Category Archives: Company News

Company News, Email Marketing, Social Marketing

Social Sharing Links Added to Email-2-Web Pages for All Elite Email Customers

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On Friday we released a new feature in Elite Email, which was requested by many customers. (Thanks for all the feedback, as always it is greatly appreciated!)

When an email gets sent out from Elite Email, our Email-2-Web feature kicks in and creates a web-page version of your message. You can use this URL so that you can link to past emails/newsletters from your website or from future emails. This also comes in handy if you want to show someone a past email without having to actually send them an email.

You can find all of these URLs under the EMAILS tab by clicking EMAIL-2-WEB.

Tip: You can choose to hide or display specific emails so emails that you want to stay private can, of course, stay private.

As for the new feature…

We have added social sharing links to the footer of the page.

This means your contacts (or anyone who you give the Email-2-Web link to) can easily share your email on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Stumble, Reddit, Delicious and just about every other social network you can think of.

Social Sharing Links Added to Email-2-Web

The goal is to help your email become more viral as people share the content they love getting from you, with people in their social network.

In the coming months, we will be adding many more great features to tighten the link between your email marketing and social network activity.

Company News, Email Marketing

Amazing Amount of Positive Feedback

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It has now been a couple of weeks since we pulled back the covers and released Elite Email Phoenix.

During that time we have received a tremendous amount of positive feedback. I knew our customers were passionate about Elite Email, but the amount of people who took precious time out of their day to email or call us to say how happy they are with the new version is the biggest compliment we could have imagined and incredibly inspiring.

It goes without saying that our development team worked very hard on this new version and receiving this type of response is a true confirmation that our efforts were right on target. And, as I mentioned previously, the long list of new features is really the result of all the outstanding feedback we received directly from our customers. So, a big thank you is in order to all our loyal users because had they not been so forthcoming with their ideas we could not have made this new version as feature-rich as we did. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Admittedly there were some glitches that people noticed (despite our extensive testing) and I am grateful for the fact that people reported these to us so we could fix them as quickly as possible.

One bit of feedback that we have heard from many customers is that we have not done enough to showcase all the new features. Of course, if you explore around the program you will see all sorts of new pages and buttons to press, but I do completely agree that more could have been done to really highlight some of the new things you can do to enhance your email marketing. Over the coming weeks I will do my best to showcase some of the new features here on my blog.

Just know that this release was only the first step because we have many more exciting upgrades coming down the pipeline…. Stay tuned and please keep the feedback coming!

Company News, Email Marketing

Gearing Up For The Release of Elite Email Phoenix

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Over the past several years we have been working on a brand new version of Elite Email that is scheduled to start rolling out to our customers tonight.

In my opinion, this new version was truly built by our customers. Over the years we have spent hours upon hours talking to thousands and thousands of customers. We have worked hard to learn their business and to understand how Elite Email fits into their marketing mix. We have listened closely to what they liked, what they didn’t like, and what they felt could help them take their email marketing to the next level.

We compiled all of this feedback and our development team worked tirelessly to build it all into our new state-of-the-art system. I honestly cannot express to you just how grateful I am to all the customers that shared their precious time with us to help build, guide and craft this latest version of Elite Email.

This new version of Elite Email, code named “Phoenix”, contains hundreds of new features, a sleek new interface, faster performance, and a few other surprises that I think our customers will really enjoy. The list of new additions and enhancements is so long that I couldn’t even include it here because then this post will scroll forever. But, I am confident that as our customers explore the new version of Elite Email they will stumble upon all the great new things we have worked hard to bring them in an effort to make Elite Email the best email marketing service provider.

Admittedly, Elite Email Phoenix has taken longer to release than we originally planned. I know many people have been looking forward to it for a long time, and I do apologize for the delay. While I don’t want to make excuses, I can tell you that although we probably could have released it months ago, but we instead chose to keep it in “beta” just a little bit longer so that when we did release it, we could feel confident that it was perfect. Our QA Team and beta testers poked and prodded every nook & cranny of the program to find every bug, kink, and loose end. We know how critical your email marketing is, and internally we set the bar for any of our programs at complete perfection.

While I am personally so incredibly excited to be launching Elite Email Phoenix, I am equally (if not more!) excited to hear the feedback from all of our customers.

Best of all, we have two more big upgrades following just behind, so stay tuned for even more exciting enhancements!

