The Email Wars

Ok the article title was meant to entice you, but isn’t that what subject lines are all about? At the end of this month we are happy to be spending 3 days in San Diego at the Online Marketing Summit February 22-24th. While there, besides speaking on one panel and doing one stand alone educational session, we will also be running a one on one email audit table where you can sign up and have one of our email strategy team review your situation, campaign, subscription center, welcome stream or overall plan and get our thoughts on how you might improve it.

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.

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.

If you missed the most thrilling show in town last week in Miami at the EEC 2010 Conference, don’t fret I made sure to video them so that you can see how it went down. Three agencies took the stage to show off their best efforts at email stardom, redesigning three emails chosen by fellow Email Evolution Conference attendees. Watch as each agency busted out their best moves and unveiled their email redesigns. Watch as the votes were tallied by a live text vote for each round’s winner. Lisa Harmon from Smith-Harmon praised and critiqued the contenders, plus she dished out her own email diva tips. When all is said and done, though, the winner is chosen.

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

Yes there is a little tongue in cheek here as I wanted to share with you the opt in process from Swell, an online clothing retailer. I have followed them for a while as they are a very frequent mailer. To me it feels like they send me an email 5 days a week, it may be less but that is my perception. Now is that too much? Not really as every email I get from them is uniquely designed and they present options that are typically relevant. Now I have only purchased from them a few times since opting in so I would not think that they have much merchandising or behavioral data on me besides the fact that I always read and often click. That might be enough for them to do a good job targeting OR it might be that I am in the target demo based on lifestyle and location. Either way they are doing a better job than some of their competitors in this retail space.

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.

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It is here. You know it, I know and your customers know it. So what does mobile mean to email marketers? I am sure you have some thoughts as to your own campaigns seeing them on your iPhone, gPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, or yes (gasp) Palm Treo – but I wanted to take some time the past 2 weeks to look at some examples, test some ideas and look at some things that we can all use to do better.

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.

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With many of you and other brands embracing using social icons in their emails I thought it would be a good time to talk about the ideas and implementation a little. First, there is not ONE way to approach and execute this concept. It is the wild west right now in how and what works best so I would advise you to think about some of the below scenarios and see what might work best for you.

One: Follow/Friend/Fan Me. So really do we need to be friends or fans? An interesting article was written in Fast Company the other day on the topic of “I don’t want to be friends with my butter”. Read it here. I could not agree more with this stance as social media is not for everyone or every brand when it comes to a facebook fan page. What you really need to think about is similar to everything you know about email marketing; is it relevant, what is the frequency and why would I want to opt in. The caveat is that it needs to drive some type of brand value, loyalty or (yes it is an ugly word but it works) rewarding. Some people know that I have a personal issue with the words friend, follow or fan. They are incredibly egotistical and cult like words that really are not what this is all about. It is about connection, impact and value. I know we did not create the words but I think you should think about how you use them in your copy. Look to find other words that are more relevant and meaningful. The good news I have seen is only 30% of major brands have gone the route of a fan page thus far. This tells me that some people are thinking about it.

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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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I know I have said it a million times in speeches, articles and in person but telling someone thanks is one of the best things that you can ever do for your email campaigns. Now I don’t mean just at the sign up, like “Thanks for signing up for OUR email newsletter” but really saying thank you and giving them something use, do or enjoy.

I wanted to point out a few recent favorite examples to give you a better idea of a retailer that is excelling at not only saying thank you but showing it as well.

Urban Outfitters not only gives you a straight forward and dead simple way to opt in, but they also make sure to ask more information about you after the opt in. Smart. Less road blocks more happy subscribers and list growth. Also while you are thanking them for signing up you are also more likely to get the next bits of info from them that are relevant while they are engaged. Knowing that mobile and TEXT is very important to their marketing mix as well as what their target demo uses frequently and is open too, asking for a mobile is a great idea here. Other great features they include is asking about your social network affiliation (who knows what’s next here) as well as your online Vs offline shopping.

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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.

I have long been a subscriber to Dell emails. Not sure exactly why as I am an Apple user, but I assume it is for market intelligence with some of the clients I work with. This past week as I as scanning my inbox I found it a little surprising as a I scrolled down to the bottom of the Dell emails and found offers for things having nothing to do with Dell or computers.

