• Installation
• Minimum Requirments
• Laws and Compliance
• Subscriptions
• Email lists
• Sending Newsletters
• Designing Newsletters
• Targeting
• My Subscription
• Reports

All sections (56 questions)

Can I download e-shot™ and install it? No. e-shot™ is a web application which means all you need is a web browser and internet connection. By logging in with your username and password, the e-shot™ system recognises you and securely tailors all content accordingly. e-shot enables users to access the console from anywhere in the world with a browser and internet connection. Web applications also remove worries relating to upgrades and software conflicts. What software do I need to use e-shot™? All you need to operate e-shot™ is an internet browser installed on your PC. Can I use e-shot™ with my Macintosh? Yes but unfortunately we cannot guarantee flawless operation. We do currently have several customers using Macintosh computers without complaint but the time and effort involved in officially supporting and maintaining Mac OS compatibility would make the product costs unviable. Can I use e-shot™ with Firefox (or similar)? Yes but unfortunately we cannot guarantee flawless operation. We would highly recommend using Internet Explorer (version 5.5 or higher). Do I need broadband to use e-shot™? No. However, depending on the size of your contact lists, and how many sent messages you retain in your Reports screen, you may experience a slow response. We would recommend using a broadband connection if at all possible. What about screen resolution? This refers to the number of pixels which display on the screen. The lowest optimum resolution for comfortable e-shot™ use is 1024x768. A lower resolution (800x600) means you might have to scroll both horizontally and vertically. Are stored newsletters, images and mailing lists secure? Security is paramount and the e-shot™ system is heavily protected. Forfront provides a high level of hardware and software security configuration including powerful firewall policies and back-up procedures. All activity and IP addresses are logged securely for your protection. We do not reveal any data to third parties and respect the privacy of all our customers. Will you ever access my account? We will only do this if there is a problem that we are made aware of, either by you or through our 24/7/365 error reporting system. Generally problems are fixed at the generic level using our own test data. In the rare instances where we log into your account, we will naturally treat this in the strictest confidence. What does the law say about email marketing? Anti-spam legislation is designed with spammers in mind rather than your legitimate business. You should also be aware that ‘spam’ laws are too new for anyone (including the US Congress and UK Parliament) to understand comprehensively and no-one knows how this legislation will eventually turn out. Beware also of those proclaiming dark days ahead. Online publishers will try to scare you into buying their own books and solicitors may try similar tactics to get you to hire them to ensure you are compliant with new laws. So long as you include an option to opt-out/unsubscribe (always present in e-shot™) and do not send out offensive and/or deceptive messages to non-permission lists you should remain within the law. EU / UK The EU Directive (Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive, 2002) is still in the process of being implemented by member states. The UK implemented its own interpretation of the Directive in December 2003. You must not conceal or attempt to hide the identity of the sender and must include a valid email address to which recipients can contact and request removal. Make sure that you include a valid email address in the message [put a valid email address in the e-shot™ Settings page ‘Reply-to’ email address] and requests received through it are actioned [in addition to automated e-shot™ unsubscriptions]. You should not send marketing emails to consumers (individuals) “unless the prior consent of the addressee has been obtained (opt-in).” An exception to this is where email addresses were obtained through a prior sales transaction or significant sales negotiations. United States Obvious rules of the enacted legislation in the US on a Federal level require unsolicited email to be labelled (though not by a standard method) and to include opt-out instructions and the sender’s physical [street] address. Deceptive subject lines and/or false headers [to conceal the sender’s identity] are not allowed. What about the Data Protection Act? We comply with the principles set out in the Data Protection Act. Anyone processing personal data must comply with the eight enforceable principles of good practice. They say that data must be: • Fairly and lawfully processed; • Processed for limited purposes; • Adequate, relevant and not excessive; • Accurate; • Not kept longer than necessary; • Processed in accordance with the data subject’s rights; • Secure; • Not transferred to countries without adequate protection. Personal data covers both facts and opinions about the individual. It also includes information regarding the intentions of the data controller towards the individual, although in some limited circumstances exemptions will apply. With processing, the definition is far wider than before. For example, it incorporates the concepts of ‘obtaining’, ‘holding’ and ‘disclosing’. How will I know if there are new subscriptions? The contact summary page will alert you to any recent activity including new subscribers and unsubscribers as well as other subscription data. You can reset which contacts are displayed as ‘new’ by clicking on the ‘Seen’ button. Only contacts which subscribe/unsubscribe