The Email Wars

A trend that I have been seeing lately used by some companies and consumer brands is the Q/A idea. What is this? Well glad you asked. It is to create the question at the top of an email and drive them down through the copy to find out where it is answered. Typically I have seen it at the bottom, go figure. This drives the full read of the email, or at least that is the intention of the idea.

I think it is a good one that I am going to watch for. It might work better in a BtoC email campaign, but why could you not try it in a BtoB one? Think about this:

Do you know what is the major driver in sales/lead conversions in an email campaign? Find the answer below….

I wager that it works and works well.

Now I am going to be watching you campaigns, and IF you use this one, drop me and email to let me know how well it worked for you.

The Email Creative Question:

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The Email Creative Answer:

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So you have a list. Is it physical addresses or email addresses? Why do I ask you this? Well because you can use this technique either way. We do this all the time for our clients using PIN Coded DM (use a campaign URL for DM to track response by media) to convert offline lists to opt in email lists and it works swimmingly.

The example here was driven by email, at least to me as they have my information and I like them both as a brand and as an email marketer. They send a simple offer: Update your information and get entered in our daily contest. No brain-er right? Well have you tried it? It is actually simple, but you need to be aware of what you really need to know from the audience. Is it for reporting on campaigns, or is it going to be used to drive email segmentation and relevant content? Maybe both I hope.

If you are not using this technique, time to start.

The Email Creative:

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The Landing Page:

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Well my friend Tamara Gielen from b2bemailmarketing.com had a post this last week that I want to take the bad cop stance on.

She writes:

Stop Looking to the Big Boys for Creative Ideas
In this blog post, Janine Popick urges all of us NOT to look at the email campaigns of the “big boys” of retailing as a source of creative ideas because they don’t necessarily have it down when it comes to email marketing best practices.

I think it should be the other way. Now not that the whole large offline agency/large brands do it right and really don’t get how The Email Wars impact creative in the inbox, but more along the lines of “Do It Better than You Are Doing It Now”. I get so tired of seeing campaigns on both sides of the line. Small brands that are sending out crap (sorry to be so honest) and large brands or agencies that are over producing emails that don’t understand why emails should not just be images (one image in some cases) as they are not going to render. Can’t we aim to deliver compelling and outstanding creative WHILE as the same time doing it right and delivering a professional campaign?

I think we can. I think that the little guys have a better shot of aiming UP instead of the Big Boys aiming down. Take the creative cue from the BIG Boys and run like a small company with the flexibility and knowledge to just do it right.

Janine has it right on her blog with the examples of what happens when you don’t think like an email marketer and just a “marketer”.

Hope I don’t come off like an email snob, but just someone that wants to see everyone succeed. Now time to climb down off my soapbox. Hence the image of the terrorist throwing the flowers. (love the graffiti artist Banksy if you don’t know him)

Well you know that my first answe to this question is NO. Never is it okay, ethical nor legal to harvest emails out there. This company Jigsaw has been on my radar for a long time as they provide a contact info trading service for sales people. And this new email has a new download that actually allows you to grab emails from web sites and add them to your contact list. Meets the goals of Jigsaw from a business plan perspective, but man such a poor goal.

Why not just take advantage of the emails we get each day offering 100K emails for $5. Right?

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Keep reading after the JUMP

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I know only 3-4K people showed up at OMMA, so some of you missed it. Again this is THE event to go to each year. Next one is this fall in NYC. See you there.

But the reason for this is to share with you the link to all of the great content. They posted in up last week and used BrightCove ( I like this media player alot) so that you can catch up on what you missed.

Cheers and enjoy.

Watch the video clips from OMMA

I believe in email. I believe that it drives awareness and sales revenues. I know that it works, but in our consumer driven economy can we always expect everyone to want to hurry to buy from us? It is timing and segmentation. Not everyone is ready to buy anytime you have a sale no matter how fantastic or amazing the deals and creative may be. Reality check time guys.

When you are planning a campaign driven by a sale you must take the following actions:

1. Segment your list so that you target buyers that based on past data will be targets to your offers. Don’t drop the offer to everyone if you don’t have the data to back up if they will buy.

2. Think micro campaigns in leading up to the sale. Sales are driven by not one, but a series of emails building awareness, segmenting by those that have already acted on your offer, sending additional (note your frequency) reminders of the offer and time remaining to participate, and closing the loop with a stake in the ground when it is over and done.

3. Know the audience intimately. If you are selling woman’s clothing, don’t send the men on your list the offer (JCrew listen up). If you are selling to a business, don’t send your customers the offer because you are too lazy or unable to segment. The last thing you want to do it create buyers remorse on an offer that someone has already acted on.

4. Have the inventory to support a sale. So many times I have clicked through in 5 seconds from getting an email and the products are already gone that would be of interest to me. Builds a future thought in my mind to not pay attention to future ones.

In the end you can drive the business if you are clear about your goals and expectations while truly building a campaign that works.

How does one learn more about their readers or subscribers…. well they ask. So I am going to start posting some surveys every so often that can help me get in touch with you and what you would like to hear more about. They are going to be simple surveys as the ones that I get that are 10-20 questions really seem long. They will be based on topics that I can look for examples online, data, and of course rants and opinions.

I also encourage you to submit more comments on posts as I post them daily and you can use the comments as well to provide me with feedback as to what I can cover for you. This is a community after all, not a one way street.

