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.

Well just after (might she have led the trend?) I read her article I noticed one email I get each week make the switch from the black border and white body to an all white body. Why is this important? Well in looking at them the new white one not only made the content more readable, but it also made the colors stand out and pop more. When you have a newsletter with more content, information architecture plays and important role and clearing the colors away from the content made this stand out to me.

Take a look at the old version:

This email used the black border and background outside with the white content blocks. Now the color bars to do a good job breaking up the sections, but not until I saw the new version did I realize how hard it was to scan, read and drive me to action. Thoughts from you?

But then they changed it all up on me this week, and maybe on you. Before I tell you what I think really works here, take a look for yourself.

Look at how cutting the copy, shrinking the header, removing the black border and background really make the content stand on its own. Not only does it work, but it allows the colored section headers allow the content to be much easier to read and visually navigate.

Maybe simpler is better in email. We always try so hard to design great emails but maybe what we are doing at times interferes with the content itself. Maybe what we should all test in content heavy email newsletters to to let the copy and content do the work, as that is what we are all really after right?

I would love to hear your thoughts and thank you Anna for making me pay attention to this a little more.

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.

But what else could you do to gather this information? Well leading from my post yesterday on Open ID the solution might be right within your grasp. Facebook Connect can help you gather this data into your opt in or profile management system in a really easy way. One of the data points that they share is date of birth. Now, there is a caveat here about it. Some people either don’t post it in their profile OR they use a default setting as they are concerned about posting it. Even some will just give you the month and day and that can be used in a simple birthday email campaign. You don’t really need a year now do you to make this work?

We actually have successfully used this Facebook Connect system on a site we built for a customer this past year at Moonit.com. Now we did find some challenges on people not completing it in Facebook 100% of the time, but if you present those data points in the return form once you have used Facebook Connect or another Open ID system you can leave that field blank, present them context around why they should add it, and then move to completion. Trust me as it works.

Let’s look at a few out there and talk about them a bit.

The first to look at it this one from Borders. They do a good job of not only providing a valuable discount amount of 25% but they also did a great job of making it easy to use online OR at a retail location with the bar code. I also really like the personalization in the subject line and in the body of the email. Nice touch. They also left the discount window open for 15 days. Now that should be enough time but I would leave it open for 30 days as people get busy and you could be leaving a sale on the table. I also really dislike it when emails are presented with so many legal rules around the use of a code. Does it really need to be presented in the email? Couldn’t you link to the redemption regulations on a landing page? It would be so better served there than in the email itself right? Just my personal thought as I often see so many companies add so much legal to an email. Not the place in my personal opinion as it takes away from the email itself and adds more copy that competes with the email itself.

The next one is from PiperLime. Now personally these guys own me. Yep I am a guy that likes shoes and they have my number. What I enjoyed about this email was the simplicity of it. It was clear and easy to take action on. The way that they moved the content to simply be about the birthday and left the legal mumbo jumbo out of it is key to me. The Borders one had about 40% of the content on the legal side and to me throwing up a bunch of copy that is generally about what you can’t do with this gift is not needed. Focus on the event and make it easy.

But the last one that I recently got from Alaska Airlines really stood out this year. One I did not expect to get a discount code from Alaska to book my next flight and two they sent it a month before my birthday. What a great idea to get out infront of the event and really stand out. Also it provides incentive to book now and not wait till later. Trust me as a frequent traveler with them that I put it to use fast on a little trip on my birthday this year to Sonoma for some wine “tasting” and relaxation that is much needed. I think the idea that they put into action is a great one as others are sending on the day this tactic really stood out to me. It was timely and relevant while at the same time provided immediate value.

So take some time to think about how you could use this event to your advantage. Even in a B to B world there are applications that you can use the birthday event to stand out. I mean I cannot think of one b to b company that has used it and that in itself provides a good opportunity to stand out. Maybe you should be the one to try it out this year?

So as I head down the path in the coming weeks of tacking on another year to my life I am looking forward to seeing who got in the game for this year and what my hit my inbox soon.

I know sounds too good to be true right? Well we are trying to put our team out there to help you. We look at and work on 1000’s of campaigns across every market niche out there each year, and with 7 plus years of doing this at eROI alone we wanted to allow people to get some tangible actions that they can take that are relevant to their job roles and email marketing plans and not just sit in another session.

