Photo by flickr user mattcyp88

Now that our user interface has had its recent facelift, it’s time that our online help pages were revised as well, for all the same reasons. For too long, we have relied on help content provided by our main technology partner, but that content no longer makes enough sense to our users since we’ve added new technology partners and made so many improvements of our own to the Delivra platform.

So we recently hired a technical writer to create an online help file that would be unique and proprietary to Delivra. Our writer was new to email marketing, so had some research to do before he could start authoring help content. One day, after he read about our clickstream- and purchase-tracking capabilities, he told me something like this:

“I had no idea that senders could see information about what pages I visited on their web site, or what I purchased from them after reading their email. That’s huge! I wish these companies I buy my climbing gear from would use something like this. Then they could send me information I want about their climbing gear, and quit sending me generic ads for things like jogging strollers that I’ve never bought and never will.”

He seemed genuinely irked to learn that such technology was available, but not being used by the companies that have him on their mailing lists. If they could detect what his interests are, and target him with emails relevant to those interests, they would have a much better chance of selling to him—he would welcome those mailings! Instead, those companies persist in using the “batch-and-blast” method of sending the same generic message to everyone who has ever opted into their list.

Often, when we talk about relevance in email, we in the email delivery business tend to focus on the deliverability benefits of engaged recipients. And it’s definitely true that more people opening, clicking, or forwarding your email means that ISPs are less likely to see your email as spam. But there’s another reason you want to be relevant: because your customers will appreciate it!

Figure out what your recipients do and don’t want, then give them more of what they want, and less of what they don’t. Accomplish that, and the engagement metrics affecting deliverability will take care of themselves.

Chris Broshears | Product Development

P.S. Delivra users will notice that the first segment of our new online help is live as of today. Covering the Members section of our application, it includes help pages for the new CSV import, which is now enabled for all of our clients who haven’t already been using it.