i wrote some software to interface with w4.com's 'api' they offer. it will do the following: grab all campaigns and information added to your account, store them in a mysql table. grab all email creatives [subjects,froms,body], storing them in html/text and mysql table. grab all suppression files and store them by campaignid.zip depending on the mailer you use, it can be modified to insert the creatives and save the images wherever you need them. if anyone is interested, let me know.. i'll package it up.
Or unless you don't feel like scouring the networks page/s wasting your time with pointless repetitive actions to get the essentials that you need to mail an offer. What do you mean, you never mail network creatives? There's standards and compliance you need to abide by, unless you're getting your new creatives approved. I'd like to check that little package out.
I assume that's what SG meant. If there's one main lesson to learn from this thread to help you - it's never, EVER, and I mean NEVER, use any network's standard FROM/SUBJECTS/BODY or you don't stand a chance with the filters and the other 1000 mailers who are cluelessly using them. Obviously you need to do extra work here and come up with your own and get them pre-approved, and obviously it makes no sense to do this unless you're working on an offer with a proven track record from internal tests or something your AM says is killing it. In terms of HTML creatives, etc. crop the image so it isnt exactly their height/width, even shaving it 1x1 on the height and width will help make your image more unique than the others currently being mailed, and gives you your own unique fingerprint. If you have the time and want to go the extra mile, color replace and play with the RGB values so the color hues change, which wont be visible to the naked eye but will change the entire hash fingerprint as well.
i did it mostly for grabbing suppression lists and having a good starting point to mass test offers..as far as image stuff goes i have a cluster of gearman workers automagically generating unique images from a source.
2 great points by roundy, and most network creatives suck anyway, but even if they are great the filters will rape you because not only are those the most commonly mailed, but they are the creatives / subjects that the noobs will not only mail, but get flagged with. 2nd point about the images, not sure how important other people realize this is, it seriously makes a huge difference. My system actually changes the image hash of every image in the email for every broadcast, especially helpful for your unsub images. Not bad to change the names too using a file full of words you can find on a dictionary site. On another note, what nick is offering can help you, if nothing else you can pull all suppression files in automatically with a little scripting, and even tho you shouldn't mail the exact creatives, to pull them all in to a system without having to click thru every page is huge. So nick I'd love to download that if you are offering it for free, and quick question, they have a 2nd api that this is for? Like their stats are pulled from their affiliate software, think the name is "has offers", this is not that right? Thanks.
We mail images and advocate mailing HTML/MIME as a standard once your IPs have been warmed up properly. After testing the difference between text/HTML the results were pretty clear cut. Now we're all for mailing a good text creative from time to time but we find that HTML/MIME is the winner. And when done right doesn't affect delivery and rev goes up...not sure I see much sense in NOT taking a little time to do this. afcpmc - ping me today - I've got an idea for us. :147:
This sounds like a waste, no? Whats the point of setting up HTML in your body, which alone makes delivery harder, if you aren't going to put images in?
I have a way to get images to display without the user having to click enable images for yahoo/aol/hotmail webmail... So I guess it's more of a limitation of your software?
