All of this changes today. You can now use the exact same email editor that you use to compose your email campaigns to also compose the confirmation and welcome emails to your list.

This means you can personalize your confirmation message, easily provide links to web landing pages, or send a coupon to your customers to thank them for opting in.

This also means that you can use your email templates for these messages as well! To help everyone get started, we have added two new templates that are now available to all accounts: the Email Subscription Confirmation template and the Welcome Email Subscriber template. These new templates are covered in awesome sauce, and make the old default messages look like they fell out of an ugly tree (hitting every branch on the way down, of course). Because of this, these templates will be used by default for new lists with email support enabled.

It’s important to note, that by default, none of your existing confirmation or welcome emails will change. If you were using the old default messages, you will continue to use the old default messages. If you were using custom confirmation or welcome emails, you will continue to use those same emails. However, if you wish to take advantage of these new capabilities, you can! Simply click the Email Settings menu item of your given subscription list to edit your list’s confirmation and welcome emails.

We hope that you’re able to use the capabilities that the email editor brings to confirmation and welcome emails to better engage your customers, and to provide a more personalized experience.

As always, don’t hesitate to hit us up with any questions/comments/concerns at support@signalhq.com.

Move Faster to Beat your Competitors

The concept of speed and surprise  is often found in the Brazilian Ju-Jitsu fighting style. It is a martial arts principle which determines the best way to win a competition when the opponent is larger. This principle removes fear from the equation by teaching that a bigger opponent can be defeated if the smaller, weaker opponent is faster. This concept relies heavily on the element of surprise. Many small businesses can feel backed into a corner or pinned to the ground when competing against larger competitors;  however, with speed and surprise, you can disrupt a market and turn the tables in your favor. Business owners can adopt this principle by being one of the first to launch a new service or product. Instead of being the one to race to catch up, make your large competitors do the scrambling.

A great example of this is how quickly and fiercely Apple changed the cell phone industry.  Not only were they first to market, they delivered a blow so deadly it would take roughly a year for the industry giants to catch up. While other phone makers were playing catchup, Apple was using their efficiency and speed to build new models and features.

Use Efficiencies to Win Customers

The second martial arts principle that all businesses should adopt for their direct marketing strategies is the fighting style Jeet Kune Do. This type of martial arts was made popular by Bruce Lee. It states that an “efficiency” is the best way to outdo an opponent. Jeet Kune Do practice requires utilizing the most simple attack in the shortest amount of time, using the highest amount of force.

A perfect business example of this technique is Dropbox, which was able to penetrate and revolutionize the file-sharing industry by building and marketing  the most-simple features people wanted to employ.  Using Lean Startup principles, and marketing a free 2GB to anyone who signed up, Dropbox went from 100,000 users to over 4,000,000 in just 15 months.  They did this with a small team by focusing on building only what people would use.

Practice and Learn

If you’ve watched any number of martial arts movies, a common thread is that you cannot become an a expert in fighting overnight. The martial arts combat known as Muay Thai takes long hours of constant practice and adjusting your style, until the benefits of work and determination pay off.

The principles of Muay Thai  can certainly be applied to eMarketing.  Many businesses try to rely on the quality of their product or reputation without taking the time to improve upon their actions. This may be successful at first, but eventually your customers will grow weary of a product that isn’t adapting or evolving to trends, behavior and a customers’ needs. Getting this right takes the dedication to observe, listen, learn to what your customers need and make the appropriate changes.

A great example of Muay Thai is Gilt Groupe. Over the years, they have tweaked their email marketing strategy to reach optimal customer engagement. They now send emails at 12:00 PM eastern (lunch for east coasters, first thing in the morning for west coasters), and align each message with the buyer’s shopping preferences. They also listen to customer concerns about returns, and shipping fees and make changes to increase customer satisfaction. Email marketing is not just blasting people with content, it’s sending the right content to the right people at the right time to increase sales conversions.

These are just a few examples of how some key martial art disciplines can help your business create successful marketing campaigns. Remember, Bruce Lee only became successful after adopting wisdom, willpower and determination against his opponents. Bye-yah!

“Lots of people think simplicity is the opposite of confusion… It’s not. The opposite of confusion is clarity.”

- Jason Fried, What Clarity is All About

“…most value is realized not from breakthroughs but rather from thousands of tweaks and implementations that build on original work.”

- Jakob Nielsen, A/B Testing, Usability Engineering, Radical Innovation: What Pays Best?

A few months ago we designated Fridays for squashing known bugs and rooting out usability problems. The whole team sits together during lunch and performs common tasks in the app (such as setting up a new account and creating a list) to identify pain points and areas for improvement.

