The Email Wars

Many of you might not have tried content sharing in your emails yet. Sure you added a Follow Us, Friend Us, Fan Us, Sweat Us (I made that last one up) link in your header or footer but is that really making an impact and driving lift to your campaigns. You might be surprised at the results and some simple tests and implementations will allow you to show results to those you need to prove the integration of the channel to with data.

Many people are promoting social sharing today in their systems, but before you go down the path for a feature you should give it a try. With developing some ideas on how to place it, where to place it, and what your goals are of using it you can get started fairly quick. Don’t over think it. It is a test. But do have some clear goals or hypothesis in mind to be watching. It is really easy to test and learn how it works for you.

I would suggest starting at the KEY point in the email. Is is a sale, deal, new article, study, event, webinar… what is it. Start by testing the main focus of the email. Give it some time to see how it works. If you are using social sharing through other means like placing links into these ecosystems manually, make sure that you are using different links in order to track them as separate efforts.

Here are the simple codes to use:

Facebook Share Button Code

Here is the Facebook share code, which can also be found at http://www.facebook.com/share_partners.php/.

<script type="text/javascript">
     function fbs_click() {
	u=location.href;
	t=document.title;
	window.open('http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(u)+'&t='+encodeURIComponent(t),'sharer','toolbar=0,status=0,width=626,height=436');
	return false;
     }
</script>
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=LINK_GOES_HERE" onclick="return fbs_click()" target="_blank">
    <img src="ADD_IMAGE_URL_HERE" alt="Share on Facebook" />
</a>

Twitter Share Button Code

Here is the Twitter share code:

<a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Currently reading: LINK_GOES_HERE" title="Click to share this post on Twitter">
    <img src="ADD_IMAGE_URL_HERE" alt="Share on Twitter" />
</a>

LinkedIn Share Button Code

Here is the LinkedIn share code, which can also be found at http://developer.linkedin.com/docs/DOC-1075.

<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url={articleUrl}&title={articleTitle}&summary={articleSummary}&source={articleSource}" target="_blank">
    <img src="ADD_IMAGE_URL_HERE" />
</a>

Now your challenge is to test some of your content specific (deals, articles, events) in each newsletter or email campaigns. Don’t try to overshare and give everything in the email the ability – but selective choose 1-3 areas depending on the campaign and test them. These can be used in your emails as well as used on landing pages associated with the campaigns as well.

Start simple, refine and expand.

One other thing I would suggest is to use a URL shortening service like Bit.ly or Ar.gy to track how they are used and spread across the web. Use a different one for each of the above links and medias (LI/FB/TW).

Now go get em.

I wrote this article for iMediaConnection the other week. Thought you might like it.

Article Overview:

National Geographic asks for your preferences, your profile, your desire for each email type, and, most importantly, your permission
Timberland’s emails stand out due to brand consistency, large calls-to-action, clarity of messaging, and easy-to-measure creative tests
Banana Republic has stepped into its own in testing, experimenting, and being different
Rethinking “best practices”

What is “right”? Is there a correct way? Do best practices always work?
The answer to these and almost every other question in email marketing is, “It depends.” I know it’s a cop-out of an answer, but in all honesty, there is no right answer. There’s no global best practice that makes your campaign stats jump, no design layout that wins every time. It takes constant trying, tweaking, analyzing, and risk-taking. Calculated and meticulous risk-taking, I might add. And yes, in the end there is no “right,” only good job, mission accomplished, and what’s next?
Yet over the years of not just observing thousands of email campaigns but also creating them, I have weeded through the good and the bad to find those brands that are marketing in ways that move audiences and drive results. This isn’t about presenting you with empirical campaign data. This is about what works for me, and why.

Here are seven brands that are doing it right.
Read the full article

In looking through some recent work our team has been busting out I wanted to share a few examples of how we have been using social media in email marketing. Now I know I have busted the chops of others lately, and I am sure that we have things to test and learn still as well, but here are three examples that I find to be well executed from our team.

Why not use it in a Welcome campaign? What an ideal point to introduce it. If social media is a prime part of your overall digital marketing you need to make sure it is out in front of them. And adding not forcing social media introductions in a welcome campaign work well. These touch points are going to be one of your highest performing campaigns EVER so choose your focus wisely. If you have other goals do not make social front and center, but do introduce it in.If you have read this blog for any time at all, seen me speak, or worked with me on your campaigns you know how important I find welcome emails to be in a program.

