Author Archive: Emily Konouchi
Video: Quick tips with Emily
3 reasons to test your email campaigns
Hello, fearless email marketer. It’s been a while, but I’m back with another video of quick tips to help your improve your email marketing efforts and make the most of your Emma account. In this edition, I’d like to share a few reasons why testing your emails before send-off is so important.
Your Emma account comes with a Test Group that allows you to store up to 10 email addresses, and sending to that group is always free. Play the video above to hear why I think the test group is a super helpful account feature, or read my reasons here.
Top three reasons to test your email campaigns:
- Testing ensures you’ve got a small group of people clicking on your links first — before they go out to your whole audience. These folks can confirm the links are pointing to the right websites. It’s what keeps you from linking your whole audience to Goggle.com instead of Google.com.
- Testing gives you the opportunity to see how your email will look on a mobile device. You can make sure the message is clear, even on that teeny tiny screen, and that the campaign is easy to navigate on a smart phone.
- Testing lets you get early feedback on subject lines, headlines, and of course, how it all looks together. That’ll ensure you have time to make any final changes to add some style before your audience receives the mailing.
So, go ahead, send to the test group included in your account, and test your mailings as much as you’d like. And tell us what other reasons you’ve found to make a good case for sending test emails. Comment here to share tips and stories.
See Emily’s first quick tips video here.
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Emma City Guide: Denver, CO
Tour Denver and get to know some of Emma's mile-high customers
This crisp fall weather is signaling me to spend some time in the great outdoors. And what better place to enjoy autumn’s offerings than Denver, Colorado? Home to one of Emma’s satellite offices, the mile high city is a fine place to spend a day shopping, eating and soaking up some of its downtown culture, and it’s the perfect setting for our next Emma City Guide.
I’m actually headed to Denver next month, so I’m putting together my short list of must-visit local attractions, and I found some noteworthy Emma customers along the way. Here’s my rundown of a perfect day in Denver, Emma-style.
The Denver Museum of Nature and Science uses Emma to promote exhibits and special programs and to stay in touch with museum members.
Denver Museum of Nature and Science
2001 Colorado Blvd
For me, exploring a new city means visiting a museum or two. It’s a chance to feed my brain in a unique setting, chat with a docent and find a proper souvenir in the gift shop. I’ll begin my day in Denver with a visit to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. This museum has been a city fixture since 1900 and provides the community with exhibitions and programs that teach visitors about the history of Colorado and beyond. I’ll hit up the permanent exhibit of Egyptian mummies first, then wander through the lifelike wildlife dioramas. Oh, and I can’t forget the planetarium. There’s so much to see, I’m planning on making a morning out of it. And when I get a little peckish, I’ll grab a sandwich from the snack bar and head outside for a leisurely lunch in City Park. It’s just outside the museum door.
+ See a recent campaign
+ Visit their website
Fleur de Lis uses Emma to let customers know about upcoming sales and to notify them of changes to their website and blog.
Fleur de Lis
8000 E Belleview Ave, Ste B40
Greenwood Village
After a picnic lunch, I’ll scout out a couple local shops. Fleur de Lis (a paperie) will make a delightful first stop, just south of the downtown Denver Tech Center. It’s a luxury paper boutique, the kind of place that instantly inspires you to dedicate more time to old fashioned correspondence. But they also stock beautiful gifts and accessories, like picture frames, portfolios, pens and personalized stamps. If you’re planning a wedding or special event, this is a one-stop shop for custom save-the-dates, invitations and gifts for the wedding party or guests of honor. Treat yourself to something nice, too.
+ See a recent campaign
+ Visit their website and blog
CLP Jewelry uses Emma to showcase products and announce trunk shoe events to retail partners and fans.
CLP Jewelry
Carried by multiple retailers
While meandering back to downtown Denver, I’ll likely embrace my inner cowgirl and pick up some locally crafted jewelry from Emma customer CLP Jewelry. Christy Lea Payne’s designs are decidedly western, made with soft worn leather and natural stones and metals, and they reflect Christy’s signature rustic style.
Her pieces are carried in a number of local Denver boutiques, but she does wholesale business with shops all over the country. You can visit the CLP Jewelry website to find a retail location. Yeehaw.
