Email & Old Fashioned Recipe

Our Old Fashioned Recipe is remarkably similar to our recipe for good emails. 

While celebrating the holidays here at JangoMail HQ our “bartender” Ryan served up some delicious Old Fashioneds. After a while we couldn’t help but notice that the recipe for a good Old Fashioned was remarkably like the recipe for a good email. It may have been the Old Fashioneds talking, but we thought we’d share!

Good Old Fashioneds and good emails both start with the right ingredients.

The garnish on an old fashioned is like the subject line on an email. It’s the first thing your customers see, and determines if the message gets opened. Garnishes, like subject lines can be fun and attention grabbing!

Muddled sugar and a dash of bitters is the content of your message. The balance between sweet and sour is the same as your image to text ratio. Make sure to include text with your images, it will help your message display properly and will improve deliverability.

The whiskey is like adding personalization, it’s attention grabbing and will make the recipient feel warm and fuzzy.

Finally, the ice or splash of water, which is like the call to action of your email message. In an old fashioned the ice releases flavors in the whiskey, pulling the drink together. The call to action on your email will pull the content of your message together.

Having a hard time dealing with the end of the holiday season? Enjoy an Old Fashioned based on our recipe below. 

1) In a rocks glass (or lets face it – any glass you want) place a sugar cube and a couple dashes of bitters. Muddle with a muddler or a spoon.
2) Add a couple of ice cubes to the glass.
3) Pour in 1.5 ounces Rye Whiskey (our personal favorite is Bulleit).
4) Cut an orange slice and rub it around the rim of your glass then drop in, add a maraschino cherry.
5) Enjoy.

Holiday Wishes from JangoMail

JangoMail has been celebrating the holiday season. Secret Santa, ugly Christmas sweaters, and the much awaited Christmas party!

This year we thought we'd give you a peek at how we celebrate during this very merry, but very busy, time of the year. 

JangoMail held the first annual Jangies (loosely inspired by the Dundies). Two of our fearless leaders handed out trophies in a variety of (very unique) categories. 

What else does Christmas entail at JangoMail HQ? RockBand, Nick Offerman videos, Chinese food and kiddos in the office. From the JangoMail family, to you and yours, Happy Holidays and a wonderful new year. 

We'd love to hear about your holiday traditions! Let us know what your family or your office family  enjoys each year in the comment section below!

Email Marketing DOs 

Email marketing tips from JangoMail

Here are a few things that you should DO to ensure better delivery and interaction rates when using JangoMail (or any email service provider).

Wondering what the content of your emails should be? Test a variety of campaigns to see where your customers engage. Which campaigns are being opened? What links are being clicked? Use these results to create best practices for your business. Below are some content tips to help you get started.

Do remember it’s not always about you: One big mistake we often see is businesses crafting the messages they would want to see, without taking into account the content their subscribers interact with the most. Try to tailor your message with the data you have about your clientele. Use the sales data, web analytics and reporting tools in JangoMail to determine what works best with your subscribers. This may mean that the content of your emails doesn’t align with your personal preferences, but it will be the content your subscribers want.

Do competitor research:  Check out your competitor’s website, subscribe to their emails and follow them on social media. There is always something to learn from what others in your industry are doing. Never copy someone else’s campaign, but feel free to learn from what your competitors are doing.

Do use proper grammar: This should go without saying, but even the best of us make mistakes from time to time. Make sure to review your content with a fine-tooth comb. Cross all the T’s and dot those I’s. Use proper punctuation and make sure it all makes sense and your sentences are framed well. You can break grammar rules, but make sure it’s clear that the mistake was intentional rather than an oversight.

Do format your text: Make your text visually appealing. This is especially important in text only emails. Use bold, italic and colored text to draw attention to key ideas and the call to action. Make sure your font choices are consistent throughout your message.  

Do break up text with headlines and images:  Break up larger blocks of text with headlines or images. The best email messages are short and to the point. Readers will be overwhelmed by large text blocks and are unlikely to read the whole message. Keep your email visually interesting with other elements placed between blocks of copy. Another option is to have subscribers click through to your website to read or download the rest of your message.

