How to get delivery reports on custom programmed email campaigns

October 31st, 2009 No Comments

About a year ago I decided to develop a bulk emailing program. My reasons at the time was mainly because I couldn’t justify the company I was a director of paying to send emails out on a bulk basis when I knew that I could simply do it myself if I wanted to. I mean if you really want to you could just send a bulk campaign from Microsoft Publisher.

I developed the proof of concept code using an instance of FCK Editor as the primary email creation tool and simply embedded all the image references and changes all the hyperlinks to point to a central website for measurement. There are obviously many other things I needed to do sill but I had the basics of a great bulk emailing solution in place.

Recently I was confronted with a friend that needs to send bulk emails out for a client but the client wants delivery reports on all the emails, so I obliged by whipping out the old code and making some adjustments. I using the C# programming language and Visual Studio 2008. The code however will be the same for other programming languages as all you need to do is append a a string to the header of the email to get delivery reports.

Below is the code needed to get email delivery reports on bulk email campaigns

MailMessage mail = new MailMessage();

mail.IsBodyHtml = true;
mail.Headers.Add(”X-Confirm-Reading-To”, “email-address-to-send-confirmations-to”);
mail.Headers.Add(”Disposition-Notification-To”, “email-address-to-send-confirmations-to”);

Thats it, its that simple, so for every email you send to a client, simply append this string to the header and the client will be prompted to send a delivery report.

I’d be glad to help anyone that needs more information on the topic of sending custom programmed bulk email campaigns.

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Its my birthday, time for reflection over the year passed

October 20th, 2009 No Comments

At this time of the year, I always tend to reflect on everything that has happened over the past year…then I do the same thing again on new years day.

This year has passed in the blink of an eye and it has been my toughest year yet. Some of the highlights in the year include

  • . resigning as CIO of my previous company
  • . starting another company from scratch with zero income
  • . having tremendous financial difficulties which are still not resolved

It all started on December 31 of last year. To get an overall view of where this is going, let me give you a brief history. From the outset I may not mention names for restraint of trade reasons and because a previous business partner has more money than me and is not afraid to use it in court cases (unfortunately I have seen that the one with more money usually wins, this also came out his own mouth). More than 2 years ago myself and my then business partner sold the majority shareholding of our company to an interested party. He gave the impression that he was an excellent marketer having great cars, 3 storey house and proven businesses, My business partner and I also at that stage knew that we weren’t great marketers so this seemed like the perfect marriage. We agreed on a price, investment amount and loan into the company and salary going into the future and so sold out business on this basis. To cut a horrible story short, just under a year later the original business partner was effectively forced out of the company, he was later taken to arbitration for having taken the largest contract client we had with him and an agreed amount was paid by him and still is on a monthly basis.

This brings me back to December 31 2009, for months before this date, this new “OWNER” of the company was starting to show his true colours and just how clever he was with manipulation, we changed business focus from what it was to be originally in the company, went into partnership with another media company further diluting my shareholding in the company and most importantly shifting focus of the company yet again hence giving a good excuse for him not to sell cause new systems needed to be created from scratch, which amazingly enough, non developers think can be created in 5 minutes. I had been effectively threatened for many months that my salary would drop, it actually did drop by R 3000 for about 6 months. On December 31 he sent me an email stating that he would have to drastically reduce my salary which was then done at the en dof January this year, to the tune of R 10 000. My immediate response at that point in time was that I no longer had anything to loose, if I stayed in that company, I would loose my home, car and probably possesions as well, there was a huge amount of tension at home between myself and my wife with how this business partner was controlling our lives.

I made the decision there and then resign, relinquishing my shareholding and loosing the more than 60 clients I had built up over a period of 4 years. I had nothing to loose because I was going to loose everything in any case. Fortunately for me I had some amazing support behind me, my original business partner stood by me every second of the way, I had old lost clients come back to me and offer me work to do. This all started in February of this year, I couldn’t have asked for a more amazing start to a company with zero capital, zero clients and zero income. I have 2 babies to feed as well as pay for a plethora of expenses.