+ See a recent campaign
+ Visit their website
The Denver Philharmonic Orchestra uses Emma to share its season schedule and promote ticket sales.
Denver Philharmonic Orchestra
KPOF Hall, 1340 Sherman St
Time to take in the local music scene. I’m going to skip the bars and rock venues and class things up a bit by attending a concert by the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra. The Denver Philharmonic is one of the longest standing — and best — community orchestras in the western United States. Now in its 64th season, the DPO is led by conductor Adam Flatt and calls KPOF Hall its home. The DPO’s repertoire proves to be a mix of familiar and new-to-my-ears pieces, and the concert will cap off a lovely day in the Front Range.
+ See a recent campaign
+ Visit their website
And there you have Denver in a day. I hope your fall promises a travel adventure or two. Don’t forget to check our our previous city guides for Austin and Portland, and happy trails!
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A message about recent account slowness
Our plan to make your experience better, plus a sneak peek at what's to come
If you rely on Emma to communicate with your customers, supporters or colleagues, I’m here to say thanks. We love being your email partner. And we know that relying on Emma means when the system isn’t performing, you’re losing valuable time and resources.
In the past few weeks, many members of the Emma community have experienced intermittent bouts of page load slowness and delayed mailings. I want to provide a little insight on the problem and share how we’re improving overall performance in the short term while moving forward with the implementation of a newly architected system platform that will allow us to scale our service (and add some cool features along the way) without compromising the in-account experience.
What’s causing the slowness?
As we add new customers and send and track more mail, our current databases are feeling the effects of the added load. While the system is stable, and all of your data is securely backed up, spikes in volume (usually from very large mailings) are putting a strain on the system, and that affects page loads in Emma and causes mailing delays.
What are you doing to fix it?
We’ve seen this problem before, and in the past, we’ve solved performance and speed issues with the build-out of additional databases and a rebalancing of the load. While we have a more long term solution in the works (more on that in a moment), that’s exactly how we’re going to mitigate the slowness in the short term. Our tech team has just built an additional relief database, which is being tested right now and will take on some of the large processes starting this week.
Will we see more slowness when the new database gets full?
We know we can’t continue building new databases every time Emma experiences a growth spurt, so we’re also planning for long term expansion. Over the past eight months, our platform developers have been re-architecting a new Emma platform, and by the end of the year we will have moved all of our customer accounts onto this speedier, more robust system. Effortless scaling is just one of the perks of migrating to a newer system, but it’s arguably the most important because it affects every Emma user and ensures the speedy account experience that we’re dedicated to providing.
What are the other perks of migrating to a new platform?
A shiny new platform means more than just speedy page loads and zippy mailings. See, the new system comes with a versatile API (read more about it on Emma Tech) that empowers our developers and the wider tech community to build integrations and features that will help you make smart marketing decisions and add value to your existing account. Features already in the works for the new system include:
- A/B/C split testing of subject lines, from details and send times
- Automatic notifications when new subscribers join your audience or complete a survey
- In-account posting of your campaign to Facebook and Twitter
- Two-way integration with Salesforce
We’ll share more details as those features get closer to being released. In the meantime, I’m sorry if Emma’s caused some frustration lately, and we all look forward to providing a better experience very soon.
Video: Quick tips with Emily
5 tips for using ads and sponsorships in your email campaigns
Have you thought about using ads and sponsorships in your email campaigns to help offset your marketing costs? You should — it’s a fantastic idea. You can cover the cost of your email, or you can even generate a little profit that can be used to send more emails, or to fund your next beach vacation (it’ll be our secret). Click the video above to hear my five tips.
And we’ll be sharing more. Each month or so, we’ll bring you a new video of tips on a range of topics, including how to make Emma work better for you and how to incorporate new email best practices in your marketing mix.
In case you prefer to learn by reading, we’ll always include the tips in the text of the post, too. In fact, let’s get to today’s tips right now:
How to offset your email marketing costs using ads and sponsorships:
- Keep it simple. Choose a layout that has image placeholders where you’ll want to insert company logos or ads. Emma’s advanced 12 layout is a good example.
- Settle on what your ad specs will be. How many will you include? What about their size and location? Just do a little planning from the get-go so you’re prepared to pitch to ad partners.
