The Email Wars

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?

Look… I have not always been a fan of animated Gifs in emails, sometimes they work with a promo or special event, sometimes they just make things look cheap. But this Saturday AM (PS great day to get me thinking about going to drive a new car) I got this email from Lexus that has captured my attention. I think I might have looked at it 30 plus times and shown it to 4-5 people already. Maybe it was the car, but I have really thought that the idea behind the use of this was good.

I mean you run a risk running an animated gif/image as the lead into your email, the whole email in essence could be completely blank if the images are suppressed. You might not find it the biggest deal, but without any content it looks spammy. Is the fun animation worth the risk?

Now it is not because it is an animated GIF as the lead image in the email, but how it was executed. It was different. I mean it loads with basically an empty top half (which is all I could see) with a search box. My honest first impression of it is that it was junk. But then it started the dance. Slowly loading in terms into the search box (storytellling) that kept me engaged. Then the reveal of the brand and the car. It was clever.

It has had my head spinning with new creative ideas to test. And I might even go take that car for a drive too.

Here is the web version of the email so that you can see how it works. I was trying to grab the code from my inbox but could not get it to work perfectly. So enjoy the execution outside the medium here

Have you see animated gifs used well in emails? Do you have any good examples so share?

I am always fascinated with the horizontal scroll email. It holds a special place in my heart in terms of creativity and interrupting the typical inbox experience. Others I have seen are not in favor of it as they thing people will not know how to use it. I call BS on that.

Now I do not think it should be a staple unless it works for your email marketing programs but it can be effectively used as an interrupter at times during the year to mix things up and make people get re-engaged in your programs. Things get stale, people begin to get conditioned to your layouts, you need to mix it up once in a while. I am so conditioned that I actually find that I stop buying from brands where I am not enticed as the campaign look, layouts and offers are stale and consistent. I need some email shock therapy from time to time to make me wake up and convert.

I have covered many of these in previous posts, but this week Abercrombie and Fitch has hit me with a Tri-Fecta. Instead of scantily clad men and women (um boys and girls) they are hitting me with product emails that are horizontal. Although I am not someone that owns any AF I do think that they do an amazing job with the brand, photos, ads and enticing people to want to buy.

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I have not come across this horrible spam Frankenstein ever. Now I have seen parts here and there but this one takes the cake and took some time to bake. Yes is is a horrible email and most likely you would not check it out, but here at eROI we take one of the team for you day and day out.

1. Spoofed from Field to be the same as the To Field.

2. Baked in some MSN preference center love to give the pharma spam some legitimacy.

3. For good measure ripped off iContact’s footer and preference center links

A complete rip off trying to legitimize spam. Man will it ever end?

But it’s not done here. What can we do to combat this or anyone else doing something similar? IS there a fix?

We are all familiar with the selling of ad space or sponsorship of your email newsletters and publications in the standard CPM model. Sure ads are a simple way to drive some revenue to support your email marketing efforts, but really this model is for publishers and not really used for many of the brand communications that most of you use. Unless there is a creative fit for them OR even a way to bring in one of your supporting partners to give them some visibility to your audience.

Selling space in new ways is something that I like to look for in emails that I get as if there are additional ways to monetize your email campaigns then I am going to add it to my list of ideas. (more…)

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

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

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

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