December and January product updates

To kick off 2024, we are excited to introduce a new chapter in Custobar’s monthly product updates post titled "Signals from the Future." This forward-looking piece is dedicated to giving you a sneak peek at the features and integrations we are working on to ensure Custobar not only meets but anticipates your needs.

On that note, according to our recent customer satisfaction survey, over 90% of Custobar's clients have experienced critical business benefits from using our platform and services! Thank you, it’s a pleasure!

Most exciting enhancements of the month

Without a doubt, Google and Yahoo’s more strict bulk-sending requirements have been the discussion topic causing the most stir amongst email marketers at the start of 2024. We embrace the changes that improve the quality of email marketing for both marketers and their customers!

Good email-sending practices are now a must

Guidelines that have been best practices in sending bulk emails will now be strictly enforced. Otherwise, the senders' emails won't make it to the inboxes of major players like Gmail and Yahoo Mail. Rest assured, Custobar’s clients are in good hands and probably already meet those requirements.

For most of you, no action is needed as your sender domain is authenticated correctly and meets the requirements. In order to make sure you are compliant, take a look at our checklist. Some of the requirements are not controlled by Custobar and can only be set by the owners of the sender domain.

Also, one-click unsubscribes have recently been enabled in emails sent from Custobar, and the upcoming email preferences management feature (scroll down for more!) will give marketers and email subscribers alike more control over their email preferences.

New integration with Erply

Erply is a versatile cloud-based retail and point-of-sale (POS) platform that caters to the needs of both small businesses and large enterprises. Custobar can now integrate with Erply ERP, and you can effortlessly merge your customer, product, and sales data from Erply into Custobar! Find out exactly what data is imported from Erply into Custobar.

Little tweaks making a big splash!

This time, in the small but significant updates, we delve into the correct handling of Custobar cookie consent, are happy about the better campaign comparison reports, clarify what constitutes the last email activity date, and detail some of the bugs we've squashed lately.

Before diving further into the product updates, we’d like to take this opportunity and remind you about correct GDPR practices regarding cookies! When you use the Custobar tracking script on an e-commerce or website, you must obtain cookie consent from users. Custobar stores customer identification to a cookie named “cb” for 365 days.

Asking for consent is a mandatory, GDPR-required step that needs to be completed before any cookies are loaded onto the users' devices.

Campaign comparison improving by March

The campaign comparison feature is improving, and you will see the improvements in your Custobar environment by the end of the month.

First, averages are now available for each KPI, like opens and clicks, in the comparison. You can also export them along with all the comparison data. If a campaign is missing a value for a KPI, it will not affect the average (it is skipped instead of counting as zero).

Campaign comparison averages in Custobar:

Campaign comparison averages in a data export:

Also, you can now compare more campaigns against each other. The maximum number of campaigns to compare was 25, and now it's 100. However, downloading the stats of so many campaigns may take a noticeable amount of time. If such happens, please let us know at support@custobar.com and drop the number of campaigns you select for the comparison.

What is counted as the last email activity date?

There’s a customer data field in Custobar called “Last email activity date” (or last_email_activity_date, to be exact). You can use the field when creating campaigns and automations and want to find people who have, for example, had email activity within the past month - or vice versa - have not had any email activity within a certain time frame.

When you search for customers using the “Last email activity date” criteria, you are, in essence, searching for people who have opened, clicked or subscribed to an email. Previously, only opens and clicks were counted as activity, but now email subscribes from the MAIL_SUBSCRIBE events are also available.

Some bugs we squashed in December and January

The email module called “Title + text + button” was missing the option to edit the colour of “Header 1” text. Now it works again!
The graph in the Shops view displaying revenue by shop, revenue heatmap, sales by shop or sales heatmap had gone a bit wonky and displayed a LOT of dates, which was not intended. We fixed it, and the graph is readable yet again!
Custobar’s Shuriken integration previously failed to update customer data in Custobar when a customer unsubscribed from all marketing. Now, the marketing permissions are turned off in such cases as they should!

Signals from the future

This month, in the future signals, we're highlighting some exciting developments: first, our WhatsApp Business integration, which is now available for piloting; second, the integration with Sanoma Ads Audience Sync, which promises to enhance your advertising strategies; and lastly, our new Email Preferences Management feature, crafted to give you and your users improved control over email marketing preferences.

Call for marketers at the forefront: WhatsApp marketing opportunity

Imagine reaching your target audience directly in their favourite messaging app, which also happens to be an app where consumers are open to receiving newsletters and not yet saturated by competition. With Custobar's latest integration, reaching your customers' WhatsApp inboxes is not just a dream. It's a wise move for the innovative marketer ready to grab this exceptional opportunity to engage in guerrilla-like marketing tactics that resonate on a much more personal level.

This personal channel is ripe for the picking. In Germany, 78% of people are open to messenger newsletters. For example, Rewe, one of Germany's biggest supermarket chains, sends its brochures via WhatsApp. Rewe tested WhatsApp with a limited audience, and so can you.

Are you interested in WhatsApp marketing, utility or authentication messaging? We're currently piloting Custobar's WhatsApp integration. Contact your Custobar contact or support@custobar.com, and let's see if you are also eligible to pilot. You can collect WhatsApp messaging permissions from your customers during the pilot.

In the works: Synchronisation of Sanoma Custom Audiences

We’ve worked hard to lift the constraints of Custobar’s Sanoma Custom Audiences integration: goodbye single audience restriction, welcome audience synchronisation!

Currently, the integration can send one-off lists from Custobar to Sanoma. It means that changes in the audience you’ve created in Custobar are not sent to Sanoma unless you create a new push campaign. Now, we’re piloting a version of the Sanoma integration that can handle continuous updates and directly synchronise any real-time changes to the audience you created in Custobar! The Sanoma list will automatically update to reflect those changes on the Sanoma AdManager side. We will keep you posted about when this improved version becomes available.

Custobar’s Sanoma Custom Audiences is a powerful integration for the Finnish market, with Sanoma reaching 95% of internet users in Finland every week. With this integration, you can target large and small audiences with display and video ads in the Sanoma network for maximum marketing visibility and impact.

Email preferences management: more control for subscribers and marketers

In the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape, email remains a foundational channel for customer engagement. But as the inbox strains under the weight of promotional offers and newsletters, the challenge for marketers is to ensure their emails aren't just opened but welcomed. Enter Custobar's highly anticipated email preferences management feature!

This upcoming Custobar feature allows your customers to seamlessly subscribe or unsubscribe from different mailing lists, all in one convenient place. They can effortlessly view and manage their email subscriptions. For marketers, this feature ensures optimal email deliverability rates and provides valuable insights into customer preferences.

Our recent blog post “Three things to know about email unsubscribes in 2024” features a small preview of this new feature.

We are here for you

Your satisfaction and success with Custobar are paramount to us. We understand that navigating the waters of customer data and marketing automation can sometimes be challenging, which is why our highly valued professional support is here for you. Whether you have questions about setting up campaigns, integrating new features, or maximising your use of Custobar, we're here to assist you. Please don't hesitate to get in touch at support@custobar.com to make the most of your marketing efforts.