- Not sure which ads to promote? Include a “call for sponsors” in your next campaign and see what happens.
- When placing an ad in your campaign, be sure to link both the image and some text to the sponsor’s website. Emma’s link tracking will allow you to show your sponsors the return on their investment.
- Consider offering sponsorship packages at a discount. It’ll cut down on the administrative work and encourage long-term buy-in.
Good luck, and let us know if you have questions along the way!
If you’re already including ads in your email campaigns, we’d love to see some examples. Tell us what’s worked well for you and what challenges you’ve encountered. Add a comment here to keep the conversation going.
Emma City Guide: Portland, OR
Tour Portland and meet some Emma customers along the way
This longtime Southerner loves the summer heat, but sometimes a gal just needs a hiatus from temps in the high 90s. I spent a week in Emma’s Portland office last month, and it proved to be the perfect opportunity to escape the stifling Nashville weather and complete the next installment in our city guide series.
Behold, Portland. The land of locally-owned shops, quiet wooded retreats and glorious food — the food cart options and list of “must visit” restaurants teeter on the edge of overwhelming for a visitor like myself.
Sure, you probably already have a list of Portland must-dos: sip coffee at Stumptown, bite into a sugary confection from Voodoo Doughnut, peruse the miles of titles at Powell’s Books. But consider venturing off the beaten path and visiting some Rose City gems that also happen to be Emma customers.
Hoyt Arboretum uses Emma to connect with visitors about events and guided tours.
Hoyt Arboretum
4000 SW Fairview Blvd
Start your day with a walk in the woods. The mix of cityscape and nature is one of the best things about Portland (and there are a lot of best things). In fact, you can take mass transit to Hoyt Arboretum and be transported to 187 acres of ridge-top trees and 12 miles of trails. No matter how much time you have for a quiet walk in the woods, Hoyt Arboretum has a downloadable trail map to guide you.
+ See a recent email campaign
+ Visit their website
Bolt connects with customers and gives the skinny on fabric sales.
Bolt
2136 NE Alberta St
After communing with nature for a spell, scoot over to the northeast side of town and visit the shops on Alberta. Indulge your DIY side and check out the offerings at Bolt, where colorful prints can’t help but inspire you to take to your sewing machine.
+ See a recent email campaign
+ Visit their website
Modern Domestic encourages communal crafting with their email newsletters.
Modern Domestic
1408 NE Alberta St
Oh, you didn’t bring a sewing machine on your trip to Portland? Never fear, Modern Domestic is just a few blocks away. Part sewing machine retail shop, part sewing studio, Modern Domestic rents studio time by the hour and hosts Friday night sew-cials for sewing enthusiasts to gather and get crafty.
+ See a recent email campaign
+ Visit their website
Pacific Pie announces the opening of their new location with an email promotion.
Pacific Pie Company
1520 SE 7th Ave
For lunch, I recommend a favorite among Emma staffers: Pacific Pie Company. The menu boasts Australian savory pies, pasties and sausage rolls. Chris Powell and Sarah Curtis-Fawley are the “people behind the pies,” and this husband and wife team are dedicated to local ingredients and making customers feel right at home in their new southeast Portland location.
+ See a recent email campaign
+ Visit their website
Solestruck uses email to highlight new arrivals to shoe devotees.
Solestruck
718 NW 11th Ave
Pop down to the district known as the Pearl for some window shopping, and well, maybe some real shopping too. I recommend a stop at Solestruck, where you’ll find a perfectly curated collection of shoes for men and women, including kicks by Jeffrey Campbell and Dolce Vita. You can even continue the Solestruck experience long after your trip to Portland by visiting their online store. Free shipping worldwide? Don’t mind if I do.
+ See a recent email campaign
+ Visit their website
Equinox uses Emma to announce seasonal menus.
Equinox Restaurant and Bar
830 N. Shaver St
Portland is a city that knows how to do happy hour, and Equinox Restaurant and Bar is no exception. The chickpea crepe and beets & bleu are a perfect accompaniment to a house cocktail like the Garden of Eden (think summer: basil, cucumber, lime and of course, vodka). Fair warning though — the laid back vibe and comfortable courtyard are enough to make you want to stay for dinner.
