The Email Wars

No matter what the next NEW idea is it only takes a short time until the clowns of the internet think of how to pollute it. I share with you one of my personal favorite tools, Twitter, and how the hucksters are quickly finding out that there is an audience there and that they have a chance at pulling the same scams as they have in all other online medias. It amazes me to see how these guys pop up as soon as a new idea gains some traction. Think about how it hurt email, myspace, facebook, RSS, IM and more.

These people pray on the uneducated online and in the end end up doing damage to the real people, marketers and companies trying to create a good experience. But are they the only ones to blame? Not exactly. Sometimes the technologies themselves are not able to act fast enough to head them off as they should. You would think that we would have all learned by know what to look out for and how to spot them and kill them off. But alas we are slaves to repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

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So now it is your turn to give me some feedback. With each quarter the team here at eROI likes to have a conversation with a few hundred marketers around the world to see how they feel about issues that face all of us.

This time we are looking at how those responsible for email marketing either test or don’t test. We are looking for honest answers from all of you about the elements that you have tried to test to make a difference in your results.

Trust me we know that most of us are not always testing as we want to, but most do experiment from time to time.

Thank you in advance for your 5 minutes to help us out with this. You know you will get this time and all the results back in spades in just a few weeks.

Give me 5 of your minutes for 5 years of blog posts…

Two words that are simple and often not used right are “Click Here”. We spend so much time looking at how elese we can tell people what to do and then poke fun at people that cannot be more creative with thier copy writing. But maybe simple works? Do we over complicate the notion of how we try to tell people what to do in emails and landing pages?

User experience professionals focus on telling us to create user behavior in word and buttons by share the expected experience your clicking of a link or button are going to provide. But maybe we are over thinking this? I am not sure as I try to be creative with the campaigns we work on and typically try not to use things that are so simple. But J Peterman made me think about this idea some more.

Maybe just trying it out would be worth a test. It is like stepping back a few years in the ideas that we try and put forward to be better in not just email marketing but web marketing.

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Not sure how familar you are with the concept of badges and rewards in terms of the internet and social communities. In all the research and work we have done at eROI in social community development and social campaigns we have found that the notion of giving badges or visible rewards are a motivator that work. The concept comes from the video game indutry where people receive visual recognition that are displayed in their profile page letting people know of their accomplishments in regard to the community. There can be based on number of connections, type of account, games played, comments given, and more.

But what we have not seen, until now, is the use of profile badges into an email. I was a little excited to notice this idea used in an email newsletter. Notice how in this email that the badge is used to display profile information about what you have available in your own account. It is a simple notion and for the sake of an email not publicly facing outside of your inbox, but I think it is a good way to use it. Other examples might be more typically seen in your rewards point account information in hotel, airline, or book club email where membership benefits are shown to you as to what you have earned in miles, points or how many more stays you have to reach a badging point.

There must be some more ways that we could look to use this information to make an email more “sticky” and worth reading and maybe even keeping tucked in a folder for later reading. Think about what you might have in your business to display as rewards or badges. Everyone should have something that they can think of and if not it is an opportunity to create something.

In light of a recent post when I was playing with the idea of less is more and could 140 characters succeed in an email campaign, I got this email. I refer to this type of email as “The Tease”. Now why would I call it that? Well here are the reasons.

1. It is from a brand that I already know and opted in to

2. I enjoy a few emails a month from them and always look forward to the knowledge they bring me in interactive design ideas.

3. It is so spartan on copy that I WANT to click through, even though I have no idea that is going to happen.

Well since they have my attention and trust they have won 75% of the battle. But they real pay off to me, as a subscriber, is what is behind the link. What am I going to get? Will be meet my expectations? You know I had to click, as I would expect the larger subscriber base to do as well.

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It is funny sometimes that companies just stop their email newsletters cold turkey. Often times it is due to the fact that they are just not sure as to why they are doing them, what the return is, internal resources dry up, the technology platform that they use becomes more of a chore to use than is worth the time, or there is a clear need to step back – take a look – and renew their efforts in a clear manner.

