Product Tips and Hints - CRM Meets Hospitality - Libra OnDemand News and Blog

Libra OnDemand has partnered with VerticalResponse for it’s mass email services, using VerticalResponse’s APIs to deliver seamless integration to Libra OnDemand CRM users. What that means is that any mass emails that you send from Libra OnDemand using the Libra OnDemand Campaign and List management tools are actually processed and sent via VerticalResponse.

VerticalResponse is a leader in email marketing, with over 75,000 customers worldwide and a ton of experience in delivering and managing mass emails. Making sure that your email actually reaches the recipient is obviously important for your email campaigns, and our partnership with VerticalResponse helps our customers achieve some of the highest levels of deliverability in the industry.

This post provides a digest of VerticalResponse’s best practices and recommendations for email deliverability.

What Does VerticalResponse Do to Ensure Excellent Email Delivery?

We’re Anti-Spam

Everyone says they’re anti-spam, but we really, really mean it. We respond to and investigate every single complaint that comes in to our abuse desk, we quickly work to resolve issues with clients who receive complaints (before they start causing delivery problems), and we even look over every email newsletter launched through our system to make sure nothing suspicious or fraudulent can make it out the door. This keeps complaints to a minimum, which is a big part of maintaining a strong reputation for our IP Addresses.

We Automate Bounce / Unsubscribe Processing

By automating this process (like many of our competitors), we ensure no users can abuse our IP Addresses by ignoring bounces and unsubscribes. This also helps us keep an excellent reputation.

We Use Feedback Loops

We have feedback loops with every single ISP that is known to offer one (and maintain strong relationships even with those that don’t). This means if someone clicks Report Spam at Hotmail, that Hotmail trusts us to take action on the complaint. It also means that when someone clicks such a button at a participating an ISP (like Hotmail), VerticalResponse users don’t have to worry they’ll accidentally send email to that person again as we automatically unsubscribe any trigger happy recipients who press the “Report Spam” button.

We Use Authentication Protocols

We authenticate client email through the use of the three currently major authentication protocols: SPF (Sender Policy Framework), Sender-ID, DomainKeys and DKIM. With SPF and Sender-ID we have published records that state our mail domains are allowed to send email marketing messages on behalf of our own IP Addresses. With DomainKeys and DKIM we sign each email with a key that the recipient server can then use to verify that we actually sent the email newsletter. These are a very important part of maintaining a good sending infrastructure.

We have a Dedicated Policy and Delivery Team

Our very experienced delivery management group is available to help with any questions regarding your specific email marketing messages (write them at delivery@verticalresponse.com). They also work hard to ensure VerticalResponse’s reputation remains as strong as possible.

What Can You Do to Help Ensure Excellent Email Delivery and Response?

Keep a Clean Email Mailing List

Be sure everyone on the mailing list has specifically requested info from or about your company in one way or another. Also make sure you’re not mailing previously unsubscribed or bounced email addresses. That went out of style a long time ago.

Treat Subscribers with Respect

Don’t mail subscribers too often and clutter their inbox with email they don’t want. Set expectations at the time of sign-up: “This is what we’re going to send you. And we’re going to send it to you this often.” Also try to maintain a relationship with your email subscriber. Don’t email them sporadically once or twice a year and expect them to take action with your emails.

How often is too often? How sporadic is too sporadic? I’d say once a week to once a month is a good range to keep in mind (though there are obviously situations where you may want to send more or less often), depending on your business type and what was promised at the time of sign-up.

Design With Delivery in Mind

Don’t just put a big image together in Illustrator and think you’re good to go. Make sure the email newsletter is easy to read (consider paragraph length and fonts), that images are being used only to enhance the HTML / text content (not as the sole content), and that the email newsletter is something that the subscriber would expect to receive based upon their sign-up with you.

An excellent resource for more information is the VR Marketing Blog. You can also see more detail regarding email delivery in general by reading our whitepaper, VerticalResponse, Email Delivery, and You.

