Thank you for making the decision to purchase an account with ForMarketer.com!

We've designed ForMarketer.com to be extremely user-friendly, whilst being one of the more powerful and flexible email marketing solutions online. This User Manual will teach you how to quickly and easily take full advantage of our system to catapult your sales and grow your business.

The manual is split in the following areas:

• Introduction and Notes
• Getting Started With Your Account
• Navigating the Control Panel
• Using Our Optional Features
• Frequently Asked Questions

Feel free to contact our if you still require any kind of help with your account after reading this user manual.

1. Introduction and Notes

1.1 What is ForMarketer.com?

For Marketer.com provides email marketing automation solutions, allowing for the execution of effective marketing campaigns using email, via an easy-to-use web-based interface. Of course, if you have any suggestions as to how we can improve our interface please feel free to .

Your account entitles you to unlimited campaigns, each with their own dedicated contact list and message set -- in no way is one campaign linked to another. (Should you want to create more than one campaign with the same specifications and message set, simply use the Replicate function found in the Edit Campaigns page)

Another point to be aware of is that we do not limit you to the number of contacts within a specific campaign. We do ask you to not take advantage of our system by sending unsolicited bulk emails. Any users found doing this is going against their service agreement and will face the consequences.

1.2 Read This Before Using Your Control Panel

Please understand that each campaign you create is managed from the same control panel. Unlike other services which entitle you to a single email marketing campaign, we grant you a single account for use with all of your campaigns.

The benefit of this is that you don't have to remember lots of usernames and passwords and you can manage several campaigns without the hassle of logging out and back in to the new campaign. It also gives you the opportunity to copy messages or replicate campaigns if necessary.

In the top right-hand corner of almost every web page within the control panel is a campaign selection box; this is the easiest way to switch to a different campaign. Selecting another campaign from the campaign selection box will refresh the control panel and allow you to manage the selected campaign instantly. If you have not created any campaigns yet, this will have no effect.

1.3 Accessing Your Account

To log in to your control panel to access your account, click on the Members link at our main web site. Here you will be requested to enter your username and password. These were issued to you upon purchasing your account and sent by email.

If you do not have your login details to hand, we have created a web page specifically for recovering them which can be accessed from the login page. Simply enter your username or email address and your details will be sent to you.

Warning! Please ensure that you log out of your control panel when you're finished by clicking the link in the top right-hand corner of any web page within the control panel. This will stop others from accessing your private and confidential data from the same computer.

2. Getting Started With Your Account

Here you will learn, in several easy steps, how to create and set up your first campaign with Follow Up Marketer?. Any linked pages will open in a separate window when clicked, allowing you to follow the steps while referring back to this window.

2.1 Create a New Campaign to Add to Your Account

Click on Add New Campaign in the Campaigns section of your control panel to add a new campaign to your account. You will be presented with a form requesting you to specify a few properties (shown on right).

Helpful descriptions have been provided to assist you in filling in the form and, should it be necessary, you can edit these details at any time from the Manage Campaigns page.

After you submit the form your campaign will be created and your email capture address will become active almost instantly. If a contact sends an email to this address, his/her contact details will be automatically captured and subscribed to this campaign.

Quick Tip! Do you publish a daily email course? If so, check the box labeled "Deliver messages on weekdays only (delaying over weekends)". This will ensure that your contacts who check their email at work do not arrive on a Monday to find two new emails which were delivered during the weekend.

2.2 Specify Autoresponse/Follow Up Messages for this Campaign

Now that your campaign has been created you must specify the autoresponse and follow up messages for your contacts to receive. Please note that each campaign you create has it's own set of messages (but if you want to copy messages from an existing campaign this can be specified in the Add New Campaign page).

To set up your autoresponse message, click on the Add/Edit Autoresponse Message in the Messages section.

Here you can specify the email header (if different from your default settings), and the subject and body of your email which can include personalization tags and supports HTML format. You can also attach files to your message and write a short note.