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As a long time subscriber but someone that has not yet laid my head down at Indigo Hotels I was happy to see so many changes going on with their email marketing programs. I have had a little insight that changes were a foot there and this past campaign I was happy to see so many changes. With email that lived on the Haiku for far too long they have made the transition from an email that I always found a little odd for a travel company to one that now has my attention. They seem to have made all the right changes towards a great program.

Here is an older version from earlier this year that was okay, but the offer and all the BLUE for the hotel locations made me feel as if there was not anything more important than just a transaction. Each of the campaigns was very focused on them talking to me not having a conversation with me. Now this is not all that bad but with the new changes they have made some improvements that make me feel like they are giving me some better information as to who they are, what I might get and why I would look at a stay there. Before they did not have any social inclusion in their programs and not they have added it to the headers along with better text pre-headers that do not add too many pixels to the header pushing content down as their past layouts did talking about no image and add it to your address book. They have made the jump to a tight format that is appealing on all levels.

The funny thing is that it is not a major change in the overall information itself, but the color changes, information architecture and flow works so much better to make the content work. The inclusion of easy to read options (like mobile), occasion marketing (gets me thinking about when I could stay there) and the notions of escaping to Florida are things that are still transactional in premise but do not feel as forced as they might have before in the color layouts.

Now although they have made me happier with mobile web access and not an app (not everyone needs an app I will go on record on this over and over again) they have a little work left to do. The main one is the view as mobile version of the email. It might be the longest text email I have ever seen in my life. They need to look at changing this to either be a real mobile version or simply place some thought into what content really needs to be there. The last 2000 plus pixels listing all of their locations does not need to be there. I am presumably on a mobile device so a simple link to find these locations is all that is truly needed. Thinking through a mobile version if you offer one should be on your hit list. Mobile version does not mean text version. It means one that is viewable and actionable on a mobile device. Now I know that there are some that do not show images, but no one is going to scroll 50 click wheels down to go through all of these listing.

Hotel Indigo, you have come a long way and I am happy with the progress. My only challenge to you now it to starting thinking about usability with mobile/text versions. I know you can do it and it just might get this email snob to find one to stay at soon.

What Lohan got arrested? Hilton in another bikini? Bret Micheals hospitalized? All this and more is content that many need faster than they can get it. And that is where clients of ours like OK! Magazine comes into to make sure that content is in your inbox to keep you in the know.

We have had the pleasure of working with OK! Magazine  and a host of other magazine publishers and I wanted to share with you how some of them our email marketing automation engines to gather content, produce a newsletter and get it out to their subscriber bases in record time.

Knowing from years of writing, producing and executing on email marketing newsletters and campaigns, we developed a platform extension a few years back that helped us to focus on the content production. After all the creation of the content is often the thing that holds back a newsletter or campaign from getting out the door on time. When you can place your energy on your job in publishing of updating the content so that you are the first to publish and not worry about the curation of the content in order to produce the email you can have more time to do your job.

We went to the drawing board a few years back with first RSS and then a Wordpress plugin that allowed content producers and publishers to continue to spend their time writing and curating on their sites, blogs and web properties while our engines grabbed the content, arranged it, moved it into custom email layouts and distributed it automatically to their subscriber lists. Sounds easy right and a no brainer. But it took a little work to get it right.

Content always has formatting issues and images sometimes blow up in emails, so taking the time to make sure that these engines could grab and format HTML and text versions (and now even mobile versions) took a little testing and fine tuning. We put all the work on our shoulders so that clients that work with us need not to worry about it. These two engines can effortlessly grab content from custom feeds, regular RSS feeds, or even from posts and assets tagged in the Wordpress engine to build beautiful and timely communications.

We have our team working on some new engines that you might see in the coming months that will add even more integration with other platforms, CRM systems, social media platforms, ecommerce engines and more. So keep your eyes out if you are looking out for ways to make your job easier and the email you send out work for you and your subscribers instead of you or your team working to produce them.

In a meeting last week I was introduced to 42 Below Vodka. Not with shots or cocktails, but from their website and cheeky marketing. Our clients that were in town from New Zealand for a planning meeting were showing me examples of the NZ brands that push the envelope. America has had one of our first tastes with Flight of the Conchords, but I think that anything NZ is just on the start of gaining more ground.