after clicking this button will be displayed as ‘new’ next time you login. What if someone wants to unsubscribe but they’re a member of more than one group? A contact who unsubscribes will be removed from all further mailings from you as a company, however using our Branded Profile Management service it is possible to give your contacts the options to manage which newsgroups they are members of. Thus allowing them to remove themselves from particular mailings, without unsubscribing alltogether. What happens to a person’s contact details if they unsubscribe? When a contact unsubscribes, their details are non-erasable. Because of the possibility that unsubscribers may be accidentally imported into the system at a later date, unsubscribed contacts are retained by the system. Cross referencing occurs during contact import to ensure unsubscribers never receive unwanted messages. This ‘suppression’ of unsubscribers is a recommendation from the ‘Guidance to the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003’ published by the Information Commissioner (Data Protection). Do you sell email address lists? No. We don’t supply contact lists. You are responsible for obtaining and maintaining the contacts you hold on the system. Apart from your own contacts (e.g. in Outlook and customer lists), you can also purchase them. Buying lists is a good way to expand your current contact database but they can vary in terms of quality/integrity of data. In the event of a poorly performing list, e-shot™ enables you to export invalid records for a refund or exchange from the supplier. How do contacts unsubscribe? Every message you send out using e-shot must contain a link for recipients to remove themselves permanently from future mailings. This is built in but you should ensure you have entered your own text for the unsubscribe text and link. How do I acquire subscribers? An effective way of gaining the most valuable (‘opt-in’) new subscribers is to collect subscriptions from your website. Either you should contact your developer or forfront.net to implement this. What happens to ‘bounced’ e-mails? E-shot™ saves you time and effort by enabling you to view and manipulate bounced emails. You can create a new group of contacts, export to an external file or delete altogether. We also take into account the number of bounces in the analysis reports. How do I find a particular contact? A full search facility is standard in the Contacts Manager. You can search for contacts by name, email or any other field included in your database. Narrow your search by filtering by status, group and source. Is it easy to change a contact’s details? Yes. Just click on the ‘edit’ icon corresponding to the contact, make your changes and click ‘Update’. How do I import contacts? When you have organised your contacts to conform to the import rules, you have the option of creating your import file in either CSV/XLS file format. Microsoft Excel is useful for this purpose. e-shot™ checks the data you import for duplicates, badly formatted records and unsubscribed contacts and reports on them. Full instructions are available in the e-shot™ documentation. What are groups and sources? Groups are sets of contacts to which messages are sent. A contact may be a member of more than one group but a contact will not receive the same email twice. Groups are also fully editable: you can merge two or more groups into one while either retaining or deleting the existing groups. Sources are literally the origin of contact information used in order to facilitate performance analysis according to source. If you find that a source of contacts performs poorly, with more than the expected amount of invalid records, you can export these to CSV and send to your supplier for a refund or exchange. Why can’t my recipients see images? e-shot™ doesn’t embed images. They are hosted on our servers and then displayed with the email. This is mainly for two reasons: 1) Smaller size emails are more efficient and 2) Prevents the email being stopped and flagged as spam by ISPs. We include a "Can't view images, Click here to view this email in your web browser" link neatly above your header, which allows your contacts to move into their web browser to view your message in its entirety. Why do some contacts not see messages I have sent? You should never expect 100% delivery of your message; sadly this is not a realistic target. Various reasons can account for this. People who move jobs are likely to have their email addresses deactivated. Strict spam filters may sometimes stop email messages even when a contact ‘opted-in’. Successful delivery can also depend on factors such as the relationship with your contacts and how their email addresses were obtained. e-shot™ enables quick assessment and reporting features for contacts which have/not opened messages in their email application. Why are some people annoyed at receiving my messages? This is almost inevitable but only a tiny number will complain. With the amount of confusion surrounding email marketing laws, some can be extremely quick to read the riot act and erroneously declare the message “illegal”. You should familiarise yourself with the various laws governing email marketing, apologise for any inconvenience and assure them that, if they have clicked on the unsubscribe link, they will remain free from your future marketing efforts. Asking them for their email address, so that you can double-check their removal, will tend to be met with derision! Can e-shot™ be used for bulk email (aka spamming)? It can but we do not tolerate spamming. As a concept, it is expensive, flawed and hardly endears people to your business. Definitions of spam differ enormously though; for one, spam constitutes any