Founded almost 10 years ago, as the new millennium dawned, CoolerEmail is entering its second decade in 2010.

Reaching that milestone is an opportune time to look back at CoolerEmail from its beginnings to now. Examining the email marketing industry as a whole, we see how it and CoolerEmail have grown and developed together in dramatic fashion over the decade. So put your nostalgia hat on and get that faraway look in your eyes as we return to 2000 and compare then and now.

Early in the development of Internet marketing, permission-based email was identified as an economical and powerful tool for direct communication. Founders Leif Youngberg and Lars Helgeson wanted to make it easy for anyone to capitalize on this new opportunity in direct marketing by offering a reliable tool to send professional-looking, permission-based communications and track responses. CoolerEmail was one of the first companies to integrate robust customer relationship management software with HTML e-mail campaign tools.

From its inception, CoolerEmail promoted best practices by emphasizing the importance of sending solicited communication only. The term spam is traced back to 1993 and actually predates the legitimate use of email marketing. By the time CoolerEmail was founded, spam was already an annoyance, but Congress was still three years away from passing the CAN-SPAM Act (new regulations later went into effect in July 2008). Thus CoolerEmail’s founders made it their mission to work diligently with ISPs to develop the industry’s highest deliverability rates while helping their clients send legitimate, opt-in email.

From those humble beginnings with just a handful of clients utilizing CoolerEmail’s robust functionality, CoolerEmail now sends millions of permission-based, trackable emails on behalf of thousands of clients each and every day. Working directly with all the major ISPs, CoolerEmail is proud to offer its clients the highest deliverability rates in the industry.

In 2000, Gallup found that only 54 percent of Americans used the Internet, and 89 percent of them used it for e-mail. Today, most Americans use the Internet, with a vast majority of them using it to send and receive email regularly.

CoolerEmail has always led the industry with innovative features and unmatched reliability. CoolerEmail’s founders believed then, as they do now, that customer service is paramount. Our Cooler Support Team is “fanatical” about support, providing live help during business hours by phone (866.4.COOLER), email or through social networking sites.

Speaking of social networking, the sites Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn didn’t even exist in 2000, but now they do, and CoolerEmail was, of course, an early adopter of all three. Social networking continues to grow in importance, as an adjunct tool for Internet and email marketers. In 2010, you’ll see more robust CoolerEmail functionality and integration for social media sites.

The team at CoolerEmail is looking forward to our second decade as the email marketing service that stands out from the rest in technology, usability and customer service. As we like to say, It’s Just Cooler!

Understanding how your recipients view your emails to effectively organize your content:

Let’s say you have a phone message to relay to your roommate.  You decide to leave a note for them- and you’re hoping they’ll get this note before they leave for work the next morning.  Where do you leave it?  It seems a simple answer: on the bathroom mirror; the refrigerator door; atop the coffee pot… etc.  If you know your roommate’s morning routine, you can leave the note anywhere their eyes will be during that routine.

If you’re especially clever, you may consider not leaving the note in the first place your roommate visits in the morning – as they may be too groggy to pay any attention.  You also might consider not leaving it in the last place, as they will be in a hurry to get out the door.  Either way, you’re not going to leave the note someplace you know your roommate will not be visiting, say, under the bed.  Why?  Because you want them to see it, of course!

This all seems common sense, right?  Well what may not be so “common sense” is applying this same concept to your email newsletters that go out to your client.  If you knew your client’s email reading routine, wouldn’t you use that knowledge to organize the information you wish them to receive?

There are countless elements that play into how your contacts receive your messages. The time of day it is sent off or received, the day of the week, the time of month, attention span of the reader, how busy their business is at the time, whether or not they had a bad day… etc.  But let’s talk about one of the most basic – the layout of the content itself.

So your contact OPENS the email – success! But are they getting all the information they want and you want them to have? They may not receive the message as you intended it to be received because you are making crucial placement mistakes.

Many studies cite an “F-Shaped” reading pattern of web content when studying eye tracking in those who read their language from left to right, top to bottom.  This shape suggests that readers usually begin at the top left corner of the page and move across the top to the right.  They then go back to the left side and read across again, but before long their movement across from left to right gets shorter, like the second limb of a capital F.  Once they lose interest in the main body of the article, they’ll move on to content placed in sidebars.

