A Help & How-To Introduction

TechExcel

MarketingShip Overview

A Help & How-To Introduction

Support Server

Table of Contents

1

Getting Started with MarketingShip 2

Email Marketing with MarketingShip 3

Autoresponders 9

Contact Management 13

Media Base 25

Email Reporting with MarketingShip 31

Event Management with MarketingShip 34

Membership Management with MarketingShip 42

User Settings – Account information and interface customization 48

The Member experience 51

1

MarketingShip Help & How-To Tips

MarketingShip is a comprehensive direct marketing platform which uses email, web-based event planning and the core concepts of Customer Relations Management to help you grow your customer base. It has specifically tailored and enhanced features for entities that use membership as part of their organizational structure.

Getting Started with MarketingShip

The first step on your journey with MarketingShip is creating an account.

To create an account:

1.  In your browser, navigate to http://www.membershipwise.com/member/SignUp.aspx

2.  Enter a User Name, your First and Last Names, and the email you wish to use for the account.

3.  Agree to MarketingShip’s “Terms & Conditions” and submit the form.

After hitting Submit, a verification email will be sent to the address provided. You must click on the link embedded in that email to activate your account. This will take you to the MaketingShip user login page:

Alternately, you can also log in using the log in boxes in the upper right corner of many pages.

Enter your chosen login name and password and you’ll be logged in and ready to start creating your first email campaign!

Email Marketing with MarketingShip

Email marketing is direct marketing which uses email as a means of customer contact.

It is:

·  Simple, Cost Effective and Professional method for your business to communicate with your clients

·  Simple- Custom, searchable email distribution lists allow you to tailor the right message to the right customers

·  Cost Effective- Sophisticated tracking and reporting system to let you concentrate time and effort on confirmed interactions

·  Professional - Email templates for all occasions so you don’t have to be a graphic artist to send out aesthetically appealing, effective communications

Email Marketing Benefits with MarketingShip:

·  Email newsletters are quick and easy to create using the MarketingShip tools – much faster than paper based newsletters

·  Target your emails via contact lists to ensure the right marketing material reaches the correct core audiences. This leads to higher read and retention rates

·  Email newsletters can be forwarded at the touch of a button, allowing contacts to send your materials along, and increasing the chances that people will ‘spread the word’

·  Immediately receive feedback on who has read or forwarded an email with MarketingShip Reporting. You can see who has opened an email, who has clicked on a link and what they clicked on, and who has forwarded your email to a friend

·  Detailed Bounce reports help you figure out which contacts are and aren’t receiving emails and why, and helps you organize and clean up your contact lists accordingly.

·  Save money on physical mail postage and conserve natural resources

In MarketingShip, it is easy to create and maintain attractive, professional emails.

1.  Go to the Email tab and select New

2. 
Name your email

Naming your email something distinct helps it stand out and be found in the tracking reports.

3.  Select a default template or use your own

The template is the basis of each email you send. You can start from a variety of pre made templates, select a custom made template, or create a new template from Scratch via the Use My Own Code link.

4.  Define the Email Settings:

The Subject Field appears on the email when it is sent, and is the first thing seen about the mail by a contact.

The From Name Field will select the name of the sender of the mail when you send it out, and anything you like can be placed here, though you should probably use a name such as the name of your mail campaign or your company name to maximize the professional look of your email.

The From Email Address Field contains the email addresses of the users of MarketingShip attached to your account- if you have one user, you will have one selectable email address, twelve users, and you’ll have twelve selectable. Any user can currently use any listed email address for use in the From Address Field. MarketingShip recommends creating a dedicated user with an email such as ‘Administrator@companyname’ or ‘Info@companyname’ for dedicated use in this field.

The Reply Name Field and Reply Email Address Field are used for people responding to your email with correspondence of their own, and should ideally be filled with a very similar or the same name and email as the ones used in the From Name and Address Fields.

Clicking the permission button includes a customizable opt-in/opt-out form in the header of the email itself, allowing readers to subscribe or unsubscribe instantly. Interested parties who have your email forwarded to them may join your newsletter and disinterested subscribers can remove themselves from your list so you do not have to keep wasting effort on sending emails to or keeping contact information on uninterested parties.

If you click the Forward Email to Friends Box, you will cause a link to appear in the footer of your email that says Forward to Friends by default but which can be made to say anything by editing the text field to the right of the box. Recipient clicking this link will be sent to a page that allows them to forward your email to several friends at once. Who takes advantage of this feature is a statistic that MarketingShip tracks and information on who forwards what emails can be found under the Email Reporting link, and is discussed later on.

If you have your MarketingShip account associated with a Facebook or Twitter account, you can check these boxes to web versions of your mail to either service. If your MarketingShip account is not associated with either social media service, you can click the Connect to Facebook and Connect to Twitter buttons to enter your access information and register these accounts without leaving the email settings page.

5. 
Adding content to the Email

Template editing- or even creating an entire email from scratch- is a simple process requiring no understanding of the underlying code. Our handy and intuitive tools make editing and creation a breeze. Their uses and features will be discussed later.

While many of the tools you can see in the image above are so commonplace as to need absolutely no explanation at all, there are a few new tools that MarketingShip provides which you should be made aware of, specifically, our trackable link and event tools.