We see all of the above factors play into a newsletter stoppage but what do you do when you bring it back to life? I thought about this not only because a client of ours did just this recently, but I actually had another client make mention of this exact example to me this past week.

For any reason listed above, or one that I might have missed, you need to develop a clear positioning when you bring a newsletter back after some months of down time. I was happy to see our client do just this as they began to re-mail their newsletter opt in list after some time getting the ship back on track.

Take a look at the header article. In the RED box you will see a clear Welcome Back message with a explanation setting the expectations of when you are going to be getting these newsletters. Also as a added bonus they added (YELLOW BOX) a link to their social links on Twitter, facebook and more. But do notice as I think that it is important that they do not try to add every social platform link known to man. Keeping it simple and driving people to the two that they have committed to makes it work. The other box I noted (GREEN BOX) was flagged as after looking at the metrics it drives just as much click through action as the important article areas. This tells me that the readers are big on images when they want their news/articles.

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I was a little surprised to see an ESP write the article for Mediapost that in essence said now is basically the time to nickel and dime your email service provider. At first I was a little shocked, but then after some thought about this article I saw a few things in it that make sense.

Here is the article http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=101929

1. You should be able to pay the right price for an email marketing software. They are all similar and different at the same time. Basic functionality between the majority of them are uniform. They all have a few different features and options that make them better or worse for your needs and with many of them pricing plays a role in that. We often come across requests from new clients that are unhappy with their provide as they get charged for everything under the sun. Why is this? We at eROI have continued for close to seven years to create pricing that works for each client based on a similar cost model. We do see wildly fluctuating costs for things that don’t make sense to charge for, but everyone has their own model.

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I was reviewing some stats on some client sites this week and thinking about the two ways that we give away content and how it impacts site visits, time on site, conversion, and the site bounce rate (not talking about email here but how fast someone comes into your site and leaves %).

What I was thinking about was how these two approaches differ to paths to success and how they each can impact and determine some of your measurables/objectives/results.

So what is the crazy man talking about here? Let me illustrate in terms that might be relevant.

1. The Free Content Display Method:

So you have things to share. You have spent hours, days, weeks, months of time researching, reviewing, writing, designing and making sure it is rock solid. Well traditional marketing would lead with a press release, speaking tour, interviews and locking the content up in your site for any visitor to grab as they want to use in an unrestricted manner.

Now this is the idea behind so many site today. Putting your content out into the world in order to grab attention, mindshare, search results and hopefully customers down the road. This way is becoming more popular as it follows the idea of information is free, expertise is open, and opinion is everywhere.

2. The Give to Get Approach:

The same scenario applies but instead you provide a level of access and ask that visitors complete a form to get access to it. Registration in order to get the value of the documents you are making private is the notion that has been around for a long time. The give to get is how many of us grab leads and grow our database. You run the risk of bad data, people not completing the steps you set forth in order to get your research, and the constant struggle to fine tune forms, user paths, and scent trails.

But the perceived value is stronger in most cases as the value in the relationship is clear that you will make everything right behind the curtain of trust.

So which one wins? Which one is the right one?

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Well maybe “rules” is a little confining word choice, but let me put this out there for you to think about.

What IF email stopped using images and copy formats that you use today and instead had a rule of 140 characters of less in the subject line, body and links? Are you following this? What I am trying to put out there is the idea of focusing on getting the point instead of selling the dream. We spend so much time on the crafting of the copy that so often gets in the way of the action we want a subscriber to take. Why 140 characters? Well that is the new “black” of web communications. The UPDATE is the new manner of personal communication and maybe our email campaigns need to test the new approach.

The idea is that all of the new social media platforms are forcing simplicity and frequency on the audience with “updates”. And people are becoming used to it. We might be driving the idea without realizing it that less is more. Now is important. And brevity rules.

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Over this past weekend I noticed that I have been continually posting and managing this blog for 4 years. 1276 posts later here were go again – year 5.  4 years of writing on this blog alone and 2 years on some of our earlier blogs that we started back in July of 2003.