Is humor always transferable country to country OR always right? So many brands have gotten in some sort of trouble in years past, but none of them have been liquor brands that I know of. We kind of expect them to push it a little further than most. And 42 Below is definitely doing that.

First the opt-in location is titled the “Hot Spam Injection”. I think we could stop right there with that one but it is only the entrance to this rabbit hole. They then follow with this disclaimer copy, “I want to receive life changing information on 42BELOW products & events! I understand that your Spam-Bot technology will relentlessly flood my in-box fast and effectively with amazing emails.” An animated gif to the right showing odd folks in states of lubricated celebrity helps to set the scene.

I am quite sure that even in jest this might hold people back from opting in. Humor is good while it is on brand but this might be too far for some people they are trying to reach. They have a great on-page confirmation message  giving instant gratification, as well as an age gate that worked too. If you are going to go this far you might as well go all the way.

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The pre-header is something that I feel is very important. Some others I have talked with recently (you will remain unnamed) have said they don’t feel it is as important as it can shove content below the scroll in the inbox and more importantly on mobile devices. I can agree with them when it is treated as an add-on or afterthought, but the pre-header today, IMHO, is more important than ever in giving people not only the gist of an email communication, but empowering them with quick actionable links to use for a better experience.

We have seen it used for a long time for whitelisting, viewing as a web page, and even unsubscribing; but the future of the pre-header is much greater in your email marketing campaigns than the old school elements. When used properly pre-headers truly allow you to give an overview of the content contained in the email for quick scanning, links to offers, links to mobile versions, couponing, and also access to alternate versions of an email. The last being what I wanted to share with you in the second example.

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In going through some past portfolio work from the eROI team and clients I work with this weekend I came across a good example that made me think about how we approach layouts and content. Often we see people using a few tried and true layouts that might work for the simple means of getting content to fit in a form, but when you start to look at the content, the goals, and how we read you might find some more creative ways to use layouts to your advantage.

There is a movement due to the growth of the mobile device market to use more single column image driven layouts. While this a good strategy to simply think about how to best render on the device, does it fit the real understanding of what marketers really know about the devices? In a recent survey we are just completing, we learned that many of the marketers feel that mobile design and rendering is important, while the majority of them still do not know what percentage of their readers are actually checking content on mobile devices. We will all get there, but it will take time. So instead of designing for the what if, think about designing around the content and messaging you have to work with. Let the content drive the layout and design. If you are coding these using best practices then your versions (html, text, mobile, etc) will fall into place.

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Prior to 2009, mobile sites weren’t a marketing necessity, unless you were trying to reach the youth market or early tech adopters. Obviously that’s changed…

According to Comscore.com’s recent reports on mobile device usage, the U.S market grew from 9.2 million users in 2008 to 23.8 million in 2009. And it’s not just the 18 – 35-year-old demographic using mobile.

Gartner predicts that by 2013 mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide, exceeding 1.82 billion units. They also predict mobile phone penetration will reach 90% of the world and 6.5 billion mobile connections by 2014.

While almost all sites can be viewed on a mobile device (aside from sites created entirely in Flash), the experience can be unintuitive at best and frustrating at worst, as most “mobile” sites as they exist today weren’t built with the mobile user in mind. Case in point: the typical site width is 960 pixels. The iPhone is only 320. Only two-thirds of the information can be seen from a mobile device. (while the iPad has changed this – still only over 700K sold – and growing)

So where do you start? Here are some important questions agencies and brands should be asking:

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For the past year we have all seen how everyone wants to add social media (ie Fan Us, Tweet This, Share This etc) in their email marketing campaigns. And from what we have witnessed a majority or companies, brands and email marketers are jumping on board to use it in their email marketing campaigns. We know from use ourselves that it is working, people are taking content shared via email and extending it further into the social media streams and rivers of news out there. And that is the point right… using it to extend the reach of your already engaged (ie Opted in) customer base in close conjunction with your email marketing campaigns.

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Diesel has always had a strong approach to email marketing. They typically use content and images to suck you in that you are not expecting, driving at least me, to spend some time on it. Now this one in particular felt like a hot mess. At first I thought who messed this one up and how did the rendering go so sideways. With a little further review I realized that it was all on purpose. Once I had spent time reading it through my opinions shifted. But there were some more things I noticed after a later look into the email itself that led me to think more about “was this a test of social media in email OR just a clever copywriter using marks that lend themselves to social media?” Seems that they might have missed something larger here.

