To ensure that you can enjoy the benefits of the high email deliverability rates that come with being an Emarsys customer, we need a little information about your business and your marketing requirements before we can enable your account for sending. This will ensure that we provide you with the right infrastructure to support your email marketing needs.
You will receive our setup form with some of the fields already filled in by your Emarsys Implementation Consultant. You should check this information, fill in the rest of the sections and then return it to us. As soon as we have this information we can prepare your account for the email ramp-up plan that will get up and sending at your required volume in the shortest possible time.
Each section in the form covers a different set of requirements. A description of these sections, along with their fields and the reasons why we need this information, is provided below.
It is absolutely essential that you provide up-to-date and accurate information in this form. We use this form as the basis for a number of decisions regarding the environment, IP range and account infrastructure to ensure that you get the best possible service from us.
Decisions made based on inaccurate information may be costly and time-consuming to reverse, and will delay the completion of your onboarding journey.
Contents of the setup form
Account information
The fields here are pre-populated by us. You only need to check that the details are correct. If any details are incorrect, please change them and inform your Implementation Consultant so that they can update the source of that information on our side.
Fields:
- Your company name
- Your Emarsys account name(s)
- Your project owner name
- Your project owner email address
Reply management and unsubscribes
If you are not using the Emarsys reply management or unsubscribe features, we would like to know about it so that we can check your processes and inform you if there is anything that needs to be changed.
The way you enable your customers to reply to, and unsubscribe from, your marketing emails is a critical factor in building trust and keeping a good reputation.
Fields:
- Will you be using your own reply management solution or Emarsys?
- Will you be using your own unsubscribe solution or Emarsys?
- If you will be using your own unsubscribe solution, please supply the landing page URL(s) you intend to use.
Previous service provider
We need to understand the recent performance of your email campaigns with your previous (current) provider, in particular any problems that you might have had, so that we can avoid repeating them.
Please be as accurate as possible here; we will conduct our own research into your previous sending domain and any inconsistencies in our findings will delay your ramp-up program and impact your overall onboarding timeline.
Fields:
- Enter the name of your current email service provider.
- Enter the sender domain used with current service provider.
-
Have you had any deliverability issues, or have any of your domains and/or IPs been blacklisted within the past year?
Note: Knowing what problems you have had in the past will help us to avoid them in the future. Do not be limited to the last 12 months if you think that a previous problem is still relevant. - If you answered Yes to the previous question, please provide as much information as possible about the reason why you were blacklisted.
- Are you Return Path certified?
Note: We can liaise with Return Path and move the benefits of your certification to your new Emarsys IP addresses. - Please let us know which IP addresses you are using with your current provider and if they are dedicated or shared.
Email performance
Here we ask you to give us an idea of your current response rates. Please calculate the averages for your marketing campaigns (not transactional emails) over the last 30 days. This information is critical for us to be able to prepare a ramp-up plan that best fits your sending profile.
Fields:
- Your average hard bounce rate over the last 30 days (%).
- Your average soft bounce rate over the last 30 days (%).
- Your average block bounce rate over the last 30 days (%).
- Your average open rate over the last 30 days (%).
- Your average click rate over the last 30 days (%).
Sending volumes
In this section you need to give us the planned volume and frequency of your daily marketing and transactional emails, as well as their distribution over the week.
Please pay particular attention to counting only subscribers with confirmed opt-in, both for your current database and for your expected future growth.
This will help us to allocate the right resources to your account so that we can manage all your mailing requirements.
Fields:
- How many marketing emails (total volume) do you send on average per day?
-
How many transactional emails (total volume) do you send on average per day?
Note: We differentiate between marketing and transactional emails for two reasons:- Transactional emails typically need to be delivered individually within a couple of seconds, and have very different settings to marketing emails where many thousands of messages all need to be delivered at the same time. For that reason we often use a different infrastructure to send them.
- Transactional emails typically do not require opt-in and it is safer for us to send all such emails using a separate infrastructure if the volume is high.
- How many subscribers do you currently have (with confirmed opt-in for email)?
- What is your planned email subscriber growth (monthly average)?
- Which days of the week do you send your recurring email campaigns on?
Website information
Trust is at the center of any business relationship, and clearly explaining to your subscribers what they are signing up for and how to plan to use their data is essential to maintaining good engagement and low complaint and unsubscribe rates.
In this section we ask for details of your web presence so that we can review your policies against our own best practices and global legislation.
Fields:
- Provide the URLs of all your websites (including all your brands).
- Provide all your account registration form URLs (all forms, in all languages, where a customer can open an account with you).
- Provide all newsletter sign-up page URLs, as applicable (all forms, in all languages, where a customer can subscribe to a marketing newsletter).
- If there are any online registration forms outside your website that can be used to subscribe to your emails, please provide their URLs (so that we can check them and advise you whether or not they are compliant).
- Please provide the URL(s) of your Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions (this is in case we want to review these for disclosure and clarity, and inform you if we feel there are open issues that need to be addressed).
Please remember: Emarsys is not a law firm specializing in data security legislation, and we do not offer legal advice. We want to help you to understand how this legislation can affect you as an Emarsys customer.
You should always refer to a qualified legal source when it comes to checking whether or not you are compliant in any given situation.
Data quality information
The questions here give us an insight into your list hygiene. Sending to unsubscribed or bounced contacts is a leading cause of complaints and deliverability problems.
Fields:
- Do you have different subscription options for different purposes (e.g. newsletter, promotions, etc.)?
- What type of opt-in practices are in use on your website (choose from a list of options)?
Note: Confusion over what a contact has opted in for is a leading cause of complaints. This will give us an understanding of which methods you use. - How are new email addresses acquired (choose from a list of options)?
Note: The safest email addresses to send to are those where you can prove that the contact subscribed via double-opt-in. The further from this method you go, the less reliable you engagement levels will be. Understanding how your database was built up will help us choose the correct approach to solving deliverability problems. - What data do you store on registration?
Note: Should a customer ever consider litigation against you because of the way you engage with them, you need to be able to demonstrate exactly what they signed up for on that occasion by providing copies of these documents used at the time. - Please describe how you currently identify inactive users.
Note: Although it can sometimes feel counter-intuitive, cleaning your database and sending only to engaged contacts is a better long-term growth strategy than bulk-mailing your entire database. Sending to inactive contacts can affect the performance of all your email campaigns.
Compliance - affiliate marketing and co-registration
This is an important issue, as contacts who subscribe on an external site may not always be aware that they are also subscribing to your campaigns. This can be a major source of complaints and unsubscribes, therefore the process must be clear and transparent.
Fields:
- Describe the opt-in process in detail for subscribers acquired by affiliate or co-registration.
- Provide us with the URLs of the pages where all your partner/affiliate companies are named.
Additional comments
Space has been left at the bottom of the form in case you have additional information that you would like to give us.
