The Email Wars

Highlighting this email is worthy as it delivers a clearly illuminated coupon code. I often find codes buried in the creative making it hard to instantly recognize them and take action. If you are in the business of driving sales with discounts you need to pay attention. Make it EASY for your email subscribers. They are in this ecom relationship not only for the updates but really for the deals. Sorry to let you down, but we are a society that is constantly on the hunt for a code to save us on a purchase.

You might want to look at your own ecommerce emails and rework the design to focus on showing me the money. Making it text is also paramount. I don’t want to flip back and forth to get some long alpha-numeric string, I want to easily highlight, copy and paste it into my cart at check out and move on. Even better is to allow the user to click on the code and dynamically populate my cart. Now I know not everyone can pass this variable, but what if you could. Taking down the barriers to purchase drives more sales.

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Every once in a while I come across something that I think is a great opt in form. Clear, simple, helpful, and a little bit of creative copy writing that makes filling it out actually enjoyable. I have been seeing more and more lately in the Web 2.0 space (I personally hate typing the phrase Web 2.0, there I go again, ouch). These forms are well done, and give us some other ideas to look at.

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Notice the following elements:

1. Watch for Mistakes - note by the email address. How many times have you had people enter a bad email address with what I call “Fat Fingering”? More than any of us care to count.

2. Explaination of why they need a valid email address - really this is good. Why is it important for you to give us valid information. Make it clear with the value proposition.

3. Time Zone - If you have the ability to better understand where your people are located, if even by time zone, you are better prepared to message them at the right times globally.

4. Frequency - Want a weekly recap? Asking upfront sets the expectations of when you are going to get an email.

5. Alternate email address. I don’t see this all that often anymore, but you might not want to get emails at the address you use to set up an account. Makes perfect sense. Maybe you want your account set up for business, but the email alerts/recaps/newsletters to go to another inbox.

Just a few simple ideas we can all leverage when we are constructing our account or opt in forms. The biggest take away is don’t ask for more information than you are prepared to use. Asking for too much up front scares people from completing a form. Progressive profiling wins every time. And in this case of an account set up, you can always get the other stuff in their profile or preference center settings/screens at a later time.

Congratulations to the eROI team for winning yet another award for our web design and data mashups. This project was selected and voted on by our peers at an event last week that brought together some web illumati from around the US. This project was built for the Oregon Golf Association to allow a place where the member clubs and courses could build an interactive map and data mashup that the stake holders and management teams of the golf locations could populate and build on.

About the Project:
Oregon Golf Association (OGA), a non-profit golfing association, invited eROI to create a dynamic online web application that enables users to search for golf courses using criteria such as course type, location and rates, providing detailed information back to the user about each course. Details for each course may include ratings, scorecard information and each course’s policy and services. eROI then integrated the mapping capabilities of Google Maps into the site in order to provide users with search results that include maps and printable driving directions to each course.

eROI and OGA then took the site a step further by integrating an event calendar tool and club membership section, making all regional golf-related events and clubs easily searchable. This system required eROI to develop a custom database, managed through a password protected administration tool, to store all course, event, and club information. By empowering courses, clubs leaders and event organizers to keep accurate and relevant information readily available online, eROI achieved OGA’s goal of supporting Oregon tourism by creating a single Web destination for detailed golf course information and activities in the area.

Here is the category: Mashup
What you get when you cross data from two different sources integrated into one web application.
Winner: Explore Oregon Golf by eROI

http://www.webvisionaryawards.com/

Yes the word SEXY gets thrown around often by the email marketing team at eROI. And why you ask? Well we all get so excited when we see an email that stands out in a crowd. And it gets even sexier when it is an emailROI client making us drool.

Aperion Audio has always done a first class job in every marketing piece they produce. From their website, to print to yes even email. The look is so polished, clear buttons, balanced font treatments, and yes even the copy makes our knees shake.

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It is so important not only to have killer timing, frequency, segmentation and offers… but the creative must make me want to know more about you. It is like that person you see across the dance floor that has all the right moves and you just want to jump across the floor and start dancing with them. Magnetic and electric.

If you are running the same old tired creative edition after edition and campaign after campaign… it is time to spice it up. Just like in a relationship in the real sense, you have to keep it exciting. We like to think about refreshing the looks at least once a year of a newsletter and even more frequently with campaign driven emails.

Make me want you.

I don’t come across to many of these buy this and get this emails… aka the tie in. What is really interesting to me about this one (and this game is going to rock) is that they are tying in the Korn song from the game soundtrack with the Amazon offer. The email is from Ubisoft but they are channeling the pre-sale to Amazon. This is a win for Amazon not only from the sale lift, but with giving away the song they are gaining more exposure to their music store. Sorry iTunes… guess a few need to get away from you.

(more…)

Hi, My name is Dylan and I work for a company called eROI. We have an ESP product called emailROI. We use it for our own email communications and are quite happy with it. So why in the hell would you send me an offer to get a Vertical Response account? I love these third party list rentals. They never know much about anyone on their list. Just happy with the CPM of an email address, and wham bam thank you mam… here you go Dylan an offer you just can’t refuse.

Wow. When I do a list rentals for clients I make sure to suppress against know addresses of comp, etc. Vertical Response you need to do the same. I know the shot gun approach can work from time to time, but you are not displaying industry leading best practices and most likely attracting clients that will do the same.

