The Email Wars

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.

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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Sitting here tonight I was pondering about what to write about and share with you. I took a spin through my collections of emails I save, I flipped through my Evernote account to see what else might have slipped my gaze, but in the end I realized that I was searching for one thing… the perfect email for me.

It got me to thinking about “what was right for me” and started me thinking about what if the only things that came into my inbox were things that I wanted… just right then. Now what does this mean? It is hard right as no one no matter how AWESOME they are in data mining, behavioral marketing, content targeting or even trigger based emails could ever hit it perfectly. I mean delivering exactly what I want right at the moment.

So it started me thinking that no matter how much we try we might never see a day where every email we get has the right time of day, day of week, offer, color scheme, buttons, subject line or even the images that I wanted in the moment. But that does not mean email is dead or does not work. Email is about marketing. And marketing is about learning about your audience enough that you can get close to not only delivering an offer that is compelling, but changing the way that we look or think about something.

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Some of you might be unfamiliar with the fact that at eROI we not only are focused on email marketing but our team works extensively in web development, strategy and idea execution across many areas.

I wanted to share this latest case study from eROI as I personally worked on all of these projects. It has been a 2 year journey from when we started testing what community could mean to where we ended up for Wacom. Along the way we learned so much and continue to learn more each day still. Community can mean so many things. It is not simply building a stand alone community site. In the case of Wacom it was a journey of storytelling, sharing, listening and testing. In the end we did end up with a strong and still growing active community site that is built into the Wacom main North American site, but also ended up being a solid and continued use of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Hopefully you can gleam some of our learnings from this study and see how you might be able to approach your outreach and conversation efforts.

In the end it all comes down to commitment and non stop engagement by not only the members of the Wacom team but also from those participating in the communities as well.

eROI Case Study: Wacom Community: Mastering the 5 C’s

What goes into building the most engaging and successful online communities? Follow along as we take you through the journey and progression of the communities built by eROI for Wacom Technology Corp. Learn all about how to harness the power of your audience to create a successful online community.

What’s Inside:

The three main goals for almost any brand community

Discovering what your customers really want

Trying new things and learning from what works

Building exponentially with social media-to-community connections

5 C’s – Commitment, Conversation, Conversion, Community & Collaboration

Get the full case study today.

So I wanted to “share” with all of you a new study we just released covering some clients we work with and how we went through the process of creating mobile versions of their website as opposed to building an app (for that). We love apps but sometimes they do not fit the need NOR does everyone need an app. See how we approached it and delivered an experience via a mobile version of the website content that was important.

I would also cite this article as reasons for our approach to this change in content consumption from Read Write Web.

eROI Whitepaper: Leveraging the Mobile Web

Are you ready to build a mobile web presence?

Get a look inside the mobile website projects of 3 unique brands, and see how digital strategy and technology come together to achieve results.

Wacom Technology Corp. uses their mobile website as a key part of an integrated marketing campaign for Bamboo Touch.

Banfield Pet Hospital has a mobile version of their main corporate site, complete with mobile-specific content.

Moonit.com uses the mobile web as the most cost-effective way to make their compatibility tool available on the go.

See how they did it!

Well we are t-minus 12 days till we descend upon Miami Beach for the annual Email Experience Council conference. Our team is once again in the email design competition facing off against one prior challenger (Mighty Interactive) and a new one (Ogilvy). The last time we met it was a great battle of not only design but reasons behind making design decisions. So without giving away the rounds and brands we have all been working on these past few weeks I wanted to share with you some of the original and new designs that were presented. Look for more attention this year paid to rendering, social, mobile and driving conversions with the campaigns we were tasked to overhaul.

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.

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It was great not only to see one of our clients doing a whiz-bang job on their welcome messages but also on the feedback that the subscriber sent in. When was the last time that you were delighting people with your welcome messaging in a way that made them take the time to write a response? I think you should make this a goal to achieve this year.

Over and over I tell people about the importance of Welcome and Thank You messages when people opt in to a newsletter, make an information request, sign up for a webinar or any other first touch point. It really does set the tone, make an impact and build a path for your email marketing. Take a moment to review your own emails and see if there are things you can do to uplevel your programs. And if you are still missing a Welcome or Thank You email I would work hard to get one in place. First impressions are hard to make twice.

Example of this email after the jump

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Well to start out I expected more than 100 plus emails to hit my inbox over the long holiday weekend. Now I was not disapointed that the final tally was only 68 emails. What did surprise me was some of the brands that got into the Thanksgiving/Black Friday holiday rush that I would not have expected. Typically I would expect to see etailers hitting me up hard. But getting emails from Oracle, Southwest Airlines, MINI, Dominos and the Bellagio were surprises.

Now they were all clever and were on point about the holiday shopping weekend, but not ones that I would have thought would be fighting for my dollars and time during this packed holiday email weekend.

But was it bad? Absolutely not. I actually think that they were all on target and had something valuable to offer. Now if the emails/offers were miles removed from this theme it might have struck me as a truly odd placement. Being there with relevant messages made me actually want to give each of them props for the thought and effort as many of their comp we absent during this time.

