The Email Wars

I am off to the Biggest Little City for 2 days for yes… business. Going to meet with some casino clients and a new extreme sports social media property. We will see what I learn from my trip from the world of the casino/resort industry.

So far they have been using our emailROI platform for great creative and nothing around the typical things you would think of in the casino world. They are top notch with list segmentation and database marketing. Quite a far step from all of the scantily clad emails I get from the Hard Rock and others in Las Vegas. Which I don;t mind, but they don’t make me book a flight and a room when I get them.

That is the point after all isn’t it? Get people there and speak to your customers how they wish to be spoken to.

Enjoy the long weekend, we will see you back here next week in full swing.

So what does this mean for marketers? Not sure yet. But it does solidify that email is a heavily used application in daily life. The fact that they are integrating SMS and Text Messaging into email speaks volumes that email is the top ingredient for making it all work. One note is that with either the Yahoo client and Gmail client, you can forward your email through it as an additional spam filter before you forward it to your own email account (corporate) to give it an extra cleansing. We have a few guys on our tech team that do this now. So it you aren’t getting through at these two ISPs, you need to work on that as many more people will see the value in a comp email account and use it to provide an additional filter.

From TechCrunch:

The new Yahoo Mail interface went into public beta in September 2006, although Yahoo was testing it long before that. Tonight ( 2 days back) Yahoo takes the “beta” label off of the product and makes it the default interface for all new Yahoo mail accounts.

Yahoo mail already has an integrated RSS reader and instant messaging. They also recently announced unlimited storage for all mail users.

They are also releasing a few new features.

Shortcuts: Mail now has a number of intelligent shortcuts. Things like addresses, places, dates, contact information, etc. are underlined with blue dots. Click on the link and see a mashup with maps (for addresses), travel guides (for places), calendar (for dates), etc. New services are being added regularly.

SMS/Text Messaging: Yahoo wants you to use their mail application whenever you contact your friends, however you contact them. In addition to emailing or instant messaging clients, you can now send them a text message from the mail interface. Their responses also come in directly to Yahoo Mail. It currently works for U.S., India, Philippines and Canadian mobile numbers.

Is Yahoo Mail a better webmail application than GMail? In our comparisons GMail always comes out on top, although the main reason is tagging of messages and the fact that GMail gives free forwarding and POP access to the account. Yahoo still charges $20/year for forwarding or POP access.

The new interface is the final realization of Yahoo’s 2004 acquisition of Ajax pioneer Oddpost. The new mail product is based largely on ideas first launched by Oddpost in 2002.

Startups aren’t just sitting around as the big guys upgrade their webmail apps, though. Our favorite product in this space is Orgoo, which launches this fall and lets users pull in mail and IM accounts from any number of providers. Foldera is another promising product in this space.

We found out officially last week, when we got the latest version of Inc Magazine, that we made #402 on the list of fastest growing private companies in the US. We are so excited to learn that all the work, great clients, amazing agency partners and long days is paying off in print. We thought winning Battle of the Agency Bands, 15th Fastest Growing Private Company in Oregon, and beating Avenue A/Razorfish in league softball were big accomplishments, and now this? Almost too much to ask for this summer.

We were also happy to see ReturnPath made the list again this year (way to go guys), two years in a row is a hard road but so wonderful to see. This just puts the pressure on us here to stay on this list next year as well to try to pace with them. It is not going to be easy, but with great brands, clients, customers, partners and a rock solid, fast growing team, we can do it.

Cheers to us and cheers to you for helping us grow as fast as we are and if we can only take the softball league we have scored a home run for 2007.

See you all at OMMA in NYC if you are there in September.

Know we are big fans at eROI of Direct Mail PIN coded campaigns. I have written about them before and can’t say enough of how a well produced direct mail piece combined with a slick landing page that is pre populated with data that you know about the end recipient converts. Mix that with a one two punch of follow up behavioral emails or even a call and SLAM DUNK baby (say it out loud like Dicky V from ESPN for me for good measure.)

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So as a fan of Mercedes Benz, and a fan of well produced marketing, I was excited to see MB using this technique. So I took the letter, fat fingered my keyboard, hammered in that PIN code and voila… nothing exciting. The air flew out of my tires on my thoughts of a good ride on the information super highway. The page went to no where special. They did not even have anything personalized nor did it take me to the offer. Just to build my own car.