Best part about this is they are using my emailROI email address that I stopped using over 4 years ago. And this sender is something that I have never heard from before in my life nor have I got emails from them before. Crazy. Like the line in Animal House, “Pledge him, we need the dues.”

If you do any list rentals or partnering use this as a lesson of what not to do, or call me and I will be happy to walk you through best practices.

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I have been writing up the sessions today that I will be editing and posting during the week. But Tamara Gielen is covering it LIVE on her blog. so take a look. It is a full house and some great panels thus far.

http://www.b2bemailmarketing.com/2008/05/live-from-the.html

To lead off I really like the new look of the Ben and Jerry’s emails. They are much better than past emails I have seen. And being that we are moving into the hot summer ice cream months, it is timely to share this one with you. They have a good use of real TEXT in the image blocks which scores points with me for rendering if the images are off in many email clients, but what stood out to me is WHY do they have a link in the footer to ask me if I want to join the newsletter?

After some thought it became more obvious to me… if this email is forwarded it allows others to use the link to opt in to the newsletter. So is this a good idea? Of course it is. Word of mouth wins you more subscribers. And who does not like ice cream?

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So about the time you are reading this, my plane should be landing in sunny FLA. Once again it is time for one of the best and most intimate email marketing events, the Email Insider Summit. I hope that many of you will be there this time from the East Coast. It is one of my favorite events and I was not at the last spring one. So watch out Insiders as it is going to be a blast.

I have heard from many of the players in the ESP world that will be there as well as from some people going for their first time. I will try to keep you updated during the week of what is going on and keep you in the loop.

Mojitos should be involved and we have decided to do an A/B split and test whether a little umbrella OR a plastic monkey enhance the take rate of the mojitos.

I have been noticing some retailers changing the placement of the offers. Getting them to the top makes an impact on the preview pane and I like the change. This below offer actually places the offer in TEXT at the top of the email next to where you typically find the VIEW this as a webpage link. Right to the point and makes it easy to see, as well as IF images are blocked really helps communicated what is going on.

The main image all fall below the offer and I think that is smart. The “What’s In It For Me” should always be top of the email so that I know what is the main driver of why I want to scroll. It works and you should try it.

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I have so far seen every presidential candidate selling gear throughout this campaign. I don’t remember it in campaigns past, but it must be a new revenue source for funding these never ending campaigns. I took the steps early on to opt in to ALL of the candidates and I have been tracking the frequency, tactics and ideas that they have used so far. Some of them have been great, timely and really hammering home the campaign ideals.

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But when did McCain become the “Green” candidate? Selling eco-friendly items is now the stance of this campaign. Regardless of the messaging the email is a very poorly designed email. What is even more interesting to me is that they items they chose to link. Ones like: “Click here”, “Follow this link”, “Visit the store” …. Sure they are clear but there are so many other natural opportunities to link words of phrases that organically live in the copy. Forcing action links in the copy makes me feel as if you are talking to people that can’t make decisions for themselves. So how do you expect them to make a clear decision on voting for President?

When I run I am just going CafePress and calling it good. I mean they give you a cut if that is all you are after is to reach in someone’s wallet… again.

How New CAN-SPAM Rules Affect Marketers

The FTC has just announced it has approved four new rule provisions to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. MarketingSherpa’s Senior Reporter Chris Heine discusses the changes with Jeff Mills, Director of Sales and Strategy at eROI. Listen to our podcast to discover how these changes will affect email marketers and what they’ll have to do differently to be in compliance. The provisions are expected to take effect this summer.

http://podcast.marketingyak.com/flash/can_spam/index.html

Wow. This is one for the books. I was stunned this week at a client that moved to Eloqua, which I thought was a great system, when I was told that unless I was using Internet Explorer I could not unsub from the link. This is one of the craziest things I have ever seen with my own eyes in email marketing. Why would a profile system or an unsubscribe process be built to be platform or browser specific? Love that they gave me a link to download IE? I have it already but don’t use it as my default browser.

So in a world where web forms should work in any browser why can’t Eloqua make this investment to be cross browser compatible? I open this post up to any comments and explanations from them if they want. Please enlighten me? If I was a client and this happened to my email recipient I would be ticked. It is basically not allowing me to unsubscribe from an email with a simple opt out. Right? Or am I just a bit crazy?

I was happy to see the first edition of Apartment Therapy go out on the emailROI system this past week. These guys out of NYC have an great site that helps people that live in smaller condos, lofts and apartments around the US and world. They have some great ideas of how to use small spaces and create usable areas.

I had the opportunity to visit with them in April and they LIVE the lifestyle. They have a great office that makes use of all the space that they have. What made me happier was how smart they were around email marketing and the use of our emailROI platform. In record time they were up and using it kicking out great emails like the one below.

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If you are in a smaller space, I would heavily rec that you sign up for their newsletter and visit the site.

They have 4 other great blogs as well worth checking out.

Well it is refreshing to get some of our newsletter design work critiqued. I spend so many posts talking about others work so love to find a post on our work. I was hoping to see that we did something wrong, but alas, they liked it…. Damn. Hard to get better when you get kudos and nothing is pointed out to grow from.

It is a collection of emails from the Search Engine Optimization industry and we did the one for SEMpdx.

Here is the overview. Love it.

3. SEMpdx

If SMX’s newsletter were as cleanly formatted as SEMpdx’s, I’d have no problem reading and absorbing the information they send me.

Clean titles, good spacing, blog post snippets that link to the complete piece–I love it!

See all of the other ones and the creative here.