Email Marketing – Auditing your Email Workflow

Learn how to engage your target audience through effective and branded emails. The experts at eROI will help you audit your email workflow from creative to deliverability and show how you can turn a dud into a success.

So we hope to see many of you there and make sure to sign up when you arrive to guarantee your spot at our table with us. Make sure if you do that you bring the things you want us to review. As player/coaches ourselves and eternal students of digital/email marketing we are really excited to be in a place to help you out in person.

We hope to see you there. And if you can’t make it for some reason you can always drop us an email or call as we are happy to take a look under the hood for you to make some calls on what might add some horsepower and drive some more RPM into your campaigns.

But what was it? The email itself was exactly the same size as all of their other ones. I had to actually hold them side by side to make sure as the image hat tip to the wide email format – sideways scrolling- makes you think it would continue on. I dove deeper into the image mapping and everything was going to the right places, so I wonder what percentage of the subscriber base actually found that arrow to the right and used it to go to the landing page.

Note that it is a interesting tactic to act as if something might have gone wrong, was cut off, or that more is hiding past the email itself. But I would love to know if people where actually drawn to the arrow.

As you can see from the creative they might have taken a little risk and gone wide with the 7 day a week approach. If you look to the landing page that the arrow takes you to, it is rather easy to see how they might have experimented and pulled this off. It would have been a good test, but not to steal any thunder from what we see here… this is a good test as well. I would have looked to do this in this way as well as the wide way and A/B test them here to see what the difference would be. And maybe they did and I was in one of the groups.

My only tip on this is I would have made the arrow work harder. I feel it was lost in the inbox as I was reading this email and I think with a different treatment it might have drawn me in more and made it clearer to me where to go.

What do you think about this? Was it effective? Would you have looked for more?

UPDATE:

I was forwarded this nice alternate gender version. I like the tie in the subject line and some of the other copy changes. Same campaign just tailored by gender all ecom in fashion should be as a default.

Nice work BR on getting targeted and focused.

I would have loved to have some actual scrolling ability in the email itself but I think they did a great job with the approach, copy and execution as a whole.

Well you are only 1/4 of the way there in the right steps. I use Sorel as a good example (even there are some great things they can still add to the process that I will explain) of the steps that come next.

Immediately you should be sending out a Thanks for Your order/Order confirmation. Now as a best practice you really need to give people an immediate email showing them what they just did. Now in this example you can see things that I like, they present a clearly written thanks, they present your information and the order number back to you for easy reference, and (not shown) they display photos of the items you purchased. This last one I am always appreciative of as it give me a fast way to visually scan the order to make sure that I did not add anything wrong as well as shows me that their ecom system got my order right. Win right? Yes it is. But at this same point in time they have me as a captive customer and as this was my first order in the system they could have done one of the following.

1. Present me something to use to place another order with them. A unique discount code that I can use for another purchase with a time offer associated with it making me think about using it faster.

2. A way to give someone else I might know that could also be in market either a “friend” code to use, making me take the step to increase their customer base (say 10%) that I can pass on right then. I am a satisfied shopper right now and it is an ideal time to use me as a referral source.

3. Present to me other relative items (say to the right hand side of this email) that might be ones that are complimentary to these items OR things that others that have bought these items might use. A great way that you can do this even if you do not have a system in place is to look at a great and cost effective system called 4-tell to automatically feed this type of data into the email. It does not even need to be nestled into your ecom platform. I have seen in action lately and am impressed with it so far. Take a look.

So now there is going to be some time that goes by from the order confirmation to the actual shipping of this product. We all expect some downtime around now. Depending on how long it takes to pick and ship these products there may or may not be a marketing email touch here during this time.

But then comes the shipping confirmation. This is when we all get excited right? The main point of this confirmation is to project a date of arrival and to present the customer a tracking code that is easy to see in order to know when that door bell will ring. A little Pavlovian but we all salivate for them. Actually from past studies I have read this order shipped email often gets more opens than any other as we tend to keep it and use it until the order arrives. So what can you do here? Well it is another great place to position a cross or up sell around like items, future deals, or even promote something that does not exist in the main marketing messages for your site. Also here is a little trick If you can make sure to not the exact location of the offer image paths you can actually change those every few days to always have a current offer presented. Simply by replacing those images you can continue to present new offers while they wait for that order to be tracked and arrive.

