StrongMail has upgraded the latest version of its flagship email marketing product, Message Studio, now available in version 7.1.
Chief among the changes is a new type of data integration with an ERP system, as well as new testing, optimization, automation and reporting capabilities.
“This is our third release of the year,” Dave Cormier, VP of product marketing at StrongMail, told CRM Buyer. “All of our releases have the overarching theme of enhancing our customers’ ability to reach the right person at the right time. That is the litmus test we use for our upgrades.”
For this particular release, the company focused on providing a unified view of the customer for better targeting and personalization, he said.
Data Integration
One step it took was adding a feature that allows user to directly connect to their existing data at the enterprise level, and then leverage that data in an email marketing campaign.
It is a different way to tap data in the ERP application from traditional integrations — and it’s easier, Cormier said. In traditional integrations, there is extensive importing and exporting of data, oftentimes with IT’s involvement.
“With our enhancement marketers can directly connect to the ERP system,” he noted.
Streamlining Workflows
StrongMail streamlined certain workflows in this upgrade.
“For example, we developed a new A/B testing wizard that makes it simple for marketers to test things like the timing of an offer or a custom line,” explained Cormier.
StrongMail also revamped the transactional email wizard to be more intuitive, he continued. “It can create campaigns that are fully automated — like what to do about an abandoned shopping cart or password reset.”
Enhancements to the life cycle marketing capabilities allow marketers to create multistep, multistage emails that go out over a period of days or weeks. A typical example is sending welcome emails to new customers. The app also allows users to send triggered SMS messages.
Visibility Into Transactions
The upgrade gives marketers visibility into transactional emails, with an eye to creating campaigns to piggyback on them for upselling and cross-selling purposes. Transactional emails typically are confirmation orders; however, StrongMail allows marketers to embed offers in them.
“If you are a retailer, you can confirm an order for a pair of pants and at the same time ask if they want a shirt half-off. If you are a travel agency, you can confirm a flight and ask if the person wants to book a rental car as well,” Cormier said.
The enhanced application includes better reporting functionality with new audience segment trending and composition metrics that can be broken down by list growth, engagement, ISP, length of relationships and other factors.
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