+ See a recent email campaign
+ Visit their website
Ruby Jewel newsletter, The Scoop, shares new menu items and community happenings.
Ruby Jewel
3713 N. Mississippi Ave
A jam-packed day of Portland fun is best capped with a treat from Ruby Jewel, just a short walk from Equinox. Ruby Jewel offers artisan ice cream made from locally-sourced ingredients, scooped into handmade cones and topped with sugary treats or pressed between two cookies to make a sandwich. I recommend the fresh mint flake ice-cream sandwich with the double chocolate cookies, followed by a good night’s sleep and sweet dreams, of course.
+ See a recent email campaign
+ Visit their website
Here’s hoping your summer travels are filled with delicious food, inspiring shopping and of course, trees. We have more city guides up our sleeves, and if you missed our Austin guide, catch up on it here.
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Emma City Guide: Austin, TX
Tour Austin with Emma and meet a few customer favorites
If the warm weather is beckoning you to take to the open road, consider visiting Austin, Texas, home to one of Emma’s satellite offices. We’re proud to power emails for so many local Austin businesses and organizations, helping them stay in touch with locals and visitors alike.
I’ve visited Austin a handful of times to see family, and with each trip I’ve focused almost solely on stuffing myself to the gills with breakfast tacos and barbecue. Today, I’m taking a virtual vacation to Austin, and I’m stepping outside my comfort (food) zone to visit some fun Emma customers.
Rowing Dock uses Emma to announce classes, camps and special events.
Rowing Dock
2418 Stratford Dr
After a cup of coffee and okay, probably a breakfast taco or two, I’d head down to Lady Bird Lake (formerly known as Town Lake) and take advantage of Rowing Dock’s kayak, paddle boat and stand-up paddle board rentals. Rowing Dock offers summer camps for kids and rowing classes for adults, but I’d probably opt to rent a kayak and wind my way around the lake, taking in the sites before the summer heat really sets in.
+ See a recent email campaign
+ Visit their website
Join the Dress Shop's mailing list and you'll receive a special offer on your birthday. Party dress, anyone?
Dress Shop
315 Congress Ave
Leslie Gandy opened this boutique in 2009 and stocks colorful frocks for any occasion. Leslie does a great job of keeping in touch with customers and fans through email and Facebook, so even if you can’t visit the storefront it’s easy to have a virtual Dress Shop experience: just pick out a dress online and Leslie will ship it to you.
+ See Dress Shop’s birthday email
+ Visit their website
A stylish signup form for 2nd Street District, "where Texas warmth meets Austin cool."
2nd Street District
Austin’s 2nd Street District is populated by more than 50 shops and restaurants, just a block off Cesar Chavez. Their website touts special deals and events, giving visitors an overview of all the sweet deals and delicious dishes (and cocktails!) 2nd Street District has to offer. The site also provides ways to stay in touch over Facebook, Twitter, and of course, email, thanks to a smartly placed signup form for visitors to subscribe to email newsletters.
+ See a recent email campaign
+ Visit their website
Plain Ivey Jane's custom email stationery reflects the retro feel of their website.
Plain Ivey Jane
408 W. 2nd St
Clearly I’m in the market for some new summer dresses, and I’m smitten with Plain Ivey Jane. This dress shop in the 2nd Street District offers new designer dresses at a discount. At any given time, you’ll find deals on Nicole Miller, Betsey Johnson and Marc by Marc Jacobs, and as owner Sarah Reeves puts it, “It’s not the type of store that you fall in love with a dress, then have to save up for it. Instead, you can buy that dress and two others.”
+ See a recent email campaign
+ Visit their website
A refreshing Blue Bonnet Tea awaits you at Eddie V's.
Eddie V’s
301 E. 5th St
After a full day of outdoor fun and shopping, I can’t imagine anything more satisfying than a meal at Eddie V’s Edgewater Grill. This upscale seafood restaurant is part of the Eddie V’s family of restaurants in Texas, Arizona and California, and it’s the perfect place to wear a newly acquired dress and enjoy a signature cocktail — like the Blue Bonnet Tea — with my tuna steak dinner. Eddie V’s uses Emma to promote special menu offerings and send personalized greetings to customers on special occasions, like wedding anniversaries.
