CCS
Customers, We
will be performing maintenance and system updates on
the Database server for the PartyPics family of websites
this Wednesday morning, May
2, 2007. We
will begin at 2:00am CT and should be completed by
6:00am central time.
During
this period all retail websites and portals for
accessing them (QP2, QPPlus, RacePhotoNetwork,
GradPhotoNetwork, MyWeddingPrints, MyLeaguePhotos)
will be unavailable. Also QEMS
and CORE will be offline. Additionally,
once maintenance begins the initiation of
new FTP sessions will not be operational.
FTP sessions
already in progress should continue normally. Orders
transferred during this period will be delayed in
going online as well.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact
me.
Thank you, Dann Armour
Candid Color Systems, Inc.
1.800.336.4550, ext. 288 April
27th, 2007
Attention
Campus Customers! It
is very important before
the semester is over and
before the students go
homefor the summer to
get email address and cell
phone numbers for key
Greek officers. This
contact information will
be critical when scheduling
Group pictures for Rush
Week. PLUS, CCS is developing
a very promising new program
for candids on college
campuses that you will
want to make plans for
with the Greek organizations BEFOREthe
next semester.
Details to this plan will
be made available to you
within the coming weeks.
Since
the introduction of Pearlized Portraits™ into
the Glamour Shots market in 2004, and more recently
in many of the special events markets at CCS, our goal
has been to find a way to trademark this product and
specifically its name to Glamour Shots and CCS. By
creating a unique and well protected product, we can
position Pearlized Portraits™ exclusively
and as a competitive advantage in the marketplace for
you, our customers.
Many, many conversations and emails later with our patent
and trademark attorney have yielded some very specific recommendations
that CCS and CCS customers need to follow. Adherence
to these guidelines will best enable us to pursue the trademark
for this product. We understand that this is a re-education
of sorts in terms of how we have up until this point promoted
and described Pearlized Portraits™. These
guidelines should be followed in all written, electronic
and verbal communications with our end customers.
Do not use
the word “pearlized” as an adjective / descriptor,
i.e. pearlized paper, pearlized finish, etc.
Only use
the word “pearlized” together with “portraits”,
i.e. Pearlized Portraits ™
When possible, use the logo for Pearlized
Portraits™ with it’s tagline,
luminous prints (see logo)
When describing the product, reference
the tagline, i.e. Pearlized Portraits™ are
luminous prints.
Avoid using “pearlize” as
a verb, i.e. “Would you like us to pearlize your
prints?”
CCS will be reviewing
all our references to this product and make the changes listed
above. We strongly encourage you to do the same on your
materials and communications going forward. This will
strengthen our claim that the mark is unique to our business. If
you have any questions, please feel free to email me at danah@candid.com or
contact me at 1.800.336.4550 x876.
New
Discounted Wallet Packages available in the Grad Market.
by Charles
Cummings
We
have added three options for wallets in CORE & QP2 Grad
Markets. They will be available in sets of 24, 48, and 80
with discounted prices. They
can be used in Graduation Announcements, Thank you cards etc..
24 wallets discounted 10% for $6.10 per set
48 wallets discounted 15% for $11.52 per set
80 wallets discounted 20% for $18.08 per set
These wallet packages are produced from one image.
Each package of wallets are also available our exclusive Pearlized Portrait finish.
To get these packages in your CORE go to your Setup tab. Then choose Products
from the tabs on the left side. Then you will see Refresh Objects tab. Click
on that tab and all new products, crests, and modifier information will be updated.
Then you can add this to your Grad offers. These new packages can
also be used as an up sell in your offer.
A Big Thank You goes out to Bud Stagg from KU for requesting this product.
If you have a product idea or specific need for a product that isn’t offered
in a certain market, please e-mail danah@candid.com for
your request to be considered.
7 Email Recommendations To Improve
Deliverability by Demetri Barges
Overview
Over the last 2 years Spam, unwanted or unsolicited e-mail,
has increased significantly. As millions of e-mails
are sent each day, only a small percentage of these
e-mails are reaching the target customers. These e-mails
are being filtered by many different methods. Spam
filters, black listing agencies, and failure to adhere
to Best Practices, are costing everyone money, as e-mails
are not being successfully delivered to the intended
in-boxes.
While Candid Color Systems is working on several solutions
for improving e-mail deliverability, there are some items
that Candid Color Systems may not be able to affect.
Please review the five simple items below, and look at
a sample e-mail, that when run through our spam rating,
received a very low score.
Feel free to use our HTML sample in your e-mails; See
Exhibit 1.
User tasks to improve deliverability
There are a few simple tasks we can perform in order
to ensure that our e-mails are being delivered.
