Affino Beta Labs - Smart Messaging

We’re going to sneak in a final stealth project into the Affino 5.5.16 release, and it is a major leap in Affino Newsletters / Messaging. We will be introducing two new key capabilities to Newsletters: event triggers and group filters, which will open up a whole new dimension in active customer engagement within Affino.

The last time we seriously looked into rolling out smart messaging was back in 2006, and it led to a six page requirements plan with weeks of work required to deliver the functionality. Since then we’ve had numerous conversations with companies on their requirements and the requirements have magnified.

We have been doing some optimisation on the messaging side in Affino this week and it led us to explore the feasibility of rolling a v1 of Smart Messaging, and the great news is that it is going to be very achievable for this release.

So we’re going for it!

Every single Affino site owner will greatly benefit from smarter messaging and it will have a material impact on customer service and sales conversion rates.

It’s worth recapping the evolution of Affino Newsletters since it will give great insight into just why Smart Messaging is going to be such a key driver.

Manual Newsletters, Flexible Design

The first release of Affino newsletters allowed users to select any Skin design and send it out to a group of newsletter subscribers. From the outset this was integrated into the core site and the site registration. It gave great design flexibility and full automation on content and subscriber management.

Newsletter Analytics

We also rolled out Newsletter Analytics which provide solid tracking of key indicators such as user reads, which content is clicked through on, what competitions are entered and if the message leads to site registrations or a loss of subscribers.

Personalise Messages

Next we introduced basic personalisation through the Text Design Element (DE) which allows for personalised text within messages, e.g. Hello Fred of Bedrock. This increased the click-through rates whilst reducing the spam filtering.

Message Optimised Code

We worked closely with numerous organisations to tune the code generated for Affino messages to minimise the risk of spam filtering and to improve the message presentation.

Automated Newsletters

Last year we introduced automated newsletters. These are sent off on a regular schedule and consist of fully dynamic personalised content, with all the subscriber management, content and analytics being fully automated. This allows the setting up of regular hands-off, active communication.

eBusiness Dashboard

With the roll out of eBusiness Dashboards we greatly increased the level of analytics available on Newsletters including subscriber trends.

Personalised Highlights

We extended the personalisation recently to allow the highlights elements to be fully personalised within the messages. This allows for users to be sent messages highlighting what their friends are up to, and with personalised recommendations. It means that as an example, rather than sending the 10 latest videos, you can send 5 latest which match their interests and 5 which were created / uploaded by their friends.

Optimised Designs

At the same time we introduced the higher level of personalisation it became clear that the message code is now completely different from that required for generating web pages. To that end we have selected the top fifteen Affino Design Elements required for newsletter messages and optimised them so they work well across all the leading email clients.

Smart Messaging

Smart Messaging builds on top of all of this great design flexibility, personalisation and analytics to allow far more effective targeting of customer and community members.

Group filtering works in two ways: firstly it allows you to target members of specific groups (security groups) you have created; secondly it allows you to target behavioural groups such as active and inactive members, customers and inactive subscribers.

Event Triggering allows you to target members based on specific events such as birthday, registration, last login (inactivity), abandoned shopping carts and purchases.

What Smart Messaging Makes Possible

With the Smart Messaging in place you can provide greatly improved customer service, timely reminders and user engagement. By being more relevant and useful you also reduce the likelihood that your messages will be un-subscribed or end up in the junk folder.