The daily audience is growing at a rapid clip and we are getting close to a redesign in the coming months. Right after the relaunch of our own corporate site (7 months in the making so far and it is going to be GRAND. If you are unfamiliar with us, take a look at www.eroi.com.

I think in little bites they are easier to digest. Take a moment to give me your feedback when you see them as it will help me to work to make this a blog that you will look to for insight, email marketing news, and opinions.

Thank you and thank you for your readership.

I have long been a fan of the Scott’s Lawn care emails. The are timely, relevant and well done. But I was a little surprised when I got the most recent one and many of the blocks of copy and images failed to load. This was not due to any image suppression on my end of my email client, but just a misfire somewhere along the way. The email wars continue even when you are doing your best…. I even gave it a chance and opened it fully, went back to the inbox and loaded it again. No go.

Well at the top, as you should always do, was a link to view it as a web page. If you are not adding this as a standard in HTML as well as TEXT you need to cover the basics in your email marketing programs. And voila, all was well in the universe again.

Here are some shots of it and note it was in the new MSN Live Mail web client.

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With the View as Web Page link:

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So many of you have decided that the post card email is really a retail tool. I rarely ever see businesses using the postcard style layout when reaching out to customers and prospects to get them to take action. Well why is this? Why is it that businesses try to use every possible word in an email and every pixel to tell you more and more WHEN they actually just want you to take an action?

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Now I know you think that you need to really drive understanding, value propositioning and give them every possible action to take when they get your email at work…. but you don’t. Really. Sorry to burst the copywriters bubble or the CFOs sensibilities, but get to the point. Tell them what the offer is and give them one action to take. Now this assumes that you have queried your lists and are targeting emails to the right person that is going to benefit from taking this next step with you.

Remember, and some of you might argue this, that we are all consumers. We all are driven to buy a PC or application in the same manner that we might buy a new shirt or pair of shoes. If you have an offer that is relevant, timely and compelling, you have a formula for a postcard email campaign that will work.

Interesting new site from Got and the EEC. Aggregates studies, research and best practices in email marketing, delivery, rendering, time of day, creative etc..

Take a look when you have a chance.

http://www.emailstatcenter.com/

If you have a TV or read magazines, you know then why we like lists. We like to see a ranking or maybe it is just the way lists organize data and information that make them so easy to browser and drive deeper. I was forward this email from a friend at Travelocity Business (She rocks by the way and I am going to look to her for my Best of Travel Email Installment) from SMU that does a great job of using simple lists and content organization to drive the clicks.

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The key to lists are:

1. Keep them simple
2 .Make them relevant
3. Don’t give too much away
4. Make them hungry for more
5. Like how I am using a list to list these?

Do you have any good examples of list driven emails that are well laid out? Send them to create AT eroi.com and we will take a look and share them.

We sent three of our team to SXSW in Austin Texas last week. What an event. George on our team, who leads new media wrote up some of his take aways on one of our other blogs EmailDays.com. If you are interested in things like Twitter, take a look.

So before you even enter my office, you will now know that like most boys in the US, I am a fan of Star Wars. Not a light saber wielding freak that camps out for weeks leading up to the next release, but one that is just enamoured with the creativity and the energy that this media property brings. Now that being said we have clients like Konami and Sega using our email platform, but I still like the simplicity that Lucas Arts brings to the inbox with these well written and well designed emails. They have a clean balance of imagery and text… yes text does score high with me even with some of the other emails I have shown you over the past few years.

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Take a moment to look how they use compelling graphic headers to build a clear separation between the game properties and help me to know where to go next. It works well sometimes just keeping it simple and sticking to the basics.

Now I have to go as a droid (account Exec) is knocking at my door again.

This post has two real thoughts in mind. One of course ties directly to email marketing and the other to this blog.

Email: When is a lurker a lurker in email? And what is a lurker in email? A lurker is someone that is on your list, and active reader but does not ever engage in clicking through or converting. I know you all have lurkers on your list. What do you think about them and what do you do with them?

Well we just spent 3 months in cleaning up our own email list for our newsletters. We took the data points from October to December 2006, segmented them by active and inactive subscribers (read lurkers) and then sent the last 3 months of emails to these new lists. Each edition was different. Not all the copy was different, but the subject lines and the intro copy was written specifically based on the behavior of the segmented lists. We used humor, as we often do, as we are tired of boring business to business based emails. Aren’t you? We used subject lines like: “Its not you, its us” and ” Are You Breaking Up With Us” as well as a standard safe one that we would typically use. The funny thing that happened was some of the feedback we got from these inactive subscribers letting us know that they were interested, but just not really actively engaging with the email.

In the second month we saw a lift in reads and clicks with 25% of these people when the 3 months prior they were lurkers. The third month was the same type of response and action.

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If you are missing me at the beginning of the week, it is because I have hit the road again on Sunday for Hollywood for my twice annual pilgrimage to OMMA, the best Mediapost show out there. This is the event I look forward to each and every year.

The EEC (Email Experience Council) will be leading the email marketing sessions at the event again and you are sure to get some good information that you can use. Join us if you can. I will be making another appearance at the Liars Club panel with the likes of David Baker from Ave A/Razorfish and Jeanniey Mullen from Ogilvy.

I will try to post during the event if I can, or have Ryan post them on Emaildays.com. Cheers.