Now I would state that the challenge does not lie entirely on the tools we use, but in the time that we invest in reading and making decisions based on the data we get back from the campaigns. Communication being taken down to a one to one basis does not rely on the subscriber, they expect it, but it comes down to the marketer doing their job of using what they know.

There are a few things I suggest that you spend some time on in the coming months.

1. The opt in: What are you asking for? An email or a combination of fields?

With simply asking for an email address you are only starting to building a program on a one to many approach. You have very little data to start your intelligent campaigns with so you have placed yourself in a spot that requires you to rely on learning over time, looking at data that may be siloed in web analytics, social data, purchase history, or even offline data collection points. Getting all of these data sources together is a process in itself that will keep you and your teams (if you have a team) tied up constantly in an effort to pull it together in order to get a true picture.

The solution: Many people feel that an email is a safe way to start an opt in and a relationship. So if this is you and you are going to take this approach, look at these techniques.

Progressive profiling allows you a few ways to continue this profile. At the thank you page, thank you email, or welcome email you should be asking them for a little more data. Now asking can be done with input fields (i.e. name, gender, zip, etc) or you can get creative with using simple buttons to ask them to choose A/B answers. Even having these simple answers can help you to append your database with actions and hidden form fields. Now it won’t be perfect, but it is a low impact technique.

If you are using a combination of fields, don’t require all of them to be filled out at opt in. Give them the option of completing them. And if you are going to ask for them, have a plan of what you are going to do with them. If you do not have a plan to use in targeting, communications or relevant content filters/rules then hide them until you trigger a field being answered and then reveal them. We use a progressive disclosure method on our own contact forms which result in higher completion of the forms. Taking a form down to it’s basics until needed visually allows people to know how much they will need to give you in order to get. And when they tip a point where more data is required then we reveal it.

2. Profile Updates:

Many people do not spend time during the year, or after an opt in to go back out and ask for more information. We all change decisions, relationships, jobs, preferences and even locations during the time that we interact with a website. If you are not reaching out to ask for and update (which we suggest 2-3 times a years and not just once) then they are not going to typically think about telling you. I know that we all hope that people would simply fall in love with us so much that they want to hit that Profile/Email preferences link in our emails whenever they see it, but from what I have seen it is only typical when they are breaking up with you during normal email programs. If you don’t ask and present the ask, then odds have it they will never tell you.

The Solution: Create a reason for them to update information with you. Maybe you moved? Maybe you are adding new functionality? Maybe you are launching a new site? Maybe you have something coming up that they would benefit from by giving you a few more answer? Maybe, just maybe, you could use a time of year event for fun in order to engage with them. Recently we used Valentine’s Day to ask, using humor, if they were still our Valentine. I know odd for a digital marketing agency like eROI, but really on cue for our brand culture and personality. Looking for those moments when we can reach out to help make our communications better are a good opportunity for us to engage. Campaigns like this work very well for us.

If you are a software company looking at pre-version release is a good time. Let them know you have a new release coming out and if they allow you to have their time for 2-3 minutes you would be in a better position to see if they were a good candidate for the upcoming release. If you are an ecommerce company using time between holiday campaigns could be positioned as helpful to your shoppers in order to understand their preferred size(s), colors, gender preferences, and maybe tie in some knowledge building as to who they might be shopping for during the next holiday. It all comes down to positioning it to be valuable to them, and not us as marketers. Travel marketers can do the same using vacation preferences, airport preferences, etc to build relevancy into the emails their subscribers receive.

3. Surveys: I know we all get so many surveys today that it might sound like a tired practice, but if you build it in a way that allows them to have an impact with the information that they provide you to lift the experience you are trying to provide them, then you might see a higher completion rate.

The Solution: Tie surveys to rewards. Now rewards can be monetary (gift codes/cards), value-based (access to content/reports) or insider info that others do not get. Presenting the tie in clearly is key here. We have tied some first 50 respondent gift cards to surveys and they work very well. It is a low cost strategy that builds the notion that they need to move fast in order to be one of the lucky 50. Think about what you can do with this data before you build the survey as a survey that has no action plan is a useless survey.