Images have good and bad qualities, being blocked by default is certainly a pain in the ass, but if you put a good sentence in at the top to "view the online version" and alot of people click that out of curiousity, and it goes to the offer page. What is amazing about images tho is that not only can you make the creative look better you can say ANYTHING in them. You can say FREE FREE FREE LIMITED TIME TRIAL OFFER!!!!!!!!!!!! and the filters have no idea what you just said. I guess it depends on how well you write your text creatives, there is plenty of ways around the filtering, but it either limits you sometimes on what you can say or makes you look retarded spelling things wrong to get them passed. I have tried using only images with that 1 sentence at the top, that doesn't work either tho. Keep in mind the spam filters spend about a billion dollars a year on writing stuff to detect our tricks, if we thought of it, they probably have already or will soon. I've found, again programmers opinion (not as much of a mailer as the big guys here) that finding a mix works the best, try to write like you would any normal email you send, its possible you might send a friend an email with 2-3 images in it, but not usually without any content at all. So if you plan it out to make your unsub an image, text for everything safe to say, and then maybe an image somewhere in there to say stuff you have trouble getting past filters like the word "free" etc. Think like they do, look at your creative and think, how much like a normal conversation or even a real newsletter does this look like? Being tricky is good if it actually works, but if they think you are being tricky at all, your rep will go down fast. Nick I know the trick you are talking about, its actually pretty dam good too, but (you probably know this already) you have to be smart about it, can't make the file size of the message too big and sometimes their virus software tags it for having an attachment. Even tho its not an attachment, it is treated as one. Little small images like that seem to be awesome tho, i make the unsub image a normal http image (since I don't care if they block it) and have been beta testing different sized attached images. And Push and Round are both completely right, its worth the time for sure, if you are tracking opens you already have an image in there, so why not make another one to tripple your click through rate when its shown? Might not be tripple, but its always a lot higher when they see an image, and when they dont trust the source to unblock images, their curiousity will make them click the view online link more often. I also do, and recommend this to try for the rest of you, use an image for the unsub and track based off of that image, instead of putting a 1 pixel image in. Again, think like the filters do .... 1 pixel image instantly tells me as a programmer reading content with a script that it is a tracking image, no doubt about it. Do you send tracking pixels to your friends when you email them? (hope not lol). You instantly are assumed to be in marketing of some kind. But the unsub image could just as easily be a company logo or footer like Push has in his forum footer, so as a filter I couldn't instantly assume its an unsub. its all relative tho, there is no right answer. People become so insistant (including myself) on what works because they have seen it work for them, and think they nailed how it works. Its the combination of a ton of factors (including luck at times), so doing half of my, or push, or round's plan might be horrible for you if the other half of your plan is totally different from ours. SG - I always enjoy and learn from your advice, but seriously disagree with "a waste of time" having a script dynamically change the hash of every image in every broadcast, took like a day to make, and I tested the uniqueness of my system's images a few times, on average it takes the creation of about 1000 images to make 1 dup (and I can still improve this more). And if you are rotating the source image too, the filters will almost never have a hash in their database of that image ever being seen before, and if they do, it would be at such a low volume they wouldn't even care to block it. Push will ping you later today or tomorrow afternoon at the latest
Good stuff afc. The biggest mistake I see mailers making with HTML templates is not doing them in multipart, and not including a "real" text version of the image template. You might think "Yeah but the text defeats the purpose, I can't say the word FREE". While this is true, you get more "benefits' to a properly structured template and your delivery will show it.
I assume he is referring to HTML Lite. It's pretty standard and a lot of guys prefer it. A tweaked HTML Lite will do very well, especially if you are mailing bizopps, surveys and even email submits. It also varies on domains... AOL is better to send an image heavy creative. There are so many variables with creatives types and methods that I don't think there really is a wrong way. The most important part is getting delivery. I do agree with Roundy though, don't use exactly what is in the networks... just make sure you aren't misleading and that you get approval for any changes. Now anyone mailing out of a Cake network, there are a ton of APIs that you can use to do about anything - pull creatives, supps, stats, etc. When you login its the "Reporting API" button in the top header. Click that and all of the different APIs with instructions are there.
sorry I don't mean to jump in here and self promote but AboveAllOffers is sitting here ready for your business with a full server farmed API that supports that ALL of the mailing requirements including supp, optout, froms/subjects, creatives. Every single mailing offer (700+) has multiple custom written creatives, hand made by a seasoned mailer and supervised by myself. As well as custom written and approved subject lines so there's no duplicates or overused ones and they're only subject lines I would use in my mailing. We mail every single creative and offer in our network every day and are constantly making adjustments to all of them to make the lower performing ones better all the time. If W4 wanted your business why don't they just build all that for you rather than of making you figure it out; Then not even give you the stuff you need to mail these offers correctly? Sounds to me that should be their job not yours. So why all the hub-bub?
