One of the queries people like to do most is geolocation. Check out our last post for more info on how to query by location. Not only can you look at snapshot reports to find out where your users are checking your emails, you can also use the query builder to create smart lists that will push new users in as they sign up and meet the criteria you’ve set for the list.

We’re constantly working to build out our query builder to give you even more access to your data. A super cool feature we recently added is the ability to query by X “or” Y. For example, if you want to see all your users in either X, Y or Z zipcodes, you would set your criteria to “zipcode is,” and your zips to whatever you’d like them to be, like so: “10012 | 10011 | 10010.” You can apply this “or” logic to your own variables or to the ones we set, and the number of “ors” you can use is unlimited.

Have fun!

• Discount offer
• Free product offer
• Familiar brand name

There’s no argument from me about those first two. However, it’s the third one I want to touch on in this post.

For decades brands have been bound by the “push” model of business with the relationship being almost entirely one way. Marketers had to introduce and hammer away at brand familiarity because they had very limited or no way at all to get to know the consumer on a personal basis.

OK, we do have mountains of research and data about consumers, but do those mass marketing studies really give you that much personal insight into the individual? Speaking as a consumer, I frankly resent being pushed into a herd.

It’s the unrequited love of that one way relationship which we are changing here at Sailthru. Knowing someone is the first step to serving their needs as customer. When we go beyond first name and email address and actually understand who our customers are and what they want, we can add real value to their lives with timely, relative and engaging information.

Familiar brand name? How about a familiar subscriber? People don’t expect to have to make any effort for someone in a store they frequent to get to know their preferences. They simply expect them to discern them based on their actions and interactions. Successful business people understand that knowing your clients and proactively serving their needs is important to making that next conversion.

Getting people to know your brand is absolutely basic to marketing, but now we have the technology to really get to know our customers too in a practical and proactive way. Sailthru thinks that while you’re brand building, you should also be relationship building.

Sailthru’s Query Builder tool gives you deeper insight into your lists.  This month, we’ve noticed that some of you have had questions about the following queries.  Feel free to get in touch with us or see our docs for further information about data mining with our Query Builder!

1. Geolocation

To track the location where your users are interacting with your emails, you can create a list or snapshot report by geolocation.  To create a targeted list or be aware of where your users are coming from, you can query a source list to find all users in a specific country, state, or city.  The Query Builder will allow you to search lists by city, state, or country, and even by how often your user is interacting within a certain location.  However, there is a specific way to call this information.  The chart below demonstrates how to format your geographical queries:

For more information on geolocation you can read our documentation at http://docs.sailthru.com/geolocation

2. Random selection size

Some clients are interested in sending to only a part of their list.  If you have a number of emails you want to send, but no other criteria, you could use our random selection size tool within the Query Builder to generate this list.  When you select the “Generate List” under Action within Query Builder, you can choose your source list from the dropdown menu and then type in the number of users you’d like to send to in “Random Selection Size.”  You may want to select “valid” in the criteria section to make sure you’re sending to users that haven’t opted out or hardbounced.

3. Purchases

For our e-commerce clients, we have a feature on the Query Builder tool that allows you to gain more insight into who is buying from your emails.  Within any source list, you can see who has made purchases based on how many items they have purchased, how much money they have spent on any given item, or when they last made a purchase.

The example below demonstrates how to query users from a source list who have purchased at least one item.

Ain't no doubt about it. Baby, got to go out and shout it!

In the example pictured above you’ll notice charts displaying list member growth and engagement, mass and transactional send rates as well as campaign results.  The graphs on the left are customizable, allowing you to select durations from one day up to the entirety of your account history. On the right side of the dashboard is a pie graph depicting member activity by engagement as well as ledgers showing recent campaign results and scheduled campaigns.  (For more information on understanding engagment see engagement tags.)  For clients who only send transactional emails the dashboard will default to a display which shows only those applicable email metrics.

To navigate back to the dashboard from elsewhere in the site, just click on the Sailthru logo and, bam! you’re back.  We hope you’ll find the new dashboard useful, but this is just the first step: in the coming weeks we’ll be adding more functionality to the dashboard, as well as making it more customizable and deeply drillable.  We’re working hard to make our interface as intuitive, informative and revealing as possible, and we would love to hear what you think.

In addition to the change, you can also select the time interval to display.  Select from “daily”, “weekly” or “monthly” from the duration drop-down menu, depress the refresh button, et voila! a powerful new chart is displayed.  Finally, in the view drop down menu you are also able to select to calculate the growth report against the total number of email addresses in your list (including optouts and hardbounces) or against valids only.  Yep, it’s pretty cool.

Stay tuned as we bring many powerful new features online over the coming weeks.

“There’s no email”, she said. In preparation I had her send report open. “It should be there…now!” as the status changed to delivered on the report. “Ping” went her email client, the email arrived within seconds.

“Ooh, how’d you know when I was going to get it, that was quick” she said.

I showed the client the back end admin for our real time delivery reports and how she could tell what emails were delivered and when. Tomorrow when Google updates her Analytics data she’ll be able to tell what links were clicked on too!

We have real time delivery reports with built in Google Analytics. I’m sorry but when clients see it in action for the first time… well, that stuff just never gets old.

Let’s say you send out an email to your friends about your new blog, if you send them to your site with a link that has the above paremeters you can easily look up what effect your email had!

It’s as simple as www.example.com/?utm_source=neil&utm_medium=email and then you can see all the traffic you sent under the traffic sources report.

If you are not doing it, then start NOW. Use the Google url builder.