Now I am sure that they agency they had lined up for this was measuring the use of the PINS versus the other methods they were using to drive people there, but was it all for them? I thought the web, email and good DM was all about me.

Needless to say I left the site, and went along with my day. I held on to this to share it with you as I think it is important to know that IF you are going to use a DM PIN coded offer, you better know who I am, what I like, and load that page with information tailored just to me. After all you took all the time to think it through, design it, use dynamic printing and sent it via the old USPS. The costs alone warrant good execution.

If you want to learn more about some that we have done and the out of this world results, just drop me a comment and I will point you in the right direction of one we have running for Microsoft or another client in the business to consumer space so you can see what it the experience should be like.

I was aghast to read this the other week. I could not believe that people are still sending out this type of email communications to lists. Now why in the heck can they send out email that is not opt in and totally unsolicited? It shows me that although many large and small brands have been taking the high road and trying to make the world of email marketing a better place, some brands just keep on with tactics that should be stopped. I was amazed with the brands shown in this article from Ken Magill and it actually made me a little sick. Not upset sick, but just that little acid reflux thing where you throw up a bit in your mouth.

Come on, where is the leadership from these brands? Where is the smack down from the powers that be to put a stop to this? This needs to end, not next week or next month, but today. We cannot have people continue to drag the email world down by using tactics that are not best practice and in some ways illegal. I am sure that they were unhappy to be outed, but hell let’s throw those closet doors wide open, get out a flood light and throw them in the spotlight.

If I get email from them in any of my accounts that I did not opt in to, you can bet that I am putting it up here as public record.

According to a Direct Magazine survey of DMers concerning the online practices scheduled to come out in September’s issue, 14% of traditional business-to-consumer DMers say they send marketing e-mails to people on an opt-out basis—that would be spam for members of the Utah legislature who need all things Internet explained to them.

The good news is the percentage of DMers who say they send unsolicited e-mail is significantly lower than last year’s 23%. But 14%? That’s more than one in 10.
And it’s not just fly-by-night direct marketers that are spamming. I personally have received unsolicited e-mail from Circuit City, Kmart, Colgate-Palmolive, Williams-Sonoma, Plow & Hearth and, of all things, Smithsonian magazine….

Read Ken Magill at Direct Mag
http://directmag.com/disciplines/email/dmers_getting_it/

Facebook opened up their very closed email platform thius week by allowing users to add normal email addresses in a message. Previously you could only send messages to Facebook friends. Now you can add in others, too.

How is this going to affect your marketing messages? Not sure yet myself, but it creates another hurdle in my way of getting to these emails in my own facebook page. (yeah thanks to Tamara Geilen I am in this nasty social mdia site, and not hating it yet.)

This is great news for people who use Facebook for most or all of their emailing. But for those of us that use normal email for our day to day business, getting Facebook messages is more of a problem than a feature. That’s because Facebook makes you log on to the site to read messages/emails from your friends. They’ll send a note to your normal email address when a new message comes in, but they make you log on to Facebook to actually read it.

I rarely do that, and have missed some important messages from people trying to contact me. It is a time issue as to do II need to click from an email letting me know I have and “email” in another site that I need to log in to and then respond in another environment. As a next step, I think Facebook should offer to forward the actual messages to an outside email address (and/or provide a password protected RSS feed). Eventually Facebook should offer full POP or IMAP support for their email. They can still restrict it so that you can only receive messages from friends, but at least you could access it from your desktop or web based mail application.

So what do you do when there are not any specific holidays to focus on and you are in the travel/hotel industry? Create a holiday. And what better to attract as many people as possible (married or not) by inventing a Honeymoon — No Marriage Certificate Required event. I loved the copy and the premise of this email. It was unique enough to stand out and got right to the point. Want a getaway, here is your excuse.

No matter your industry this is a campaign that resonates with the widest possible audience and might actually give them a fun reason to book a room and head out for the weekend.

What this illustrates is to be creative in your campaigns. Think of it like an ad campaign of creating fun and creating demand when there typically might not be anything else to talk about new or exciting.

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I hate to tout our horn, well maybe I don’t, but we got done working on this new project for Cinemax for Sin City Diaries in June and I forgot to blog this email. We built out this campaign site using KickApps and it got a lot of traffic. This was sent out by not only Cinemax but other media publications they partnered with (this one is from Stuff Magazine). The email was targeted to the male audience (note the image) but the call to action is so perfectly clear it made me smile. Not only was the whole email a hyperlink, but it told me what I needed to do, SUBMIT NOW.