Company News

Massive Server Upgrade Complete at Elite Email

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We have successfully completed a massive upgrade of all of our email servers.

At Elite Email we have dedicated email servers spread out across Canada and the United States so that we can offer our customers the absolute highest level of service with the best email deliverability.

After months of planning and preparation, each one of these servers has been beefed up and is running better than ever before.

To quote Kanye West, our email servers are now BETTER, FASTER, and STRONGER!

Emails will now send out faster, however everything is still tailored to specific ISP limits and guidelines. So, even though we’re eager to push the pedal to the metal we must ensure that we play nicely with others and follow the rules.

But, the good news is that this upgrade makes our sending infrastructure much stronger and all customers should see immediate benefits when sending email.

Company News, Email Marketing

New Feature at Elite Email > Automatically Remove Hard Bounces

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As always, at Elite Email we pride ourselves on offering industry leading deliverability that gets our customers right to the inbox.

We already employ all forms of email authentication including SPF, Sender ID, Domain Keys, and DKIM. In addition to that, we have relationships with major ISPs around the globe and have active feedback loops with any ISP that offers such a service. And, of course, wherever possible, our IPs are whitelisted or on the Trusted Sender list.

But, even with all that, we are always striving to do more and be better. After all, as soon as we sit back on our heels, we risk slipping and we never want that to happen!

One of the issues that really bothers ISPs is when you try to send to a ‘hard bounces’ address over and over again. This shows poor list hygiene and is definitely contrary to best practices.

A hard bounce is usually the result of sending to an email address that does not exist and is permanently undeliverable. So, if you put yourselves in the shoes of an ISP, you can see why receiving multiple attempts over time to a ‘hard bounces’ address is contrary to the high email marketing standards we expect from all Elite Email clients.

Up until this point, our customers have always been able to clear bounces manually. You could simply click the “Clear Bounces” button on your email’s bounce report and everything would be cleaned for you. But, many customers were forgetting to do this, which we totally understand because we know how hectic things can get!

As a result of much customer feedback and the goal of constantly improving delivery, we have released a new feature that automatically removes hard bounces from your mailing list. This feature was released over the weekend and based on preliminary reports is working well.

Keep in mind that we only remove HARD bounces, so soft bounces (which could be ‘mailbox full’ or ‘temporary server error’, etc) are kept on your mailing list unless you manually remove them. This is because there is a chance that when you re-send to a soft bounced email address that it can be successfully delivered.

Stay tuned for more great features to boost your email marketing that we have planned over the coming months!

Company News, Email Marketing

Tucows Launches New Feedback Loop

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Tucows, the third third largest wholesale domain registrar (through its wholesale division known as OpenSRS) has  just launched a new feedback loop program.

Everyone at Elite Email feels this is great news because it allows for much greater and instant communication between mail box providers and ESPs.  With better communication I firmly believe that both the receiver and sender benefit. Tucows joins a long list of other ISPs who provide feedback loops. While many people may not be familiar with Tucows, it is worth noting that it has registered more than 8 million domains and hosts millions of inboxes. 

I’m sure most major ISPs that don’t already operate feedback loops (or “FBL” for those that want to use the cool industry lingo!) will start doing so in the near future.

Company News

Major Upgrades & Enhancements to Elite Email Sending Infrastructure

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I am happy to report that after several days of carefully planned upgrades, we have fully completed the latest round of enhancements to the backend infrastructure of Elite Email.

This upgrade, without getting too technical, puts a ton of new horsepower under the hood of Elite Email!

Emails will now send out faster than ever before (…adhering to ISP guidelines, of course).

This upgrade includes major enhancements to both the underlying hardware at our data centers and also major improvements to the sending software.

During this upgrade we’ve also added several new servers, which increases the stability of our network. In case of network failure, we can now route customer’s emails through different data centers in the USA and Canada.

This upgrade was meticulously planned to ensure almost unnoticeable downtime for our customers so that sensitive email marketing campaigns were always delivered on time.

While all of us at Elite Email are exciting about the upgrades, we also want to thank our loyal customers. It is only because of our tremendous and rapid growth that such upgrades were required and for that we are incredibly grateful.

Company News, Online Marketing, Social Marketing

Sauza Tequila Harnesses The Power of Social Marketing

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Sauza® Tequila has proved once again they are ahead of the curve when it comes to interacting with customers in an exciting, engaging and very Web 2.0 way.

