SENDING AND SETTING UP , CONTENT AND USERS IN LAMP- 360

Transcription

1 SENDING AND SETTING UP , CONTENT AND USERS IN LAMP- 360 Prepared by: Chris Kelly Customer Support LAMP-360 September 2014

2 CONTENTS 1. Introduction Quick Start Setting up users Set up Send Blast Campaign Stream/Step Sending an Intro The template definition Links and Automatic links Streams and Steps Step definition Fire and Test Fire Content & Landing pages Creating Content Definition Type Rules for Contacts who complete the form Responses, Registers, engagement and posts Content Publishing to Social Media Campaign and reporting Setting up in LAMP Introduction Types Campaign or System for alerts and default campaign s Campaign for your marketing s by Division Personal used for s to your contacts Set up Set up System addresses Set up Campaign addresses Set up: Personal account addresses Signatures Divisional Signatures and Campaign s... 22

3 5.6. templates set up Deliverability (intermediate) Message Sent / attempted Delivered Viewed message Click thru Contacts and New Leads Created Opportunities Bounces & spam Hard Bounce Spam reports & repeat spam reports Invalid Blocks Deferrals Drops Opted out / Unsubscribes Volumes and IP addresses (advanced) notes Throttling (advanced) What Is Throttling? What can cause a deferral? Warming up IP Warming Up an IP Address What does it actually mean to warm up an IP address? Reputation. Does my IP need to be warmed up? And if so, why? How does one go about warming up an IP? What does it entail in terms of volume, time frame, etc? For marketing & marketing campaigns For transactional What does LAMP do to prepare its IPs for their customers? Please review our various terms of service here for full details Queue Setting up Users in LAMP Intro Users Roles for permissions... 30

4 Divisions and Divisional Teams Signatures and campaigns Passwords... 33

5 1. INTRODUCTION This guide commences with a Quick Start to sending an in LAMP-360. Section 3 then describe the process of sending an , as either a simple blast or as part of a Campaign Stream. Section 4 describes setting up Content as this is often an integral part of an Campaign. Section 5 describes setting up handling in LAMP, some of the other features and background to including deliverability and authentication Section 6 is related and describes setting up users, their accounts and signatures and working with multiple Divisions.

6 2. QUICK START This page describes the basic steps to send out an Setting up users You can just use the default user, otherwise set up any new users you require. However, note your main/default/admin user can have multiple addresses. o Go to Admin / Users to set up users o To set up accounts, other than h default and signatures, go to Activities / s. o Click Settings icon and set up signatures and use Mil Settings to set up incoming and outgoing servers. o Go to Activities / s and set up new send and receive (IMAP or Pop) if not using the default system account already set up. To use LAMP sending infrastructure you will need the appropriate credentials Set up Go to Marketing / Templates Create template o Give name description o Subject o Category o body Choose any associated Content required if an automatic link is being used The signature automatically is pulled through from the Divisional settings. If its balnk enter it at the bottom of the body field Choose to include the Link to content for an automatic link to be inserted after the body, but before the signature Choose whether to include the unsubscribe link and its font and size We assume you already have data loaded and a Target Group set up 2.3. Send Blast Edit your chosen template Choose the target group(s) the No. of records then shows Set the Schedule date and time Save the template and the record is scheduled review in the Campaign s Queue sub tab Campaign Stream/Step Go to the appropriate Campaign and click to access the Status view. Click on Streams sub tab. Edit the stream if necessary: o Set Fire time to send the o Check or select the Target Group(s) Save the Stream Click on the Stream name to enter the stream detail view Create or edit the Step o Select the Template in the Step o Link to Content if required (selected automatically) o Save the Step o Check or set the days from Pre Step field

7 Return to Campaign status, check the Queue sub tab to ensure the s scheduled look correct Wait till fire time or press Test Fire to test and then Fire when you are ready to go

