The Email Wars

“Friend”, “Fan”, “Follower”, “Like”

What impact do these new notions have on your customer and subscriber base? Are these forms of ratings, measurement, a path to engagement? Or a just a new way to passive engagement?

Over the past 12 months we have been witness to the sweeping changes that social media has brought to email marketing. Eight months ago I could count on my hands how many companies were adding social media links to their email programs… today I would need to get an abacus to keep count. But just as companies are getting up to speed with the add-on of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to their email headers and/or footers, early pioneers are now moving toward content level sharing WITHIN their emails. I will wager this trend will surge before the end of the year as marketers see that the propensity to “share” specific articles, promotions and news begins to jump the shark.

But what does it mean?

We are all gaga (and I don’t mean Lady Gaga here) right now over the way that consumers, customers, and subscribers are openly jumping in to help promote companies’ marketing efforts. Within email we can see this engagement jumping to the off-the-chart levels that we saw in the early days of “Send to a Friend”. These two “features” are actually grounded around the same concept, only the medium has changed. But what makes this medium different?

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I wrote this article for iMediaConnection the other week. Thought you might like it.

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

Are you running an email marketing rodeo or simply a one trick pony program? Many marketers run the latter as they look at the opt in to be a way to turn on the one way funnel similar to direct mail. Well this is not hitting a PO Box but hitting the inbox. The inbox is directly tied to this magical digital rodeo we call the internet which enables us to create actions based on actions. Have I lost you yet? I hope not.

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.

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In looking through some recent work our team has been busting out I wanted to share a few examples of how we have been using social media in email marketing. Now I know I have busted the chops of others lately, and I am sure that we have things to test and learn still as well, but here are three examples that I find to be well executed from our team.

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.

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What Lohan got arrested? Hilton in another bikini? Bret Micheals hospitalized? All this and more is content that many need faster than they can get it. And that is where clients of ours like OK! Magazine comes into to make sure that content is in your inbox to keep you in the know.

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.

Where Are You At with Your Email Marketing Evolution?

We have the pleasure of working with marketers of all levels. Some are just starting out in digital with years of experience in database marketing; some are brand new hires that are excited about doing the right thing and want to learn. The more established are busy segmenting, testing and evolving their email marketing programs. Remember that no one is an expert and no one can cheat evolution. In the Email Wars, there is no Captain America, and no injections of Super-Email Marketer Serum. That is one of the best things about marketing. In order to get wins, we are all in constant state of testing ideas, plans, reviewing past campaigns and finding new ways to do our jobs. Now, if that is not a good path for evolving then I do not know what is.

I remember this past February, at the Email Evolution Conference, when the audience was asked to raise their hands based on how long they have been email marketing. At first the air was full of hands with 1-3 years of experience. Then, the air started to clear as we moved to 3-5 years. As we reached 10 years, there were only a few hands in the air. Now, this wasn’t a case of people not sticking it out in digital marketing, but the fact was made readily apparent that we are still in a young medium (interactive/digital/online – or whatever you want to call it) that changes weekly. Heck, I wake up most days and am exposed to something new within minutes that I never considered before. What a great time to be alive and in marketing as long as you can digest the noise, sort the clutter, and make rational decisions.

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In going through some past portfolio work from the eROI team and clients I work with this weekend I came across a good example that made me think about how we approach layouts and content. Often we see people using a few tried and true layouts that might work for the simple means of getting content to fit in a form, but when you start to look at the content, the goals, and how we read you might find some more creative ways to use layouts to your advantage.

There is a movement due to the growth of the mobile device market to use more single column image driven layouts. While this a good strategy to simply think about how to best render on the device, does it fit the real understanding of what marketers really know about the devices? In a recent survey we are just completing, we learned that many of the marketers feel that mobile design and rendering is important, while the majority of them still do not know what percentage of their readers are actually checking content on mobile devices. We will all get there, but it will take time. So instead of designing for the what if, think about designing around the content and messaging you have to work with. Let the content drive the layout and design. If you are coding these using best practices then your versions (html, text, mobile, etc) will fall into place.

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Sitting here tonight I was pondering about what to write about and share with you. I took a spin through my collections of emails I save, I flipped through my Evernote account to see what else might have slipped my gaze, but in the end I realized that I was searching for one thing… the perfect email for me.

It got me to thinking about “what was right for me” and started me thinking about what if the only things that came into my inbox were things that I wanted… just right then. Now what does this mean? It is hard right as no one no matter how AWESOME they are in data mining, behavioral marketing, content targeting or even trigger based emails could ever hit it perfectly. I mean delivering exactly what I want right at the moment.

So it started me thinking that no matter how much we try we might never see a day where every email we get has the right time of day, day of week, offer, color scheme, buttons, subject line or even the images that I wanted in the moment. But that does not mean email is dead or does not work. Email is about marketing. And marketing is about learning about your audience enough that you can get close to not only delivering an offer that is compelling, but changing the way that we look or think about something.

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All hail the mobile future, as it is here now.

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.

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Prior to 2009, mobile sites weren’t a marketing necessity, unless you were trying to reach the youth market or early tech adopters. Obviously that’s changed…

According to Comscore.com’s recent reports on mobile device usage, the U.S market grew from 9.2 million users in 2008 to 23.8 million in 2009. And it’s not just the 18 – 35-year-old demographic using mobile.

Gartner predicts that by 2013 mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide, exceeding 1.82 billion units. They also predict mobile phone penetration will reach 90% of the world and 6.5 billion mobile connections by 2014.

