We have made some changes to the contacts section that will allow you to delete groups of contacts from the contact group screen.
 
Previously you could remove a contacts membership from a “Contact Group”. You could also delete the “Contact Group” itself. However you could not delete the “Contact Group” and all members in that “Contact Group.” You can now do this in a single action.

To delete all members within a contact group:-

• Go to the Contacts Tab
• Select a “Contact Group”
• Select “View Contacts” which will show you a list of all contacts with membership to that group
• Use the “Delete Group & these Contacts” button

NOTE:Please remember this deletion is permanent!  

These changes were made to LiveWire Campaign on the 12th May 2008.

The answer is categorically yes and I can prove it!

Two years ago I was badly let down by the garage I was purchasing my new car from. Not only did they tell my that my car was actually months away from delivery only days away from the promised delivery date but they also tried to ’steal’ my deposit when I subsequently canceled the order. I was not a happy bunny. Fortunately my bank stepped in. I’d paid the deposit on credit card and my bank returned the money immediately when I called ‘breach of contract’ on the motor dealer. A lesson to be learned there!

A day or two later I received an email from a leasing company listing the months special offers and one particular vehicle caught my eye. Suffice it to say it was delivered a week or so later and it was a timely email campaign that prompted the purchase. I’m still enjoying driving the car though I’m now looking forward to renewing my contract with the same leasing company in July.
More recently my old jet washer finally gave up the ghost and began to emit little more than a dribble. Email marketing came to the rescue again. Just last week I received a special offer in my inbox of a £175 power washer for only £60. I jumped at the chance and ordered one.

Last weekend I cleaned my car with it. A power washer purchase prompted by email marketing used to clean a car purchased from a timely email campaign. Proving, if proof were needed, that email marketing is still alive and well and the secret is still just sending the right message at the right time.

We have just presented our first online marketing workshop for enterprise4all in Preston, UK. As usual email marketing was one of the hot topics that the attendants wanted to know most about.

E-mail marketing is still one of the most cost-effective ways of finding new clients and building a stronger relationship with current customers, but competition is fierce, the economic climate is looking decidedly inclement and your e-marketing messages have to work harder than ever to cut through the smog.

We worked one on one with each of the attendees and showed how email marketing fits into the big picture. It’s still amazing to find large organisations getting their e-marketing communications badly wrong. Some were still batch sending many thousands of emails from Outlook and had no idea if any one at all was reading them!

The fact is, even with all the SPAM and all the bad communication out there, email marketing still works. Often it’s just a matter of keeping your audience engaged for long enough until you manage to send the right message at the right time and make a sale.

Here is a short list of some of the points we highlighted at the workshop. They are the basic fundamentals of a successful campaign. We’ve talked about them many times before but they are worth repeating:

• Get personal – personally addressed e-mails with, if possible, personalised content is going to have more chance of establishing trust and a relationship
• Write a meaningful subject line and opening – write a succinct, transparent and descriptive overview of the offering you wish to promote. The reader should be able to work out within a few seconds if it is of interest and whether they wish to learn more
• Copy – Be concise and use short sentences, paragraphs and bullets points to ease reading
• Be sure to proof the copy – silly little mistakes stick out like a sore thumb and spoil all that effort you invested to make the perfect e-mail campaign.
• Test your e-mail before you send it – do a dry run to yourself and a sample group
• Answer all replies with 24 hours – e-mails are a quick and easy channel of communication and interested parties will want quick answers. Do not disappoint on the first and probably only time you will have to make a favourable impression

Is it a mystery? Is it failing technology? Or is it just rude? I often wonder.

In my daily business life, quite often I get emails in my inbox that are requests or queries that I take a few minutes to reply to. It takes a bit of thought, a bit of consideration and a little bit of time. Often my reply to a specific request is in the form of a proposal. The questioner asks if he can have ‘A’ and I reply yes, or no but you can have option ‘B.’

And then I get no response. Zero. Zilch.

Just a few words is all I ask in return. ‘Thanks, but no thanks’ would be a start. An explanation would be even better but it doesn’t always happen and I wonder why. Perhaps it’s a symptom of why some people seem to forget the rules of communication in email. They forget about punctuation, capitalisation, forming a coherent sentence. I read a few paragraphs of text recently where the writer had decided, apparently that full stops and new sentences were old hat and that they’d use hyphens instead. Interesting concept but it didn’t really work.

Of course it’s a symptom of the well documented general laziness with the English language that is creeping in. It starts badly in school and, in my experience, sometimes doesn’t ever improve. Good communication skills and the ability to formulate concepts and translate them into words are key skills for marketers and graphic designers but it appears to me that many new graduates are taking these abilities less and less seriously. It’s a shame. These skills are fundamental. Without them how can we communicate our ideas effectively and succinctly? How can we tune in to what people want and give it to them? I value them much more highly than I value a designer’s technical abilities with Photoshop.

I realise I’m taking a risk writing this. I know there are much cleverer people than me who have spotted all the grammatical errors I’m sure I’ve made, but at least I’m trying.

Following feedback from a number of customers, we have now added additional options for categorising duplicate contacts within contact upload files.

Contacts who are already on your contact list, and are also contained within the file you upload can be processed as follows:

• If you would like to add both existing contacts and new contacts to the same group simultaneously,
  select Add to same contact group as new contacts.
• If you would like duplicate contacts to be ignored (not added to a group), select Ignore.
• If you would like to add existing contacts to a different group than new contacts, select Add to different group(s).