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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We often talk about email preference centers, email frequency and optimizing the amount of emails we send in our weekly thoughts and conversations about email marketing. But all of these are really marketer side actions and don’t really focus on the email subscriber as directly as we think they do. So what about a “pause” button that would allow subscribers in either your emails or your preference centers to activate a PAUSE on your email campaigns. Now I am not talking about an unsubscribe or opt out feature, or even a change in frequency (please only email me once a month, week, etc) but actually creating a way for subscribers to pause a relationship.

Now this is not very marketer centric, but in the end it should not be. It should be about the subscriber giving them the instant ability to pause a relationship for 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, etc. Microsoft flirted with this ability back in 2008 with a pause plugin for Outlook that never really went anywhere. It did not actually pause emails, but simply placed a delivery delay on them. Now that is not truly the direction I think benefits anyone. Why? Well the consumer is still going to get emails that might have expired items, codes, deals, or information that is now out of date. That only creates frustration and a bad user experience. What I would like to see the industry explore is really investigating how to pause a relationship placing all communications that the individual has opted into on a time based pause.

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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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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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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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Some of you might be unfamiliar with the fact that at eROI we not only are focused on email marketing but our team works extensively in web development, strategy and idea execution across many areas.

I wanted to share this latest case study from eROI as I personally worked on all of these projects. It has been a 2 year journey from when we started testing what community could mean to where we ended up for Wacom. Along the way we learned so much and continue to learn more each day still. Community can mean so many things. It is not simply building a stand alone community site. In the case of Wacom it was a journey of storytelling, sharing, listening and testing. In the end we did end up with a strong and still growing active community site that is built into the Wacom main North American site, but also ended up being a solid and continued use of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Hopefully you can gleam some of our learnings from this study and see how you might be able to approach your outreach and conversation efforts.

In the end it all comes down to commitment and non stop engagement by not only the members of the Wacom team but also from those participating in the communities as well.

eROI Case Study: Wacom Community: Mastering the 5 C’s

What goes into building the most engaging and successful online communities? Follow along as we take you through the journey and progression of the communities built by eROI for Wacom Technology Corp. Learn all about how to harness the power of your audience to create a successful online community.

What’s Inside:

The three main goals for almost any brand community

Discovering what your customers really want

Trying new things and learning from what works

Building exponentially with social media-to-community connections

5 C’s – Commitment, Conversation, Conversion, Community & Collaboration

Get the full case study today.

So I wanted to “share” with all of you a new study we just released covering some clients we work with and how we went through the process of creating mobile versions of their website as opposed to building an app (for that). We love apps but sometimes they do not fit the need NOR does everyone need an app. See how we approached it and delivered an experience via a mobile version of the website content that was important.

I would also cite this article as reasons for our approach to this change in content consumption from Read Write Web.

eROI Whitepaper: Leveraging the Mobile Web

Are you ready to build a mobile web presence?

Get a look inside the mobile website projects of 3 unique brands, and see how digital strategy and technology come together to achieve results.

Wacom Technology Corp. uses their mobile website as a key part of an integrated marketing campaign for Bamboo Touch.

Banfield Pet Hospital has a mobile version of their main corporate site, complete with mobile-specific content.

Moonit.com uses the mobile web as the most cost-effective way to make their compatibility tool available on the go.

See how they did it!

As a massive fan of email subscription and preference centers when it comes to email marketing I think that I stumbled on to the Holy Grail of email opt in pages. I was both amazed at the depth of this WSJ email opt in page while at the same time floored at the complexity and breadth of what they had to present. I had no idea that they published so many different versions of daily, weekly and unique emails until I stumbled upon this one. Now after scanning and trying to decide what I really wanted to get I dove deeper into all of the levels of complexity they made public facing.

My hat is off to whomever is managing all of these and my hopes is that they are using a content management system that automates the production of all of these choices. I mean for those of you that publish just one or a few emails you can imagine how many Full Time Employees it would take to pull this off.

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Do you remember back to a time when we all learned to hate the pop up ad? They became both a massive issue with users and the media and at the same time a profit center for so many ad networks and those hocking anti pop up blockers. In the end the pop up lost that round… until the invention of the light box. Yes that cool function so many of us love as it brings functionality right to the top of the screen while not killing the overall site visit is the new pop up. But is seems we like it. And even more importantly it seems to really be working in conjunction with newsletter list growth.