Of course there are variations on this F shape, sometimes users will read across the entire article creating more of an E shape.  I also found studies that show more of a U shape (down the left and up the right side).  However, the F-shape is by far the most popular when studying web content eye-tracking and some things are pretty much agreed upon:

Headlines get read. Make sure you’re putting the most important information, in the simplest way possible in your headlines. Though it doesn’t need to be as short and sweet as your subject line, you should continue to think about creating interest.

Keep it fairly short – remember, this is an email, not a novel.  Your contacts have other emails to read and business to do.  In most situations, your contact does not have the attention span for your email that they do for other reading material – say, the Sunday paper.

Not everything will be read. What is it they say, on average a person only retains 25% of what they are told?  So think along those lines when creating your newsletter.  Put the most important info at the top, at least in the first part of your article, and think of the rest as “extra”.

Define paragraphs or sections with “mini-headlines”.  Make the first sentence in a paragraph an introduction to the following information – engage readers and create interest.

Smaller type encourages focus. The same way that speaking softly will cause listeners to lean in and tune up their ears, smaller type forces readers to pay more attention.  Just make sure you keep it legible! (Note that some studies found that smaller text will sometimes be ignored when it is placed alongside larger text, as with sub-headlines)

Remember, just like your roommate receiving their phone message from you, your readers want the information you have for them, otherwise they wouldn’t have opted-in to your correspondence.  You just have to give it to them in a place they can easily find it.

Conduct your own research and let us know your findings!  Did you get better click-through rates when links were on the left or the right side of your newsletter?  Are your articles getting more attention that the advertisements on your site?  Are you noticing a difference when you send out more text-heavy newsletter versus the short and sweet?

Articles I used to write this entry:
“The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes” http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/main.htm
“F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content” http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html
“11 Striking Findings From an Eye Tracking Study” http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/05/20/11-striking-findings-from-an-eye-tracking-study/
“3 Hot Marketing Tips from Heat Map Analysis” http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/1499/3-Hot-Marketing-Tips-from-Heat-Map-Analysis-images.aspx

You can now look back at your grammar school days and think, “Wow – the nerds really do end up inheriting the world…”

Right?  Right.  Why? Because the nerds paid attention in class.

Were you one of those A-earners getting stuffed in lockers?  If so, you probably already know about the weekly Cooler E-Classes.  If not, I’ll fill you in:

Cooler E-Classes are live, interactive, webinar courses hosted by Betty Cooler (aka Lettie Taylor of the CoolerEmail support team).  These Cooler E-Classes are a tour through the 2.0 interface.  Lasting usually between 45 and 75 minutes – they cover:

• Importing and organizing contacts- Learn about importable file types and how to create them, where to import your contact list, how to create and manage lists and groups and all about custom user fields.

• Building an edition- With the all-new Build module, creating an edition is so easy you’ll be able to send out your newsletters more often – or in a hurry!  Betty shows you, from start to finish, how to create a newsletter edition using a system template.  You’ll learn how to insert images, links and text as well as how to customize each email sent out to it’s recipient.

• Sending a broadcast- Choose your contacts, select the edition and Send!  It’s really that easy – and Betty proves it with a look at the Send module of the 2.0 interface.  She also covers questions like, “what if one contact is on the list twice?” and “how quickly does it actually get sent out?”

• Tracking results- Dive into the Track module with a look at all of the different charts and graphs available for your tracking pleasure.  You’ll learn where to find all the information you need to have.  And how to keep track of it on a regular basis.

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Questions are welcome throughout the session – and the end of the class is completely dedicated to Q & A – so if you need a live demo on a certain feature or want to see your question answered live – ask away!

Cooler E-Classes are every Wednesday afternoon at 1:00pm Pacific Standard Time, and unlike a lot of higher education – they’re completely free!  To request an invitation, email EClasses@CoolerEmail.com

Already attended once but just can’t get enough? – You, and everyone from your team is more than welcome to join any time.

To get more proof that school is cool – email EClasses@CoolerEmail.com and ask for more info on the Cooler E-Classes.

CoolerEmail is a proud sponsor of the Susan G Komen Race for the Cure in Temecula, CA on Sunday, October 18!  To all the participants, good luck!!

Consistent with the original program, commissions (20%) will be paid on a recurring basis.  More details should be available soon so stay tuned

For over a decade, CoolerEmail has offered the broadest email marketing feature set at the most affordable price.   Since our inception, we have considered thousands of feature variations, and implemented most of them.