Now what started as a place for me to write down my thoughts around things I get in my inbox, events I attend, things we do as a company and the conversations I have with myself in my head – has been embraced by 1000’s of you a month. I thank you for this.

Writing this blog on top of the travel, work, client meetings, speaking, events, wars with others out there, etc etc takes some commitment. I warn clients about this concept that if social media is a check the box strategy, don’t start. I had to create a process and routine/ritual for myself in order to stay on it which continues today. Almost like a writer (who has a proof writer and copy editor – would be awesome) who pours that glass of wine and lights that cigar before sitting down to make some pages fly – I know have this ingrained way of makiung it happen. Chalk it up now to a vice… but a good one.

But here is what I ask of you: I love it when I get some new comments of any fashion. Conversation is a two way street and as long as they are not completely offensive and you identify yourself, they will get posted. With a recent upgrade to WordPress MU 2.7 I just found 30 some comments that the spam comment system snagged along the way.. and now they are live.

Here we go… another year ahead. SPRING FORWARD of FALL BACK? I choose the first.

Just how wide should and email be? I know that everyone builds them a little different when it comes to girth, but I have not seen many under 300 px wide. This one in point is 265 px wide. So skinny I thought for a moment that maybe I had a rendering issue. But alas I scrolled down and found the rest.

Now I see lot of European email marketers roll it thin, but in my opinion they are running it way too narrow for the US. Now Icebreaker is a NZ based company with new North America HDQs in PDX and I might need to walk up there soon and give them an hour on changing the approach to the US audience.

Why? Well ake a look. They left so much on the table. Typcially we see emails between 500 and 610 px wide in design. Over twice the width of this email. If they would have only looked to stretch the body out they would not have driven the actual product of this ecom email so far down, well below the fold.

The header image was engaging but there was nothing to do with it. Once you got to the actual product it was a 4 by grid and little copy and no actional buttons in site. Time to get the button genie out and create some Homer Simson-esque button pushing desires in the US audience.

Now I love Icebreaker as a whole, amazing clothing and the site (if you have not seen it) does something I wanted to do for a Natural Foods company some time back… they source trace back every garmet sold to the exact farm that it was sourced from. Amazing.

So skinny — > Good or bad? You know my take.

Last week I was going through an internal meeting for eROI marketing plans and I was trying to illustrate the power of TEXT and headline copy for a program I am working on. Well about 15 minutes later this email came SCREAMING into my inbox. I mean you see it… and you know what to do. There was not a chance that you had a second doubt that you had been commanded to follow.

And not only that but if you follow you are entered to win. Folks… this is headline copy.

More and more I am starting to become a fan of the font in more ways than I used to. Words are powerful, time is valuable and actions are the goal. So why not take a chance to get simple, focus on your copy length and work hard to use it to the maximum power it can release.

I know you have it in you to rid the world of 10-14 pt copy in email for headlines.

Good design makes an email. There I said it. All we read about in blogs, magazines, white papers so often is how data, timing, delivery, frequency, etc, etc make a campaign. Well if you don’t have design and a clear eye for email layout you are only fighting 3/4 of the fight. In the end if it gets delivered, has good copy but the design fails, then all that work fails. I want to challenge everyone to spend more time on the pretty and not just the nitty gritty.

There are so many emails that I could use to illustrate this, and most likely you or I could shoot some holes in this one, but it is just so damned pretty. Design is an art in itself that makes people have an experience that represents how people feel about you as a company. So please try to put your best foot forward when you put another email into the inbox. Create an expeirence through your design that makes people look forward to your next interaction with them. Just text and shiny buttons only go so far.

Are you happy with your design or your internal resources? I know many people I talk to are happy with the efforts but want some outside help. Well lucky for you we are not only in the business of business making, but in the business of functional pretty.

I don’t pimp eROI that much, but as a reader I think you owe it to yourself to look to us for your next idea or campaign. OK self promotion over. Thanks for allowing me the rant.