8 3. SENDING AN Intro The basic set up to send an is already done for you when you receive your LAMP instance. However, section 5 goes into detail on some of the more detailed and advanced options of setting up accounts. This section gives an introduction to the basics of sending an . Context normally a marketing intended to generate leads will have a clear Call To Action (CTA). This is the action you want your reader to take, such as register for a seminar or download a whitepaper. In order to incentivise the user to make the CTA you often need to give him some information or an offer. In the case of LAMP this can often be to access Content you store in LAMP. Therefore most s should be focused on this objective and provide a link to the content to enable the user to undertake the CTA. When clicking on the CTA the user generally goes to a Landing Page where the user is converted into a lead or campaign interaction. This section discusses the set up steps to send an that links to a Landing page and creates a lead in one unified process. Landing Pages are associated with Content and are managed by LAMP in the Content module. Note: To send s you just need to click on an address in a Contact record and complete the sending dialogue The template definition WalkMes: template creation Go to Marketing / templates and you will see a list of existing templates. In a new instance there will be usually one demo template to review. Create a new template or edit the existing. Note you can also press the test button alongside a template to immediate send yourself a test copy of the template to check its formatting. The List View also shows the number of s that have been sent as well as opens and click statistics. Most of the fields here are self-explanatory. The fields need to be filled in and then saved to set up your template. The key fields are: Name and description internal LAMP fields for finding the template in LAMP Category there are 4 types of in LAMP: System for system notifications like assignment or creation absence a new lead Auto-responder for use in immediately responding to a landing page registration for personal s sent manually Stream and Step for the main Campaign Stream s sent by the system to Target Groups Blast for immediate blasts Choose the most appropriate type for your template. The key fields are: Select content: this is the default content that is set when a Step is defined, see: 3.4 Subject this important field is the subject line your recipients will see in their client. Body this is where the main part of the goes. You can use LAMP s WYSIWIG editor here, or click on html and edit or paste in html you have created or copied from elsewhere. Use either method to layout and format your as you require. Tables and images can be inserted to obtain a professional layout.

9 Note: for early stage (top of funnel) marketing s, often simple text will suffice with only a small image in a signature. You can include signatures, links and unsubscribe buttons however, LAMP typically will do this for you automatically. See below and section Insert variable this set of fields allows you to insert data from the LAMP contact database in order to personalise the . A field like $contact_first_name will be substituted with the Contact s first name, so that Dear $contact_first_name becomes Dear Fred. Include Link to content this check box enables the link to the landing page to be added in consistently and automatically by LAMP. If your template includes a CTA that goes to a Landing Page associated with Content then choose this option.

10 Include unsubscribe if checked an unsubscribe link is included at the bottom of the . The font family and font size determine its font. Lead scoring fields there are two, one for View and one for Open. These assign simple numeric scores to the Contact record for taking the associated actions. Finally, you can send a test to an address and set up an attachment. Note: attachments are more likely to get s trapped in corporate spam filters Links and Automatic links There are several ways to set up links to content or URLs in an . Note: links are mostly associated with your s CTA and will often go to a dedicated Landing Page. This is preferable to a generic web site or home page. There are three ways to set up links in LAMP: Manual highlight the text or image to be the link and use the link icon in the editor tool bar to add in a link to an external URL at any point in the body text. To link manually to one of LAMP s Landing Pages, go to the Content and click on its Landing Page URL and copy this as the URL. Semi - Automatic link to Content your can be associated to a piece of Content in LAMP-360, like a webinar or whitepaper. This association is set up in the template (Select Content). Insert an html link using the editor with a URL destination of $collateral without the quotes. This $collateral variable will be substituted with the link to the associated Content piece s Landing Page. This means you don t have to search for the URL of the Landing Page. Fully Automatic link to content check the box Include link to content. This achieves the following if selected: The sending address is selected automatically according to the Divisional and Campaign settings (see section 5.3.2) The template s body field should only contain the main body of the . LAMP automatically appends the following after the body: o Link: if Content is selected in the template or in the Stream, alongside the template, then the text link to and the Content is included. i.e. Link to Whitepaper o Signature: the Campaign senders signature set up in the Division in step 5.5 is then included Compliance with spamming and sending laws is aided if a complete signature and unsubscribe link is provided As Content is usually the focus of s, the demand generation process will often start with creating Content then its associated . Content can be stored in LAMP or LAMP can just store the link to external content like a YouTube video. In either case LAMP can provide the necessary Landing Page Streams and Steps WalkMes: Streams: for sending s, Adding Steps to a Stream In a Campaign, the template set up above will be used to send an to all the Contacts in a Target Group where they are not unsubscribed or previously bounced. The Stream and the Step is where you link the template to the Target Group and optionally some Content.