If the purpose of this campaign is to simply record your contacts ignore this step. For ezines and newsletters, you can simply set an autoresponse message to confirm the subscription and not bother adding any follow up messages if you like.

Once your autoresponse message is created, you will be automatically redirected to the Follow Message Manager where you can create further follow up messages if necessary. These messages can be as close or as far apart from each other as you like.

2.3 Implement Subscription Methods (or Import Contacts)

After your messages have been created and added to your campaign you're ready to start adding subscribers (referred to as contacts). There are three main ways contacts can be added:

• They can send an email to your email capture address and be subscribed automatically.
• They can subscribe themselves by completing a short subscription form on your web site.
• You can manually add contacts or import an existing mailing list (opt-in only).

If you wish to let your contacts subscribe themselves from a
form on your web site go to Generate Subscription Form in the Campaigns section. You can specify options such as whether you want to request a contact's name, his/her preferred message format, and also assign custom fields. To track subscriptions and removals create a new tracking tag while you're there.

Once you've submitted this form you will be presented with the HTML code for your custom web form (a sample form is shown to the left). Simply copy and paste this into the appropriate web pages and your contacts will be able to subscribe to your campaign without you having to touch a single button.

To add individual contacts go to Add New Contacts in the Contact section of your control panel. There you can enter the contact details and specify what follow up position you want the contact to be added in, the default message format and custom fields if applicable.

To import a list of contacts stored on file you have two options accessible from the Import Contacts page. Either copy and paste the list into the space given or import the list from a text file on your computer. In both cases you will be able to specify a default name, message format and whether you want the contacts to receive your autoresponse message or not.

Warning! It is against your service agreement to add contacts who have not specifically opted to receive emails. You also agree not to spam or send unsolicited bulk emails using our service. Anyone found breaching the agreement will have their account terminated and be charged a clean up fee.

2.4 View Your Response And Subscription Statistics

As your list of contacts grows and your messages are continuously delivered you can keep a close eye on almost every aspect of your campaign from the Tracking section. If you simply want to see how many messages were delivered you can do that from the Follow Up Message Manager.

However, if you want to instantly spot how many contacts subscribed from a web form (or email capture address) using a specific tracking tag then go to the Tracking Tag Statistics page. You will also be able to see how many of these contacts removed themselves.

From the Message Response Tracking page you can find out how many of your messages were actually opened and read by your contacts. Due to technical restraints, this can only be calculated if your campaign utilizes HTML messages.

The last page of the tracking section, URL Tracking Statistics, allows you to view the number of clickthroughs a particular link you've set to be tracked in your messages has received. This is useful if you're running a promotion and want to record the number of hits from an email message.

3. Navigating the Control Panel

To help you easily navigate your way around the control panel, we've divided our interface into six sections. Each control a different part of our system and contain individual pages and forms. The various sections are:

3.1 Campaigns Section

This is where everything starts. You can add new campaigns and manage existing ones from here. You can also generate HTML for custom web forms to insert on your web site and subscribe or unsubscribe contacts with.

Add New Campaign - From here you can add new email marketing and follow up campaigns. Unlike most of our competitors, we do not limit you to the number of campaigns, you can create as many as you wish from this page.

Manage Campaigns - This is an "at a glance" list of all your campaigns. You can lock (suspend) specific campaigns, or all campaigns, test a particular campaign by having all the messages sent to your email address at once. You can also edit and replicate campaigns from here.

Generate Subscription Form - By specifying a few options here our system will automatically generate the HTML code needed to place a contact subscription form on your web pages.

Generate Unsubscribe Form - This generates a web form for your existing contacts to use if they wish to unsubscribe. In most cases, this won't be necessary as they can unsubscribe from the link at the bottom of each email sent using our system.

3.2 Messages Section

This section is where you add new messages and manage your existing messages. You can also broadcast solo messages from here too and manage scheduled broadcasts.