Keeping it simple wins every time and keeping the actions focused on driving people to a microsite is the frosting on the cake.

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Well I have to applaud Marriott. They got me hook line and sinker. I actually thought about going to NYC just based on this email and not for any other reason. They sent me this one based on my stay there this same week in August last year. Kudos for mining that data and sending me a relevant email. It was a targeted offer for the location and the same day of the week I arrived (Sunday). I think that this email shows that some email marketers out there are getting it, listening to their customers and targeting email campaigns the right way. Now only if Jet Blue would have sent me an email this same day for $50 off my ticket there they would have had another head in the bed in NYC. (unfortunately when I went to the Jet Blue email offer I had got 2 weeks before, the link no longer worked and the offer had expired at 11am EST the day before.

But this Marriott email give me hope that what all of the email marketers, agencies and EEC is telling people is taking hold. PS I will be heading to NYC for OMMA in Sept, if Jet Blue of Marriott are reading this send me an email now and I will book 5 flights and 5 rooms immediately.

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Now when you see this email, you will think it was beautifully designed. I won’t argue with you there. It is a good looking email, I will give it that. But where do you click to get to the landing page? I pulled out my Harry Potter wand, as we give those to all employees on day one, and tried to click everywhere on the email. No links. Not even in the footer branding images or the URL that is so apparent. Then I looked back to the top. There it was, the BUY NOW link. That was it. Not they did follow best practices at channeling the action to where THEY wanted you to go, so I can’t entirely place blame, but the rest of it let me down. I wanted to click the image, the link.. something, as I did not want to buy it, but learn more. Even the Download Now link was dead.

My two cents is to think about how people will react to this and make sure to hyperlink any apparent URLs in the email. I would have hyperlinked the whole darn thing as one big image at least.

But if you have a magic wand, maybe you know already what to do.

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I had asked a few months back for some examples of band emails that are good as so many that I see are not getting email. This one was passed on to me from a friend as an example, but WHY did they leave the bottom half of the template empty? Was there not enough to tell people about the band? Did they run out of copy?

They should have adjusted their email template they are using as this to me is a bad experience. Makes me wonder why I would even pay attention to these guys anymore… oh wait, I don’t.

If anyone has any GOOD examples of band emails, send them over or let me know what to opt in to for myself.

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I wanted to share this email as I thought it was a good one illustrating that they were listening not only to me but to everyone else that is on their list. This Columbia Sportswear email put it right out in front of me in the header and the footer that this email had been prepared just for me based on my preferences and my likes.

It also gave me the option of changing my preferences so that they next one might be more in tune with what I am interested in seeing and buying. So many times in retail they use the shotgun (aka batch and blast) mentality. It is refreshing to see people taking the time to not only send me relevant emails, but also show me and tell me how to make it more custom to my shopping needs.

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B to B Email Marketing Trivia:

53% of buyers always prefer to receive a courtesy email and 53% said they never prefer to receive a sales call as initial follow-up. The study found that buyers tend to give a valid email address more often than any other piece of registration information.

I would think that in B to B it is a tough market. We see hundreds of new guide downloads a week on our corporate site. Many of them are good leads and many of the people are back in getting more resources as we update them. BUT many of those in the BtoB email marketing arena are just looking for information and not looking for a conversation about it. Of the, say 100, only 5% engage in email back from a courtesy email from the sales team. From those we talk to they appreciate the follow up, but really just want more data and case studies to learn from.

We see this in all the other channels and verticals we work with our clients with as well that people want information but not always a call or anything else. A challenge for B to B Marketers to learn how to increase.

Maybe they have been reading this blog, but it seems that the BtoB Magazine emails are getting better. After so many we see that don’t follow best practices in email marketing, or ones that are broken, we have a collection of those that are starting to do better.

Congrats guys for working on your emails.

Moving the Registration button above the fold:

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No more images over text in the new layout:

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The new postcard layout:

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Well they are new to me but maybe not you. I have long relied on ReturnPath and a few other sources for good data, but these two are worth checking out.

Just a quick post. If you have any send them my way.

http://www.trustedsource.org/TS?do=home

http://www.onlinemarketing.info/