11 Note: Streams must be set up and edited from the Streams tab of a Campaign. A Campaign can have multiple Streams. See the WalkMe and search for help on Streams for further information on Streams. In the Campaign s Stream subtab, edit the Stream: Start date and time: You select what start date and time you want the to start going out. Target Group: In the Stream you select which Target Group(s) are to be sent the . If you select a large Target Group of say 10,000 s (LAMP-360 can handle much larger) then LAMP will normally spread the sending out throughout the day. It s possible some will go the next day depending on volumes and the state of the Queue. Large Target groups will take several minutes to set up and save, before they appear in the Q, but this happens in the background so you can save the Stream and do other work. Optionally you can select: Throttles daily an hourly the list will be sent according to these rules. These rules are defined in a hierarchical fashion at Divisional/Project and Stream level. Also tat the Division/Project and Campaign level you can specify what hour the s are sent out between. The default is 7am to 10pm. streams are sent out approximately once per hour and therefore there are 15 sending slots in the default setting. A Target group of s with a limit of 50 per hour will send 15*50 on day 1 assuming the first send is 7am and the remainder will be sent hourly the next day. Streams are normally forward from a given date. However they can be Reverse streams 1 so the days are from a given date this is particularly useful for events, running on a fixed date Step definition The Step consist of just a few key fields you need to set up: 1 Available version 4.1 anticipated Q4 2014

12 Select the template already set up in Step 1.2 above. Optionally you can create a new template here. Select Content: If the template is associated with a piece of Content (see 3.2) this will automatically be selected. Either accept this choice or select another item of content. Content selection can be left blank, in this case no automatic links will work. Set the Days from Pre Step. Steps in a Stream are usually sent with a given number of days between them. This allows s campaign to stop being single blasts and become more relevant nurture and awareness campaigns. LAMP provides automation and rules so that s can be triggered and prospects obtain the s relevant to their position in their buying cycle. See further information in the help on Streams and Steps Fire and Test Fire We have Test Target Groups because in the Project settings there is a variable called days. This is short for thee number of days between repeat sends. If A is sent to a Contact today and again in 90 days. Unless the days value is less than 90 the 2snd will not go out. This avoids inadvertently sending repeat s. The default value of days is 180. NB So if you test with a default target Group, once the has gone once, it won t go again and the stream test will appear not to work. So please use Test target Groups. The Test Fire button allows you to fire the Stream/Step so that test s go out. The test s are defined in a Test type of Target Group. The Fire button allows you to prematurely set off a campaign if it is ready to go earlier than you expected. Even if the Stream s start date is tomorrow the first step will go now when you press Fire. Be careful! If you press fire again it will also force the 2 nd Step if there is one.

13 4. CONTENT & LANDING PAGES WalkMes: Content creation and management, Content Part 2 Publishing on Social Media LAMP allows you to define Content in the Marketing/Content menu. This Content allows you to easily create associated Landing Pages to obtain registrations from your users who attempt to access your content via the Landing Page (LP). An LP is essentially a web page designed to cause a registration (conversion) and hence generate a lead the start of the sales process. Visitors to an LP can access the page in several ways: From Social Media (automatic in LAMP) From a link on any web site use the Content s Landing Page url From a LAMP Campaign automatic in which case the registration form will also be pre-filled. Once the LP is set up you can link to it automatically from your LAMP campaign s. See section Landing Pages are the main way to generate / capture leads but only work if you have good quality content. If you are linking to third part content such as a blog article or video, you should choose the landing page to be un-gated and therefore invisible to the user Creating Content There are three main sections to setting up Content; the definition, the Type of Content and the Rules.

14 Definition When you create a piece of Content the first Tab is the Content tab: Key fields and points are: Content Name the name of the post also used as the post for Twitter Image for Social Media here an image can be selected or uploaded. The image is just used to create the post in social media. Some postings will not work without the image being present. Description for post or LP this is an optional field. But any text/html entered here can be copied on the other tabs to make the set up quicker. Normally you would enter the description of the piece of content. It can be simple text or formatted html Select Web Forms select which web form you wish to use. Each form can have different fields and a different number of fields on it. Use the default or go to Project Setup / Web Forms to set up a new one. LP Form Position - is the form at the top, bottom, right of left of the page Form Button the text for the form submission button ie Register LP Form title - the form title Hide LP Title does the title show Persona, Themes, Topics you can define which of these the content is associated with

15 Tags, Contributors, Sources you can also relate the content to these items Type There are currently 3 main types of content: Whitepaper, Seminar Events, Media item Each type has a similar layout with minor variants: Key fields: Select check the box to inidicate the LP s type Title this should pull through from the Content name, but can be entered manually Copy from Description copies the text/html from the text on the Description field of the Content tab

