On-demand email and one-to-one marketing solutions provider ExactTarget launched its social network-based BackOffice today, allowing customers to submit and track help cases via the company’s social network.
Located in ExactTarget’s customer-only social networking site 3sixty, BackOffice allows customers to request technical support, monitor real-time help status and view a 90-day history of submitted help requests. The online support is in addition to ExactTarget’s global 24-hour-a-day phone-based customer support services.
“3sixty has become the location of choice for email marketers to engage with their peers to discuss current issues in marketing or pose questions to us about the software, its functionality or any issues they are currently experiencing in the application,” said Stephanie Zircher, ExactTarget’s director of 3sixty. “The introduction of BackOffice to 3sixty provides the industry’s only one-stop social networking site that provides exclusive client only education, support requests and online collaboration.”
Named 3sixty for the role the site plays in connecting emarketers to one another and to ExactTarget, the social network has grown to more than 13,000 members in less than nine months. Since launching in October, nearly 100 product enhancements and additions recommended by 3sixty users have already been incorporated into the company’s one-to-one marketing platform, including improved tracking tools, expanded email testing and simplified triggered email sending capability among others.
“The site gives our team a chance to network with colleagues around the country in a forum that is dedicated solely to e-marketing,” said Cara Olson, manager of e-marketing at Overland Park, Kans.-based Digital Evolution Group. “It gives our team the opportunity to quickly learn about enhancements and to respond to and advise other ExactTarget users who have posted questions in the community.”
Through the site’s training section, known as the University, users can participate in nearly 100 interactive on-demand video tutorials on ExactTarget’s technologies including SMS text messaging, triggered messages, international emails and dynamic content.
In addition to delivering online training and providing a forum for ExactTarget users, 3sixty gives marketers access to the company’s new products before they are commercially available. Earlier this year, global pizza giant Papa John’s field tested ExactTarget’s Social ForwardTM technology through the Innovations Lab on 3sixty.
ExactTarget clients access 3sixty directly from the software application online at www.exacttarget.com.