4. Consumer/Customer panels: Lately we have seen an uptick in consumer brands and business to business brands launching panels of people that allow them to get data more regularly. Now you can build variables of these based on customer type, prospect type, and even behavior type (i.e. subscriber, customer, lead, location, etc). Panels are great as they are a velvet rope approach that brings people into the fold with your business and can allow you to get better data as they are engaged with your brand and feel as if you are listening to them closer to make change. It is akin to being a stockholder in a company where your vote counts. If you do run panels you need to make sure to have a follow up to these segments letting them know what you learned and what actions you plan to take based upon the feedback. Listening and not sharing will have a short term negative engagement impact.

Now that you have some of the data, you are empowered to be a better marketer. Yet if you simply ask, ask, ask and never implement and do then you might as well go back to the megaphone approach to your marketing. Remember it is not up to the subscriber to tell us what they want, like or do, but up to us as caring marketers to listen, ask, and provide the opportunity to do better.

And I know you all want to do better, right?

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

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.

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.

The top things to look are email rendering, email readability, action paths, ability to complete goals, and need for a mobile version of your website, blog, ecommerce site, or simply a paired down mobile version of the content you are presenting.

The good news is most all companies are in the same boat this point in time so you have time to explore, plan and react.

With eMarketer reporting that over 42% of US consumers are stating that they had a smart phone as of Dec 2009 we need to take this seriously. This same study also reports that nearly 13% of respondents are planning on purchasing one in the next 90 days. Tick Tock. I have also seen some recent studies citing that around 17% of smart phone users are already making purchases. Just imagine if we had mobile friendly emails, campaigns, websites and ecommerce. What a difference that would make in these numbers. So what is it going to take 60%? 70%? Most likely it is just going to take time for companies to start making strides to deliver in this fast growing environment.

There are not many tools out there to report on mobile client engagement (Pivotal Veracity has MailboxIQ that does it) yet but I expect to either see more tools hit the market this year OR marketers getting smarter about testing emails to look at Web Analytics reports from their email campaigns. Either way it is time that you start to pay attention to these metrics in your own reporting and find ways to track and build on these stats. With a recent campaign we ran we had the fortune of already having some of this data which allowed us to build emails, mobile versions of emails, microsites targeted to work on mobile devices and ways to drive engagement via that channel.

So what do you need to know.

1. Odds have it that your emails don’t either don’t work right OR they are hard to read/act. In looking at some samples of some recent campaigns I receive on my iPhone prior to viewing them at the desktop I found that some companies are not really paying attention to the mobile rendering

experience. Now I am not saying that they do not render, but they either are hard to read OR they do not lead to mobile friendly sites. That kills the campaign right there. Take some time to experience your own campaigns on a mobile device if you have not already and try to get to the goals of your own marketing.

One company we have recently found is doing some great things with their emails. The way that they are coding them creates a fluid layout that no matter what size device or where you read it stretches and changes the fonts, images, etc to the right size. I am looking at how they did this so well as I think that is it something we can all learn from. Now I do not think that this approach can work for all emails. Why? Well from this one and others I have tested it looks to only work right with simple HTML copy based emails. Emails that are image heavy might present some challenges.

The image to the left here is an example of how it reworks itself to format exactly on the iPhone. While it sure does get long, it is really easy to read and renders so nice. But take that same email and look at it in a desktop email client (the one here is Apple Mail). It reworks itself to stretch to the environment and can be manipulated no matter what size you change your preview window or the full message to be. Pretty neat I think. It is an idea worth look at more and seeing how you can build your templates or HTML to work for your needs. Extra points to them that is was a list hygiene campaign working on getting their customer database in order.

2. You don’t have the rendering information you need. So you want to make some changes but yet you really don’t have a lot of information to help you craft these campaigns. Well you are in luck. I took some time to test not only preview size but also looked at functionality size when it comes to rendering and ability to scroll not only up and down but left to right. No with most smart phones like gPhone or iPhone we did not see challenges in the left to right scroll as they use a browser type environment, but with other phones we see some limitations.

Here are some shots of the Pixel test we run in some of the clients.

iPhone: Ability in Horizontal to render over 960Pixels (sorry for the sideways shot as this was in horizontal layout mode.)

iPhone: Vertical Layout over 600 pixels.

gPhone: 600 pixels in vertical layout but ability to scroll horizontal to an unlimited length. We actually only tested to 2800 pixels but it looks like it can go indefinitely.

So what does this mean? It means we all need to test. We know that presently there are some abilities to try new things but until we test we will not know for sure. And the wild card is that when new software updates or new phone models emerge we will need to test again.