email sent from someone not in their contact list while for another, spam refers to unsolicited and irrelevant email sent from an anonymous source. Sending to business addresses is perfectly legal and useful in online marketing. However, we will terminate accounts which distribute illegal information, place false or misleading information in the subject line, include truly offensive material or contravene the law in any way. What is e-shot™ used for? e-shot™ is most effectively used for both marketing and customer retention. For marketing, it enables you to proactively market your products and services while providing an array of tools to enhance your sales effectiveness. For customer retention, e-shot™ helps to keep in touch and deliver valuable information quickly and cost-effectively with existing customers, suppliers and partners. Does e-shot™ use CCs or BCCs to send to numerous recipients? No – this is a primitive method and does not allow for personalisation and effective tracking. With e-shot™, each message is sent individually to each contact, with the ‘To’ name set accordingly. Can I use my email address as the ‘From’ address? Yes but you do not have to. To avoid numerous auto-replies, you can set this as an e-shot™ address. You can still use your email for the ‘Reply-to’ for when recipients click on the ‘Reply’ button in their email application. Can the recipient's name appear in the ‘To’ field? Yes. This is subject to your contact database containing name fields. What about personalisation? You can personalise the ‘To Name’ field and any part of the message so that is displays your choice of greeting. E.g. “Dear Mr. Smith” or “Dear David Smith” or “David Smith” etc. Further personalisation can be achieved by adding extra data fields such as locality, product name, etc. Can you cancel an email while it is sitting in the queue to be sent? Yes. If the mail is in the queue and the ‘in progress’ icon is not yet showing, you can prevent it from being sent by clicking ‘Put on hold’. The message will be placed ‘On hold’ indefinitely until the message is taken off hold or deleted from the queue. You should always check the contents of your email and test it among a small group of test contacts (e.g. a couple of colleagues) before sending. Can I cancel a message once I have sent it? It is not possible to retrieve e-shot™ messages which have been delivered. If the status icon for the message is displaying either as ‘On hold’ or ‘Waiting in queue’ you can place it back on hold or delete it. If the status icon shown is the animated one for ‘In progress’ you cannot stop the message from being sent. We strongly recommend that you test your message thoroughly prior to taking off hold. Can I add attachments to my email newsletters? No. Documents are not physically attached due to corporate firewalls, spam filters and possible file size issues. You can, however, include a link to a document which will give you the same outcome. Can the recipient forward mailings created using e-shot™ to friends/colleagues? Yes. e-shot™ has "Viral Marketing" elements built in, we can include a "Forward to Friend/Colleague" link neatly in your template. When this option is used, your contact will be able to enter a name and email address to which we will send an exact copy of your original mailing. The new recipient then has the option to opt-in to your mailings. Is there a limit to the size of my newsletter when sending? No, but you should be aware that a large message, in terms of physical and visual size, will probably upset the recipient before he or she has even thought to read it. Try to make your message as simple and concise as possible and optimise any images you use. Does personalisation work with plain text newsletters? Yes, you can still personalise plain text messages. Is there a cost involved in personalising emails? The standard personalisation fields are available to all users at no extra cost. If you have special requirements and need to tailor your messages to achieve a specific aim, forfront can implement this at an extra cost. Does e-shot™ correctly display HTML or plain text depending on recipients’ email settings? Yes, messages sent using e-shot™ are MIME compliant which means that recipients’ email applications will display messages as HTML or plain text according to the user’s preferences. If I cancel my subscription, how long will my account be active? Your subscription with e-shot™ will run to the end of the agreed period (usually one year). If you sign up today and cancel in a few days, your account will remain active for 365 days from the date of your subscription. Do you supply templates? We supply your initial ‘Company Template’ when you purchase e-shot™. This template reflects your company identity and applies to the HTML Editor and Company template. Both plain text and HTML Upload messages are not affected. We can of course provide you with additional templates for a one off charge; this charge is reduced substaintially if extra templates are purchased with your e-shot subscription. What kind of global settings are available for my messages with e-shot™? The Settings page allows you to set defaults for a number of elements. You can set out which name fields are used to address the recipient (e.g. “Dear Mr. Smith” or “Dear David Smith” etc.). Set the ‘From Name’ which could be your name or that of your company? Set the default ‘Reply-to’ email address which will be the address recipients will send to if they click the ‘Reply’ button in their email application. Set the unsubscribe message and link text. Decide whether you see the basic or advanced version of the HTML editor. The Settings page also enables you to administer various optimisation functions such as