All Truevail Newsletter and Website members must complete the mandatory form below to complete the initial setup of their new Truevail 2.0 platform account. Please refer to our initial email for more information about the following form. If you have any questions or are unsure of how to answer, please email support@truevail.com.
Hello Truevail Members! We have some exciting news for you, but first we would like to note that this post is a mandatory read for all of our Newsletter and Website subscribers. Your action/response is required at the end of this article.
What is Truevail 2.0?
Truevail is launching a new fully integrated marketing platform this year. We are currently calling this platform Truevail 2.0. In Truevail 2.0 all of Truevail’s services will be combined into a user-friendly dashboard, providing members with easy access to manage and view their services from a single location. While Truevail 2.0 has been in development for the past 6 months, we are beginning to take the first steps to create accounts for all of our clients. In this initial setup transition we will be offering members to add Email Authentication to their newsletter plan.
What is Email Authentication?
Email authentication is an important security feature that helps protect email users from phishing scams, spam, and other forms of malicious emails. It works by verifying that the sender of an email message is who they claim to be and ensuring that the message has not been tampered with in transit.
Setting up Sender Email Authentication within the Truevail 2.0 platform will allow us to authenticate your newsletter campaign ‘From’ email address. This will allow us to send authenticated email campaigns from your preferred email address such as yourname@yourcompany.com. This authentication will remove the ‘Sent on Behalf of’, ‘Via’, or ‘Unverified’ header from your sender email address. The unauthenticated header is displayed differently between different email browsers.
To add email authentication to your new Truevail 2.0 account, we will need to update your DNS records.
What are DNS Records?
DNS records are like instructions stored on a computer that tell the internet where to find a website or other internet resource. They help route internet traffic to the right places, and make sure that websites and email work properly. Different types of DNS records provide different kinds of information, like the address of a website, the mail server responsible for email, or other useful details. DNS records are usually stored your domain host (website address host) – such as GoDaddy, Google Domains, Etc.
Creating Email Authentication for Newsletter Subscribers
Email Authentication is created by adding text records (DNS Records) to a domain (web address) that you own. To add these records, you will need to own a domain for your business and Truevail will need access to your domain host account.
Our team will either need admin access via login credentials or you can add support@truevail.com as an admin/delegate on your domain host account.
What happens if I do not own a domain or use my host agency’s email address?
If you do not currently own a domain thats okay. We can continue sending out your email newsletters for you how we always have, utilizing the ‘Sent on Behalf of’ header. We can always authenticate your domain in the future if you decide to purchase a domain for your business.
Website Migrations for Website Subscribers
The Truevail team will be migrating all Truevail built websites to our new platform over the course of the year. This will also require us to make changes to your domain DNS records which will require us to access those records when ready to migrate your website.
DNS Hosting and Migration
As an added benefit, the new Truevail 2.0 platform can host your DNS records for you. This means you will be able to manage and make changes to your DNS records within our new easily accessible Truevail 2.0 dashboard. For clients that would like to take advantage of the added benefit of DNS hosting, we can migrate your Truevail 2.0 account host your records during our email authentication process and website migration process.
Is it Required that Truevail Hosts My DNS Records?
For Newsletter Subscribers – No – We can update your records where they are currently hosted to add email authentication. The main benefit for hosting your DNS records at Truevail for newsletter subscribers is just ease of access through the Truevail 2.0 platform. Our team will also be able to provide you with IT assistance for your DNS records.
For Website Subscribers – Yes and No – Our new Amazon web servers have a unique system that adds some limitations if we use a 3rd Party DNS host. To be able to directly access the non-www version of your website (https://mysite.com) we will need to host your records. If we do not host your records, that is still okay, but if a visitor goes to the non-www version of your site (https://mysite.com) they will be redirected to the www version of your site (https://www.mysite.com).
What Happens If I Cancel My Truevail Membership and My DNS Records are Hosted at Truevail?
We can continue to host your records at no cost to you, we can also help you migrate your records back to where they were previously hosted for you at no cost.
Will Truevail 2.0 Cost More?
No, our current clients will be grandfathered into your current pricing structure.
Mandatory Next Steps (Your Action is Required)
For us to set up your new Truevail 2.0 account for future access, we require that you fill our our response form at the link below for us to proceed with your account creation and setup.
Major Changes for Open Rates and Scoring Due to Apple Mail Privacy Protection
In September 2021, the new Apple iOS 15 Mail App added “Mail Privacy Protection” to its app. In an effort to keep the actions of users private, Mail Privacy Protection marks all emails received into the iOS 15 Mail App as ‘open’ regardless of whether they were actually opened by the user or not.