I know you might think Dominos, but think about this… everyone just got done cooking the big holiday feast and the last thing many people want to do is to cook again. And from the crush of delivery vehicles I saw on the streets of my neighborhood it seemed that everyone had the same thoughts. Timing is everything here and they know their customers.

The crazy thing is our family took this weekend not to shop online or offline. Instead we took this time to be together, get things done, and prepare for the start of our shopping this week. If anything these emails we got we shared between one another for list making and gift planning. So even though we were not taking advantage of the sales (trust me there will be more as the next few weeks whiz by us) were were paying attention to the brands in our inboxes so that we were ready.

Hope that today treats you well with the crush of “cyber Monday” that is hitting us today.

eROI Case Study: Online Strategy for a Successful Product Launch (Get the full study)

To support the launch of the Intuos4, Wacom Technology Corporation worked with eROI to put a new twist on the product launch with an effective integrated online campaign. This case study outlines the integrated online strategy used by Wacom, including results of the multi-pronged campaign; email, microsite, and offline channels working together to seamlessly promote the unique aspects of the new Intuos4 tablet.

Enjoy exploring the site and learn how it all came together to support the introduction and sales efforts.

“We’re absolutely happy with the number of visitors. We believe we’ve received a 70% awareness of our target audience. I mean, that’s really good. Not many companies are going to achieve that kind of awareness for a new product launch.”

~ Marketing Director, Wacom

Get the full study

Sure put out an offer, make a price deal, throw in a photo and you have a campaign. Pure Genius… in 2003. But look we are in another time and place now. You might still have the mindset to build launch and blast (sorry for that last one) but your customer is looking for more. Some old skoolers out there with heavy DM background like to argue this and try to stir the pot of the informed by saying it is a numbers game. Sure I won’t argue the numbers game but I will argue to my last breath that if you are not connecting you are not going to meet your goals not matter what they might be.

This example of the new Columbia Sportswear digital strategy reflects this (sure our old Art Director is over there now and took some awesome learning with him – plus they assembled a ROCK STAR team) change in selling.

Rule One: I am here for the product.
Rule Two if I would wear your logo then you are a “Prom King” brand and people love not only your wares but your lifestyle and include you as part of their lives where your wares intersect what they do.
Rule Three: You owe them a relationship – they give you their hard earned money and in this new media world want to participate with you past just throwing on a new super wicking light weight fleece.

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About 3 years back I went and opted in to 12 different automotive manufacturers campaigns. The reason (besides loving cars) was to watch the types of programs they put together, look for best practices and new ideas. I have saved each and everyone that I have received and enjoyed the majority of them. What stuck after reviewing 196 emails so far was the major differences in each program. Now not being clear of the exact goals of each I went into it with an open mind and was interested in getting a few years in before making any observations.

What I found was very interesting to me as the results of these communications were across the board.

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So these past 7 weeks (July 17th to August 27th), I have been reporting and tracking the email campaigns from Abercrombie and Fitch on the use of WIDE, horizontal email formats. I have seen 12 in total over this period of time and have been fascinated with the results that they might be getting from these tests. It is not very often that retailers, or anyone for that matter, use this format and as I saw more and more come out I was sure that it was due to great results.

Why? Well they are a smart marketing machine. After hypothesizing on my own and with others in the industry, I thought it was time to reach out to their team and ask. Since we had placed our “Spy” KillROI (the eROI Spam fighting Robot) into the AF offices some time ago we had an in. I reached out at the end of last week to see if they had some details that they would not mind sharing publicly with the rest of us to learn from. Now what I can share is not going to be the top secret results. As there are others out there that they compete against that would love to copy what they are doing (actually I have now spied American Eagle ripping off, I mean testing, the same WIDE idea) and we don’t want that.

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We know that so many people spend time and money to create an email template that works well in all the email clients, save time and money with each new campaign, build an expected email for subscribers to know where to look and what to do, and give some flexibility for promotions and new content. But what gets to me is when people fail to actually use and complete a template leaving a area of it blank. It feels so JV to me and makes me wonder why they don’t take the time to see what else can be added, or simply edit the template to work for that campaign.

As I travel frequently I am signed up for most of the Airline emails and am impressed with most of them. But SW seems to frequently be the culprit in using an email template and failing to use it right. I mean they are a discount airline so could this lack of content save them money? Doubt it.

What I would hope that you learn from this post is to look at how you are using your templates if you use them in your email platform and find ways to create a few versions of them so that you can not leave massive blocks of emptiness in them. It feels unprofessional and to me shows a lack of effort by the email marketer. Even taking the time to reorganize the content in this case could have helped them to deliver a flushed out email, avoiding the gaps.

Have you ever been guilty of rushing a campaign out the door with a lack of content or taking the time to button it up?

Here is the funny thing about this email that I am critiquing, I actually booked a flight from it for a trip this month… so maybe it does not matter in the short run to conversion, but instead does some harm to the overall brand.

Thoughts?