Many people are promoting social sharing today in their systems, but before you go down the path for a feature you should give it a try. With developing some ideas on how to place it, where to place it, and what your goals are of using it you can get started fairly quick. Don’t over think it. It is a test. But do have some clear goals or hypothesis in mind to be watching. It is really easy to test and learn how it works for you.

I would suggest starting at the KEY point in the email. Is is a sale, deal, new article, study, event, webinar… what is it. Start by testing the main focus of the email. Give it some time to see how it works. If you are using social sharing through other means like placing links into these ecosystems manually, make sure that you are using different links in order to track them as separate efforts.

Here are the simple codes to use:

Facebook Share Button Code

Here is the Facebook share code, which can also be found at http://www.facebook.com/share_partners.php/.

<script type="text/javascript">
     function fbs_click() {
	u=location.href;
	t=document.title;
	window.open('http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(u)+'&t='+encodeURIComponent(t),'sharer','toolbar=0,status=0,width=626,height=436');
	return false;
     }
</script>
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=LINK_GOES_HERE" onclick="return fbs_click()" target="_blank">
    <img src="ADD_IMAGE_URL_HERE" alt="Share on Facebook" />
</a>

Twitter Share Button Code

Here is the Twitter share code:

<a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Currently reading: LINK_GOES_HERE" title="Click to share this post on Twitter">
    <img src="ADD_IMAGE_URL_HERE" alt="Share on Twitter" />
</a>

LinkedIn Share Button Code

Here is the LinkedIn share code, which can also be found at http://developer.linkedin.com/docs/DOC-1075.

<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url={articleUrl}&title={articleTitle}&summary={articleSummary}&source={articleSource}" target="_blank">
    <img src="ADD_IMAGE_URL_HERE" />
</a>

Now your challenge is to test some of your content specific (deals, articles, events) in each newsletter or email campaigns. Don’t try to overshare and give everything in the email the ability – but selective choose 1-3 areas depending on the campaign and test them. These can be used in your emails as well as used on landing pages associated with the campaigns as well.

Start simple, refine and expand.

One other thing I would suggest is to use a URL shortening service like Bit.ly or Ar.gy to track how they are used and spread across the web. Use a different one for each of the above links and medias (LI/FB/TW).

Now go get em.

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

Marketing online is taking a turn to marketing automation. There is not way using past techniques that we can always be there to know when someone is ready for A or B to happen. But using the new systems of marketing automation we are finally gaining ground to creating trigger based campaigns on actions, behavior and timing. It is something that has been a long time coming. I hope you are ready to take the bull by the horns and make the leap out of the chutes.

What are triggers in email marketing? Well they can be all of the following and more. Depending on what you are able to do I suggest you review these and saddle up with one or all of them.

1. Time based triggers. I typically refer to these as customer lifecycle. They can be in the welcome emails, thank you emails, and sales prospecting emails. When someone comes to your site and does something you can actually start a clock that sends out emails based upon a “day plus X” factor. Using time based triggers you can continue your conversations based on the path you want to take someone down. Now the trick with time based email campaigns is that you need to always be reviewing and adjusting them. Just because you want people in the first 30 days to see X/Y does not mean that the timing always lines up with the actions. If you are using time based campaigns from a subscription you should be constantly fine tuning the spread on the days to find the optimum times. There is not a magic formula I can give you as every one is different. But I have some ideas. I like to work in multiples of 3’s personally. By using a 3 day spread you can move them back and forth allowing the frequency to have enough room so as to not overwhelm your subscribers with so many emails that they unsubscribe faster than you can saddle up your horse. The goal is to hitch your wagon to the right team so that they can all pull together moving the subscriber down the golden road to engagementville.

2. Event Based Triggers. Someone comes to your site and because you are a cowpoke that has saddled up some automation magic you can actually reach out to them based on what they have viewed. Imagine someone comes to your site, looks at your services and does not do anything. If you have the systems in place you can actually have some flows set up that trigger a re-engagement email that gives them information based on those events or pages that they just looked at. The big benefit here is that you are providing content that is focused at the “event” or moment of what they were interested in. The trick here is not to come our of the chutes too fast. If you hit them immediately it can come off as a little big brother. Give event based triggers some time. Maybe an hour to a day. Longer than that risks them moving past the event in their minds and may not connect based upon what occurred.

3. Behavior Based Triggers. Lets say you came into an ecommerce site, looked at a shirt and a hat, compared some features, or read some product reviews. Armed with this knowledge you could send an email next that uses that product(s) placed in the email. Even staying simple like colors or categories can make an impact on tying relevant content to the campaign.