3. It is not just about the email. Well you knew that right? The email is just the overall experience gateway to what we are tasked as marketers to provide. We need to be looking at the next steps in the mobile web site or simplify it with mobile campaign pages. We have been rolling out new mobile versions of sites lately when we build them for clients, but here is something you may benefit from… we develop a large percentage of websites with custom WordPress CMS platforms. Why would this help? Well if you are doing the same you can leverage many of the development communities plugins to create built in mobile versions of your sites or campaigns. I know that this will not work for everyone and in that case you need to look at creating mobile versions of your site. It is rather hard and can be expensive to do this for large sites, so start small and focus on the experience and goals.

Some recent examples to share would be.

Moonit: Mobile version of core website with Facebook Connect Mobile

Banfield Mobile version of website for core needs.

In the end there are a lot of things to look at and evaluate not only from an external use standpoint but also from an internal ability view. No matter the outcome 2010 is the time that you start to move these projects into your company goals so that you can step up and have an experience no matter the device that drives to engagement and conversion.

Look for some more test and ideas soon or share with me some examples you have come across.

]]> http://theemailwars.com/2010/01/20/investigation-into-mobile-email-marketing/feed/ 7 http://theemailwars.com/2009/11/12/new-integrated-campaign-case-study/ http://theemailwars.com/2009/11/12/new-integrated-campaign-case-study/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:35:31 +0000 Dylan Boyd http://theemailwars.com/?p=2205 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

Trust
What will you do with the information you collect from me? Will you protect it and make sure that it will only be used how I have asked it to be used? Will you make sure to honor it even when you think that a “blast” is ordered down from the C-Level? Your job is to take an oath to make sure that the information shared is clearly identified from opt in and presented in a clear manner that builds trust.

Clarity
What am I giving you my information for? Is it a contest? Newsletter? Purchase? What will you send me in the future? What can I expect from you in my inbox? A good program will clearly present the uses of contact, communication and the premise of the relationship. It is your job to honor that and keep your word.
Conversation
What do you have of value to hold the attention of your subscriber? If you are simply giving the same old information that is found on the web, your site or other locations, is the interest going to be held? Content for your emails needs to be unique, thought out and valuable or you run the risk of increasing the churn and forcing them to other sources for the same information.

Mutual Benefits
You must give to get and get to give. Simply forcing offers, content and things only of value to your goals are not going to drive results of your campaigns. Sure you will get some conversions, but if you continue to only worry about advancing your goals you will eventually, and sometimes faster than you thought, have that subscriber unsubscribe, stop reading or simply stop taking actions.

Transparency
Sharing real information and bringing your subscribers into the fold is a better way to build a relationship. Making them a part of the campaign will elevate your results. As we are all witnessing with social media, email can be the same vehicle if you take each opportunity to bring the information, offers and conversation to a place where there is investment from both parties into knowing the value of the relationship. Are there things you are doing as a company that might give them a better feeling about you? Are you having conversations in other places that you can bring into your emails, sharing in other places of engagement? Think about how you can pull your other areas like blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even company initiatives into the light. Seeing some consumer brands I know share things about work they are doing with environmental issues, social issues, and employee programs often makes me feel closer to the brand or campaign.

Listening
Your metrics are your best resource. Are you constantly looking and evaluating what is working? Do you make sure to segment and produce content/offers that are what your subscribers are looking to you for? Thinking about email successes and failures is what allows us all to do better. Listen to your results and use those results to make informed decisions on your next outreach. On side note to listening, here is a pet peeve of mine: Are you sending from an email address that uses “noreply@”, “companyname@”, or something else that is either impersonal or an address that does not encourage feedback? When sending email, the last thing you want to do is close down that avenue for feedback. Test using an address like “feedback@” or “talktous@” and see how that works. Don’t fear the results and added work, because you never know what you might learn.

Patience
Every campaign will not be a home run. Everything you send out is not going to work  as planned. Taking the approach of learning from each campaign, this is where testing comes into play. You should be testing at least one variable on each campaign. If you are nervous about it, try simple things like multiple offers, 2 subject lines, or a change to an image placement, call to action or button color. Simple tests can reveal more than you expect and simple tests allow you to set the pace of your own learning.

Understanding
If you can not figure out how to use email effectively or need help with best practices, ask for help or search out those that can make sense of it. Make an effort to continually educate yourself and those you work with. If you are stuck doing the same old things because that is your comfort zone, get out of the zone. You are surrounded by hundreds of people at companies and agencies that have experience you can lean on. It is not a scary thing. We all learn new things every day. Personally, that is one of the reasons I am so excited to wake up and go to work each day. I learn not only from my clients, my industry peers and my team, but also from others I simply watch and pick up new techniques. Be an eternal student and seek a teacher if you need one.