16 Abstract / Landing Page text this is where the description is. This layout will form the body of the Landing Page Confirmation text after the form is submitted the user can go to either a page containing the confirmation page (the 2 nd landing page) Select confirmation text checking this box makes the 2 nd step the text above URL if the box above is not checked the user goes to this URL; after the form is submitted Rules for Contacts who complete the form The top two thirds of the screen define how any new Contact created in the system is handled. New Contacts are created if a person submits a form Grading, focus, relationship, lead source default values set Stream which Stream a Contact should be placed in now, for future handling Add to Target Group which target group shall the Contact be added to. Add Tags for any Contact completing the form, a list of Tags to be added to their record Contact Sales Rep which rep the Contact is assigned to Relates to Buying Status which stage in the buying cycle is the Contact associated with Lead Score the number of points for accessing this content At the bottom of the screen some general handling characteristics of the page are defined: Captcha does the form contain a captcha element to avoid spam bots Gated Y/N if the LP is not gated, it will not show and the user will go direct to the ned URL destination or item of content without having to register. The process is still tracked however Registration Form LP if the form is not gated you get a visit and if this box checked, you get a visit and a registration Alerts and templates set whether to alert the owner of the lead (the sales rep or the content owner about the registration for rapid follow up

17 Responses, Registers, engagement and posts At the bottom of the piece of Content are several sub tabs: The tabs show response and registrations as well as scheduled and post history as well as engagement Content Publishing to Social Media Once a piece of Content has been defined a new tab appears at the top of a piece of Content: Social Publishing: You can currently post to Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter. When a post is made the post appears at the scheduled times on the social profile. The link in the post is set automatically to go back to the Content s landing page. This way the Content cn be tracked with visitors and registrations by sources; , web links or social media (along with which profile). The key fields are: Title copied from the content title Post The body of the post copied form the Content s description Publish now on save, publish this post to the selected profiles Publish later date / time set a date and time when you want to post to go at a future date Green add new button you can schedule multiple posts per profile, each future post will allow a different post content and time

18 Profiles these are set up in Project Setup / Social Media and LAMP allows you to have multiple profiles to post to. Each profile is specific to a Division Campaign and reporting Look at the List Views of Campaigns, templates and Content to get detailed statistics on the success of your Campaigns. See also section 5.7. You can also click directly on a Landing Page for each piece of Content.

19 5. SETTING UP IN LAMP 5.1. Introduction The simple is in fact quite a complicated architecture behind the scenes to ensure the best chance of your s being delivered. There are also several types of and there is usually some set up required to get the best out of LAMP. Please note, as you receive LAMP, freshly provisioned it should be able to send Campaign and personal s from the admin/system account. However, we strongly recommend reading this guide and understanding the details. This guide has some sections marked intermediate or advanced. We recommend you read all the unmarked sections and if you have time the intermediate and advanced Types There are three types of sending in LAMP-360: Campaign or System for alerts and default campaign s In the Admin section of LAMP you can enter the settings screen. When a LAMP system is provisioned for you this is normally set up with the address that you subscribed to LAMP with. This is set up to use LAMPs sending infrastructure designed for high performance and deliverability. Any internal alerts will use this and by default the Campaign sending (see next section ) will be set to this unless its changed Campaign for your marketing s by Division One of the main features of LAMP is sending out volumes of s as part of your outbound marketing and lead nurturing campaigns. By default the mail default system described in above is used to send s by the LAMP system. However, this is not always suitable especially if you use multiple Divisions to represent different divisions / clients or personas in the market. LAMP allows you to associate a default Campaign sending with each Division Personal used for s to your contacts You can set up s that you use to send personal s to your contacts. These are set manually in the pop up. Anywhere in LAMP-360 that you see an address you can click on it and send an to the user. You can use the personal pop up to send s as the default account which is the System/Admin account (unless your administrator has made this not available for users). Please note, multiple s accounts can be set up for each user of LAMP, which along with the system s means LAMP can hold details on lots of accounts.