Add/Edit Autoresponse Message - You can create your autoresponse message and add it to your message set from here. This is the message your contacts will instantly receive when they subscribe to this campaign.

Add/Edit Follow Up Messages - This goes to the Follow Up Message Manager, where besides from managing existing messages, you can also create and add further "follow up" messages.

Broadcast Solo Message - Here you can write solo messages to send to your entire contact list. As with the autoresponse and follow up messages you can compose messages in HTML message format, include personalization and even attach files.

Manage Broadcasts - This is where you can see an detailed list of all your previous and scheduled broadcasts. You can view or edit broadcasts, depending on their status, and delete scheduled broadcasts. Messages can also be sent to your email for testing purposes.

3.3 Contacts Section

This is where you can manage your list of contacts, add/import new contacts, export your contact list, and block emails or domains from your campaign.

Manage List - This contains a detailed table of contacts along with a powerful filter form for you to filter your contacts by name, status and more.

Add Contact - Manually add contacts to your campaign from here. You can also specify follow up position, default message format, and custom personalization fields.

Import Contact - If you have a list of contacts elsewhere you can import them to your campaign from here. Either copy and paste them into a textbox or import them from a text file. You can also restore backed up contacts in the form of FUM files.

Export Contact - Export your contact list from here. You can export to a text file or to FUM format for backup purposes (as this includes custom and tracking data).

Block Domain - Here you can block specific email addresses or entire domains by specifying masks. You can also check to see if an email address will be blocked due to an existing mask as well as locate and delete existing emails containing specified masks.

3.4 Tracking Section

From this powerful section you can view statistics such as contact subscriptions and removals via specific tracking tags and message responses rates. You can also view statistics showing the number of clicks URLs in your email messages received.

Tracking Tag Statistics - This displays the results of your tracking tags which can be implemented within web subscription forms and email capture addresses to calculate the number of subscriptions and removals.

Message Response Tracking - If your campaign uses HTML messages then from here you will be able to view exactly how many emails, out of those delivered, were actually opened and read. This is a unique feature and useful for anyone who understands the importance of testing.

URL Tracking Statistics - From here you can see how many clicks each URL inside your messages received, providing you set the link to be tracked using the [[track URL]] tag.

3.5 Account Section

This is where you can modify your account details which you gave upon purchasing your account (if you have changed your email address then this is where you would specify that). You can also change your password here.

3.6 Support Section

This is where you can contact us and get help with your account. You can also access the friendly community forums and this user manual from here. If your question isn't answered here, request support from this section.

4. Using Our Optional Features

Here we will discuss several of Follow Up Marketer's features not covered in the "Getting Started" guide so you can take full advantage of our system with minimum fuss. If you still feel lost or if you feel uncomfortable using any of these features, please email our for assistance.

4.1 Replicating a Campaign

If you want to create a new campaign with the same properties and message set as an existing campaign for use with an alternative set of contacts, there is an easy solution. All you need to do is follow these steps:

1. In the Campaigns section of the control panel, go to the Manage Campaigns page.

2. Click on the name of the campaign you wish to replicate.

3. Scroll down to the end of the form where the "Save changes" button is placed.

4. Click on the button beside it, labeled "Create replicate".

5. The Add New Campaigns page will load, preset for you. Simply specify a campaign name and your desired email capture address and click "Create campaign".

When the campaign is created the messages from the original will be automatically copied over ready to use and the campaign properties, including the default email headers, will be identical.

4.2 Personalizing Your Messages

If you want to personalize your messages with the contact's details (and more), there is very simple way to do this. Let's say you wanted to say "Dear Joe Bloggs", if your contact's name is "Joe Bloggs" for example. You would write "Dear [[full name]]" where you want this to go. That's it!

When your message is delivered to your contacts it will address them personally. If they haven't specified their name it will read "Dear Friend" or whatever you specified as the default name for contacts when creating your campaign.