4. Conversion Based Triggers. Similar to a event, conversions can be used based on goals set up in your analytics flows. Using a goal page to tie the visit to the subscriber you can start a series of emails based on the goal or conversion. Think about how a B2B company could use it for a white paper download. Now of course you are going to trigger the download email and thank you, but what about taking a delayed approach for 3-7 days later to ask them to review, rank or share a few other relevant studies with others they know. By using goal based results you can continue to provide focused content to that subscriber.

5. Transactional Based Triggers. One of my personal favorites around email. Often these emails are light simply providing the transactional info from a sale. Now when you add in other variables like asking for a review, upselling like products, or even giving them an offer on their next purchase you are building a solid customer relationship. Other things that we see work well with these triggers are customer surveys 10-30 days after purchase to ask them how the product is working for them. Did it meet expectations? Would they recommend it to someone else? Do they have any feedback for you? Instead of simply focusing on the sale, focus on how to build that relationship and open up the opportunities to continue to connect in a meaningful way. People that purchase can be the greatest source of telling someone else about your product. These are the ones you want to keep engaged as it is easier to keep a happy customer as a repeat customer than it is to continue to always seek out the next customer.

We could go down the path to create more ideas around triggers, but cowboy these are some good places to start. If you can be good at these five ideas you can develop a strong trigger based email marketing and marketing automation engine that will take you to the next level.

The trick here with any of these is to not get stuck in mindset of once it is live it is done. These types of emails need to be continuously monitored, measured and changed up. If you get into the rut of just letting it go, eventually the impact will wear off.

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?

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.

In looking at the Community site we built for Wacom (now 3 generations/versions in) for PenScrappers we made sure it was part of the email template in a way that stood out but did not steal the attention of the goals of getting started and exploring content. It is a light way to include it in the flow of the email and actually becomes a nice way to leave it as an expected element in future emails.

When working with Banfield they wanted to use email to introduce their subscribers to what they were doing in three social media channels. Now instead of just saying follow us/friend us they choose to add some value around what they were doing in these channels and showing a little of each in a way that reveals what is going on while leaving a little bit behind the curtain to help to engage the click. When you put some context and show what they might be interested in adding to the social tools their subscribers were already using, they actually help to build value and a story as to why it might be something or somewhere they would want to engage. People LOVE their pets and giving content that helps them with these relationships they cherish helps to solidify the approach.

With a new branded entertainment game show/interactive game we built for Starlicious this year (now don’t go losing yourself for the next 2 hours catching up with celebrity gossip and playing for prizes) we used a combination of the survey after we published a majority of the shows to then engage with the social channels. When introducing a new brand/property it is important to first build the relationship before asking them to take some steps that might not make sense. If you are to simply tell people to jump in and engage in these social channels without proving the value of your content you simply create a reason for churn. And the goal is not a constant battle for new points of engagement, but prolonged engagement that supports the building/continuing of relationships.

We also did something a little different by introducing one of their brand partners, Gain, as the channel for the Facebook relationship, as they have commitment to the channel and content to support it. Why bit off more than you can chew? It is better to focus on building and supporting one than to try to take on everything. Being fortunate to have a partner to not only promote but tie in and support benefits everyone with this method/approach.

So how are you tackling your company’s approach to integration, introduction, and value positioning by using email to support your social programs. There are many ways to do it, and I am not saying that we always do it right, but hopefully these are three examples that might help you think about how it might work for you and your email subscribers in a positive way. Happy Tweeting.

We have had the pleasure of working with OK! Magazine  and a host of other magazine publishers and I wanted to share with you how some of them our email marketing automation engines to gather content, produce a newsletter and get it out to their subscriber bases in record time.

Knowing from years of writing, producing and executing on email marketing newsletters and campaigns, we developed a platform extension a few years back that helped us to focus on the content production. After all the creation of the content is often the thing that holds back a newsletter or campaign from getting out the door on time. When you can place your energy on your job in publishing of updating the content so that you are the first to publish and not worry about the curation of the content in order to produce the email you can have more time to do your job.

We went to the drawing board a few years back with first RSS and then a Wordpress plugin that allowed content producers and publishers to continue to spend their time writing and curating on their sites, blogs and web properties while our engines grabbed the content, arranged it, moved it into custom email layouts and distributed it automatically to their subscriber lists. Sounds easy right and a no brainer. But it took a little work to get it right.

Content always has formatting issues and images sometimes blow up in emails, so taking the time to make sure that these engines could grab and format HTML and text versions (and now even mobile versions) took a little testing and fine tuning. We put all the work on our shoulders so that clients that work with us need not to worry about it. These two engines can effortlessly grab content from custom feeds, regular RSS feeds, or even from posts and assets tagged in the Wordpress engine to build beautiful and timely communications.