20 5.3. Set up Set up System addresses You need to be a user with Administrator privileges, the system should already be set up with your account when it is provisioned. Login and go to Admin page. Select Settings. Fill out the account settings for your default Campaign / System account. Test to check its working and save Set up Campaign addresses Campaign accounts are set up in the same way as personal accounts below (5.3.3). In step 5.5 you can associate the account and its signature with a Division so that all of the Campaigns in that Division will use this setting Set up: Personal account addresses Click on Sales / s. Click on Settings / Accounts The following screen appears:

21 There are two sections to complete, potentially: Mail Accounts this allows you to receive your s into LAMP and it acts as an inbound client. You may also use Outlook or Gmail etc. and LAMP will duplicate whatever s you receive there. The advantage of this is you can then relate s to particular LAMP contacts. Related s will then appear in a Contacts Activities Subtab. Outgoing SMTP allowing you to send s. The default account is already set up on provisioning which is your default sending account using our infrastructure called system or LAMP SendGrid. You will normally want to send your outbound s from your existing account, this is normally an SMTP POP or IMAP account. Click on each of the options to set up new inbound and outbound accounts. The settings will normally be the ones your client or ISP provides. For instance in Outlook click on Account Settings to see your existing settings. Some defaults are set by the system for popular accounts like Gmail. If you wish to continue to receive s into say your Outlook or Gmail client, you do not need to set anything up here for inbound accounts. If you set your account up for sending in LAMP then LAMP s will appear in and go through/use your existing accounts - this means s will have your usual name and address. There are also add ins for LAMP that allow you to integrate and synchronize outlook and Exchange servers with your Signatures In LAMP you can also set up any number of signatures, though you will normally only have one per account. Click Activities / s. Click on the Settings gear icon. Click on the Create or Edit signatures and complete the simple form. This signature will also be selectable in other places like when setting up the Campaign s.

22 The dialog above appears whenever you set up a personal account Divisional Signatures and Campaign s Campaign s are set either as the default system (see 5.2.1) or can be set by Division. To set s by Division, go to the detail view of your selected Division. There is a button in the subtab, labelled Choose one team member., click on this and the form appears in which you can select a user, choose their and signature. The signature set in setting up the personal (5.2.3) can be used here. If nothing is set the default system is used for any Division. Whenever a Campaign is sent out by LAMP in a particular Division, it will use this sending address to send the s from. The template will use the signature selected here.

23 The picture above shows the user creating a Campaign. Note, the default address and associated Signature are shown here, for information purposes, to the values set at the Division templates set up templates can be used in campaign streams or in s. See section 3.2 for template set up. Click Marketing / templates to take you to the list view of templates Deliverability (intermediate) When an is sent by LAMP it is not guaranteed to be delivered, there are various statuses and codes that LAMP stores to show what has occurred. However, in normal circumstances, with a quality list the s will be delivered. In the Campaign, Campaign Response and Template List views, you can get some statistics on the results of your campaigns. The Campaign status view sub tabs and chart is the main place to see this data or its associated list view. The Message Sent / attempted A request is an sent and is reported in your dashboard every time our servers get a request from LAMP to send an to one of your customers Delivered A delivery is recorded when a request to send an results in an being delivered to the end recipient. However, delivered does not necessarily mean that your is in the recipient s inbox. Delivered means the message was accepted by the receiving server, but they does not necessarily mean the message reached the inbox. If an is indicated as delivered you can be certain that it was not deferred by the ISP Viewed message LAMP inserts a small, transparent image into all messages that are being tracked for Opens. When the client application loads images, it pulls the image data from LAMP s servers and registers an Open event. Not all clients load images by default. Microsoft s Outlook, Apple s

24 Mail.app, Mozilla s Thunderbird, and Google s Gmail do not load images. As such, there may be many occasions where recipients will have received a message, opened it, and even clicked on a link, and it will never be counted as opened Click thru The Clicks is the total number of times your users have clicked on the links within your s. Users clicking an Unsubscribe link will not count as a Click Contacts and New Leads Created Any users who register on a web form or Landing Page generate a Campaign Response in LAMP. If the Contact already exists in LAMP the record will be updated in the Campaign response sub tab and the Modified date field updated. If its not in LAMP already, a new contact will be created. Check the Campaign response list view for a lit of all Campaign responses. This table will show the source of the response and the type: a view, a click in an or a LP registration Opportunities Any sales opportunities created that are associated with the Campaign will be show here Bounces & spam There are several types of bounce depending on whether the address is no longer valid, the is invalid or grey areas like temporarily the inbox is full. LAMP will view these as bounces. If it s a hard bounce then s will not be sent from this address again. Below is an example of a bounced A bounce occurs when a sent message is rejected by the receiving mail server. The most common causes for bounced messages include a misspelled address, a non-existent address, or a full recipient inbox. A repeat bounce is when an address has bounced, then bounced a second time and logged to the Bounce List, but you ask us to send to it again. Our system does not attempt to deliver the message, because the system knows that address is bad. This shows up on the Activity tab as a drop with the reason bounced address, and as a repeat bounce on the Statistics tab Hard Bounce This type of bounce occurs when the receiving server returns a 500-class error, communicating no additional attempts to deliver to that server or address are needed. A common reason for a hard bounce is no mailbox for user Spam reports & repeat spam reports If a recipient of your feels that they received it in error, or simply did not wish to get the from you, they may click the report spam or junk button. Spam reports can negatively affect your reputation and deliverability, so it is very important to make sure you send to people who really want your messages. You should always include a clear, easy way to opt out of future messages from your organization, by way of a subscription management link. Finally, a clear and fair initial opt-in process will mitigate potential spam reports down the road. Repeat Spam reports are the number of messages that were sent to addresses that had reported mail as spam,

