The Email Wars

The other week Anna Yeaman at StyleCampaign put forth an idea and backed it up with a test on the concept of the uses of black and white as a background in an email and how it performs. Her test has been on my mind making me take a closer look at not only our work but of other campaigns I see since. In paying closer attention to how some people have used these colors to make their email campaigns not only look better, but become more usable.

Now the colors black and white are stylish colors. They are both elegant colors that can really make a campaign stand out. She shared the results how used alone they made a big difference in test but also took it a little farther showing how they can work together. Now I like her use of the black frame on the white background, but taking a simple look at them again I really wanted to see how some other programs were using them and how they made me feel.

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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 called Email Leaders Forum 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.

Email Marketing – Auditing your Email Workflow

Learn how to engage your target audience through effective and branded emails. The experts at eROI will help you audit your email workflow from creative to deliverability and show how you can turn a dud into a success.

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.

I found an email from Banana Republic very interesting this AM. I am not sure how many people might have caught it but it was a complete play on something not being right. As a matter of fact the email was “broken”. Now I did not catch it at first myself in my first skim as the size was on par with every other email they send. I thought something was out of whack but had to go back and look at it harder. Now did the typical subscriber notice that something was afoot? Did they notice and take action to find out more?

But what was it? The email itself was exactly the same size as all of their other ones. I had to actually hold them side by side to make sure as the image hat tip to the wide email format – sideways scrolling- makes you think it would continue on. I dove deeper into the image mapping and everything was going to the right places, so I wonder what percentage of the subscriber base actually found that arrow to the right and used it to go to the landing page.

Note that it is a interesting tactic to act as if something might have gone wrong, was cut off, or that more is hiding past the email itself. But I would love to know if people where actually drawn to the arrow.

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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

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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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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There have been some great email makeovers recently. They always grab my attention as I think we become so conditioned to emails that rarely adapt or change that we actually turn our response mechanisms off to them. So some new creative takes me by surprise in a good way.

I wanted to share the changes that Hotel Indigo recently took and talk through how they might help them drive more conversion.

The prior emails were always fun and focus on a Haiku but the real estate was poorly used above the fold to really give people they want in exposing them to hotel locations and deals to make some impulse reservation planning. When people are in market they want to be provided with visual choices and not simply a photo of one location that might not be relevant.

There was good placement of the 1-800 number which I always find to be good with travel as people still like to call and talk to someone when they are making a reservation at a new location. But with all the locations listed in a simple text menu there is not phsycological connection to the physical place itself. Call me old fashioned but I like to see where I might lay my head down at night. Photos with travel and hotel email do more for me. With other travel (like airlines and destination travel) emails seeing a city shot might work, but when dealing with hotels lets share some of the hotel itself.

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I have been seeing a resurgence in the use of animated gifs in email campaigns. In the past they have been an eye sore, but this past week I was surprised when one in my iPhone made me stop, pause, and actually pay attention. Now it was a really simple method but got me thinking about how we could use them more (and the fact that they rendered on my mobile device).

But creating action in an email does in fact help sometimes. See Style Campaigns post on it from yesterday.

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I have shared many campaigns that always wow me when they turn the email from vertical (as we all normally expect) to horizontal (scrolling right to left). We have used (at eROI) this approach a few times with client campaigns and had great success. But a few weeks back I wanted to test one vs the other to a random segment of a client list.

Now understand that this was a test. Only a test. We wanted to see if we tried the same creative in a different inbox presentation if it made a significant difference to the overall campaign metrics. Same time of day, same offer, same imagery. Controlled.

Well I wanted to share with you two versions of this campaign and before releasing the results with you to see if you have any ideas on how they performed. I know many of you will have some thoughts about it and hope to hear your hypothesis about the outcome.

You can click on each image to see them in a larger format.

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I’ll be the first to admit that it has been years since I “woke up with the King” but I am constantly impressed with the constant slew of campaigns radiating from the Big Guy in the robe and crown (king of like the eROI Crown don’t you think). This Angry Gram was first sent to me by one of the team – hope he was just sharing and not really ANGRY (since this email he went o Belize for two weeks and I hope he has recharged his batteries).

But let’s take a look at this campaign from an email marketing standpoint.. cool?

The Email – yes this was the Angry Gram I got and it made me angry. Why? Why don’t brands or agencies learn that LONG SCARY URLS WITH TONS OF ALPHA NUMERIC CHARACTERS are not friendly. Mask those in copy – create a tiny URL like KNG.me or BK.me – something rather than that. But then I am am email marketing snob right?

They actually tell me I can opt out from ANY other emails – so if other friends find this site to… hypothetically these emails will never reach me. Does that kill the viral effect/impact? Sure but it also is a great practice to keep people from really getting angry or reporting a spam complaint.

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We are in the midst of another massive shift in the inbox. It is not the inbox itself, but where the inbox lives during the average day of business communication or consumer marketing outreach. Today, it should be known and understood that people are checking email everywhere and at all times, looking on iPhones, Blackberry, Treo, Windows Mobile and maybe even devices we don’t rank as the top mobile platforms yet. So I wanted to put the thought out to you….

Should you care?

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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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Hotels: Long the source of good and bad experiences, wild nights, hallway yellers, desires to not get up as early as you normally do and just lay in bed a little while longer… places of things that you share.

So why is this relevant? Well we have long seen online retailers focus on driving customer reviews and sourcing their community to rate products they have bought – but pulling it out into a hotel chain newsletter is a great idea. Sure travel aggregators like Travelocity have done it for a while, but rarely do I notice hotel chains doing it. (would love to see car rental companies do it by airport code)

But Tablet Hotels had recently added Guest Reviews next to the view details text call to action. One might think that you would be more prone to asking them to book now OR make a reservation – but the fact is that they are giving their travelers the ability to influence a booking. Great idea.

Also not that when they are introducing their new properties they are taking a different approach to those and leading with price and rates as opposed to starting rate and offers/value prop. I think not using the review on new properties is a safe approach as when opening anything new you need to get your sea legs under you before you have everyone firing on all cylinders. Give them some time to get a collection of Guest Reviews before you open them up to lead with in your email campaigns.

This brings into question if you did a program like this would you be transparent and allow everything to go free on these reviews (answering publicly those that are bad and making amends)? I put this out there as I would say yes but I can see legal and the (more…)

Sure you have heard this once or twice, heck you might have even used the line yourself. But what I am so encouraged by is seeing Abercrombie & Fitch continue with a strong mix of expected, long and WIDE emails entering into this retail season. We have seen close to 16 in the past weeks and see no sign of ending, to me this means that it is working with their email subscriber base. That for me is very exciting as I am a BIG fan of the WIDE email. Now I don’t want everyone to be jumping on the WIDE band wagon (sorry for the TUESDAY IS THE BEST DAY TO SEND EMAIL CAMPAIGNS – guys it is different across lists, industries, and many other factors), but I am hoping to see a few more companies give some new ideas a try in the inbox.

One other thing it looks like is that they are learning what is working when trying these formats out. I have seen PLUS 2700 pixel wide formats (too big for Outlook) and now this one is 1550 by 700 pixels. To me that is a good sweet spot to test. The range of 1700 to 2200 pixels is kind of a good place to try and still have some good controls in place.

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