For more tips check out Ryan's video below.

Email Don'ts

Email Marketing Don'ts from JangoMail

When you are putting together your content for your email campaign there are things that you should and should not do.

One of the more important things to remember is that there are certain “trap” words that can ruin your message by having it directed to the junk folder.

There are around a couple hundred words that can cause problems when trying to achieve good delivery rates.  We're not saying NEVER use these words, however, they should be used very sparingly. If you're having a problem staying out of the spam or junk folder, these words could be putting you there.

Another thing to avoid is making your subject line too long or too many characters. Try to keep your subject lines short and sweet. Having around thirty characters should be your target for a better subject line.

When you finally get to the body of your message, don't forget to add some personality. Make the body of your message a good text to image ratio. Put your "call to action" towards the top of your message. So, the what, the why, and the how….Make sure your recipients know what they are receiving, why they have received it, and how they can benefit from it. 

Finally, don’t forget to TEST, TEST, and TEST. How terrible would it be if you did NOT test your message and all of your links were broken or the personalization you had setup did not work properly. Careless mistakes are a big don’t. Nobody wants to look foolish when it comes to their business, so test those messages and make sure it is perfect before sending it to your list. 

Master Account and Subaccount Setup Explained

What is Agency Setup?

Agency Account really means Master Account and Client Subaccount really just means Subaccount, so we’ve decided to make it easier for everyone! Starting today we will begin calling Agency Accounts Master Accounts and Client Subaccounts, Subaccounts.

We created Agency and Client Accounts for the advertising and marketing firms that were some of JangoMail’s first clients. But, this type of account setup benefits so many other types of organizations! From universities who use this feature to separate each of its departments to companies who create Subaccounts for each salesperson. JangoMail’s Master and Subaccount feature is a powerful and flexible way to manage multiple accounts under one umbrella.

Creating a master account could save you $$$

Creating one Master Account with a number of Subaccounts is cheaper than creating a number of separate JangoMail accounts. At JangoMail, cost is calculated by the number of emails sent. The price per email decreases as the quantity of emails sent increases. With the Master Account setup, all Subaccounts are included in the total send volume. This way the Master Account gets the lowest cost per email, due to the combined sending volume. The billing structure is still flexible. We can send one bill for the combined Subaccounts to the Master Account or we can bill each Subaccount separately.

With 3 JangoMail accounts this university would pay $969 / month

With a Master Account and 3 Subaccounts the University would pay $868 / month

Lose Fewer Email Addresses Due to Unsubscribes

Unsubscribing email addresses from your list when asked isn’t just good business practice, to comply with CAN-SPAM, it’s the law. But, if an email addresses unsubscribes from a university’s athletics emails should it automatically be unsubscribed from emails about alumni events? At JangoMail Subaccounts do not share unsubscribe information. This way email addresses are not unsubscribed from an account for no reason. The unsubscribe information can be shared back to the Master Account if desired.

Easily Share Templates

Master Accounts can create and share email templates with Subaccounts. This allows an HTML expert to create templates that non-experts in each Subaccount can easily edit. A practical scenario for this is a university. The marketing department could create universal templates with the proper logos, headers and footers and send to each department (Subaccount) to complete using JangoMail’s WYSIWYG tool.

Would your JangoMail account benefit from Subaccounts?

Many of our potential customers think that the Master Account with Subaccounts setup isn’t for them, because they are not an agency. However, it is useful for numerous other types of clients that have multiple groups all sending within one organization. If you have one JangoMail account for multiple different types of sending, or for different departments within your organization, this setup might be the right choice for you.

If you’d like to learn more about how JangoMail’s Master Account and Subaccount setup could work for your organization, please contact our support team or call 1-888-GO-JANGO.

If you are not a JangoMail customer but would like to learn more about our Master Account and Subaccount setup, or any of JangoMail's other great features - signup for a free trial today or contact one of our email experts.

Message Tagging: an Underutilized JangoMail Tool

How to Organize Your Account

Message tagging is one of JangoMail's most useful features, but it is generally underutilized by our clients. JangoMail saves every message sent by active accounts. With all of this information visible, some JangoMail users may find it hard to find and organize their sent messages. An easy way to filter and find messages is our tagging feature.