We have our team working on some new engines that you might see in the coming months that will add even more integration with other platforms, CRM systems, social media platforms, ecommerce engines and more. So keep your eyes out if you are looking out for ways to make your job easier and the email you send out work for you and your subscribers instead of you or your team working to produce them.

Leading with the subject line to “follow them online!” was my first pointer to pause and wonder if this email I was reading was not online but I had printed it off or seen it on a bus.

When I see an email like this I think:

Social Media – Check

YouTube – Check

Facebook – Check

Twitter – Check

Email about Social media – Check

I don’t think strategy and a well planned campaign. I think OK we got social media cooking, we should drop an email out there to let people know.

Now that was what the check list looked like to me with SMART’s approach with this email. Here are some quick and easy take aways for using social media in email – and more importantly if you use email to LAUNCH social media how to approach it.

1. SHOW the icons we all understand – use the facebook, youtube and twitter (or other social network) icons. Don’t try to rely on simple text links buried in the content. This is a show not tell media. Do not make your own icons if they end up looking NOT like the ones we all recognize and process quickly. If your goal is to get people to use them then use the ones we all know.

2. Use some of the content you have been “busy” creating in the email to give me a sense of what I might have been missing. Tell me how busy you have been at it is of little to no value to a susbcriber.

3. Use email for what it is, a visual medium to inspire and communicate. Now I know that some people will not agree with my thoughts here but this example of a TEXT ONLY email does nothing to convey any importance or value from taking action on these. Do I really need to be “friends” with a car that I don’t even own? I can see how it might resonate with people that are owners of this brand, but for those of us that aren’t – give us something inspiring to WANT to add you to my social media whirlpool.

Social media, like email, is about engagement. And this email fails to engage me at all and more importantly left me thinking that they weren’t too SMART after all.

I love living in the future. Who would have ever thought that things we saw on TV as kids would be here today and in our lives. I know it makes me feel and sound old, but this new device is truly inspiring. Now I have heard some complaints about it, but the funniest one to me so far (that I have heard on multiple occasions) is how heavy it is! Guys, it weighs a pound and a half… is that too heavy for a TV/ book/ magazine/ library/ jukebox/ photo gallery/ email inbox/ web browser/ gaming machine? If it is too heavy – or heavier than you expected – get a 2 pound weight and do some reps or curl that 20 oz coffee mug a few more times a day.

And while I am at it… this post was sent from the future.

I thought it might be interesting (since this post is about reading on the iPad) that I should write (with one fast finger) from mine. Now being that the keyboard is different (do not read “bad” here), it has taken a little longer to make as many typos and grammatically incorrect sentences as I typically do, but give me time and I will be knocking out crap faster than ever and from odder locations.

These thoughts are based on about two weeks on it, and it has been one heck of a two-week stretch, that I only have a few finds thus far. And to preset expectations for this post, I would like to say that more will be found with time and testing.

So, will this be a game changer? Well, if you are talking about video games then yes, just got done running a few laps of Asphalt 5, but this is going to be a device that slowly shifts in how we use it. Regarding email I am not overly convinced it is going to be a positive or a negative yet. It has a little of both.

1. Fewer than 1 million sold so far (maybe more by the time you read this). Now I am sure it will grow, but as an early adopter myself I do not find myself reaching for it more than I do my iPad Foldable XXL(i.e. Laptop) or iPad Nano (i.e. iPhone). Amazingly those two devices are still my primary ways to engage, interact, and work. I expect as more understanding, openness to outside business software, and use grows we will see it make a larger impact. But how? I am not sure yet. 700K were sold out of the gates which is impressive but still not accounting for much of a metric surge in analytics with sites and email clients.

I think that once we see 3G roll out in the coming weeks we might see even more people that were holding out move to acquire a device. I have wifi wherever I go so it really makes 3G a non-factor. I assume that the story will be the same for many that do not venture to places without connections. PS it is ok NOT to have an internet connection or device from time to time; you will not die. Trust me, I have experimented with being disconnected, and I survived. It was a lot like that TV show Lost but with less black smoke monsters and more mai tais.

2. The inbox is sexy. Why? Well it is so big. Yes, size does matter when you are presenting compelling creative. The portrait and landscape modes in the native email clients (which allows you to pull in about ANY email ISP or Corp system) really give you the room to breathe and let your designs run wild.

One the best parts of the email (for now, as I have a feeling we might see some “app” monetization possible with iAds here in the future) is that it has little interference and is simple. It allows you to get the message.

Simple is better sometimes, right?

3. You can actually click and buy without a mobile version. Now you can actually drive sales more easily than in a 320X240 inch screen. Hard to windowshop through a peephole. The iPad allows for a solid ecommerce, form, and engagement experience.