+ See a recent email campaign
+ Visit their website
Alamo uses Emma to share their show schedule and link back to features on their website.
Alamo Drafthouse
320 E. 6th St
After classing it up at Eddie V’s, I’d probably feel inclined to close out my evening at the Alamo Drafthouse, the best place to see a movie and drink a beer at the same time. I’d likely buy a ticket for their Dumb & Dumber Quote-Along and settle in with a Lone Star and a bucket of popcorn. I’d revel in the fact that I’m actually expected to shout out, “Samsonite! I was way off! I knew it started with an S, though.”
+ See a recent email campaign
+ Find additional Austin locations on their website
Well, there you have it: my perfect summer day in Austin. Stay tuned for more city guides from the places Emma calls home. Happy travels!
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If you like this post, check out more customer stories on our website.
Thrillers, fillers and spillers
How the hidden talents of an Emma colleague made our office a bit greener
Earth Day ... a little bit at a time.
Maybe it was the fact that spring finally descended upon Nashville, or maybe it was the anticipation of Earth Day and our initiative — with your help — to plant 100 extra trees this month, but we found ourselves hankering to get our hands in some potting soil and bring some greenery to our desks.
Our inspiration other than leafy goodness? Marc Powell, who leads our infrastructure team, and his invariably green thumb. A visit to his desk sometimes involves parting fern fronds to see if he’s actually in his chair.
Marc was kind enough to impart some planting knowledge to a few eager members of the Emma community team. During a recent workshop, he taught us which plants thrive in terra cotta, glazed and self-watering pots, as well as the recipe for a beautifully planted “ensemble” (that’s the combination of a few complementary plants in a single pot). Marc’s ensembles are all the rage here in the office, and I’m happy to share his secrets with you, in case you’d like to get your office in the Earth Day spirit:
- Select plants that need approximately the same amount of water and sunlight
- Consider how much light your workstation gets when making plant selections
- Combine plants in odd numbers (otherwise the human brain tries to find patterns rather than just enjoying the aesthetic)
- Go for contrasting colors
Finally, remember that a perfect ensemble pot contains three kinds of plants:
- Thriller, which boldly shoots straight up and gives height and drama to the ensemble
- Filler, which provides leafy bulk and interest
- Spiller, which tumbles out of the pot
With Marc’s wisdom fresh in our minds, we headed down to the closest nursery and picked out some appealing plants. We potted our own little ensembles in no time flat and are currently enjoying them at our desks.
Do you have any Earth Day tips, or ideas for making your workspace greener?
Want to work at Emma? Our community relations team is hiring.
Spring has sprung! And wouldn't you know it, we're growing our customer support team.
Join us at Emma. We're cubicle-free.
Our Nashville community relations team is on the hunt for the perfect candidate to round out our team of customer service superstars. Superb customer service is a cornerstone of the Emma experience, which begins with a consultation with a member of our non-salesy sales team and continues with personal, friendly, helpful interactions with the community relations team.
The day-to-day work in Emma Support is a healthy mix of predictability and, well, less predictability. Sure, it’s a given that you’re going to talk to customers on the phone, in email and in Live Chat (think instant messaging), but the scope of the questions and the personal interactions with Emma customers makes every day different. You might answer a call from a new customer who has a question about his first email campaign. After showing him the ropes in his account, you might follow up with that new customer by sending an email with links to Emma resources and an encouraging note to let him know how to reach you if he has any lingering questions. Then, you might answer an email from a marketing director who needs advice for increasing the number of people who open her email campaigns. Later in the day, you might find yourself chatting with a small business owner who needs a hand adding a signup form to his website so he can gather the email addresses of new subscribers. After offering your technical expertise, you spend a couple more minutes asking that customer about his social media presence and suggest how he can promote that new signup form to his wider online audience.
While the more frequently asked questions will become familiar, the personal approach to service makes each interaction unique and strategic. We’re not just out to answer the question a customer asks; we’re out to answer their *next* question, too, even if they haven’t thought of it yet. (Psychics, feel free to apply). Oh, and we also seek to empower our customers to become email marketing experts by partnering our technical know-how with helpful tips for best practices in the industry.