Here is a list of the different personalization tags you can add to your messages...

• [[full name]] - This prints the contact's full name as specified during subscription. For example, "Hi [[full name]]" will print "Hi Joe Bloggs", if your contact's full name is Joe Bloggs.
  
  
• [[first name]] - This prints the contact's first name as specified during subscription. For example, "Hi [[first name]]" will print "Hi Karen", if your contact's first name is Karen.
  
  
• [[last name]] - This prints the contact's last name as specified during subscription. For example, "Dear Mr. [[last name]]" will print "Dear Mr. Smith", if your contact's last name is Smith.
  
  
• [[email]] - This prints the contact's email address as specified during subscription. For example, "You are subscribed as [[email]]" will print "You are subscribed as [email protected]", if your contact's email address is [email protected].
  

• [[date long]] - This prints a long date to your message, in the form of "day, month date, year", i.e. Wednesday, April 17, 2004.
  
  
• [[Date med]] - This prints an abbreviated date to your message, in the form of "month date, year", i.e. April 17, 2004.
  
  
• [[Date short]] - This prints a short date to your message, in the form of "month/date/year", i.e 04/17/2004.
  
  
• [[Date eu1]] - This prints one of the European date types to your message, in the form of "date/month/year", i.e. 17/04/2004.
  
  
• [[date eu2]] - This prints another of the European date types to your message, in the form of "year-month-date", i.e. 2004-04-17.
  
  
• [[date day]] - This prints the day of the week, i.e. Wednesday.
  
  
• [[Date month]] - This prints the month of the year, i.e. April.
  
  
• [[Date time]] - This prints the time of the day, i.e. 18:56.
  

• [[campaign]] - This prints the name of your campaign. For example, "Thank you for subscribing to [[campaign]]" will print "Thank you for subscribing to Weekly Health Tips", if your campaign is called "Weekly Health Tips".
  
  
• [[campaign short]] - This prints the first part of your email capture address, also known as the campaign's short name. So if your email capture address is [email protected] then the "freetips" is printed in your message.
  
  
• [[removal url]] - This prints a one-click removal link for your contacts to unsubscribe with. Note that all emails sent using our service include a single link at the bottom of messages which your contacts can use to either change their details or unsubscribe from.

4.3 Specifying Custom Personalization

In your messages you can also include custom data, this can be something as simple as a contact's post code or perhaps the number of employees his company has depending on how you intend to use your campaign.

1. Go to the Generate Subscription Form page in the campaigns section.

2. Specify the options as required until requested to input custom field labels

3. Tick the checkboxes for each field of custom data you wish to record. You can request three separate fields of data (this may very well be increased in the future).

4. In the spaces given, enter the labels for the field as it will be seen in your web form (this is what your contacts use to subscribe) replace the existing values.

5. Click the "Generate web form" button and place the generated HTML code on your web pages where you want the subscription form to go.

6. While creating your messages, include the custom tags as required. For example, if the first field of custom data is a phone number, you will type [[custom1]] where you want the phone number to appear (the 1 in this tag refers to the data being the first field of custom data).

4.4 Blocking Specific Emails/Domains

To block a specific email address or an entire domain from subscribing to your campaign, follow these steps:

1. In the Contacts section, go to the Block Domains page.

2. Add a new mask by clicking on the appropriate link and typing in a mask to block.

3. If you want to remove all existing contacts who have email addresses containing a specified mask, click on the link in the paragraph relating to this feature on the same page.

4.5 Tracking Subscriptions/Removals

If you want to track subscriptions or removals from a particular web form you can do so by creating a tracking tag. Follow these steps to set up a web form with utilizing a tracking tag:

1. Go to the Generate Subscription Form page in the campaigns section.

2. Specify the options as required until requested to specify or create a tracking tag.

3. If you already have a tag created select it from the list given. Otherwise, type a name for a new tracking tag in the space given (for example, type "pop-up" for a subscription form which will go in a pop-up window).