Imagine actually being presented with a shopping or ecom experience. Having a device that allows you to easily check out might trump “mobile” ecom and help drive more sales with less delay between the cart and the checkout.

4. Mobile does not mean “on the go”. Now although we are seeing heavy use from travelers so far, this device is tethered (at present) to wifi and the majority of time I see it in use is by people sitting and really engaging with it. I am sure 3G will change it a little, but the size of the device makes it very different from a mobile phone  and more in line with how we see people using Netbooks. Don’t plan on seeing me anytime soon reading mine while driving (it’s illegal first of all); it is a device for a time and place. I have seen more people using them infront of a TV, in a reading chair, on the bus, in bed, etc. and not being “mobile.” I think we need to redefine “mobile” as either “untethered” or as a type of device.

5. ISPs are making it work. Now it looks like a majority of the main ISPs are already rolling out a iPad version of their web based email clients to work natively in the iPad. This is good news as they want to make sure their customers are happy with the inbox experience no matter what device they access it on.

6. So many ways to view – the inbox has about 4 viewing options based on orientation. So many things to consider and design for will present a challenge to us marketers. But realize that this device makes it really easy to just turn the object to re-arrage the layout. 1/2 of the challenge is going to be on the user.

7. Content providers, publishers, publications and people are going to “get it.” That’s right. It is going to be understood better as time goes on. Now it is odd to me to say that as intuitive of a device that it is. It is dead simple, everyone knows how to use it when they pick it up, but there is a learning curve as to how we are going to use it as consumers and marketers. The best things we can do now is (ready for this) Test, Innovate, Lead, Learn and Repeat.

So what do you think about it? Will it impact your online marketing, your email campaigns, rendering, or even how your social integrates? I bet it will impact them all in beneficial ways, yet only time will tell.

But what caught me the past few weeks was seeing two leaders in social media (AddThis and Twitter) fail to use it at all in their most recent email newsletters. Odd I thought as they are witnessing as a use case marketers embracing it everywhere and using their platforms and tools why would they not be implementing it themselves?

Are we all just fools for thinking (with proof) that adding social media integration to email is the right thing to do? Have we all simply just followed each other down the social media rabbit hole? Or did the people in charge of email marketing in these two referenced companies simply forget or not understand how to use email marketing with a 1-2 punch of social sharing?

Rest assured that I feel it is the latter. The fact that they did not use it in their own email campaigns simply shows me that maybe they might have not taken the time to understand how email marketing works as a social driver. But Twitter WHY the text only email and the Unfriendly (bulkr) in the sending email address? Seems you guys are all about connections and the brand attributes you have created and odd you choose not to use them in an email campaign. I also found it as quite a surprise that they also choose not to follow Can Spam compliance by leaving a physical mailing address off the email as well. Is the location of the office top secret? (According to Google it is here – which says it is top secret from Street View) Do they run outside of compliance with the Act? I am happy to drop by and give a 30 minute crash course on the basics if they would like – and in trade they cold give me 30 minutes of their knowledge.

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and look for them using it next time around. I would wager that someone there noted it as well and they will correct it. But I could be over zealous and wrong with this thought… time will tell. Or do they know something more than we know as email marketers?

Have you or are you using it in combination with your email marketing? Is it working for you? Love to hear from you and see any examples and results you might want to share.

Leading with the subject line “The exclusively limited Be Stupid t-shirts (hesitate and you are lost).” Now bad grammar aside it was an interesting way to build a subject line. Driving demand and curiosity at the same time. Driving into the body it was interesting to see how they used the stike outs in the copy header to focus on PANIC. The “URGENT MESSAGE” only added to the silliness.

There were all sorts of little copy areas (that were all image of course) that continued to add to the story while creating a Where’s Waldo-esque word search for me. They also used a hashtag in the top (twice) of #BESTSTUPIDTEES. Now the funny thing is that that hashtag must have been either not noticed or not worth using as in a search there was not a peep of them, even from the Diesel Twitter account. What this leads me to believe is that it was a test and a poor one at that. If they are using them in a campaign and not even taking the time to use them themselves then why use them at all? Social media in email FAIL? Well take it one step deeper and notice that they don’t even have a Twitter (688 followers + tons of tweets about the campaign but not one mention of the hashtag used in this email) or Facebook call out in this email as well.

Guys if you are going to experiement with social media in email actually present it as such or don’t use it at all. After a search around what looks like a HUGE campaign budget being spent on print and other places they have totally neglected how social could have made this viral and larger in a very easy way. They even have a microsite dedicated to it with the smallest social icon set in the bottom footer below all the action. Foolish? Or are they just not ready?

In the end it was an entertaining campaign that ended up showing me how large brands are still missing the boat when it comes to understanding the web and social media as a whole.

Other than that, creative idea – poor execution.