In addition to answering questions and solving problems for the customers who reach out to us, the community relations team is also focused on customer outreach, which may come in the form of an informal phone poll to help our product team conceptualize a new Emma feature, an email to check in on a customer who hasn’t used her account in a few months or a handwritten thank you note to a customer who mentioned us in his latest blog post. We believe this kind of outreach sets Emma apart, builds loyalty in our customer community, and at the end of the day, makes our work more fulfilling.
The right community relations candidate loves interacting with people and garners every human feeling from empathy to excitement (no robots here) as you partner with customers to achieve email marketing greatness. Top-notch communication skills — written and verbal — are a must, as you’ll be providing instructions and guidance to customers with a varying level of comfort with technology. While we don’t expect you to be an HTML or programming guru, we are looking for someone who has an interest in technology, keen problem-solving skills and is a quick study. The Emma office is a lively, learn-as-you-go environment, but we’ve also got tons of resources for a self-starter to learn the ropes of the Emma application and email marketing.
So whaddya say? Are you a non-robotic psychic with mad customer service skills? Learn more about the position or apply here.
Behind the scenes of our January newsletter
How we created a plan full of emails, link triggers, surveys and rewards to help our customers with their own marketing strategies.
During a brainstorming session for our newsletter content last year, a group of Emma staffers tossed around the idea of incorporating a New Year’s resolution theme into January’s mailing. It’s kind of a no-brainer, right? The new year lends itself to setting goals and checking off to-dos, so we decided to use our January newsletter to get the Emma community thinking about taking their email strategy up a notch. We provided a menu of resolution-worthy goals related to using a more advanced Emma feature or re-imagining their approach to email marketing.
We knew we had an arsenal of helpful content built into our in-account Help Guide, blog and Ask Emma library, so we created a plan to provide a mash-up of that content for our newsletter subscribers. And when we faced the question of *how* to deliver that ever-so-helpful content, we found an answer in the Emma application. Link-based triggers would allow us to send follow-up emails full of advice, each one tailored to the resolution the reader had clicked on. We think email marketing should be fun and rewarding, so we opted to dream up a “cereal box-worthy prize” for folks who clicked on a link and participated in a follow-up survey letting us know how it went.
Since design is such an important part of who we are, our brainstorming meeting also included a fun discussion about the look and feel of the newsletter and its accompanying emails. Creative director Allison Davis and designer Elizabeth Williams put their heads together and decided to not only create a bold, fresh design fitting for a new year, but also to stage an Amy Sedaris-esque photo shoot featuring our own delivery specialist and newsletter model (it’s a working title), Claire Burns. What resulted was a stand-out design that was reminiscent of our Getting Started Guide. As Elizabeth says, “I wanted the design to be comfortably familiar but delightfully fresh — with a heavy-handed dash of ‘It’s the new year people, let’s get empowered!’”
Click to see the whole January series.
About those link triggers
Because Emma’s link-based trigger feature allows you to send a follow-up campaign automatically when someone clicks on a link, we knew the tips related to the resolution would arrive when the recipient was most interested to read it. We created six emails total, the January newsletter plus five more detailed campaigns to cover each resolution:
- Survey tips and tricks
- Advice for segmenting your audience & getting new subscribers
- Expertise for creating stylish, stand-out campaigns
- Ideas for personalizing campaigns and send-times
- Suggestions for incorporating triggers into an email marketing strategy
Just click on the slide show to the right to see all of the campaigns (and all of Claire’s poses). Once we completed and tested each campaign, it was time to set up the triggers. We followed these steps and sat back to watch the opens and clicks on the response page.
About the survey, landing page & rewards
A week or so after the January newsletter send-off, we started working on the follow-up campaign inviting those who clicked a resolution to give us a little update on how they were faring. Since Emma’s response page gave us all the details on who clicked which link, we took the time to personalize the message in each follow-up email. We sent one version to folks who clicked to embrace the power of surveys, another for those who wanted to finally master the steps to creating a trigger email and so on. Of course, we wanted to create a special follow-up message for the ambitious folks who clicked more than one resolution — that ended up being the largest group of recipients for our segmented follow-up.