Today I can boast a client base of 15 clients, I am not at all through the tough financial times yet, my home is probably still going to be repossessed and my car as well, but the outlook on the future is very positive, I am more happy then I have ever been and more successful then I have ever been. My income on average is on par with what I earned before, the difference now is that one month my income is awesome, another its almost non existent. I have a further 8 potential clients that will hopefully come through one day soon and my business relationships with all my clients is exceptionally strong, I prefer to consider each on of my clients as friends as well.

I think my biggest lessons to date have been the following:

  • . If you are in a sort of live or die situation you can do anything you put your mind to, I was always to scared to market myself and my company, now I have a website that has generated business for me, word of mouth marketing from my clients to other potential clients etc..
  • . Working with partners is exceptionally difficult (perhaps I am the problem), I have had over the last 10 years 3 business partners come and go and it has taught me that I mustn’t be scared to go at it alone and secondly that there is always difficulties in maintaining relationships in partnerships. Thirdly, I am Difficult!

The year ahead is very exciting and stressful, I know for instance from experience that there is effectively 1 and half months worth of business in this year, thereafter everyone is on holiday till the end of January, so I need to make up 3.5 months income in 1.5 months. The excitement lies in the projects that I know are coming next year, 3 major contracts (major for a small company) that will keep me busy for a long time and in the new year I want to drive to push for monthly income, my restraint of trade will be finished in February and that will allow me the freedom to give my name out and market even more effectively than I am now.

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How to measure return on bulk sms campaigns with custom programmed software

September 2nd, 2009 3 Comments

Hi, this is the next article in my series of articles on how to measure the return on investment in software development projects.

In this article I get very specific about how to effectively measure the exact return on bulk sms campaigns. Please remember that this is my opinion only and I value the comments of everyone else reading this article.

A bit of history
I am sure that everyone agrees, that sms has become a huge thing, especially in South Africa where the response rate to smsing is still very high. Unfortunately there are many companies and businesses out there that realize this same thing and use that to send massive quantities of smses to clients. There is legislation in place to make sure that the consumer is protected to some degree but most companies sending smses dont adhere to these rules if any. This is starting to bring about a tarnished reputation to smsing on a bulk basis.

Having said this however, I find that my clients consider smsing a major benefit when it is done correctly, the cost benefit ratio is outstanding. The delima is this, most companies sending out smses know that it is worth it because every now and then a customer walks in the store and says they got an sms, how many companies out there however can tell you exactly how much money they make from smsing clients? Very few right? So how do you do it?

How to measure

We will use the example of retail businesses that offers its clients  a combination of services and products to their clients.

Step 1: Your existing clients are like gold, make sure you know as much about them as they will let you know, at the very least ask every client for there cell number and first name, with that you can send a completely customised sms to that person and make it seem like you typed it yourself.

Step 2: Decide what sort of campaign you want to send clients, the trick here is that in reality you are always spamming a client if you send an sms to someone that didnt explicitly tell you to send an sms to them. Of course if you offer the client something awesome, then they wont see it as spam and they will be glad you sent the sms. In other words, my suggestion is that if you going to send a campaign, give something away, for example 10% off a specific service for a week to clients you know are interested in that service, come fetch a gift cause its your birthday soon. The point here however is that an sms campaign that is giving something back to a client is always going to have a much higher return than a campaign offering information only.

Step 3: Add a unique code to each sms and state that the person must give the code to redeem the 10%, gift etc. Now you know where I am going with this, but you are already saying that people wont come to the store and present the number. I agree and disagree with this statement, the reality of adding a, say 5 digit code to the end of an sms means that the client now needs to do an action and this can be seen as negative, remember though that the objective is to measure exactly how many people come back as a result of the sms, interested clients that receive the sms will come to your store and show the code if they are really interested in what you are giving back. You will also get those clients that come to the store and say they received an sms, a good system will allow you to take that clients cell number and check if they got the sms and hence get the code sent to them.

