Here are the entries in no particular order:

1 – Channel 5

2 – Ubiquitous Taxis

3 – XOR

4 – Carton House

5 – Orchid

6 – One Serv

7 – African Sky

8 – Gift-ov-Life –

Please vote for your favourite signature design by selecting the corresponding number from the poll below. The client signature with the most votes by 31st May 2012, will be declared the winner.

As the social media conversation gets louder and louder, businesses must get better at engaging with customers to respond to comments or feedback whether good or bad. Bad feedback or negative comments posted online or on social networks can be detrimental to a business or brand, and in worst case scenarios can go viral within hours. A good social media strategy will involve fast action to minimise any bad press from individual customers in order to maintain your online reputation.

Rocketseed ‘Rate our Service’ or ‘Feedback’ banners are designed to help businesses improve their customer service and manage their online reputation effectively through their emails. Customer ratings banners can be used to manage your customers’ feedback effectively whilst directing traffic to social media portals or feedback sites such as ‘Tripadvisor’. Examples of the success of these Rocketseed ‘Customer Rating’ banners can be seen with Xperience Hotels in Egypt or Cardinal Insurance in South Africa, where both have effectively improved their online reputation by managing customer feedback.

Xperience Hotels found that although around 60% of feedback for one particular hotel was Excellent and 34% Very Good. The final 6% of customers who rated their stay as ‘Average’ could be contacted directly for feedback in order to help improve the overall service at the Hotel. A fantastic result!

If you’re looking to improve your Social Media strategy or manage your online reputation, we strongly advise you to ‘Think Email, Think, Social’ and then ‘Think Rocketseed Mail’!

What is SPF?

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is a DNS-based email validation system designed to prevent email spam by detecting spoofed mail senders, a common vulnerability that accounts for a large portion of all spam sent.

How will it help me?

If a domain publishes an SPF record, spammers and phishers are less likely to forge e-mails pretending to be from that domain, since the forged e-mails are more likely to be caught in spam filters which check the SPF record. Therefore, an SPF-protected domain is less attractive to spammers and phishers.

Since an SPF-protected domain is less attractive as a spoofed address, it is less likely to be blacklisted by spam filters and so ultimately the legitimate e-mail from the domain is more likely to get through.

What do I need to consider?

To get the best results from implementing SPF it is very important to include all IP addresses that will be sending mail using your domain name such as:-

• Email servers and gateways who deliver directly to the internet
• Web servers who generate emails e.g. confirmations.
• 3rd party suppliers who send billing and statement information
• Mass mailing platforms who distribute newsletters and other company information.

How do I implement it?

You would need to contact your DNS provider to create an SPF record that covers all the IPs in your organisation that do final delivery of mail. If you are managing your DNS yourself there are some excellent resources available on the internet to guide you through the creation of the DNS record.

http://spfwizard.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/content/technologies/senderid/wizard/

I want to know more

The best information resources on the subject is undoubtedly http://www.openspf.net/

When the very first email attachment, compatible across most email programs was sent, people were of course sceptical, but the invention of the email attachment has since revolutionised modern communication. At the time, people didn’t understand that the ability to send photos, music, and other types of documents by email rather than relying on traditional postal systems would change the way we work today. When Borenstein first suggested that his dream was to email people pictures of his grandchildren, people laughed at him. But now (according to the Guardian article) ‘each day in 2012, we send around a trillion Mime* attachments’. The humble Email Attachment actually turned out to be one of the brilliant inventions of our time, providing businesses around the world with the means to operate faster and transfer information more efficiently. It also allowed Borenstein to fulfil his dream. It’s an inspiring idea!

At the start of Rocketseed in 2002, we also had a vision, developing new possibilities for employee email. Ten years ago, few individuals would have understood that an email could drive sales and web traffic for businesses, but this is now what we do for our clients every day. While social media plays its role, Borenstein also thinks that ‘email will always be the best way of contacting specific individuals’ and we tend to agree. But our favourite quote from the father of the email attachment is this. “Similarly, email, which some people say is dying, continues to grow. And most dying things don’t really do that.” At, Rocketseed, we’re positive that email is a growing medium (Check out Rocketseed Email 2.0 here) and one that businesses need to use to the best of their advantage, to promote their social media activity and drive sales.
p.s We’re sad to hear about the price of a postage stamp going up, but our other favourite quote of the day is from @Queen_UK who tweeted ‘60p is more than reasonable for a picture of your gracious and loving Queen’. Perhaps we should also create a nice email signature for Her Majesty.