1. Words to avoid
Avoiding ‘”Spammy” type words is important
to keep your Spam score low. While this may seem obvious,
words like “offer” should be avoided. Exhibit
2 is a list of words and phases to avoid.
2. Send your e-mails through spam rating agencies
E-mails are ranked spam values by most major ISP’s,
and most spam filters work on a point system. By sending
your e-mail through a spam rater you can see your spam
score; A high score demonstrates that you need to re-work
your e-mail to have less spam value. One bad word may
not cause your e-mail to be filtered, but several may.
There are several free sites you can send your e-mails
to for a free SPAM Rating. One such site is sitesell.net.
Send a copy of your email message to spamcheck@sitesell.net
with the word TEST as the subject. A SPAM report will
be sent back to the reply to address.
3. Setup test e-mails accounts
By setting up test e-mail accounts with common providers,
you can periodically check to see if your e-mail is being
received. In addition to verifying that your e-mails
are received, you can view your e-mail through the provider
portal.
4. Monitor Blacklists
If you are using Candid Color Systems to send your e-mails,
you do not need to monitor black listing; we are providing
this service for you.
Are you, or is your ISP on a blacklist? If so, you need
to get off. Some ISP’s will not even look at your
e-mail if you are blacklisted. There are services that
will monitor this for you. If you send your own e-mails,
and do not use Candid Color Systems for your e-mails,
you need to subscribe to one of these services. A good
service for monitoring is www.mxtoolbox.com. Mxtoolbox
will check your mail server against 127 known blacklists.
You can check anytime, or subscribe to their service,
which will notify you if you are added to a blacklist.
5. Check DNS settings
If you are not using Candid Color Systems, you do not
need to verify your DNS settings; Candid Color Systems
is providing this service for you. Please note that
Candid Color may be hosting your e-mail and website,
but may or may not handle your DNS server.
Most ISP’s do not deliver E-mail containing all
the correct DNS entries; if you are unsure whether or
not you are doing this correctly, you can contact customer
support and they will assist you.
6. Throttle your e-mails
If you are using Candid Color Systems to send e-mails,
you do not need to worry about this; CCS monitors the
e-mail volume sent, and adjusts volume as needed.
If you are not using Candid Color Systems, you need
to make sure you do not ‘dump’ thousands
or even hundreds of e-mails into the internet at one
time. Most major ISP’s only allow a certain amount
of e-mail volume to enter their domains, unless you are
white listed. The amount of e-mail volume varies by ISP;
you need to watch your bounce backs and interoperate
their meanings.
7. Other items a. If you are using a .biz or .info domain in your content,
or as the source of your emails, consider getting a .com
domain.
b. Never include numeric IP’s in a URL. They
will almost always get the message classified as SPAM.
Exhibit 1 – Sample E-MAIL
Download
(.doc) the source
HTML for the above email.
Download (.rtf) the source
HTML for the above email.
Exhibit 2 – Words
to Avoid
Here is a list of some words and phrases culled from
several spam filter lists. It is not complete. Porn
trigger words and drug related words (Viagra, etc.)
have been left out. Most spam filters work on a point
system, so that the occurrence of just one "spam
phrase" probably won't trigger rejection.
1.
100%
2. Accept credit cards
3. Act now
4. Amazing
5. Big Bucks
6. Big savings
7. Breakthrough
8. Claims to be in accordance with some Spam Law
9. Claims the recipient registered with some kind of
partner network
10. Click here
11. Dear
12. Discounts
13. Don’t hesitate
14. Free offer
15. Full refund
16. Forward to a friend
17. Guarantee/guaranteed
18. Incredible
19. Limited time only
20. Money back
21. Now only
22. Offer
23. Offer expires
24. Offering coupon
25. Opportunity
26. Opt in
27. Order now
28. Order status
29. Orders shipped by priority mail
30. Please forward
31. Refund
32. Removal instructions
33. Remove/removed/removal
34. Satisfaction
35. Save up to
36. Special promotion
37. Targeted
38. Urgent
Graduation Add-Ons "More Bang For Your Buck!"
by Jessica Braun
Graduations are getting closer and closer. You’ve been reading
about them in the past few newsletters and I’m sure there will be more
soon. Here are a few more options available in our CORE grad market.
We offer several premium up-grades for graduation photographs including quick
retouching, cropping, lamination, and pearlized portraits. Most customers offer
these as a part of a deluxe package and also Ala Carte. Deluxe packages are
a great way to give your grads and families the finest memories available.
CORE is available in not only grads but races, schools, sports, and proms.
