You may have noticed in the link tracking screen an advertiser can be applied to any link (see below).

You also may have wondered just what it’s all about. Well, it’s an easy way to track an advertiser’s links in a campaign and even generate advertiser specific reports.

Here’s how you do it. First, make an advertiser. Go to the Libraries and Tools tab and click the Create Advertiser link. Fill out the Advertiser info and click the Save button. Now the next time you’re creating a mail you can assign this advertiser to any link in the campaign. Simple.

There’s a couple of different ways to get the data back. You can either run an Individual Mailing report filtered by advertiser or you can run the Advertiser Specific report which will show all campaigns and all clicks for that advertiser within a give date range.

Method One: Go to the Reports tab and click the Individual Mailing link. Choose the mail you want to report on as you normally would and then select the Advertiser you would like to filter by in the Step 2 section. Click Run Report and poof, there’s the report.

Method Two: Go to the Reports tab and click on the Advertiser Specific link. Select the advertiser you want to report on, enter a date range if desired and click Run Report.

Should I Use Advertisers in my Email?
We get that question a lot and really it’s beyond the scope of this post to answer but here’s some points to consider.

Do your subscribers expect there to be auxiliary advertisements in your email? In other words, do you do a lot of online ad placement? Are there ads on your website? If the answer is no then this might not be the road you want to go down.

Are advertisements relevant in your campaign? For example if you typically send out industry newsletters or updates, then yes advertisers would be a logical step in the life of your e-mail campaign. If you’re a small retailer sending out offers and updates about your products, you want to keep the focus on you and advertisements would be out of place.

If you’re a ReachMail user who uses advertisers, hit the comment section and tell us about how it’s worked for you.

It’s now even easier for subscribers to share your mail with all their friends; our Forward to a Friend feature has been enhanced to include social media sharing.

You may have noticed in the mail setup screen that there are now some additional options in the Forwarding setup section. In addition to the standard text only link you can now choose to add a basic social sharing icon or your own custom icon. It’s now easy for your subscribers to recognize that they can easily share your content through their favorite social network.

Now, when subscribers click the forwarding/sharing link they’ll go to the same familiar Forward to a Friend page but they’ll see additional options to share the email on social networks. Whichever option they choose, the View as HTML link for that mail will be posted on the site with the subscriber’s comments.

In the Forwarding section of the individual mailing report you’ll now see a breakdown of how the mail was shared on social networks (see image below).

Enjoy and if you have any questions, drop us a line at support@reachmail.com

Not too long ago I wrote a post about Form Wizard and how to utilize it and integrate it into your website.

Form Wizard is a handy tool to easily create a simple sign-up form to add to your website. The form writes directly to the ReachMail list of your choosing. If you want to read the how-to instructions, check the old post or watch the video.

Form Wizard has a powerful feature that is sometimes overlooked. It’s the Auto-Responder. Sounds cool, right? It is. What does it do? It sends an automatic email to any new users as soon as they are in your list. Why is that important? It helps you put your best foot forward with all your new list members.

Here’s a sample scenario. Say your company (Acme, Inc.) sends out a monthly newsletter on the first Monday of every month because you’ve wisely heeded the advice of some email marketing experts. A new user joins your list on the tenth of the month. They’ll be waiting a couple of weeks at least for the first email. In the meantime, they’re apt to forget that they signed up. Know what happens when users forget they signed up? Opt-outs. And Spam Complaints.

Enter the Auto-Responder. The auto-responder comes to the user shortly after they’re entered into the list and is a great reminder that they’ve joined and gives you a chance to welcome them and give a preview of what they can expect from your emails. If I were making an auto-responder for this monthly newsletter list I might say something like this: Thanks for joining the Acme, Inc. monthly newsletter! We hope you find it an informative window into our company. You can expect our newsletter on the first Monday of every month. In it, we’ll have recap of the the past month, a look ahead to the new month and an employee spotlight feature. If you’d like to take a look at our newsletter archive, use this link.

The auto-responder shouldn’t be long but you should get across at least the following:

1. A thank you and welcome.
2. A content preview and a frequency reminder.
3. One other piece of content the user can take action on.

Of course, this was just one example. If you’re a retailer you might have a special coupon in the auto-responder; there are a variety of possibilities.

Ready to put an auto-responder on your forms? Here’s what to do. In the Form Wizard section of Libraries and Tools, click the Manage Forms link. Find the form you want to modify in the list of forms and from the Action menu all the way to the right choose ‘Create Auto-Responder.’ From there you be able to use any of the basic mail creation methods to make the auto-responder (template, webpage, file upload, scratch).

If you have any questions about auto-responders or want to discuss your situation individually, drop me a line at dnielsen@reachmail.com