We are not only seeing it with content publishers but more and more we are seeing it across marketing and brand sites. And all use cases I have seen are pointing to it working and not being hated as much as the browser take over ads that make you wait 5 seconds till an ad runs or allowing you to click past it. And why is this? Well this one I found from a recent link (as no matter what you think I am not a reader of AskMen.com) was a good example of why they are working.

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Sure we all know that Twitter is a great way to increase your reach and deliver valuable content in a real time manner to those that are addicted to it like I am (I would wager many of you are as well). But are you using it in the best possible way to grow your email marketing programs? I have seen an uptick in companies using it is pre-promote the release of a newsletter telling people to opt in before the latest edition gets sent. I have seen companies feeding special versions of their newsletter out using it as well. And if they are smart they are also using it to feed individual articles from their newsletters to this channel. But recently I saw Nordstrom using it to engage with people for targeted newsletter growth.

Some time back I saw them use it to promote a men’s newsletter through a simple tweet. Smart idea. Now I am not sure if they have some way to segment based on gender (as this would be great if someone could do this from a communications tool into their follower steam) but it did catch my eye and made me want to look further as an email marketer.

I had assumed that I was going to land on a general newsletter sign up page and need to select the right lists to be on. Well I was pleasantly surprised at the fact that they took me right to a unique landing opt in page JUST for that men’s newsletter. Nice work. Now even if they did not have the ability to gender target using Twitter, they do have more of that data now by the implementation of this gender specific newsletter opt in page. Now they know that these users are male. What would have made this even better would have been if they would have either used the Twitter OAuth system to login via Twitter and capture that Twitter handle as well as an email address. By doing this they could have added this data to their user profiles in order to look for patterns and ways in the future to interact better via Twitter OR the email.

But none the less it was a great promotion and a well thought out use of targeting and landing based on gender. It opens up many ideas in my mind about the types of user data that email marketers that are giddy about social media to think about using. I would even advance the idea of similar campaigns in Facebook and employing Facebook Connect to get the 36 data fields (email is now one as well) when creating an opt in form. I have been toying with this idea for a while now since the recent addition of email as one of the marketer accessible fields in the Facebook Connect API.

Thinking about this idea, do you think that you could push your teams to try something new with implementation of social connection tools? Worth a test I think.

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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As a marketer (inbound or outbound), mobile, advertiser or email marketer there are 5 things that you should be starting to think about if you are not already. I trust that most of you are now realizing we are in the awkward teen years of the mobile decade. It’s not the year of mobile, as I am sure we were hear people champion in posts and articles this year, but the middle stage of starting to really have a mobile network that provides data and connections everywhere (insert ATT/Sprint/Verizon/TMobile jab here…you know you just did subconciously), user base, UI/UE thoughts and design, and a consumer ecomomy that now needs always to be tethered to the latest news, deals, friend updates, and apps. We have been as a society pushing adoption forward of new medias and repurposing old medias in ways and to devices that we are all scurrying to grasp. Don’t feel alone as you read this as we are all part of this testing and learning process.

So what are you doing, planning or thinking about as to how you are going to respond in regards to your marketing? Have you laid out some tests? Thought of some ideas? Reviewed your own data to help you make educated guesses? You have to start somewhere and looking at your own reporting is a place to start in order to find the seeds to plant and grow your ideation.

I am fortunate to work with a team and some clients that are actively embracing, testing, learning, and understanding how to approach this next phase in the evolution of marketing. And even though I often write about email here, it is not all about email. Not a shock to some of you I hope.

The 5 Things that I think are worth your attention and thought are the following:

place, device, location, action and intent

With a clear understanding of what these 5 things not only mean to you but to your audience you are placing yourself in the right stating point to shape a plan of action.

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So often people in this industry feel that when they buy a sponsored email it means that they will get a header and footer from the partner and can stuff their creative and messaging inside. It is so old and overplayed that I am not sure it works too well anymore. Personally I feel a little cheated in my relationship with the list that I subscribed to. Even tricked when I look forward to content from them and get something from someone else entirely.

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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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