The launch of CoolerEmail 2.0 is an exciting time as we have once again raised the bar in email marketing!  We have integrated super-simple template functionality with the most important and often used features in the email marketing industry.  At the same time, we have significantly streamlined and improved the user-experience.   The new clients we are welcoming to CoolerEmail 2.0 (many of whom are upgrading to CoolerEmail) from outdated (or more complex) email marketing service providers are uniform in their praise: “it’s just cooler!”

The most often used and requested features (based on a decade of experience and listening) are now up and running in CoolerEmail 2.0!  There are a few social media features (for example, even more powerful twitter integration) that we are putting the final touches on and that will be up soon.  And, of course, as the world of online marketing continues to evolve, CoolerEmail will be there to help chart its course – just as we have done from the earliest days!

Thank you for visiting our blog.  And welcome to CoolerEmail 2.0!!

When choosing an e-news provider some of the key components to look at are……

• Deliverability
• Ease of Use
• Flexibility
• Pricing
• Reliability
• Tracking

In the CoolerEmail 2.0 upgrade we have focused on all of this and more! In the coming weeks we will show you how CoolerEmail 2.0 fits into each of these important components to building a successful email marketing platform.

Today we are going to focus on the user and how easy the new 2.0 system is for the user.

When looking at an email marketing system ease of use is incredibly important. It is hard enough to get motivated to send out e-newsletters, without having to add a time consuming learning curve into the mix. If the system is not user friendly your email campaign consistency could suffer, as could your content, and newsletter design.

Ease of Use – A few things to keep in mind – the system should be straightforward and fairly quick to import and export your mailing database, manage your list online, create and send e-newsletters. The ease of use should extend into reviewing and understanding your marketing results as well.

Ease of Use is most often equated with the user interface but it is also contingent on the customer support behind the technology.  We feel it is important to give you an intuitive, feature rich, easy to use interface and to make sure, that you not only have all of the newest and most innovative email marketing tools at your disposal, but that we provide the support to help you use those tools.

User Interface:

In CoolerEmail 2.0 we chose to break it down into three easy to navigate areas:

The Dashboard was designed to give you a quick but relatively thorough view of your current email marketing performance in these three areas.  The segmented sections with charts and graphs give you the ability to monitor your email marketing efforts…..without a lot of effort.

By clicking on the titles of each section, ‘Contact Trends’, ‘Tracking Summar’, and ‘Broadcast Summary’ you can drive deeper into the analytical data behind the charts.

The goal behind the design of CoolerEmail 2.0 is to give new and current users a system that is so easy to use that you can focus on creating great newsletters filled with stimulating content and

rich design, rather than wasting time on a complicated, cumbersome, and frustrating system that detracts from your email campaigns.

Integrate CoolerEmail with your existing Contact Management System

CoolerEmail XML API

The CoolerEmail XML API is a robust yet simple to use solution for seamlessly integrating large, sophisticated CRM and other data management systems with your CoolerEmail account (so you don’t have to manage multiple databases).

Using the CoolerEmail XML API, you can automatically POST and RETRIEVE any data to your CoolerEmail account. This means you can, among other things, send professional quality (and trackable) CoolerEmails directly from your CRM system (e.g., Oracle® , Siebel® , Onyx® , SalesForce.com® , etc).

ACT! Plug-In

If you’re one of the many ACT! users who wants to send HTML e-mails quickly and easily to your ACT! contacts, we have the perfect solution for you. Using the new ACT! plugin, you can “sync” groups within ACT! with your CoolerEmail mailing lists, view contact history for each e-mail sent, and track which contacts have clicked on specific links. You can select and sync your whole database and mailing lists all at once — it really does make your ACT! software cooler!

Customer Support

CoolerEmail has always had an extensive help section and live customer support, we have added to that interactive help features within the user interface and we will soon be implementing Cooler Help Videos and Webinars.

We feel so strongly about making the CoolerEmail system easy to use that if you need help importing your content from your current contact management system or email client we will gladly step in and help you with it. On top of that, if you need help building your first newsletter template, we would be happy to assist you there as well.

So check out the system let us know what you think, and if you have any further questions give us a ring (Telephone Support: 1.866.4.COOLER) or shoot us an email or tweet us or hope on our Facebook page – our support team is ready and waiting.