Thursday

Oct222009

Tips & Hints for Email Marketing

Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 2:10PM |

Marketing to Your Customer Database

Libra OnDemand includes with powerful tools to market to your customer database. By combining rich CRM profile data with email marketing tools, you can segment your entire database by multiple criteria such as stay patterns, guest preferences, survey results, demographics data, spend history and others. You can then create highly targeted email campaigns that will have a high chance of striking home with their intended recipients.

First Sign Up for a Vertical Response Account

We use Vertical Response as our platform partner for email marketing services and CAN-SPAM compliance. We have created a strong integration with the Vertical Response solution, providing the ability to manage email marketing communications from within Libra OnDemand.
To get you started, please contact your Libra OnDemand account executive to sign you up for a VR account and to activate VR services for your organization.

Then Create Email Templates

Email Templates are created in the Communication Templates section of Libra OnDemand setup.

Go to the Setup screen and navigate to the Administration Setup->Communication Templates->Email Templates section.
Click the New button and create either a Custom or HTML template. If you already have a pre-designed html code for your template, simply copy and paste it to a new Custom template.
For HTML templates, you would need to use a pre-defined Letterhead. Please refer to the following Help page for additional information about email templates and letterheads.

Remember that you can use the merge fields in the template editor to personalize your email content.

Create an Email List

Email Lists allow you to select members for email campaigns. There are two types of Email Lists: Standard (members are selected and added to the email list at the time of list creation) and Dynamic (members are added to the list at the time of campaign launch using pre-defined filter criteria). You would typically use standard lists for most of your email campaigns and you’d use dynamic lists mainly for pre-arrival and post-departure email communications.

Click on the Email Lists tab, then click New to create a new Email List.
Enter the list name and specify whether this is going to be a Standard or a Dynamic list. Click the Save button.
Click Manage Members button to go to the member selection screen.
Select whether you are going to build your list primarily from email addresses contained in the Contact or Reservation profiles.
Select the Object for your search. If you are searching by main profile data of contacts or reservations, select Contact or Reservation as the object name. You can also search by any objects that are related to your primary object.
Specify the Field name for the selected object and your search criteria. Click Go to display the results of your search.
If you are creating a Standard list, select the list members that you want to add and click the Add Selected button.
For Dynamic lists, click the Save Query button instead.

Now your Email List is ready and can be associated with email campaigns.

And Finally Create the Campaign!

Click on the Email Campaigns tab and then New to create a new campaign.
Use the Email Template field to select the template that you want to use.
Use the Status field to track the approval process for the campaign. Only Reviewed campaigns can be activated for launch.
Specify the Frequency of the campaign. Select ‘One Time’ to send the email only once. Use ‘Scheduled’ to be able to specify a time schedule for repeat campaigns. Click Save.
Click the New Campaign List button to associate your email list(s) with the campaign.
If you are creating a Scheduled campaign, click the New Campaign Schedule button to create a schedule of campaign launches. You can create Daily, Weekly and Monthly schedules.
Now you are all set! Click the Activate button a the top of the screen to launch the campaign!

Email Marketing,

Sunday

Sep202009

Tips & Hints for Analytics

Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 5:00PM |

Understanding Your Business

Libra OnDemand comes with multiple analytical Reports and Dashboards to provide you with insight into your hotel’s performance. These tools are mostly self-explanatory, but here are a few tips to get you started.

Viewing Analytical Dashboards

The easiest way to start is through the Dashboards ab.

Click on the Dashboards tab.
Select one of several Libra OnDemand Analytics dashboards from the View Dashboard pulldown field.

The dashboard data is as current as the As of date displayed at the top-right corner of the dashboard. To refresh the data, simply click the Refresh button.

Each dashboard consists of three colums of components, providing Daily, Month to Date (MTD) and year to Date (YTD) views of data. By default all Dashboards give you a consolidated view of all properties to which you have access privileges. Revenue is reported net of taxes based on historical PMS data and is uploaded to Libra OnDemand on a daily basis after the PMS night audit.