These Fridays have been enormously useful, and led directly to several updates that we’ve recently pushed out the door:

Keywords? Short codes?
Keywords and short codes are still head-scratching concepts to a lot of people. We knew we could do a better job explaining what they do (they let people opt in to your list):

But words only go so far. An illustration of the process seemed in order:

I’ve got my list, now what?
Our lists come packed with functionality that helps you find and reward new subscribers. By playing up a few key features and linking to help content on the ‘new list’ view, we’re able to help you take full advantage of the tools at your disposal:

How do I retweet/reply to this tweet?
This one was a gimme. We used to hide these commonly used functions in a dropdown. Now they’re front and center, as you’d expect them to be. We’ve also added the ability to quote a tweet (alongside the existing option to immediately retweet it).

Fluid design and mobile optimization

Gone is our fixed layout, giving your stats and reporting tables more room to breathe on wider monitors. We’ve also spent a lot of time optimizing key functionality for your smartphone. Now you can do just about everything in Signal in a mobile browser (though we’re still pondering how best to send HTML emails).

A (hopefully) never-ending process
Most of these were quick projects, and we had to carve out time from larger initiatives to get these done. But this kind of iterative detail work is as important as the dashboard redesigns of the world.

Yes, we are redesigning our dashboard. Want a sneak peek?

Help out!
If you’ve got 45 minutes, why not participate in one of our user tests? During these guided sessions, you’ll view mockups of proposed functionality or use the app itself to help us evaluate new concepts and address our existing pain points. We’re seeking both customers and people who’ve never used Signal. I believe that’s you in either case.

To sign up, use our handy (Signal created) opt in form, or text USERTEST to 75309 (which is the best short code ever).

At the tail end of last year we were running version 2.3 of the framework, released nearly two years earlier. We knew that a lot had changed with the 3.0 version (the biggest release to date), and that the upgrade would be a significant amount of work. We also knew that this upgrade would provide improved application stability, performance improvements, increased developer productivity and a bundle of new feature to take advantage of. To add, many of the open source plugins and gems (code libraries) we use were also abandoning support for Rails 2.x, which would potentially leave us stuck with older, buggy, unmaintained versions of these libraries. It was clear there was obvious upside to upgrading, and after five years of building Signal we also were excited to spend time removing and rewriting some old code that was weighing us down. Win all around.

We chose to kick this effort off at the beginning of January and estimated that it’d take us three months to work through all of the project tasks. We thought it made sense to slot this ahead of any new feature development and enhancements since we’d likely have to rewrite any of that new code to work with the new version of Rails.

Q: How many people does it take to upgrade and application Ruby on Rails 3.2?
A:

It’s true, this puppy wiped out our whole team. It was a huge effort.

We wrapped up all development and testing tasks at the end of March and successfully deployed the upgrade to production earlier this month. With the whole team stepping up to help with the project, I really felt like we did a good job finding, fixing, resolving and closing bugs in a timely manner. Customers are now experiencing the benefits of a cleaner, faster Signal, and also able to take advantage of some design improvements to aid in usability including mobile optimization throughout product.

Now that we (thankfully) have this project out of the way, we’re focusing on the next set of features and enhancements that will add a ton of value for customers…things like a redesigned dashboard, introduction of true CRM style contact management and a series of projects to improve analytics and reporting. We’ve also taken an opportunity to take a step back and put rework how we plan, prioritize and execute product development efforts. Lots of good mojo going right now!

Mobile Messaging in North America: A Fresh Look at Current Options for Marketers

We hope you find it a quick, valuable read.

In it, Eridon points out that SMS marketing works best when integrated with other digital marketing channels as opposed to being used alone for lead generation.

“[SMS] is most successful when it’s leveraged for its superpower … a real-time, interactive method of communication that’s promoted through an integrated marketing campaign leveraging social media, email marketing, landing pages, and more.”

Adding SMS to your cross-channel mix can provide remarkable results for businesses who do it right, but a lazy approach may do more damage than help. Eridon highlights that the intimacy of receiving text messages means SMS marketing deserves solid attention to detail and care when planning campaigns.

“Executing a proper SMS campaign takes just as much work as a proper email campaign — you have to generate your opt-in mobile list (that’s right, no purchasing lists, folks!), collect enough information about the folks on that list to properly segment them and target your communications effectively, and experiment with communication frequency to achieve the right level of engagement with your audience — because if any of that is just a little bit off in this highly personal form of communication, you brand won’t win many fans”

Follow the link to read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32433/When-SMS-Text-Messaging-Actually-Makes-Sense-for-Marketers.aspx#ixzz1smtyaXMR

We will tweet progress of the maintenance on our support twitter account. Please follow that user if you want the latest information.

If you weren’t already aware, we offer a live chat feature to anyone who visits our website and wants to get some real time info about our product and services.  I tend to be logged into this chat tool (provided by the fine people at Olark) a fair amount throughout the day.  I enjoy helping solve our customers problems and helping prospective customers learn more about what we do.