To not misinterpret any of the data from iOS 15 users, our email marketing platform does not use any of the data from iOS 15 users that have opted into Mail Privacy Protection due to the inaccuracy of reporting. Not using the inaccurate Apple Mail Data in our reporting creates lower open rates and scores on your reports compared to previous campaigns before September 2021, or open rates on different email marketing platforms.
Other email marketing platforms may count all iOS 15 users as opens, dramatically increasing open rates for platforms that do not take into account this discrepancy in their open rate data.
How Your Campaign Reports are Affected
iOS mail users account for up to 35% of all email recipients and growing. That means your open rates, engagement, and lead scores are negatively affected by a margin of up to 35% as compared to an email marketing service that automatically counted all iOS 15 users as opens.
An email marketing platform that does count iOS 15 users as opens could send an email with an actual open rate of 0% and would have the possibility of having an open rate of 35%. That data is incredibly inaccurate. At Truevail we have decided to use only real applicable data to use in your reporting.
Taking into account this discrepancy in data, on average, your campaigns actual open rates will be anywhere from 5%-20% higher than what is reported in your campaign reports.
How Your Quarterly Lead Engagement Reports are Affected
Since we no longer have applicable data for iOS 15 Mail App users, our Quarterly Lead Engagement Reports will not include the potentially false data provided by Apple. We will not add scoring to any contact using Apple Mail to read your email campaigns, and this means even your active users could end up with a lead score of 0 even though they actually are reading your campaigns.
iOS 15 data also affects the automated tagging system we provide. All Apple Mail users will not be recorded of having any actions and therefore will eventually be automatically tagged as Disengaged, Inactive, and Unsubscribe Due to Inactivity. We do not suggest you take any action such as unsubscribing any contacts due to this information potentially being false. Our team will remove the Unsubscribe Due to Inactivity tag in the future.
If you have any questions about Apple Mail Privacy Protection please reach out to us at support@truevail.com.
People come to Instagram to be inspired and discover things they care about, and that includes content from brands and businesses.
200 Million+ Instagrammers visit at least one Business Profile daily.
60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram.
1/3 of the most viewed stories are from businesses.
Step 1: Download and Launch the Instagram App
Download the Instagram app by going to the App Store on Your Mobile Phone. Once it is installed, open it.
Step 2: Connect the App to Facebook
Once the app is opened, click on the Sign Up prompt. Enter your e-mail, and then connect your account to Facebook. This step will come in really handy both for when you want to post directly to Facebook from Instagram, and for finding people to follow that you personally know.
Step 3: Switch your Account to Business
If you plan on using Instagram as a tool to market your business, then you’re going to want to switch your account from Personal to Business. Doing so will let you view insights and stats relating to your engagement, will keep your profile set to “public”, as well as let you add a business address, phone number, and store hours.
To do so, find: Settings > Switch to Business Account.
Step-by-Step Guide to Setting up Facebook for Business
It doesn’t cost anything to set up a Facebook Page. Once you’ve created your Page, you can also use it to post content, link to your website, and communicate with Fans and followers for free. That makes a Facebook Page an incredibly valuable tool for any marketer working with a limited budget.
You also need to create a Facebook Business Page before you can start using paid marketing strategies on Facebook, including Facebook ads. So, the first step of mastering how to use Facebook for business is preparing your Facebook Page.
Step 1: Create your Facebook Business Page
· Head to facebook.com/pages/create. You need to be logged into a Facebook personal account to get started, but your personal information will not appear on your new business page.
· Choose your page type: Business/brand or Community/public figure
· Enter your business details.
Step 2: Add Branded Images
Upload your profile and cover photos. Make sure to use the optimum image sizes for Facebook so they look their best.
Step 3: Complete Your Page Info
Click Edit Page Info and fill in the following sections:
· Description: 255 characters to describe who you are and what you do.
· Contact information: Fill in all the ways you want people to be able to reach you (including your website).
· Extra options: If it’s relevant to your business, add your operating hours, price range, and privacy policy.
Step 4: Create your Facebook Username (AKA Your Vanity URL)
Your username helps people find you on Facebook. Click Create Page @Username to make one. It can be up to 50 characters long.
Facebook marketing ideas for your vanity URL:
· Choose a search-friendly Page name. In most cases, this will be your brand name.
· If possible, use a consistent username across social networks.
Step 5: Add a Call-To-Action Button
A call-to-action button gives people a quick and easy way to reach out to you or otherwise engage with your business. Click Add a Button under your cover photo to set one up.
Step 6: Review your Facebook Page Settings
Your Facebook Page settings give you custom control over who sees what on your page. Take a look to make sure you understand the privacy and security settings in particular. That’s it! Your Facebook Page is set up and ready to go.