This past week the Social Marketing Division at EliteAnswers.com helped launch a Canada-wide campaign for Sauza Tequila that harnesses the power of two of the most popular social networks: MySpace and Facebook.

The premise of the campaign is that Sauza Tequila (which recently introduced new mango and acai berry flavored tequilas) is looking for Canada’s best DJ in a contest dubbed “Sauza Tequila DJ Mix Off Challenge”.

The contest calls upon DJs across the country to put together their best mix and submit it to a regional and, upon advancement, national judging panel. The semi-finalists will really get to shine when they are invited to perform live at a club in front of a national judge.

The promotion taps into the amazing social marketing power of MySpace, where the DJs are invited to post their submission on the Sauza Tequila wall for all to see. You can view the MySpace page here: http://www.myspace.com/sauzatequila (The French version can be seen here: http://www.myspace.com/sauzatequilaqc)

Sauza already has a booming group of loyal enthusiasts on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2365913470) and those people have not been left out of the mix. Exclusive messages and contest updates have been sent to all members of the group, which further engages them in the conversation with the brand they like.

Sauza really understands how to harness the power of social marketing to engage their customers in an exciting and interactive way that sets them apart from those brands that are stuck to traditional marketing platforms.

Business Blunders, Company News

Why We Beta Test & Where CNN Could Have Used More Testing

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We have been working on a brand new version of EliteEmail.com for a while now. This new version is jam packed with new features that is entirely the result of customer feedback we have received. We always (and I mean always!) listen to our customers and attempt to be as responsive as possible in building the absolute best program possible. People are always asking when this new version will be available and while we have a rough timeline we are reluctant to give an actual date.

This reluctance isn’t because we enjoy keeping secrets or like building suspense, it’s because we need to go through the most rigorous of beta testing to ensure our customers email marketing activities are not interrupted for even a second. The only standard we accept is absolute excellence and while holding the bar that high does lead us to have a long beta testing cycle, we believe that anything less is simply a disservice to our loyal customers.

Last night I was watching CNN and was reassured why beta testing is so important. CNN has lots of new gadgets and graphics for their election coverage, most of which so far have been running fairly smoothly. The folks at CNN seem to have a good handle (as they always have) on how technology enhancements can really spruce up a newscast. Yesterday they showed off a cool new feature on that nifty touch screen they’ve been using lately. With a few taps of the screen, they were able to load Google maps and zoom in to any area of the country to illustrate a particular point. In this case the host (John Roberts) was showing the levies in New Orleans.  After proudly announcing this new feature, which, I must admit, was incredibly off-the-charts cool, Roberts went to switch the touch-screen to show the Republican side of the story. He tapped the screen and there was no response. He tapped again, and nothing…again, nothing, and again. This is on national TV with millions of people watching and all anyone can see is John Roberts tapping the screen to no avail. Finally he knew it wasn’t coming back and tossed it over to Wolf Blitzer for a semi-smooth cover-up. I guess no one at CNN ever tested the new Google Maps feature followed by resetting the screen to the other party. With millions of people watching, they couldn’t have been happy about this glitch, which once again reaffirms why you need to test, test and then test some more before releasing something live.

So, that is exactly what we are doing with our EliteEmail.com, our flagship email marketing program. We test and then we re-test. Then we test even the most obscure scenarios because each customer of ours does their email marketing a little differently and we need to make sure their experience is flawless. We may not achieve perfection and I’ll be the first one to admit that, but that’s where we are setting the bar and we’re not prepared to cut any corners. Ultimately, I believe this philosophy shines through in our program and is something our customers appreciate even if they have to wait a little bit longer.

Company News, Email Marketing

Holiday Email Templates A Huge Success

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A couple of weeks ago we released a brand new template category within EliteEmail.com titled “Holiday”.

I was just reviewing some of the recent template usage metrics and these new templates (obviously fueled by the time of the season) have been a massive success.

It is interesting to see that businesses around the globe of all types, ranging from banks, consultants, restaurants, bands, artists, and more all chose to send out holiday eCards to their contacts. Furthermore, in most cases these messages carried no promotional message whatsoever, and simply wished “happy holidays” and ‘happy New Year”.

This is a wonderful example of how email marketing can help boost your brand image with your customer base, even if you aren’t actually measuring sales conversions as your key email marketing ROI metric for a certain campaign.