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.

I also really enjoyed the main copy of the email. “You’re Initiated”. Why? Well it starts the relationship off under the idea that you are part of the club, you belong and can only gain from the actions you just took. The email as well is simple enough to show the benefits of subscription and makes clear what you are going to get from it. Win again.

But the part that I love the most (from a data/behavioral perspective) is that they have four clear buttons that allow you to jump into the shopping experience by gender category. Why is this so important? Well first they have not asked for your shopping preferences and armed with this first touch data they can actually begin to customize offers based on your actions. It’s the little things that matter to good email marketers and using the action based behavioral click data is a great way to begin a preference based targeting campaign. Do note that the navigation links matched the categories as well. Keeping it simple and focused is a great way to go.

So knowing this of course I tried clicking on 2 links that were not in my typical category simply to see if they are using this data to target future ads and emails with. Now time will tell but I am interested to see how it plays out.

Welcome well executed and I am looking forward to seeing what future campaigns bring to my inbox. I am also interested to see how long it takes for me to start getting regular email from them so that I can see how their frequency and cadence might differ from their comp at the Gap and other retailers in this category.

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.

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.

We are not only seeing it with content publishers but more and more we are seeing it across marketing and brand sites. And all use cases I have seen are pointing to it working and not being hated as much as the browser take over ads that make you wait 5 seconds till an ad runs or allowing you to click past it. And why is this? Well this one I found from a recent link (as no matter what you think I am not a reader of AskMen.com) was a good example of why they are working.

1. They allow you to still see the content you are there for. Sure it hurts the ability to interact or read it, but it does not create a bad user experience IMHO that makes you have ill will toward the site.

2. They opt in takes place quickly and then fades away to let you continue your visit.

3. They just look so much prettier than another window spawning outside of your browser or opening a new tab.

I would think that we will see more of these start to appear as this year goes on. As long as they are done in a creative way and are easy to move past I would not expect that we see much hostility towards the use. I have also lately seen them not open on a first page but X pages into a visit. We have used them in a magazine site to appear after 3 pages viewed with good success. One thing that we did test was based on the user analytics after a few months of testing. We found the average visit page view patterns and fine tuned them to 3 pages as we noticed a drop off in visits after 3 pages. By adding this we did not interfere with the intention of the visit and did not interfere with the content. The list growth has been directly tied to this tactic as we can tell the difference in subscribers coming from the normal newsletter sign up forms/boxes vs those that opt in via the light box. A little creative form tagging can do this for you as well.

Take some risks with this and see what you find. Try it on a few unique pages where you see drop offs or exits in the visit patterns. Or try it based on average page views and work backwards from there with an “X” variable. It all takes testing but without trying you will never know.

Long live the light box – or at least until we find a new way to advance the experience in a non obtrusive manner.

This is something you must consider. Sure, you may say that you work for a software provider, an online retailer or another company that already provides a great service with happy customers, and I’m sure you do, but are people really taking notice and telling their stories, as related to your brand, without being prompted? Most likely, no.

So what can your company do to create this level of customer relationships this year? Well, there are a host of things that can drive this forward (and I list some suggestions below), but in the end it is important to remember that it will take your entire team, company or organization to truly make it happen.

Here are some ideas that I believe are worth exploring with your team…

1. Call your customers. Seems simple, right? But in today’s world where people are so caught up with email, text, tweets, etc. they often forget that just a simple phone call can make a big difference. Sure this takes time, but in order to make an impact you need to invest this time, as it will come back in spades. You could start small, such as picking one person a day who has placed an order or downloaded a resource and give them a personal call to just make sure everything went ok. Not only will this catch them a bit off guard (in a positive way), but it may actually move them a bit closer to you or your brand. Another idea is to run a report of top customers and call at least one a day just to check-in and see how things are going. The purpose of these calls are not to get more orders, business, or make sure you have a meeting set, but simply to make a connection.

2. Change something in the delivery. A long held story in ecommerce is the one where a Zappos customer places an order selecting normal ground shipping then gets an email informing them that their order has been expedited for overnight shipping at no charge. This is just Zappos’ way of saying “thanks for your business” but it’s something that many of their customers experience, and share, each week. Periodically expediting a customer’s shipping is an effort to create a delighted customer experience and drive repeat orders. And it works. We all know (as reports from this past holiday season have shown once more) that free shipping or faster shipping drives orders. In fact, I believe that Zappos led most of their subject lines this past holiday season with some variation of free shipping. So if it is working for them, could it work for you? It is something to explore as a cost/benefit trade. Worth a test.
3. Say Thank you and Welcome. With a goal of driving subscribers to their email programs why do so many companies simply grab the sign-up and move on? I am a firm believer that simple things, such as telling subscribers thank you on a welcome page or sending them a series of welcome emails with helpful information, can lift the lifetime engagement of each subscriber. Take it a step further and periodically give subscribers surprise discount codes. Finding ways to say thank you throughout your relationship is a great way to deepen your connection with your subscriber and show the value you place on them.

4. Mix things up a bit. As marketers, it’s easy to get caught up in doing what works. Unfortunately, after long periods of doing “what works” you actually risk driving down the overall engagement of your audience. Give your audience an unexpected campaign element; try incorporating a new idea, angle or medium in to your campaign. For example, we have worked with a few clients to add PIN-coded direct mail pieces into their campaign mix. The mail pieces drove recipients to a landing page and were tightly integrated with their standard campaign elements. Your first reaction may be that traditional forms of media (such as direct mail) are dying, but when used as part of a larger “modern” campaign, traditional elements can absolutely create a high rate of engagement. Experiment with adding a new touch point where you audience isn’t expecting it and you may find that you unlock engagement from a previously silent part of your current audience.

5. Create your own holiday. One of my personal favorites for sparking engagement between you and your customers is to pick a day that you can produce a new event around.  Your audience gets hammered with messaging and offers around all of the major holidays, meaning that your campaigns may very well be getting lost in the shuffle. Instead of fighting so hard to get noticed during those holidays, why not put the effort into a totally “unique” holiday where your campaign is sure to get attention. Choose a day with some sort of historical significance. Or maybe look to a holiday from another country. Better yet, simply invent one. Even if your audience has never heard of the holiday you select, it can become an event that your entire company rallies around and develop into a something that really makes your brand shine. I have witnessed campaigns of this sort in the past that not only drove sales, but got great media and PR coverage. Not ready to try this on a large scale? Start with your regional business.  It’s likely that there are annual “events” specific to each region that a big campaign can be created around. One of my favorite examples of this is from right here in Oregon and was hatched by the legendary Tire Magnate Les Schwab. Being a rancher he had an abundant supply of beef. So he created, the still running, Free Beef Month. The campaign is simple – You buy a new set of tires and you get beef. Odd yes, but each and every year during “Free Beef Month” Les Schwab becomes a topic of conversation all over the region.

So go forth and think about how you can do the unexpected to deliver unique customer experiences that will get your new, current and past customers and subscribers feeling more connected than ever to your brand.

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?