25 and were therefore dropped. Think of the number more as number of s suppressed because the address reported as spam Invalid An invalid occurs when you attempt to send to an address that is formatted in a manner that does not meet internet format standards. Examples include addresses without sign, addresses that include certain special characters, or spaces in an address. This response comes from our own server, since an invalid is impossible to even attempt to send to its [non-existent] destination Blocks If you receive a block notification, this means that the IP address from which you are sending has been placed on a black list of some sort. ISPs and organizations work from various blacklists, some of which are reputable and valid. In the event that you are placed on a blacklist, LAMP SendGrid will contact the ISP in question on your behalf and submit your IP for removal, once we ve determined that your are in fact legitimate and appropriate Deferrals A deferral occurs when an ISP is for some reason not ready to accept from your IP address. Instead of blocking or bouncing the message, the ISP will defer receiving the message and wait for the to be resent. An ISP may do this because it does not recognize the IP from which a message originates; or it could just be that their system is operating in such a way that they cannot accept the at that specific time. If, upon your resending, the ISP determines that it is ready to trust you as a sender or their system operations are back to normal, the will be accepted as normal. LAMP SendGrid will retry delivery of a deferred on behalf of our customers for 72 hours from the time of the first deferral, after which time the address is placed on the Hard Bounce list. If you have built your own solution, you will want to build this intelligence into your code in order to avoid having to retry deliveries manually Drops In certain cases, SendGrid will Drop a message to a specific address in order to protect your sender reputation. SendGrid keeps Lists to track bounces, spam reports, and unsubscribes for each of our users. If a user sends a message to an address that exists on one of these lists within their account, LAMP SendGrid will automatically drop the message (i.e., not send to the address). *Note: LAMP SendGrid users can always delete entries from these lists if an address is erroneously placed on one or more of these lists, you can accomplish this by mousing over the entry and clicking the Delete button Opted out / Unsubscribes In order to maintain compliance with CAN-SPAM laws, any that is sent in bulk to a mass audience must include a subscription management link. LAMP provides a Subscription Tracking app that automatically adds this link to your s when you select Auto links. When someone clicks that link within their , they are added to your unsubscribe list. Any recipients that are added to this list will be excluded from future mailings. It s no surprise that sending messages to addresses that have explicitly unsubscribed from any of your messages is detrimental to your reputation as a sender. While this functionally only applies to one-to-many message formats (i.e., marketing s) and not to transactional messages, make sure to include subscription management functionality in your marketing s and other mass messaging.

26 Below is an example of an unsubscribed address in the contact record: Volumes and IP addresses (advanced) For companies that want to send over s per month, you may need to purchase a dedicated IP address from LAMP. This has a monthly cost but will help you in improving your deliverability and ensures that you are responsible for your own send reputation and do not affect that of LAMP and our other clients notes LAMP is a cloud-based SMTP provider that allows you to send without having to maintain servers. LAMP SendGrid manages all of the technical details, from scaling the infrastructure to ISP outreach and reputation monitoring to whitelist services and real time analytics Throttling (advanced) What Is Throttling? So, you tried to send a bunch of , and when you checked your Activity page, you see a number of messages are marked as Deferred instead of Delivered. Or maybe you re looking at your Reports, and noticing a lot of addresses in your Blocks, but not many in your Hard Bounces. What? Why aren t your recipients currently in awe at the glory of your amazing message? First of all, rest assured that our system is designed with throttling (also known as deferral these terms mean the same thing in the world, and may be used interchangeably) in mind. We continue to attempt to send messages for up to 72 hours until the message is delivered. Normally, it takes between a few minutes to a few hours until the message is delivered. But what is throttling? Well, it s when a receiving server refuses a message, but with a specific explanation that tells our server it s only a temporary refusal. They usually say things like user is receiving mail at too great a rate right now, please try again later, or user s mailbox is over quota. One important thing to note is that these errors are almost always a 400 class of error What can cause a deferral? The receiving server doesn t recognize your IP, and is afraid you re sending spam. This is why warming up is so important, so they know who you are. The receiving server doesn t have any open ports to receive . The recipient s mailbox is full. Some recipients have marked your mail as spam, but not enough for the server to block you. Instead, they will refuse to receive more until they see what the rest of your current recipients do. What happens if it s continuously deferred for 72 hours? Well, that generally means it s an issue like the account being inactive, having a full mailbox, or some other legitimate problem with the recipient. When we are unable to deliver a message after this time period, we convert these deferrals to Hard Bounces. When an address is hard bounced either due to this, or because we got a different class of error (such as this user does not exist ), we add this address to the Block list.

