log in to http://hub.arpreach.net – create a new activation code for your registered domain

domain activation code

16. Copy the new activation code and paste it in to the ‘Activation Code’ box in your arpReach site. Add your license number and password in the appropriate boxes. Read the terms and conditions, click the box if you agree.

activate license

17. Click the ‘Activate Now’ button

Congratulations your arpReach installation has been updated.

Things to be aware of

If you have customized your language files please be aware that we have added new files for the arpVerify integration and you will need to add these and change them as appropriate within your customization (Thanks Tom for pointing this out).

If you need help please contact the arpReach support team and raise a ticket

You can order arpReach here