After signing up for an account, the next step is to follow some other users and look at their photos. Like Facebook, Instagram uses an algorithm to determine what content to show you and when, so don’t panic if someone suddenly drops out of your timeline.
To see more of the accounts you care about, simply engage with their posts and, if you never want to miss someone’s post, turn on notifications. To do so, click on a post of theirs, and then choose Turn on Post Notifications from the menu.
Before you start posting, take some time to get your profile looking sleek and polished!
Optimal size of your Instagram profile picture
Upload a minimum image size of 110 x 110 pixels for your profile photo. If you want your photo to look sharp, the ideal photo size is 180 x 180 pixels.
Anytime you want to update the photo, click on “Edit Profile” on your profile page. You’ll be able to change your profile photo, name, username, your profile description that includes a bio and a link, business information and private information.
Updating your Profile Description
When you click on “Edit Profile”, a page pops up where you can update your bio. The character limit is 150 and you can include a mix of words, hashtags or emoticons. In this bio, think about what keywords people will look for when they search for products or services you have. On your Instagram profile, you are allowed to add in a link. It could be a link to your blog post, video or your website.
If you want to spruce up your bio by having more than one link, there are services like Linktree where you can create a bio link that comprises of multiple links.
As a small business on Instagram, it’s easy to fill in your bio and forget about it. If you haven’t updated your bio for awhile, it’s always good practice to review your Instagram bio and see if there’s any important updates that need to be made.
Find People to Follow
Because you’ve already connected your Instagram account to Facebook, you should be automatically prompted to individually follow people in your friends list.
However, if you want to search for users not in your personal contacts, click on the magnifying glass icon at the bottom of your screen and Instagram will show you some videos, Stories, and photos by users they think you might like.
Other ways to find people to follow include searching for hashtags.
Instagram Hashtags
#hashtags was born in the 21st century. At the beginning, it was mostly associated with Twitter and was meant to link buzz around the same topic on the platform so others can follow or join these conversations.
Fast forward to today, it has become so useful that it has been successfully adopted across other platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn. (Unfortunately it didn’t work so well on Facebook.) Hashtag is parallel to “google search engine” on the social media platforms.
If you are running a business, using the right hashtags on Instagram will help new people discover your content. There are 1 billion monthly active users on Instagram and 500 million daily active Instagram Story users worldwide. Apart from following individual accounts, these users are able to follow hashtags they are interested in. This means posts with these hashtags will be shown to this group of followers.
Anyone who is following this specific hashtags will see those content shown in their home feed. Hashtags help users to find things they care about or want to know more about. Tagging your content with the right hashtags help these users to discover your brand and your content.
Create a Branded Hashtag
A branded hashtag is often a key part of a successful Instagram marketing strategy.
The best starting point is a general branded hashtag. It should be short, memorable and include your brand name in some form. The benefits of a branded hashtag are to make your content more discoverable, drive traffic to your profile and creating a stronger community around your brand. It will also help you organize your content, making it easily findable and trackable.
You can place the hashtag in your bio so that it’s easily visible to anyone visiting your profile.
And no one says you have to have just one hashtag. You can also create hashtags for a specific campaign or competition, showcase brand advocates or encourage user-generated content.
Instagram Content
Publishing your content on a regular basis is also another success factor for growing your Instagram following. The lifespan of each Instagram post last about a couple of days so your content can easily pass without anyone noticing. Instagram’s algorithm works in such a way that when your follower likes or comments on your post, the relevance score of your content to them goes up.
So, the next time when you publish a post, the algorithm will mostly show your post to them again! When you stop publishing, your relevance score declines and when you put out a new piece of content, it’s less likely to be shown to them. The more interaction your follower has with your content, the more familiar they are with your brand.
Reply to All Comments
This doubles your engagement and starts conversations in the comments, which also boosts the posts. Comments are everything! Instagram will raise the visibility of your post the more the engagement goes up.
When you receive a comment from your followers, reply as soon as possible. Think of it as a real conversation with someone. Don’t let them wait. This doubles your engagement and starts conversations in the comments section, which also boosts Instagram engagement. Comments are one of the biggest factors for Instagram, especially a couple of minutes after publishing your posts. The longer comments, the better.
As a Truevail member, you’ll receive two engagement reports – the Monthly Campaign Report and the Quarterly Lead Engagement Report. These reports will tell you who’s engaging with your emails, how often, what they might be interested in and what they’re not.
One week after your campaign gets sent, you will receive a detailed Campaign Report. This report consists of client opens/un-opens, clicks, forwards, replies, and more. Seeing how many times someone opens a campaign is a great way to gauge their interest.