We also created the survey embedded in each follow-up email in Emma. It was a simple, three-question form asking folks if they’d accomplished the goal and how it changed their marketing plan. As promised, we offered a reward: After submitting their survey response, the survey-taker landed on a page chock-full of downloadable buttons — and we also created that landing page entirely inside our Emma account, following the steps in this article.
Our team of designers had fun creating the buttons, and our hope is that the buttons will encourage our customers to follow the tips we outlined in our follow-up emails and become email marketing superstars.
Our results so far
With so many mailings and a corresponding survey to boot, we had gobs of response details to look through and analyze. But we were most eager to see which resolution got the most clicks (it was the one about style, if you’re curious), how many link-clickers wanted to receive more than just one of our follow-up emails full of advice and tips (that was a whopping 43% of the link-clickers, believe it or not), and what folks were saying in their survey responses.
While we were pleased that 85% of the survey-takers had already taken a more strategic approach to their email marketing with Emma’s help, we were even more pleased with the long-answer comments they left. We expected to hear more details on how these strategies were applied, but instead we received a healthy mix of success stories and requests for more help. This is our audience talking back to us, telling us what they need. Thanks to that unexpected result, we now have a natural next step: connect our support team with these customers for dedicated help and training.
More resources
Want to get in on the resolutionary fun? Sign up for our January newsletter so you can click on the links and get helpful follow-up emails. We won’t make you take a survey in order to get the prize, either — we just uploaded the buttons on our Facebook page. And best of luck to you in your own resolutionary efforts!
Details on a recent security breach at Emma
We’re very sorry to report a recent security breach in Emma’s system that has resulted in some Emma account information being compromised. Though a relatively small number of accounts are known to have been affected by the breach, many more accounts were exposed to potential threat, and we’ve taken a number of precautions (more on that below) as a result.
This morning, we emailed each Emma customer account with details on how their specific accounts were affected, but we also want to create a resource here on the blog with more information and details where we can easily keep everyone up to date.
What happened?
On the evening of September 7th, our regular security monitoring alerted us to suspicious activity and, ultimately, a breach in one of our databases. Immediately, our team began work to identify — and address — the source of the breach and investigate its scope. As our investigation has continued, we’ve learned that this was a sophisticated, deliberate attack with the apparent objective of targeting the email lists of customers in a particular geographic region of the world. (Since the investigation continues, we’re not yet disclosing all of those details.)
In a small number of accounts (about 1% of Emma customers), the hacker was able to export email lists or access usernames and decode passwords to log into accounts and send spam. These customers have already heard from us directly, with details about the breach and an offer to help in any way possible.
In other cases, customer information — including usernames and passwords — was accessible to the hacker. For these accounts, we’ve expunged all previously stored passwords that may have been compromised and assigned each username a temporary, highly secure password. This step means that any login information the hacker has is unusable. Those customers will be asked to create their own new passwords the next time they log in. We’ve put in place new password standards to ensure those new passwords are strong and secure, and we’ll be rolling those changes out to the entire Emma community soon. See our tips for creating strong passwords.
Some accounts were not affected at all, and at no point was *any* customers’ credit card information accessible. That’s all stored separately by a third party and is heavily encrypted.
Is it fixed?
We’ve thoroughly secured what we believe to be the source of the breach, enlisting the help, advice and scrutiny of outside database and security experts. In addition to the regular security scans already performed by an outside monitoring firm, we had an additional audit performed Wednesday night. That audit came back clear. We’ve set up additional sophisticated, around-the-clock monitoring to protect against and shut down any further abuse. And as we mentioned earlier, we’ve shut off further account access by this hacker by replacing compromised passwords with secure temporary passwords.
Each and every person who works at Emma knows that a breach in the safety and security of data acutely impacts the brand and business our customers have entrusted us with. And we’re deeply sorry not to have met that trust. Going forward, we’re committed to doing whatever it takes to make Emma’s systems impenetrable and are working tirelessly to make sure things like this don’t happen again.
If you have follow-up questions or if there’s anything we can clarify, please don’t hesitate to let us know. We’re here to answer your questions and help in any way we can.
Thanks,
The Emma team
Emma is a member of the Email Sender & Provider Coalition and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group.
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