So you are 3/4 to the goal now right? So what is next you might wonder? Isn’t our job done? Well the hard part is, but this is where you really have an opportunity to reach back out and find out the level of customer satisfaction with the experience or with the product. Why? Well knowing what is working and what is not is key to growing a strong ecommerce program and your relationship. A simple survey is one way to get them engaged. How did it go? Where things easy to find? Did you have any issues that came up that we could address better? Would you recommend us to someone else (Net promoter scoring)? But even better is to engage with feedback on the happiness with the product itself. We all know that people look for the recommendation of others and even seek them out when making a purchase. So would you rather have them search those out all over the web OR take advantage of placing this content back into your site and having the authority rest right next to the products? I would choose the latter based on a few reasons. Now the less I have to leave your site to make a decision and the more time I can stay with you then the higher the chance that I am going to make the purchase. Now if you decide to house these reviews you need to allow both good and bad to live here side by side. You need to throw on your tough skin and be ready for a fair amount of tough love. Hiding negative comments are a sure way to lose the trust of those that come to you.

In a recent test we did with an online retailer we tried showing professional reviews from a outdoor gear magazine in one email, while in the other we presented customer scoring and reviews. Which do you think did better? It was an interesting testament to the changes in online trust going on. The email with the customer scores and reviews outsold those of the old line journalistic source. Now this was only one test and should be repeated to make a true call on, but we found it to be a real driver to sales. Are you including testimonials or reviews in your ecom emails? Maybe you should test this.

The other reason I love reviews in the ecom site is that it creates more content. Content is king and from a search perspective I would love to have more juju on my side from a review and content perspective than on an aggregator site. Note that you will want to wait a few weeks to 30 days to follow up on this so that they have had adequate time to use the product and write an intelligent review.

In the end you need to understand that the campaign is not over when you drop your first touch email. It should be continued through the lifecycle allowing to you leverage this relationship to drive more sales, provide goodwill, and keep your engagement levels high. This way they next time they are in market they will consider you before your competition.

Round One: USAA Teen Checking Campaign

Round Two: National Geographic Kids Magazine

Lots of best practices and ideas were brought to the table and the votes were cast. Who won? Guess you will have to watch and see.

Which agency will be the next Email Idol?

Moderator: Lisa Harmon, Director, Creative Services, Smith-Harmon, a Responsys Company
Panelists: Sam White, Creative Director, eROI
Jim Spence, Designer, Smith-Harmon, a Responsys Company
Mike Corak, Director of Interactive Services, Mighty Interactive

My hat is off to whomever is managing all of these and my hopes is that they are using a content management system that automates the production of all of these choices. I mean for those of you that publish just one or a few emails you can imagine how many Full Time Employees it would take to pull this off.

If you take some time to look at some of the screen shots I made you can really gain some respect for the time and thought that they have put into this page. It goes to show me that email is a major driver of visits and engagement for them as well as I would assume a revenue generator in the ad sales for the paper in this electronic age where we are gathering more of our news from online than offline.

One of the things I wanted to call out was that they clearly present not only the text and html preferences but also the frequency and days of the week you can expect to get these emails. Win Win for them and for the subscriber here. One draw back is I had to make some changes to the ones I was subscribing to as I thought I might have too many on certain days. But on the flip side of that thought it was really nice to be able to make those decisions. I would assume that even with me opting in to 7 different editions that I would be happy with my selections and have better understanding of when they would arrive in my inbox.

On top of that if you dive in deeper you will notice that they are also VERY clear about helping you to make the right version selections if you are reading them on a mobile device. The thought that went into this email subscription/preference page is so inspiring that I almost want to go work for them for a week and see behind the curtain as to how they pull all of this off and manage all that data.

Bringing back down to earth now it makes me wonder why more people are not taking the time to create email preference centers that work as well as this one does. Sure you might only have one or two email marketing programs in place but could you do better by clearly presenting how it is all going to work and helping to explain to your subscribers some benefits they might have by selecting different versions from a simple Text vs HTML preference? Think about what you can do to make life easier for your subscribers. It will pay off in spades.

Some time back I saw them use it to promote a men’s newsletter through a simple tweet. Smart idea. Now I am not sure if they have some way to segment based on gender (as this would be great if someone could do this from a communications tool into their follower steam) but it did catch my eye and made me want to look further as an email marketer.