4. Click the "Generate web form" button and place the generated HTML code on your web pages where you want the subscription form to go.

5. As your contacts subscribe (or unsubscribe) this will be calculated and you can view the results in the Tracking Tag Statistics page of the Tracking section.

You can also use tracking tags in your email capture address. Simply add ?subject=tagname at the end of the email address where tagname is the name of your tracking tag. To create a new tracking tag for this purpose, go to the Tracking Tag Statistics page and create a new tag from there.

If your email capture address is [email protected], for example, and you have made a tracking tag for an ezine advertisement which is called "ezine101", then the full email address with tracking functionality will be [email protected]?subject=ezine101.

Note: If tracking tags are not implemented into your web forms, the Tracking Tag Statistics form will show the number of subscriptions from the associated web page automatically without you having to program the pages in.

4.6 Tracking Links Within Messages

Using our link tracker you can instantly see in real-time how many of your contacts have clicked on a link within your email. This is useful for tracking the response of your ads and endorsements.

To set up a link to be tracked, use the [[track URL]] tag. Simply insert this in your message where a hyperlink should be and replace URL with the actual URL of the web page. So if you wanted to track a link to Google.com you would enter [[track http://www.google.com/]].

When your message is sent to your contacts they will see a special link which is tracked by our system. You can see the results by going to the URL Tracking Statistics page in the Tracking section.

If you are using HTML messages, you can implement this into the tag so that the contact never sees the tracking URL. Simply type URL]]">text goes here and replace the URL and the sample text accordingly.

5. Frequently Asked Questions

Can I really add unlimited campaigns to my account?

Your account entitles you to create as many campaigns as you wish. Since there is no limit you can set up a seperate campaign for your different products and marketing tasks as required without worrying about outrageous charges most email marketing services would request.

What web browsers does your control panel work with?

Our control panel has been designed to work with the majority of browsers on PC and Mac platforms. This certainly includes Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. However, we believe you will be most comfortable accessing your account from Internet Explorer 5.5+ and Netscape Navigator 6.1+. Unfortunately, we do not currently support the Opera browser.

Do you have any restrictions on how I use the service?

We are very strict when it comes to matters such as spamming. Your service agreement specifically mentions we will terminate your account and charge you a clean up fee if you use your account to send unsolicited bulk email messages. As long as you keep well away from this unethical method of marketing you have nothing to worry about.

Can I set up email aliases (or email forwarders) for my campaigns?

Sure! Simply forward the alias or forwarder to your email capture address and your contacts won't even realize that they're subscribing to an autoresponder system.

Why are no emails being sent from my campaign?

There are two possible reasons for emails not being sent:

a) Your account is not activated yet. This will be the case if you have just recently placed your order and your billing information is still being processed while you are learning the system. You will receive an email as soon as your order is fully processed and your payment is confirmed.

b) Your campaign is in a Locked state. If this is the case, then the campaign selection box will show this campaign in red with the word "locked" in brackets beside it. To unlock the campaign, go the Manage Campaigns page and click on the Unlock function.

Contacts are saying that they aren't receiving emails from me!

If your contact complains that he or she isn't receiving either the autoresponse or the follow up messages it's probably down to one of the following reasons:

a) Their email server is inaccessible. If the system fails to deliver an email message after 5 days of trying, the contact is automatically marked as "bounced".

b) It is more likely that their mailbox was full when message was delivered and the email was rejected. In this case they won't be marked as bounced and contacts will receive future messages.

If a particular contact requests to receive the previous message (the missed follow up), simply change their follow up position as required by clicking on their email address in the Manage List page of the Contacts section and using the Edit Contact form.

Note: Because of the way different email providers operate, it is not always possible for ForMarketer.com to recognise whether the message bounced because the mailbox was full. If the error is not recognised the contact will simply be marked as bounced. To place these contacts back in the follow up sequence use the Edit Contact form.