orphan record management, cache settings and delete bounced records. How does e-shot™ manage images? e-shot™ uses an image upload and management facility which gives you the freedom to maintain your own image bank. Simply upload images from your computer for use later when you create an e-shot™ message. You can also include images which are already online such as images from your website. Can I edit images using e-shot™? Not really. You can adjust some image properties such as spacing placed around the image, its dimensions (though the physical file size remains the same) and where it appears. Editing the actual image (e.g. brightness, contrast etc.) should be done using an external image editor. There are several free and very low-priced editors available for the adjustment of brightness, contrast, image size, cropping etc. Does e-shot™ allow for importing HTML files? Yes. After you have imported the HTML file, e-shot will prompt you to upload any images which were referenced in the HTML file. This upload HTML feature enables you or your designer a free reign to create unique messages. Can I use e-shot™ to create templates? Yes. Although templates are created by forfront when you purchase e-shot™, you can use messages which you have already sent as templates for new messages. For a message you have sent, click ‘Re-send’ to go through the creation wizard. All content will be editable so all you need to do is delete irrelevant information and re-insert new content. This re-sent message will then behave and appear as a separate message with its own reporting. Can e-shot™ messages contain PDF files? Placing a link to a PDF document in the message behaves in a similar way to an attachment or image. When a user clicks on it, the file will download into a browser and may be saved from there. Do the e-mails sent using the e-shot™ system include any 3rd party branding/advertisements? No. These are your e-mails, not ours. At no point will you see a forfront/e-shot™ logo in your mailings. How do I know if e-mails that I sent out were actually opened? e-shot™ gives you comprehensive metrics on how your message has performed. This includes the percentage of recipients who open the message and a list of who they are. You can display only those contacts that displayed the message and export the list to an external file or create a new group from them. Those who clicked on any monitored links are also fully traceable and easily manipulated in order to optimise your marketing effort. What is a HardBounce? This is the term for a message which could not reach its destination. The email address maybe non existent or invalid or there may be a problem with a contact’s ISP’s mail server. What is a Softbounce? This is a message which reaches the recipient's mail server, but is then bounced back. The most common reason for the occurrence of Softbounces is that the recipient’s mailbox is ‘full’. For web accounts such as Yahoo mail and Hotmail this is common. SoftBounces will continue to be sent mailings. What is the difference between a Hardbounce and a Softbounce? Whereas a HardBounce indicates that an email address is invalid, a softbounce means that, although the email address is valid, it cannot be delivered probably because the recipient’s email box is full. By default, HardBounces are omitted from send lists unless they are edited and updated. SoftBounce contacts will be sent messages as normal. What information can I expect from e-shot™ Reports? e-shot™ returns an executive summary for high level comparison and very detailed reports including full transaction history for each contact. Reports are organised initially by message, from where you can access shortcut links to regularly viewed statistics as well as the more in-depth reports. View and manipulate contacts that were sent the message, displayed or read it, clicked-thru a monitored link, unsubscribed or bounced. You can create click-thru reports based either on who clicked a specific link or contact. You can then create new groups or export data based on any of these criteria. How do the reports help me achieve improved marketing? With a little extra work, reports based on messages which have already been sent, enable you to identify certain contacts that have a high read/display or click-thru rate. Similarly, you can ‘weed out’ those contacts which HardBounce, or never read messages. This streamlines your operation enabling to suit your campaign to a smaller, more likely audience. Over time, your marketing can continue to become more focussed and effective. The e-shot™ system easily enables you to filter your future sends based on previous campaign results. What open/click-thru rates should I expect? This will depend heavily upon many factors: subject matter; content; timing; target accuracy, contact list integrity etc. As an example, typical values are as follows: Read rate: 10-30% Click-thru: 2-10% Bounce rate: 1-30% Unsubscribe rate: 0-3% However, you should not necessarily expect your own figures to reflect these. After I have designed my email, Is it difficult to send to my contacts using e-shot™? No. Absolutely not! The e-shot™ system has been designed to be very user friendly. Once you have completed your email, you simply need to select which "Group(s)" you wish the email to be sent to. Can I easily target follow-ups using e-shot™? Yes. We have included a fully comprehensive filtering option which allows you to target your new email based on the way your contacts have interacted with previous sends. Options such as "All those who opened my previous email", "All those who clicked on a particular link" and "All those who have never received an e-shot™" are just a few filters that are available to you as an e-shot™ user.