While almost all sites can be viewed on a mobile device (aside from sites created entirely in Flash), the experience can be unintuitive at best and frustrating at worst, as most “mobile” sites as they exist today weren’t built with the mobile user in mind. Case in point: the typical site width is 960 pixels. The iPhone is only 320. Only two-thirds of the information can be seen from a mobile device. (while the iPad has changed this – still only over 700K sold – and growing)

So where do you start? Here are some important questions agencies and brands should be asking:

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For the past year we have all seen how everyone wants to add social media (ie Fan Us, Tweet This, Share This etc) in their email marketing campaigns. And from what we have witnessed a majority or companies, brands and email marketers are jumping on board to use it in their email marketing campaigns. We know from use ourselves that it is working, people are taking content shared via email and extending it further into the social media streams and rivers of news out there. And that is the point right… using it to extend the reach of your already engaged (ie Opted in) customer base in close conjunction with your email marketing campaigns.

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Not very often do we see a new email client that demands some of our time. We all know from our studies and research that the fringe email clients rarely warrant the time to explore and test as they don’t have enough of a user base to justify the time. But there is one that I have been exploring not only for the features and user interface, or the integration of multiple email accounts – but for the following:

1. Web Standards supported

2. HTML based in browser client

3. Ability to bring all of your emails into one inbox

4. Icons (favicons) identifying the sender back to their site

5. Social media integration

If these five aren’t enough for you to be curious then maybe I have lost it.

Threadsy is the name and making email easier for people is what it is all about. Not just from the sides of logging into one place to manage multiple accounts, but the integration of other tools like Twitter makes is a great exploration into what inboxes of the future might be.

Take a gander at the inbox. Clean, simple and organized. I love how it brings all the multiple accounts into one view – note I am only testing with 2 at present – as well as adds top level navigation to allow you to move between ISP views if you need to work account by account. I love how they pull in the favicons adding more trust for me. A simple way to add some trust in the inbox when for years we have been trying to used Certified or Good mail systems to do this. Now don’t get me wrong here as there are many other benefits (like images and getting to the inbox for starters) but this simple approach for me adds trust. It’s in beta and not perfect yet (note some missing favicons) but I like it.

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I was taking a look at all the tools and sites I use the other day and thought that it might be beneficial to share some of them with other marketers. I am often amazed when I sit in a meeting with a client to learn that these tools we use on a daily basis are often unheard of by some. And many of the times they see them in action they are fast to jot them down and ask for a list for later.

So here is goes… here are the tools that I use all week long that you might find are beneficial to not only your email marketing but your digital marketing as a whole.

Images and Design Tools:
Skitch – As a mac user I am always looking for tools that make the capture of images I need for presentation decks, blog posts and sharing. Skitch is one of my favorite tools out there. I can quickly grab the capture I need, annotate it if need be, resize it and drag it to my desktop. The other benefit it that it carries a history file with it so that you don’t need to keep those shots anywhere else and you can go back again and again.

Hotgloo – what used to be a comp tool is not in a paid model. Do I fault them, nope, as everyone should make a buck. This is a great quick sketch tool that I use to wireframe ideas with clients on the fly and illustrate functions. Often this tool helps me pass back the visual outcome of a meeting when the team is not with me. The new release even adds ecom and iphone design systems.

OmniGraffle – This is serious business but not a tool that is too overly complicated for most to use. The real value with OmniGraffle is that there are a handful of designers that develop great tempting tools for it. iPhone, iPod, App, emails etc all have great tools for creating wireframes and flushing out user experience.

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We all know that we love getting emails on our birthdays. I was watching last year to see of all the 100s of emails that I was subscribed to from consumer brands to see how many of them actually used them. I mean why not treat yourself right? But what I found interesting was that of all the lists I am subscribed to that only 5 brands actually sent me an email. Now maybe some of them did not have my date of birth when I opted in, but what a great thing to do right? If you can create a unique email focused to go out to your lists to drive a sale and provide goodwill as well it should be a win. So why don’t we see more retailers using this technique?

Well I assume that most don’t ask or have not thought about it. Would we willing give birth date information if asked? A majority of people would not and might even shy away from it if there is not an explanation of why you are asking. But what if you show and tell them why you want to ask it? I would think that if it was clearly presented from a personal win/benefit perspective that you would find more people opting in to this type of information.

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Over the past two years I have made mention to OpenID and how it is going to impact email marketers. Now some of the different versions of OpenID that I have worked are beginning to become more understood. Maybe my thoughts 2 years back were a little ahead of the curve. We are starting to understand the impacts and uses while  seeing the benefits of what we can do with it. You can learn more about it at WikiPedia.

What is it?

OpenID is a safe, faster, and easier way to log in to web sites. End of story? Not really. We are seeing how users are just finding out what it is, and on that same note with the types of ways it can be used they might not really know that they are even using an OpenID. Why? Well it is guised in a login from another system and not your own.

Here is how Wikipedia defines it:

OpenID is an open, decentralized standard for authenticating users which can be used for access control, allowing users tolog on to different services with the same digital identity where these services trust the authentication body. OpenID replaces the common log on process that uses a login-name and a password, by allowing a user to log in once and gain access to the resources of multiple software systems.^[1] The term OpenID can also refer to an ID used in the standard.

What does that mean?

It means that no more different usernames and passwords need to be remembered across every website, blog, social media site, community site etc. What? Yes OpenID in it’s true form enables you to pass/share the content, profile, user info you want with each site you visit. So you can use Google, Facebook, and many others in order to complete a form, join a site, make a purchase and even more. The thing to understand is that you no longer need to always require someone to use your site login abilities and you can leverage those of other larger providers.

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