Last night, I was involved in a very different kind of chat.  At first, it seemed like a common question that we get from consumers who find us when they need support related to a text message campaign or service offered by one of our customers.  This person was trying to text in a keyword to what appeared to be one of our short codes but was getting an error.

When I asked this person what type of text message service they were trying to participate in, it became immediately clear that this was a young person reaching out for help.  This young person was attempting to use a text chat service for child abuse victims or teens who were in crisis.  Unfortunately, I was able to quickly tell that the service they were looking for wasn’t one provided by one of our customers, but most likely one based in Ireland, which would not work here in the U.S.

I’ll be honest – I was in a mild state of panic.  This person was in crisis and I was in a position to help them, yet I worried that I may say or do something that would do more harm than good.  My colleague Jaime quickly stepped up and scoured the web for hotlines and other online resources to provide this person so they could get the help they needed immediately.  I did my best to relay this info over chat and, in the end, I genuinely think this person left the conversation feeling like they had options to find the help they needed.  I believe we did the best we could.

Even so, I was unsatisfied.  I could tell that this person felt most comfortable communicating via text and that calling a hotline was not their preference.  I figured there had to be a service like the one provided in Ireland.

Turns out, such a service not only existed, but we were powering it.

One of our customers, Educational Message Services, uses our text message capabilities to offer a service that connects people in need to counselors and other professionals that can help.  They help provide a text message option for crisis support, reporting bullies and assistance for victims of sexual assault.  In addition, they power other useful services like help for expectant mothers, people trying to quit smoking or to provide news in areas that have experienced a natural disaster, like the service we power for National Grid.

It’s so simple to use a service like this.  To reach their crisis line, you simply text ANSWER to 839863 and a counselor immediately responds with an offer to help, or simply listen.  The service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and is totally confidential.

It can be hard to pick up the phone and verbalize such deep, personal emotions.  Traditional hotlines are also not ideal for the hearing or speech impaired.  It’s a relief to know that such services exist and is also a tremendous point of pride now for our team to know that we play a part in it.  While it’s easy to think about text message marketing as a tool to help brands and businesses reach consumers, the reality is that it’s simply a way to connect people.  This is exactly why we love what we do.

Finally, a personal favor.  As my story demonstrates, awareness of text message services such as these is far too low.  Please take just a moment to share this with friends, family & colleagues and help spread the word.  I want the next kid in trouble to know exactly how they can find help.

While dust collects in my email inbox, I’ve been able to find my fix with some new friends who text me offers and send push notifications to my mobile phone. These friends know that my phone is always with me and it vibrates to show me every message they send. This led me to ponder the effectiveness of SMS marketing messages vs other methods of marketing and advertising. Certainly, I can’t be the only one who is more likely to respond to texts vs email.

Thankfully, I happen to work at Signal, and with our 500mm+ text messages sent to date, I have the perfect database of response metrics to help answer these questions. I analyzed a random sample of text messages sent via Signal that included a URL, with the goal of compiling benchmark stats on click-through rates (CTR) to not only satisfy my curiosity, but also to help our customers understand if their campaigns are below, at or above the industry average. Here’s what I discovered based upon a random sample of 20 large scale messaging campaigns.

The average CTR across all of these text messaging campaigns was 6.16%. Compare that to email marketing campaigns, which average a CTR of 2.8%. The comparison looks even more favorable when stacked up against CTRs for Facebook ads (0.051%), display/banner ads (0.09%), and pay-per-click ads (2.36% for Google Adwords, 1.61% for Yahoo!/Bing search ads).

It’s clear that SMS’ intimacy has something to do with the increase in CTR. It’s incredibly easy, and natural, to reach for your phone every time it chimes or vibrates the news that you have new text .

As such, marketers who include text message offers and content in their marketing mix have a clear competitive advantage. These engagement levels may not last forever, as SMS inboxes may reach the same saturation levels of email in the future. The time to act is now.

While I admit the sample size was small, it’s clear that engagement rates at this level indicate consumers’ willingness to interact with brands via SMS signaling a huge opportunity for marketers. By incorporating text and push notification offers to existing email & ad campaigns, retailers will have increased opportunities to drive conversions and/or store visits. Brick and mortar retailers can deliver messages to individuals right when they are in store or near one. Make text message offers your MVP of 2012.

Data Sources:
Mobile Benchmarks: Signal
Email benchmarks: Epsilon Q2, 2011 North America Email Trends
PPC Benchmarks:  Emarketer.com
Facebook Benchmarks: Webtrends Facebook Advertising Performance Benchmarks
Display Ad Benchmarks: Jonsteinberg.com