Hi Lyris HQ Users,
We listened to your recent feedback and delivered! Over the past month our product development team has worked hard to add new features and functionality to Lyris HQ. We have switched to an efficient Web 2.0 development process that allows us to shorten our release schedule. As a result, we have been able to focus on consolidating the Lyris HQ user interface, streamlining workflow and issue resolution, and automating integrated marketing features.
As you know, we have proven, best-practices marketing software that we are aggressively bringing together in Lyris HQ. We believe in an integrated marketing world where all of your marketing tools work together and report data in a consolidated format. What you get from the Lyris HQ platform is proven technology with a new user experience and an integrated feature set that empowers you as an online marketer to get better results with proven ROI.
New feature highlights this month include:
Read on to find out more about the new features released this month and what’s in store in the New Year.
And remember, if there is a feature that you would like to see in Lyris HQ, please submit your request via the product feedback form located in the top right corner of the Lyris HQ console. I will personally read each submission and ensure that your requests are passed on to the product management team.
Thank you all for your valuable feedback and loyalty.
Sincerely,
Chris Adams
Director of User Experience
December 2008 Release
Email Marketing
New Social Media Message Enhancer
Now you can harness the viral wave by giving your customers the power to post your newsletter content on nine of the most popular social media sites, including: Digg, Furl, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Newsvine, LinkedIn, Delicious, Reddit, and Google Bookmarks. Simply create a new enhancer in the Lyris HQ email-marketing tool, select the social media type, and insert it into your message. Additionally, if you use Lyris HQ Web analytics, you can track visitors who arrive at your Web site from these shared messages.
This feature helps you tap into the power of social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, unlocking a whole new range of possibilities for viral marketing that can make your messages more effective and more targeted than ever before. It's like "send to a friend" on steroids!
Lyris HQ Mobile – SMS
Lyris is pleased to announce the availability of Lyris HQ Mobile, a new SMS texting solution that allows you to send timely, relevant, and targeted text communications to opt-in audiences. Please note, this feature can only be used via our extensive product API.
In the meantime, here are some highlights of the Lyris HQ Mobile API solution:
To learn more, please visit the Lyris HQ Mobile Web page on www.lyris.com, or contact your Lyris HQ sales representative today.
Personalization & Enhancer Mail Tags
To accommodate our upcoming message creation process changes, and to make it easier for those using our current WYSIWYG editor, we have changed how our mail merge tags and enhancers are represented in the user interface. For example, <First Name> is now %%First Name%%. Mail merge fields and enhancers denoted with < > will continue to work; however, any tags that are inserted going forward will be using %% %%.
Opt-in Forms now available in XHTML
You now have the option of generating an opt-in form using either HTML or XHTML. The forms will continue to perform the same way; however, the new XHTML format accommodates users who have more dynamic and advanced Web sites.
New Segment Option on the Quick Test functionality
We know that you are concerned about testing, and now the Quick Test function allows you to randomly pull data from a specific list segment when testing personalization and dynamic content. Simply enter the email address(es) to which you want to send a test message, select the segment from which you want to pull the data, and enter the number of test messages you want to send. No messages will be sent to your users; their profile data is simply used to show you what the message will look like when they receive it. All messages will only be sent to you/the email addresses you've entered.
Search Marketing
Keyword Research
To save time compared to the old Lyris UI, and compared to using free tools from search engines, you can now select a keyword on the Keywords screen and click the Research button to trigger a Keyword Research search query popup. Find a Similar Keyword or the Alternative Spelling you like, select it, click the Add button, and then go to an Add Keyword popup to start bidding on it.
To enable you to mine the long tail, i.e. keywords that don’t generate as many clicks, Lyris Search Marketing provides up to 500 search results. The free search engine tools generally deliver less than 100 results. Also, unlike the free search engine tools, Lyris Search Marketing provides easy access to Alternative Spellings, not just Similar Keywords. As a result, Lyris Search Marketing enables you to mine the long tail better than the free tools.
The Similar Keywords provided by Lyris Search Marketing remain more relevant than those from free search engine tools, which (unlike Lyris) sometimes attempt to make algorithmic suggestions like synonyms or related items or subsets, which can result in irrelevant Similar Keywords.
Tool tips in the Keyword Research popup enable you to read definitions of the metrics, with links to information about the service used to generate the Lyris Search Marketing Keyword Research search results.
SearchAdvisor
SearchAdvisor informs you about search campaigns that you can quickly optimize. The tool is easy to use including:
(i) a simple 3-step guide on how to set up a report of problem keywords and PPC ad creative
(ii) separation of report inputs from report outputs
(iii) flexibility to enter as many, or as few, report inputs as you want and still be able to generate a report for the inputs you entered.