27 What this means is that even if you send a message through us for that user, we will not even try to deliver to that address, because we know it s no longer good. Continuing to try to send to a known bad address will harm your reputation with the receiver, so we prevent that. However, if you continue to try to send, and we intercept it, your reputation with us goes down, as noted on your LAMP SendGrid Dashboard. Deferrals, aka Throttling, aka Soft Bounces are a normal part of delivery, one LAMP knows how to handle. There are a number of mundane reasons that can cause a defer. If a message stays throttled, it will be added to the Block list Warming up IP Warming Up an IP Address Whether you are new to the game or an accomplished vet, you have probably run across the idea of warming up an IP (Internet Protocol) address to improve delivery performance. Since we often find ourselves explaining the ins and outs of the IP warm-up process to current and prospective customers, we figured we would explain the basics. Below, we ask and answer four basic questions to explore and explain the topic What does it actually mean to warm up an IP address? IP warming is a gradual process that happens over time, with the goal of establishing a reputation as a legitimate sender in the eyes of ISPs (Internet Service Providers). When an ISP observes suddenly coming from a new or cold (i.e. recently dormant) IP address, they will take notice of it and immediately begin evaluating the traffic coming from that IP. Since volume is perhaps the most telling factor in the eyes of ISP SPAM filters, it is best to begin sending low to moderate volume (e.g., up to 1 million s/month), eventually working your way up to larger volumes (e.g., over 1 million s/month). This gives the receiving providers a chance to closely observe your sending habits and the way your customers treat the s they receive from you. It should be noted that taking this gradual, ramping approach does not guarantee smooth sailing for ever more. It remains important to follow other best practices send acceptable content that your users want to get, maintain quality lists and send your on a consistent basis Reputation. Does my IP need to be warmed up? And if so, why? If you are sending from a new or cold IP address, the various ISPs have no basis from which to assign you a sending reputation. Since this reputation will eventually determine whether or not your s will get past their SPAM filters, it s obviously pretty darn important. In the case that you are sending a very low volume (e.g., < 10,000 s/month) of , you will likely stay off the ISPs radars for the most part. However, if you are exceeding this approximate threshold, you should make the warm-up process a priority in order to start off on the right foot. We suggest that a warm-up period is useful regardless of volume. Often times, the history of your IP is also an important determinant of an ISPs initial evaluation. Here are a few tools you can use to check the reputation of any IP: Return Path s SenderScore.org and Cisco s IronPort SenderBase.org How does one go about warming up an IP? What does it entail in terms of volume, time frame, etc? The first time you send from a fresh IP, ISP SPAM filters have to make a quick decision. Unfortunately, in this case they don t have enough information to make an educated decision.