Step 4: Your software program to do point of sale must have a portion built in that allows you to enter sms codes into the system, this then verifies against the cell number for that client and very importantly, get your program to automatically either give that gift, the discount on the product or service etc automatically. The client will then see that this sms code actually assists in getting what is being given to them very quickly, thereby making the client more receptive to the same campaigns in the future. Most importantly however your program will have recorded that a discount or item was given as a result of an sms code, oh and did I mention that anything else bought on that invoice can also be directly attributed safely to that sms! Why? Well its all about the impulse buying sydrome that many people have, now not only have you got the client to come back to your store, but they have also purchased additional items and services as a result of your campaign to give them something. Yes there will be clients that arent like this, but my experience with my clients has clearly shown that many clients will buy more than what they came for.

Step 5: Finally your software program needs to have a specific report that is date range and or sms campaign based that shows ROI in sms campaigns, this is not such a complex report, the cost price is made up of:

- the cost of the sms campaign as a whole
- the cost price of all the items on the invoices attributed to the campaign

The sales portion consists simply of the selling price (ie actual selling price less discount if that is what was given) of all the items on all the invoices for that sms campaign

The report then subtracts sales from cost of sales to give the profit on the campaign and then display a simple ROI percentage.

Thats it, you now have a manner to provide an exact way to track the exact return on an sms campaign, most clients discover that the hit rate of clients responding to the quantity of sms sent is probably lower than 10% but that the return and profitability of the campaign far outweighs what looks like few people coming back on your campaign. Remember it doesn’t take huge quantities of people responding to turn a good profit, in most instances it only takes 2-3 returns. 10% of 10 000 clients coming back is serious profit for any business, considering it took a well thought out sms and 5 minutes to send 10 000 smses to clients, thats probably the best money you could have spent on marketing ever.

Also remember that a report displaying ROI on an sms campaign will greatly assist you in becoming even more effective with sms campaigns, ie what time of the month has a better return, what season, time of day, what sorts of discounts client like best etc, all of these business decisions can be taken very easily with a report such as this in front of your eyes.

A final note: If you find that your hit rate is to low for your liking, the chances are your campaign is a bit to general, rather send more specific campaigns to even more targeted clients, that will definitely see your percetnages increase, if that doesnt work then perhaps the issue lies in the service you offering clients, great service always brings clients back again. I have had clients that had almost no return on sms campaigns and they sent the same sms campaign as other clients had with great success, without telling them however, it was clear that they just didnt offer there clients a good service in any case so no amount of smsing and discounts was going to help them.

I hope this article has helped some people and companies, my company specialises very heavily in assisting its clients in how to send effective sms campaigns and measure these campaigns  even more effectively.

All Programming offers bulk sms programming and development services, to view more information, click here

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ROI in Software Development

August 31st, 2009 No Comments

Hi I thought I would write a series of articles on a topic that I believe is becoming absolutely critical in the software programming and development industry, that being the magical and mysterious ROI (return on investment) in software development.

As the owner of a programming company here in South Africa, I decided at the outset of the company that a rule of thumb for accepting any software development project would be that I would need to figure out how to measure the ROI in that particular project. Now you may or may not be surprised to know that in most instances my clients don’t actually think of this measure before taking on the project, they know that they have a business problem or business need that needs to be solved with technology and are willing to pay an amount of money for that. Experience over the years however has shown me that the best way to retain that client in the long term and or to make more business from that client is to prove a ROI in some way on that software development project.

I find this measure to be critical because for my companies purposes (All Programming) it shows exactly how successful a project is to my client in monetary terms. The bigger my impact through the software I develop, the more successful I have been at satisfying that clients need, the easier it is for me to go back to that client and offer further services. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t believe that a project coming in on time or under cost is a great measure of the success of that project at all, this is typically what IT companies do. If I really want to do a great job for my client then I always intentionally build a monitoring tool into the software I develop for them and that tool must track the ROI for the client in some way and present a report to the client whenever they want to see what this piece of software really is worth to them, be it through savings, additional income, time savings, it doesn’t matter so long as you track the value.