*(the technical term for the standardisation system invented by Borenstein and his collaborator Ned Freed).’

If you haven’t already noticed, what we really love to talk about at Rocketseed is Email Marketing! So, you won’t be surprised to hear that UK Managing Director Fiona Robson has been speaking again on the subject, this time at the Hotelympia Conference in London, providing the industry attendants with an insight into how they too can drive sales through email marketing. We’d like to share some key highlights and tips from Fiona’s presentation.

If you’re interested in improving your email marketing strategy, there are a few basic techniques which you should already be adopting, such as optimisation for mobiles, more sophisticated segmentation and personalisation, and most importantly testing, testing, testing to ensure the impact of your message is maximised. But at Rocketseed we’d like to move beyond the ‘Batch and Blast’ approach to email marketing and get you to think differently about your emails.

At the recent conference, Fiona posed the question, ‘When is the best time to send an email?’ The audience was divided. We think the best time to send an email is when your customer wants to receive it. It could be on Tuesday afternoon, when they have a break at work, or it may be at 3 O’clock on a Saturday when they’re standing in a queue looking at their mobile phone. The right time to send an email is going to be the right time for the customer. So rather than just blasting emails to try and get more business, we encouraged the audience to think about when their customers would be most interested in hearing from them.

We took a look at the types of emails that companies tend to send to their customers along the purchase cycle, including some specific trigger campaigns aimed at hitting the customer at the right time for them. Some examples included ‘When they’re looking for a product’, ‘When they’re undecided on their choice’, ‘When they’re already planning their holiday’, ‘When they’ve booked or purchased’. These bulk emails are all about engaging with customers at the right time for them. What about when a customer contacts your company? Do you reply on a blank email with no branding? Hopefully not! Branding your emails consistently across all email channels is key in engaging with your customers and maximising sales opportunities.

If you want to think differently about your email marketing, you should be making your emails stand out throughout the sales cycle, engaging with customers to drive sales and integrating with your social sharing activity. Email is a powerful tool, which when integrated with the website and social media channels can lead to increased revenue for your business. Click here to Re-tweet our meme!

The Email Marketing Council seek to champion email as an essential part of the greater marketing mix and an effective direct marketing channel by producing and disseminating best practice guidance, research, case studies, data-driven reports and organising events for the membership.

As Managing Director at Rocketseed UK, Fiona works with our customers to ensure they are making the most of their marketing opportunities via email. The focus is not just on email newsletters but also on everyday business communications. Fiona has over 15 years’ experience in sales & marketing plus ecommerce roles.

Thanks for all the support from our customers in the elections.

Download the Email Marketing meme here (pdf)

When did you last get an email thanking you for flying First Class around the world? Ok, you don’t fly First Class? Well, when did you receive a thank you from a hotel or restaurant? Businesses of all shapes and sizes take our money and often never say thank you for our business. Why not? There may be lots of reasons, including bad manners but it’s unlikely to be because they’ve lost your address.

Airlines, for example, know a vast amount about their customers – name, address, email, phone and credit card details to list a few. Virgin Atlantic charge around £1200 to fly Premium Economy to the Caribbean, but do they ask you how your flight was? No. Could they? Or more importantly, should they? Absolutely! All they have to do is to send a personal email to ask you. They don’t need to do very much to those who give a good rating, but suppose it was poor or average? Wouldn’t a phone call to find out more make a lastingly positive impression?

Personal, 1:1 email is the most underused marketing tool in businesses’ marketing departments. Bulk mail or newsletters blasts, Tweets and Facebook posts all have their role but there’s no medium with greater impact for customer care than the humble hand-typed email.

At Rocketseed, we care as much about personal communications as Chris King, the Customer Manager at Sainsbury’s. We work with our customers to enhance their personal communications to deliver long term results. I bet Lilly Robinson will be the number one advocate for Sainsbury’s for the rest of her life! Good old 1-to-1 personalised communication. Look after customers – they pay the wages!

Let us know what you think…

The group offers a complementary range of channel-enabled services that provide reseller partners with both the capacity and the capability to meet the demands of their customers in the most agile and economic way.

“Rocketseed Mail is a proven marketing channel for SDG. It delivers quantifiable results and provides our sales teams with a constant flow of new business leads – it just works!” Andrew Clarke, Head of Marketing

Download the complete case study here (pdf)