28 Therefore, you have to give them something to work with just not too much and not too quickly! Below are a few suggested schedules for ramping up your sending: For marketing & marketing campaigns Conservative Approach: Estimate your total monthly volume and divide that number by 30 and then try to spread your sending evenly over the first 30 days, based on that calculation. Example: if you will send 90,000 s/month, you should start off sending 3,000 per day over the first month. Aggressive Approach: Instead of dividing total monthly volume by 30, divide it by 15. Example: say you still need to send the same 90,000 /month, but you need the s to reach your recipients in half as long of a time frame, send 6,000 per day for the first 15 days For transactional Established businesses: If you are already sending a ton of , and you decide to move to an ESP for the first time or switch to a new vendor, you should migrate your sending a little bit at a time. One way to do this is to split your traffic and move small portions of it to the new IP over time. Alternatively, if you are already maintaining multiple mail servers, you can move your servers over to your new IP one at a time. New businesses: Typically, the organic growth of your business will, by its nature, create an ideal ramp. Since transactional is usually dependent on the number of users you have, the growth in your customer base will create a nice, comfortable growth curve in your volume. ISPs keep monthly histories of all the being sent to their systems. Therefore, you can expect to accomplish a sufficient warm up within about 30 days. You should be able to gradually increase your outbound traffic from about 1,000-2,000 s/day (at the outset) up to 100, ,000 s/day when the process is complete What does LAMP do to prepare its IPs for their customers? We are constantly working on different approaches to allow our customers to begin sending the volume that their business demands as soon as possible. We take the first step of evaluating the history and cleanliness of the IPs that we put into our inventory if a block doesn t meet our standards, we send them back. Once we ve determined that our IPs have an acceptable pre-existing reputation, we then distribute those with the highest reputations first. This gives those with lesser reputations some time to cool off a bit and get ready for future assignment. We will continue to innovate in this space, because we see it as an important piece of our overall service offering. You might be thinking, why haven t I encountered this whole warm-up issue at other ESPs? The answer is simple: many of them, especially those focused on marketing tools, do not offer dedicated IP addresses to their customers. Most often, ESPs simply place everyone on a shared cluster by default. While it may be less cost effective and more technically complicated, we think it is important to empower our users by allowing them to earn their own reputation on their own IP. View this link to see Top 10 Tips to keep out of the spam folder:

29 terms of service Please review our various terms of service here for full details. Essentially these terms prohibit sending of spam and uploading bought addresses. If you violate these rules you may have your account suspended with no refund available for denial of sending service Queue In the Admin section of LAMP you can view the Queue. You can also see this per Campaign in the Queue sub tab of each Campaign, in the Status view of the Campaign. In the Admin pages the Queue entries can also be deleted if required.

30 6. SETTING UP USERS IN LAMP 6.1. Intro For a multi user system there are a number of options for security and data access to be aware of Users We recommend that there is only 1 admin user and that all other users are assigned roles of Sales, Marketing, tele-marketing or content management. Set up your users go to Admin / User Management Set up user name and password and other items like time zone. The user can always set or change these at a later date The user can be set up as a regular user (with a role) or as an admin. Users can be active or inactive but cannot be deleted Roles for permissions Go to Admin / Roles Enter the appropriate role. The role shows all the permissions for that role, you are recommended not to change them. For each module you can change the access to see lists, edit, create and delete records. At the bottom of the role page, you can select User to assign them to this role. Note: in larger companies security and role management may become more important. Users can be given access to data in modules that is their own o Owner or None or All.

31 Divisions and Divisional Teams Before setting or creating the Division, its best to create the Divisional teams. A Divisional team lists the users who can access a Division. There is a relationship between a Division and Divisional team. Go to Admin / Divisional team Allocation Create or edit a team i.e. LAMP Division team Select the Users who are members of this team Now let s deal with the Division itself: Go to Admin / Division. Edit or create a Division o The name is important and appears in the main filters at the top of the LAMP screen and after login credentials are presented In the assigned Team, select the appropriate Divisional team o The members of the team will be able to access this Division and its data Default Values for New Division can then be set. o When a record for the Division is created these fields, default values are set. Note LAMP allows a single Contact record, to have multiple values of these Divisional fields, a value for each Division. This avoids having the same Contact record in multiple times.

32 Divisions allows the high level segmentation of data in that system, it s like having multiple CRM / MA systems in one. Divisions can be used to segment the system for several use cases: You are an agency with multiple clients You have a Domestic and Commercial Business You want to operate multiple different subsidiary businesses You want to operate for partners You want to operate with franchisees You have domestic and international business Etc etc Keep thing simple to start with Signatures and campaigns. Once a Division and its Team have been set up you can consider its default address for Campaign s. In LAMP you could have two (or more Divisions). A Division will often send and the persona or address used for one Division will be different from another Division. LAMP allows you to define default addresses and signatures for each Division. Only one default address can be set up per Division. The LAMP system has an overall master address used for system s and by all Campaign s, for all Divisions, unless Divisional s are set up. In the Division, under the sub tab Define s and Signatures you press the button Choose one team member as the Campaign s Default sender Complete the short form: o Select the user from the list of Users in the Division s team o Allocate the role (not used) o Choose the signature from one already defined for this user in section 5.4, the selected signature is displayed o Choose the address from those available for this user Repeat this for each Division. Now when you define a Campaign, the Details page will pull through the address and signature that this Division will use, to confirm the correct settings