I had assumed that I was going to land on a general newsletter sign up page and need to select the right lists to be on. Well I was pleasantly surprised at the fact that they took me right to a unique landing opt in page JUST for that men’s newsletter. Nice work. Now even if they did not have the ability to gender target using Twitter, they do have more of that data now by the implementation of this gender specific newsletter opt in page. Now they know that these users are male. What would have made this even better would have been if they would have either used the Twitter OAuth system to login via Twitter and capture that Twitter handle as well as an email address. By doing this they could have added this data to their user profiles in order to look for patterns and ways in the future to interact better via Twitter OR the email.

But none the less it was a great promotion and a well thought out use of targeting and landing based on gender. It opens up many ideas in my mind about the types of user data that email marketers that are giddy about social media to think about using. I would even advance the idea of similar campaigns in Facebook and employing Facebook Connect to get the 36 data fields (email is now one as well) when creating an opt in form. I have been toying with this idea for a while now since the recent addition of email as one of the marketer accessible fields in the Facebook Connect API.

Thinking about this idea, do you think that you could push your teams to try something new with implementation of social connection tools? Worth a test I think.

But to get back on track I wanted to share their opt in and welcome email as I thought it was well done. The opt in does a good job of presenting 3 variations of the emails I would receive by opting in. I am always thankful when I get to see some examples located around the opt in process. I feel that it is a good way to condition people to what to expect. Almost in a way of setting up the experience of when I see them in the inbox for the first time. Adding the birthdate to the form must be a legal requirement for them or even one that helps them to look at age data in targeting. Heck we will see in about a month if they have a birthday campaign as well.

One thing I did notice was that they do have a cause co-registration for the Surfrider Foundation which is is line with their audience and most likely a cause that they support as a corporation. It was a nice touch to use their opt in to support a like organization. Might be an idea for other retailers or even B2B companies.

But it did not stop at the opt in page. They had a very nice thank you page that presented some options to help you engage and move forward. I would have been happy with their efforts right there, but then came a timely (not too delayed) Welcome message. Right up my alley in what I like to see in best practices and lifting the engagement. But they also took the extra step I often see so many retailers miss, they presented right there a 15% off discount code. Now I would wager that a large majority of people use it in the coming days if not right then. The fact that it was quick to arrive was also a good thing as if I had continued and loaded some items into my cart, bought them, and then got this email a few days later, I might have experienced some buyers remorse. So nice job guys. Love to see the capitalization on the increased engagement and hopefully an uptick in sales from this effort.

Overall even with the high frequency (38 emails tracked in the past 60 days) I have remained highly engaged with the email program due to what I attribute to the well done welcome email program. Now looking at this time period might be a little uncharacteristic of the overall program as I am looking at the holiday season, but they are doing it right. Knowing that I am engaged keep them in my inbox and has trained me to expect every few days now to see them there in the AM hours.

The takeaway is to really look at your welcome program no matter what industry you are in. Making the touch points line up and behave in a way that sets the course for a strong program will lift your sales/goals and drive your sales and engagement. What are you doing to say thanks and welcome with your subscribers?

You can view last years PPT, Video and write up here.

The First Round: esurance Campaign – Original

Mighty Interactive:

eROI Design:

Responsys:

Now everyone had a different approach this email but the key things were clearly presenting the savings, using buttons to drive the actions, and pulling in key brand elements (like Erin the heroine) into the action for quick processing and recognition of the sender.

Round Two: Children International Newsletter – Original

Mighty Interactive:

eROI:

Responsys:

Round Three: At-A-Glance Promotion/Newsletter – Orginal

Mighty Interactive:

eROI:

Responsys:

Now as you can see from all of the examples everyone took a slightly different approach at all 3 emails and had their reasons for doing so. It was a great panel presentation that was packed to the walls. So this year it it moving to the Day Two Keynote session so that everyone can participate and share the process, thought and creative. But in keeping with the ideas of growing and learning (aka testing) that we all profess in our own work, keep your eyes peeled for some changes to the event/presentation. It will be a great one with some very cool brands, concepts and changes based on the factors we all need to be considering in our email marketing campaigns.

I hope to see you all there and feel open to introduce yourself to any of our team that will be around at the conference.