So how do you go about figuring out the ROI on software development project?

This is the difficult portion because it requires listening to the clients need carefully and scoping there need correctly, once you have done this, it should become fairly obvious what the client is trying to solve by having the software developed, this should then be a clear indication of the measure to be used on ROI. For example,a client of mine wished to have a system developed that automated the process of allowing shareholders in various properties to swap there owned weeks with each other. Before the client came to me they did this process manually, ie called there shareholders to find out if they were willing to exchange a week with a fellow shareholder that already gave an indication that they wanted to swap there week etc. This took a lot of time and for the administration fee that the client asked to do this, I suspect the profit was very little. Once we had developed the system and allowed the shareholders to interact with each other through the website instead of the web system, the ROI was very clear, why?

-We tracked each exchange in the system, each exchange has a monetary value associated to it.

-The clients telephone bill dropped significantly

-More swaps occur because of the ease at which shareholders can swap weeks, instead of having to go through a process of calling the company then waiting etc, this increase in sales is measurable

-Because the client offered the service electronically he could increase his administration fee.

All this information the client could get through there system thereby ensuring that he could very clearly see what his ROI was.

Conclusion

I believe without a doubt that if you truly want to complete a software development project successfully for a client, then you need to build a ROI tool into the software. Convince the client to do this, if you cant do that then build it free of charge, but make sure that you get your client to look at these figures. In the long term this will have a positive effect on your business and keeps your software development projects honest in terms of creativity and keeping the clients needs in mind constantly.

Please offer your comments and views on this topic, I am very sure that peoples opinions and views on this vary quite considerably, I am very willing to listen to other opinions in this regard.

In my next article on ROI and software, I will be describing more specifically how you can measure ROI on certain types of projects, in this case it will be how to measure ROI precisely in SMS campaigns.

Related articles on software  development return on investment

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Give Credit Where It Is Due

August 23rd, 2009 2 Comments

I really like to give credit where it is due. In this series of Links, the first link I am going to add is probably the single most important link for me on an inspirational basis for my work on a daily basis.

The website???

Smashing Magazine

Basically this website contains design, tutorial, cheat sheet and programming information on websites. For the most part however it is dedicated to graphics design and tutorials. There are hundreds upon hundreds of free fonts, logos, graphics, website templates etc on this website. If you are anything like me, ie I am an excellent programmer but my string points are definitely not graphics design, then this website will offer you all the inspiration you will ever need. Its on my daily list of things to read in the morning.

In fact this blog template is from the smashing magazine website and as requested by the developers of this amazing template, here is the link to the actual template should you wish to use it yourself. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/16/wordpress-fun-a-free-wordpress-theme/

Don’t hesitate to add this one to your list.

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Hello world!

August 22nd, 2009 No Comments

Welcome to the All Programming Blog!!!

So what is it that you can expect from this blog? Well firstly as demonstrated by the casual theme of this blog, this blog takes an often light hearted approach to all its articles, you will find over time that this may be a good thing, bad thing or very sarcastic.

This blog will over time contain information on many topics of which some of these will be:

  • Software development and programming
  • Website design and programming
  • Search engine optimisation
  • IT industry news
  • My own personal experiences in business
  • Tips and tricks

Well there could end up being many more topics than this over time, I am unsure right now.

So why the need for a company blog, well there are 3 main reasons

1)I am using this blog as an experimental tool over time to see how and whether it positively effects my google search engine rankings.

2)The greater majority of South African companies don’t have blogs, I guess I am trying to start a trend.

3)I have a lot of ideas and thoughts and need a means to let the world know about them.

I welcome all and any comments, hope you enjoy this over time.

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