What I was presented with was FTD, Blue Nile and Brooks Brothers in the footer. Seemed odd to me that a company focusing on holiday sales was presenting non brand merchandise to subscribers. Now I cannot say it is a bad thing to do, but it struck me as odd. It made me wonder if Dell had hit a low point in sales of PCs that it needed to increase its revenues by selling flowers, jewelry and dress shirts. Or could it be a good way to use co-branded or partnership emails that I have not seen used by them before. I would assume that there is either a distribution partnership/trade in place OR there is a acquisition or revenue sharing agreement in place. (more…)

I have a confession to make. I have let something I used to care about die. Yes my attention to the new new thing, the shiny thing, the next thing made me forget and neglect one of my longest life partners on this mad ride we call the internet. Now it was not something I was doing on purpose, we just grew apart over time. I found corporate accounts, gmail and social tools to pull my attention in more often and in less locations. Hell I had changed my preferences so many times I just had to simplify. I needed more but needed to check less places.

It was love at first site. Email, an inbox, communications, connections, wild mind blowing stuff…. well even today email still intrigues me. So many others jump from tech to tech, thing to thing, but one thing stays a constant not matter what you throw at it.

You (MSN/Hotmail) were my first and I am not sure why I keep you around as we have grown so apart and our friends all know where to find us at other places. Maybe it was just convenience and old habits. Maybe it was just time and attention.

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Any good relationship needs a foundation that can be built upon. Here are some elements that will help you build a strong email program.

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.
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When it comes to relationships, is your goal to continually hunt for new ones, or to make the ones you have into long term commitments?

Most marketers are caught in the eternal struggle to gain more opt in records, having no plan on how what happens next aside from “let’s email them.” Marketing, not just email marketing, needs to have a plan for how to grow relationships once they have started. If you can think about next week / next month / next year, you can nurture healthy relationships and get out of the grow-my-list game.

One of the challenges I continue to see is most interactive marketers not beginning the thought process around where their relationships are going. They live in the now and rarely think about one month, let alone one year, from now. The better you are at listening, reviewing and making plans, the better health your relationships will be in the long term.

Prospects enter into new relationships online with the hope that they will get, clearly communicated to them, something valuable and beneficial. We can use a real life relationship metaphor to talk about this, as it sometimes places it into an easier to understand flow for most.

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Why would you want to build a contact management preference center for your website? You already have lead capture in place. You are getting 2-5 data points besides email address for every prospect. For your newsletter opt-in forms, you are getting the necessary subscriber email address. This is all good right? You have what you need to start communicating with people, according to your marketing plan. When someone above you says drop another email on the list and drive some sales, you are all ready to lock and load. Your messages simply drop the payload on everyone on your list in hopes that a good percentage of them are interested in something you have to say or sell. “Spray and Pray.” Perfect plan, right?… you have done your job.

Or have you?

If you are the one in charge of email marketing efforts for your company and this is how you approach email marketing, then maybe it is time you start thinking about how you are going to start getting tactical for the holiday season and beyond.

Why a preference center?

Besides simply their email address that you already have in your database, what information would be more important for you to know about someone in order to have a relevant discussion?

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Review time is in the air, and budget planning is on the minds of marketers everywhere. This is also the time that many choose to review their current email marketing platform or provider. Sept-Oct-Nov is the time we get an annual barrage of phone calls from people that are reviewing most of the top email service providers out there, looking for a better fit or a better deal. I hear a host of different reasons and questions; here are some of the most common:

Q: “We are looking for more features, do you have more than our current provider?”

A: “Do you use the current features of X provider? No? So, why do you want more?

“We have seen some other people doing great work out there and noticed that they work with you.”

“I am really concerned about our deliverability.”

“My current provider never helps me be better.”

“I am looking to send more and spend less.”

“We always audit this time of year, typically via RFP, but have been with the same provider for 4 plus years. Our corporation mandates an annual review.”

Q: “How can we get the data we need?”

A: “Do you have a plan to use it if you get it?”

I can play devil’s advocate on about anything out there, but what is really comes down to is that everyone is always looking for something bigger, better, sexier, and different. Not only that, but in many cases they expect it to be cheaper.

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