Insert links- This tool, represented by the page and link icon, brings up a popup window with your MarketingShip Media Base. The page gives you the ability to create and edit trackable links for future use, letting you upload an attached file, write in an HTML page, or link to anything on the web, with detailed names, notes, and preview options, as well as the ability to see how many times each link has been clicked, and by whom.

Insert Quick Links- This tool is a much more streamlined link tool, which only allows you to insert a URL, the name of the link, and how the link will open- in the same window, new window, etc.- to create a quick trackable link. Links created via this tool will automatically be sorted into and visible in your ‘quick links’ folder in the Media Base.

Insert Event- This tool, represented by the page with a green e allows you to take any active event you’ve created on MarketingShip, and automatically insert a link to its invitation page in your email, either embedded inline, or as a plain link.

Mail Merge- This tool, represented by the open envelope icon at the right of the second row of tools, can place code into the mail that will be filled by each contact's own information upon delivery. This tool can also be used to place links to the registration and login pages of your member portal, should you have one.

Save Template- Any email can be saved as a template for future use by copying it in its entirety, opening the template tool at the upper right, and creating a new template. Doing so will not interrupt the current email creation session.

6.  Select Contact List for recipients

Send your email to some, or all of your contacts. If you don’t select any contacts, you will only be able to save your email as a draft. If you don’t have any contacts, you will need to make some using the tools in the contacts tab.

7.  Decide when to send, now or later

Mail can be saved as a draft, mailed immediately, or scheduled to be sent at a future date, either a singular fixed point in time or in response to repeated stimulus such as a holiday or birthday. If you decide to send or schedule your mail, you will need to check the Permission Policy box assuring that everyone you are sending mail to has already consented to receiving it.

8.  Preview your mail

There are several different ways to see, at any time, how your mail will look once its sent out, even while you are constructing it. In the editing window while you are creating your mail, clicking the preview button at the bottom of the pane will remove all the guiding marks and show you what your mail would look like if you sent it out at that moment. Once you’ve sent, saved, or scheduled your mail you’ll be given a preview of how it will look when viewed by recipients. You will also be given the option while viewing this preview to send a test email to addresses of your choosing ensuring your email looks and works as expected in various browsers. Lastly, in the list of all your emails, you can click the preview button be taken immediately to a working preview of the mail, links and all.

9.  Editing your mail after creation

If you have saved an email but not sent it, it can be edited by clicking the Edit button in your mail list. This will allow you to edit any aspect of the open mail, including its name, sender, recipient, and the email itself. Sent Mail cannot be edited, just as it cannot be sent again. For that you need to copy your mail.

10. Copying an email

Emails can be reproduced exactly by selecting them in the email list and clicking the copy button above. The new mail be have 'Copy of' and the original mail's name as its default name, though this can be changed. All other details of the new mail will be exactly the same as the old mail. Copying a mail is the only way to ‘edit’ or ‘resend’ a successfully sent mail, since sent mails are locked to ensure accurate tracking.

11. Sorting, Archiving, and Filtering your mail

While your email list will start out small, it will eventually grow quite large, several pages worth of emails very quickly. As looking through pages of emails to find a single message is quickly frustrating, MarketingShip has several options to simplify finding your mail. First is the ability to change how many mails you view per page. With default choices of 10, 20, 50, and 100 per page, MarketingShip will automatically remember your preference on this page and separately for every other option. If you want to view a small number of mails in your mail list and a great number in your mail reporting list, MarketingShip will remember for you.

Other features to cut down on your search times are the ability to sort your emails, filter between categories of mails, and sending old or notable threads into their own special list.

To sort your mails, on your list of emails just click on the name of a value, like the date created or the contact list, and the mails will be sorted by that value in ascending order, or descending order if you click the name again.

You can also choose to filter your emails by whether they are a draft, are running, they are scheduled, sent, or if they are archived. Archived Mail only appears in the Archived mail list, and cannot be moved from the archived list short of deletion. The archived mail list is intended for old or noteworthy mail that is cluttering up your current mail list but which you do not want to delete.

Autoresponders

1.  Creating a new Autoresponder

To create an Autoresponder, go to the Email tab, click the Autoresponder link, and click New.

2.  Name your Autoresponder

As with a normal email, the name of an Autoresponder is used to distinguish it from others in the email list and tracking reports.

3.  Select a template

The template is the basis of each autoresponder, . You can start from a variety of pre made templates, select a custom made template, or create a new template from Scratch via the Use My Own Code link.

4.  Define the Autoresponder settings:

Whatever you enter in the Subject Field here will appear as the Subject of the Autoresponder when it is sent.

The From Name Field will select the name of the sender of the mail when you send it out, and anything you like can be placed here, though you should probably use a name such as the name of your mail campaign or your company name to maximize the professional look of your Autoresponder.

The From Autoresponder Address Field contains the Autoresponder addresses of the users of MarketingShip attached to your account- if you have one user, you will have one selectable Autoresponder address, twelve users, and you’ll have twelve selectable. Any user can currently use any listed Autoresponder address for use in the From Address Field. MarketingShip recommends creating a dedicated user with an Autoresponder such as ‘Administrator@companyname’ or ‘Info@companyname’ for dedicated use in this field.