Here’s a look at the basics of how to understand the Monthly Campaign Report:
OPENS/UN-OPENS
This report will tell you how many people are opening your emails. To drill down even more, you can calculate something called the Open Rates. Email open rate means the percentage of the total number of subscribers who opened your email campaign.
According to Mailchimp, the average open rate for travel-related emails are about 20%. (Due to Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection that was implemented for iOS 15+ users in September 2021 open rates for the entire marketing industry have drastically changed, please review our post to understand this major change.)
Research shows that subject lines play a significant role in open rates. We constantly look for the best subject lines we can to help improve your open rates and A/B test all of our subject lines for the best open performance.
CLICKS
Your newsletters will have links built into them to help bring your clients to areas on the internet that you have predetermined as necessary, such as your website, travel listings, accreditation sites, affiliate sites or review pages. Clicks will indict which of these links the email recipient clicked on. Again, this can help you gauge what their interested in, and follow-up accordingly.
According to the Digital Marketing Association, the click through rates for travel-related emails are about 2.4%.
Even though that number may seem low, email has a median ROI of 122% – over four times higher than other marketing formats, including social media, direct mail, and paid search.
BOUNCES
Bounces indicate those email addresses in your subscriber list that have been returned by the recipient’s mail server. Bounces can be of two types: hard bounce and soft bounce. Hard bounces are either invalid or non-existent addresses that are to be deleted from your list. Since hard bounces can affect email deliverability negatively, we automatically blacklist hard bounced emails to ensure the best deliverability rates. Soft bounces are blocks that are a short-term issue–you don’t need to take these addresses off of your list permanently. Soft bounces may occur if the recipient’s server was down, their email box was full, or the message was too large.
UNSUBSCRIBES
Unsubscribes happen. We don’t take it personally. However, we do try and learn from them. Please try to spend a little time looking over these reports to see who’s not engaging. Again, there could be many reasons for this.
LEAD SCORING
The main feature of this report is the “scores” of all your contacts. Scores are created by actions your clients take, and each “action” adds to their score.
The users with the most points are the most engaged over the period of 4 months at the time of the current report. Points for any action will fall off after a 4 months.
(Due to Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection that was implemented for iOS 15+ users in September 2021 has drastically changed the way marketers handle data, please review our post to understand this major change and how we apply it to your campaign reports.)
Open Scoring: Any time a contact opens a campaign 10 points are added to the contacts Lead Score.
Link Click Scoring: Any time a contact clicks a link on a campaign 20 points are added to the contacts Lead Score.
Forward Scoring: Any time a contact forwards a campaign 20 points are added to the contacts Lead Score.
Reply Scoring: Any time a contact replies to a campaign 20 points are added to the contacts Lead Score.
Users with the highest score are the most engaged. This is pure gold! Here’s where your investment can start to pay off.
ACTIVITY TAGGING
Based on your clients’ recent actions or inactivity over the past two months, we also tag your clients as Recent Activity, Engaged, Disengaged, Inactive, or Unsubscribe due to Inactivity.
Recent Activity: Contacts who have opened a campaign within the past 14 days.
Engaged: Contacts who have opened a campaign within the past 45 days
Disengaged: Contacts who have not opened a campaign in the past 45 – 90 days.
Inactive: Contacts who have not opened a campaign in the past 3 months – 4.5 months.
Unsubscribe Due to Inactivity: (Due to Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection that was implemented for iOS 15+ users in September 2021 we will no longer be using this tag in the future and contacts with this tag should be ignored, please review our post to understand this major change and how we apply it to your campaign reports.)
YOUR ROLE
It’s up to you to use this data to connect with the most active potential clients and make them new clients or score a booking. Put on your sales hat, make contact, and start a conversation.
So, let’s look at a sample email to get you started. You can also use this dialogue in a phone conversation.
Dear Friend,
Thanks for visiting my new website and reading my newsletters!
My team gives me regular reports that show how well my new newsletter and website are being received. I’m thrilled to see that you’re one of the top readers, so I wanted to say THANK YOU!
Is there anything you’ve read that inspired you or reminded you about a possible new trip?
If so, let’s chat!
Please email me or call 212-555-XXXX.
Best
Sue
P.S. I just heard about a new travel offer, and because of my connections, I can get you some great perks like late check-out, free airport transfers, and free breakfast! Let’s chat!
CONCLUSION
Thanks for reading, and please remember to review both reports as you receive them. Hopefully, they will be a valuable resource for understanding your clients and growing your business.
And, if you have any questions or want to know more, please email support@truevail.com.