These are some simple, hopefully straightforward thoughts that you can take and implement into your programs. Realize that none of us are experts but some of us have more experience than others. I will be the first to go on record that if it were not from doing, learning, listening, reading, interacting and asking that I would never have had the experiences that have grown my knowledge. I am not an expert; I just play one on TV.

The first in the top right hand corner of the site asks for 9 fields, some check boxes and some opt in frequencies. It also allows you the ability to create a user ID and password for the site. I was not sure exactly why I needed a U/P but maybe it is to comment and interact. Odd for a news site to require this instead of just using comment forms. The other strange thing to me was that ALL fields were required to sign up for the newsletter in this form (in small type at the top) yet there were not any required indicators next to the fields. Little bit of a disconnect to me if someone misses it and I am requiring it for opt in.

The first two opt in boxes were default checked but yet the third which opts you in to 3rd party emails was not. This was a good thing as I hate it when they check that last box. Sure it might work for their partner programs but many people do not realize that it was checked until they start getting emails that they did not expect. Checking that box leads to a bad user experience in the short and long term and from past programs I have worked on show a high general opt out rate not just for those programs but from all opt in. And who wants to lose people due to your aggressive pre-checked box?

The second form towards the bottom of the site is the standard enter your email address opt in that I think suits this site more and give the experience. The benefit of this type of form is that you can get the opt in, then take them to a next page where you can progressive profile the user and ask for preferences and any other information that might help you with the email marketing/daily newsletter experience. This is my preference to engagement as if they do not give you more, you still have a path to start down with learning and asking as time goes by.

What was a great thing to find was their use of other methods to engage with them next to the opt in at the bottom of the site. This being iPhone, Facebook, Twitter, iGoogle and Blackberry – and once again email. nice use of the area to let people make decisions of where they want to interact with the Beast during the day.

They failed my final test of the Thanks, Confirmation email, and Welcome email. Such a missed opportunity to start a dialogue, set expectations and expose them to areas/features of the site that they might not have found/explored yet. Even a Thank you page was not provided where they could have immediately engaged me with news, features or something special to new subscribers.

So even with an email newsletter I look forward to getting each AM during the week I feel that there are still some things that they could be doing to make the overall experience better and help to lift the engagement metrics of their email marketing programs.

Are you making sure to check out your site to see if you have the above? Should be on your short list this month.

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.

The results are that the emails are working inline with the results they would expect from traditional vertical formats. I am sure that they will be testing more and mixing up the two formats based on opens, clicks and conversions (sales). This is good news to me as we often try new things like this and the client reactions are mixed at the approach. It is not for everyone and there has to be a good reason for using the wide format.

So why would they try the wide format?

Have you ever visited their site? If you have not you should as it might all make sense. The entire shopping experience scrolls from left to right, just like you would do with a wide email format. Interesting, huh? So those people that opt in and shop from AF would be accustomed to viewing an email in the same manner, even though traditionally we don’t often get emails that scroll left to right. So the subscribers have already been conditioned for this email format.

Now in the 12 that I received, I noticed that widths were different in some cases. Why is this important to note? Well many of them were built too wide for Outlook, which I would assume could make up a significant percentage of the subscriber base. We have learned from creating wide emails that Outlook has some width conditions that fail if the creative is over 2200 pixels wide. Good thing to know if you want to ever experiment and test this layout format, right? Well looks like they learned after a few tests as the size started to standardize at or around 2200 pixels. In the future it is even better to err on the side of caution (a little under 2200 px)  just in case you have some odd backgrounds or padding associated with your email delivery system.

I have included some examples of some of the tests that I have seen from them. Also included are two others we’ve created and used for a client in a medium that is all about changing traditional behavior.

So you know, it all makes sense when to build on these approaches to testing. Doing something different does not always mean radical but rather unexpected. The inbox is filled with expected so look to test something in your industry vertical that might get you some attention.

Go forth and mix it up, measure, and learn. Testing does not kill your results, resting on your success does.

UPDATE: Make that a Baker’s Dozen (13) now for AF. Another one arrived this AM in the WIDE style. And it was was 2250X750 Pixels. Little too wide for all email clients.

See it here.