FC Software Blog

I thought I’d briefly list some of the features I’m planning for our email marketing suite this is by no means a definitive list however covers the major aspects of the system.  There’s no particular order to any of them its just as I initially wrote them down and thought of them.

• Bulk import of contacts email address/firstname/surname
• Single addition of contacts
• Multiple campaign management each campaign handling its own set of leads from the central pool
• Scheduled sending
• Create store and edit email templates & attachments to be used repeatedly within campaigns.
• Email image storage and distribution for using images embedded within emails without users having to rely on having their own web server for image hosting.
• Creation of tracking links for click through tracking etc.
• Tracking and reporting on a per campaign basis on mails sent, mails bounced, mails delivered, mails opened and links clicked through.
• Potential to tie into the FC CRM systems for both email lists and action tracking ie: receiver clicks a link goes to link website but is then  transparently also added to your companies FC CRM and assigned as a new lead with notes detailing what actions they took from email and which campaign they were a part of.
• Timed resends ie: schedule a newsletter to go out once a month all you have to do is edit the newsletter content template each time.
• Pre-send spam checking and weighting – before you waste your send have your email content checked for likely hood of being caught by spam filters.
• Pay as you go system. You have your system and contacts for life and you only pay when you actually send an email.

Now there’s a few other smaller things that go with the above but there’s also a few potential other features I’m thinking about putting into this outside of the initial remit of “email marketing”.

SMS Marketing – Ability to schedule and send bulk SMS’s just as you do with the emails above but instead with text messages.

Twitter Marketing – I’ve been playing with the twitter API and as part of this suite I’ve also considered building in a twitter manager. Handles multiple accounts, schedule timed broadcasts to accounts, pre-set templates the whole lot.  I’m thinking this is perhaps a phase 3 system but its something that I’m keeping in the back of my mind as a value added service if you like.

Think thats about it I’m sure more idea’s will come to me over time or if you have any suggestions all are welcome.