A few ways we have seen our customers utilize message tagging:
•Identical campaigns separated according to recipient groups
•Multiple events/promotions, each with multiple campaigns
•Different message types: account updates, reminders, promotions, etc.

This is a JangoMail account sorted using the tagging feature. 

Tips to Get Started with Message Tagging

Always keep these ideas in mind when tagging your account's messages:

•Do you have multiple events or departments sending through your single account?

•You can always add additional tags at any time, but if you have many campaigns and haven't yet used tags, it's a good idea to start with a basic idea of how to organize your messages.

How to Begin Creating Tags

You can enter your new tag into the "Tags" text box. Once created, new tags will appear in your tag list. Each tag can be assigned a color, which can be changed after it’s created. 

How to Add a Tag to a Message

To add a tag to an existing message, head to the operations field in the message page and click the assign tags icon. This is located next to the preview and delete icon. Adding new tags is easy. So if you are missing one, it only takes a couple seconds to create it.

How to assign tags to a message. 

How to View A Specific Type of Tagged Message

In your sent folder you will see a list of tags. To highlight a message, just click on the tag you are looking for to tag the messages. After you have finished finding your tag, you can go to "clear applied tags" to leave the view.

How to Manage Tags

At the bottom of your list of tags there is a manage tags link. Clicking this link takes you to the manage tags interface, where you can do anything from renaming to changing the color to deleting a tag altogether.

How Message Tagging Helps You

Message tagging is similar to cleaning up your office. When you have papers all over the place, it can be hard to get anything done. A filing cabinet might be the best way to organize loose papers. Think of this tool as your online filing cabinet.

Don't See Message Tagging?

If you do not see message tagging in you user interface, don’t worry! It just needs to be turned on for your account. Contact our support team today and can turn it on within a matter of minutes.

If you are a JangoMail customer and would like more information on setting up tags in your account you can visit our tutorial or contact a member of our support team.

If you are not a JangoMail customer and you would like to learn more about sending email marketing visit our website to sign up for a free trial or contact an email marketing expert. 

What Makes JangoMail the right Choice for Higher Education?

Email is an Important Marketing Tool for Colleges and Universities

Email marketing is becoming more and more important for colleges and universities. Not only does it provide an easy way to communicate with potential students and their parents, it can also be used to keep in touch with alumni, and promote events and athletics.

Higher education institutions used to spend a larger portion of their marketing budget printing and distributing bulky marketing materials. Now, email makes promoting colleges and universities cheaper, easier, and more efficient. In fact, it has never been easier to keep in touch, or to attract new students and benefactors using email.

JangoMail has a number of higher education clients, so we asked them what set us apart from the competition.

Colleges and Universities Love Our Agency Account Features

We found that most of the colleges and universities using JangoMail love our agency account setup. JangoMail offers a lot of flexibility with the way these accounts are configured. We tailor each account to the specific needs of the organization. A typical agency account has one master account with a number of subaccounts. Billing can be done on one invoice, or each subaccount can be billed separately. The subaccount feature allows each department within the organization to operate autonomously, while the organization retains the benefits of only using one email service provider.

JangoMail is Priced for Higher Ed

JangoMail also offers very competitive pricing options that appeal to higher ed. Pricing is straightforward at JangoMail and there aren’t any hidden charges. JangoMail does not charge based on email file size, only the number of emails sent. This provides significant cost savings for colleges and universities that maintain huge email lists (like lists for each graduating class), but only mail a small portion of these lists.

Other Features for Colleges and Universities

Institutions for higher learning also enjoy features such as: unlimited list storage, advanced personalization options, HTML editors, email preview tool, email-to-website tracking, SPAM content checker, and superior customer support. These features make it easy for novices and experts alike to create and deploy professional HTML email campaigns.

To learn more about JangoMail for higher education contact us at 1-888-GO-JANGO and ask for Lauren or visit us on the web, be sure to add higher ed to the comments section.

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