Drilling Down into Reports

By clicking on any dashboard component you will drill down into the underlying report data. You can easily modify the criteria used for creating the report.

Report summary levels and time frames for pulling the information can be changed by modifying the Report Options. For example, you can view revenue information by Market Segement, Source of Business, Revenue Type, etc.
If you would like to see how your property’s performance changes over time, select the Report Date or Report Month options in the second Summary Field.
If you would like to see performance statistics by day of week, choose the Day of Week option.
To view revenue performance by property, select the Property Code summary option.

Scheduling Automatic Report Runs

Dashboards and Reports can be scheduled to refresh and run automatically and can even be emailed to you or any other user at a given time each day.

Choose the Schedule Future Runs option from the Run Report pulldown button.
Specify who you want the dashboard or report to be emailed to and the schedule for future runs.

Original Salesforce.com materials were used to prepare this document.

Reports & Dashboards,

Sunday

Sep202009

Tips & Hints for Guest Services

Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 4:58PM |

Respond to Your Customers’ Requests

You can use Libra OnDemand to manage all of your customer interactions, including responding to and following up on customer requests. These can be guest requests for additional pillows, prospective client’s requests for hotel brochures or even a report request from your General Manager.

Identify the Customer

When Customers contact you with issues or requests via phone, email, or Web, you must first identify and qualify the customer. Depending on the nature of the request, it can be related either to a Contact or a Reservation record in the system.

Type your Contact’s name, Guest name, Room number or Reservation number in the Search field on the Sidebar to find the relevant record.
If the Contact that you are looking for does not exist, click Create New on the Sidebar and select Contact to create a new profile.
When creating the new Contact profile, make sure to either select an existing Account or create a new one from the Contact profile edit screen.

Log the Call and Schedule Follow-Up

From the Contact or Reservation record, scroll down to Activity History related list and click the Log A Call button.
Write the Subject of the call and call Comments in the Information fields.
If follow-up to the request is required, use the Schedule follow up task section to record follow-up task details.
You can assign the follow-up task to another User or multiple users by pressing the Search button next to the Assigned To field.

Monitor Your Tasks and Events Queue

Don’t forget to regularly review your Home screen for outstanding Tasks and Events.
You can view the status of Tasks that you have delegated to other users by pressing the Activity List View button on the Home page and selecting My Delegated Activities view.

Original Salesforce.com materials were used to prepare this document.

CRM,

Sunday

Sep202009

Tips & Hints for Sales Management

Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 4:53PM |

Reporting on Your Team’s Activities

Libra OnDemand and Salesforce.com reporting tools provide an easy way to view and monitor your team’s activities. You can view all scheduled tasks and events by each sales rep, as well as see the history of completed activities. This provides you with an easy way to see what’s going on in your team, what new opportunities your sales people are working on and if there are any items that require attention.

Activity Reports

This folder contains standard activity reports, providing activity information for yourself and your team.

Click on the Reports Tab and select the Activity Reports folder from the Folder pull-down field.
Open the Tasks and Appointments report by clicking on the report name.
In Report Options, select the Time Frame to specify the dates for which you want to see the information.
In the View field, select if you want to see your own activities, your team’s activities or activities that you have delegated to others.
In the Show field, specify whether you want to see Open, Completed or Open and Completed activities.

Customizing and Saving Reports

Each report can be customized and saved as a new report for future use. You can also configure reports to run and be emailed to you automatically on a pre-defined schedule.

You can customize any report by using the Report Options fields or clicking on the Customize button. Please see the Tips and Hints document for Custom Reports for additional information on report customization.
To save the parameters of a custom report, choose Save As. Specify a report name and a description. Both the name and description display on the Reports tab.
To overwrite the existing custom report with your changes, choose Save. When saving a custom report, administrators can put the report in a folder to make it available for other users.
To export a report, click Export Details.

Original Salesforce.com materials were used to prepare this document.

CRM,

Reports & Dashboards,

SFA,