Leading with the subject line “The exclusively limited Be Stupid t-shirts (hesitate and you are lost).” Now bad grammar aside it was an interesting way to build a subject line. Driving demand and curiosity at the same time. Driving into the body it was interesting to see how they used the stike outs in the copy header to focus on PANIC. The “URGENT MESSAGE” only added to the silliness.

There were all sorts of little copy areas (that were all image of course) that continued to add to the story while creating a Where’s Waldo-esque word search for me. They also used a hashtag in the top (twice) of #BESTSTUPIDTEES. Now the funny thing is that that hashtag must have been either not noticed or not worth using as in a search there was not a peep of them, even from the Diesel Twitter account. What this leads me to believe is that it was a test and a poor one at that. If they are using them in a campaign and not even taking the time to use them themselves then why use them at all? Social media in email FAIL? Well take it one step deeper and notice that they don’t even have a Twitter (688 followers + tons of tweets about the campaign but not one mention of the hashtag used in this email) or Facebook call out in this email as well.

Guys if you are going to experiement with social media in email actually present it as such or don’t use it at all. After a search around what looks like a HUGE campaign budget being spent on print and other places they have totally neglected how social could have made this viral and larger in a very easy way. They even have a microsite dedicated to it with the smallest social icon set in the bottom footer below all the action. Foolish? Or are they just not ready?

In the end it was an entertaining campaign that ended up showing me how large brands are still missing the boat when it comes to understanding the web and social media as a whole.

Other than that, creative idea – poor execution.

We have all been jawing about the use of animated gifs in emails over the past 8 months and I love that we are starting to see them being used more and more when they make sense. Now not only to they really make an email work well, drive deeper engagement, and even make us all pay more attention to them when they start dancing in our inbox but they are something that we can all use.

VIV Magazine has been doing some new campaigns with their newsletter taking them over the top in a good way. My senses also tell me from the length of the subject lines, the layouts and the great attention to detail that I would wager that one of our “favourite” email marketers from across the pond (hello Dela) is behind this crafty work. I could be wrong the based on the email I have seen his fingerprints are all over this. I hope I am right.

I wanted to call out a few things that really make this work and you should note. Armed with some of these tricks/ideas you might be able to make some strides in testing these techniques in your own programs.

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Every once in a while I get a nice surprise. I was told the other day that Levis had a great new welcome email and that it lived up to the promise on the home page. What was this promise? Well if you look at the home page at the footer they state “Sign up for email & we’ll send you a promo code for free shipping.” Well it had all the makings of a good offer and I wanted to test the delivery.

The sign up was painless, and the promise was delivered. I even tried to game the system by signing up deeper into the site with a link that presented zero shipping promise. What this tell me is that they have made sure to deliver on it no matter where it comes from. So for those that did not happen to see the offer in the footer of the site it actually delivers a surprise. That is something that I always love and think that shoppers love as well.

We all know from past studies and tests that people just love them some free shipping for online orders. Nice work Levis.

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The other week Anna Yeaman at StyleCampaign put forth an idea and backed it up with a test on the concept of the uses of black and white as a background in an email and how it performs. Her test has been on my mind making me take a closer look at not only our work but of other campaigns I see since. In paying closer attention to how some people have used these colors to make their email campaigns not only look better, but become more usable.

Now the colors black and white are stylish colors. They are both elegant colors that can really make a campaign stand out. She shared the results how used alone they made a big difference in test but also took it a little farther showing how they can work together. Now I like her use of the black frame on the white background, but taking a simple look at them again I really wanted to see how some other programs were using them and how they made me feel.

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We all know that we love getting emails on our birthdays. I was watching last year to see of all the 100s of emails that I was subscribed to from consumer brands to see how many of them actually used them. I mean why not treat yourself right? But what I found interesting was that of all the lists I am subscribed to that only 5 brands actually sent me an email. Now maybe some of them did not have my date of birth when I opted in, but what a great thing to do right? If you can create a unique email focused to go out to your lists to drive a sale and provide goodwill as well it should be a win. So why don’t we see more retailers using this technique?

Well I assume that most don’t ask or have not thought about it. Would we willing give birth date information if asked? A majority of people would not and might even shy away from it if there is not an explanation of why you are asking. But what if you show and tell them why you want to ask it? I would think that if it was clearly presented from a personal win/benefit perspective that you would find more people opting in to this type of information.

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