It is also free if you are hosted. If you aren’t familiar with
CORE or would just like a refresher course, please call tech support at 1-800-750-0494
option 2. They are always happy to help.
Quick Retouching. I would like to first
point out that each image is individually color corrected, at no extra charge.
Quick retouching is the next step up. It includes a light softening of
the face and brightening of the teeth and eyes. It will soften small
imperfections in the face such as light acne. Studios usually charge
an additional $10 to $15 per image. 12% of one client’s graduation customers
order retouching each year.
Cropping. While Candid
does not charge for cropping you can! Just to review
- cropping is the aspect ratio in proportion to
the size of your print. You can do this yourself
in CORE or allow your end customer to do it at the point
of order for no charge or for a fee.
Lamination. Lamination preserves
your precious photos for a lifetime. Lamination is a
transparent plastic coating that adds a glossy finish
to your photos and resists water, solvents, grease, and
fingerprints. The same client mentioned above is proud
to say that 31% of their customers order this up-grade. Lamination
and our next add on, Pearlized Portraits, cannot be offered
together because it defeats the purpose of the Pearlized
Portrait finish.
Pearlized Portraits. Pearlized
Portraits, also known as metallic, are Kodak’s
premium paper which gives off a luminous glow. Pearlized
Portraits make up well over 15% of sales for one company. Another
long time client has never offered Pearlized Portraits
for graduations before. He will be offering this
up-grade to his grads starting this spring. I’ll
update you after the graduation season.
One employee of our client made a spectacular statement that is perfect for
closing this article “These augmentations give you more bang for your
buck!” Candidnet
Tips
by Joni Brown
Did you know on Candidnet there is a navigation category for the Developments
Newsletter? If you click on this category you see two subcategories
for Archived and Current. You will always be able to find the most
current edition of the Developments Newsletter by accessing this link.
You will also have access to all the archived Developments
Newsletters dating back to August 2005. We’ve added a new feature
to the Archives. Under each newsletter date there is now a list of all
the articles inside that specific newsletter. This should make it much
easier when searching for an old article or a specific subject.
When you access the Developments Newsletter pages you will
be taken to a new site. To return to Candidnet, simply
click on your browsers back button. Weekly
Event Summary E-mails by Denise Mangiante
Qems
has proven to be a powerful tool for generating more sales from Party Picture
and other events. However, in the past, the Qems program required one
e-mail to be sent for each event that a person attended. This resulted
in an avid party goer receiving numerous e-mails from the photographer. We
think that receiving numerous e-mails from the photographer reduced the impact
of the Qems e-mail and also possibly subjected the Qems e-mails to more filtration
by spam filters.
Accordingly, we now have the ability in Qems to send one e-mail to a recipient
in which the recipient is reminded of all parties he or she attended at a given
campus. We think this will result in more e-mails connecting with our picture
buying audience.
This
new function in QEMS will allow you to send summary e-mails to your organizations
listing event activity. This feature can be used as an addition to your
daily e-mails or you can use the summary e-mail instead of daily event e-mail
notices. The summary e-mail can include:
- List
of new events in the last 7 days.
- List
of events set to expire in the next 7 days.
- All
active events.
The summary e-mail clearly communicates event status to your organizations and
reminds customers to visit your events to purchase images.
Weekly
Event Summary – Instructions Setup 1.
To enable weekly bulk event emails use the site setup page. Select “Enable
weekly bulk event emails” and set the hour and day you want the emails
to be sent.
2.
Now, create a template that you want to use for bulk emails. Because this email
is associated with many groups, instead of the just one group, several variables
will not function on a bulk email template. See the list of variables for a description
of this list.
When creating a template for Bulk Event Emails the following new variables
can be used:
- $NewEvents$: Displays events that came online in the last 7 days
- $ExpiringEvents$: Displays events that will expire in the next 7 days
- $ActiveEvents$: Displays active events, if either $NewEvents$, or $ExpiringEvents$
is not used then $ActiveEvents$ will include those events in its list.
- The lists will render in the HTML and Text portion of the email. In
the text version it will be a simple list with no links. In the html version
it will be a list of spans that can be customized by declaring the ccs class bulkEventListItem in
the head of the html email message.
3. Next, at the group level, select the parent organization that contains the
organizations you wish to email and select a template, then click either “Update
all children” or select the children manually.
Message will be queued at the time specified at
the site level. When messages are queued the site administrator is emailed.
Approving
Messages
1. An email
is received
2. Review Outbound Queue and view message
3. Approve Email – review message and click “Approve”. Message
goes into Queue and should be sent within 15 minutes (depending on the amount
of message currently queued).
