The Email Wars

I have always been a big fan of Diesel for the fact that they take major brand risks. Now that being said their brand is attractive because of the risks that they take. So maybe it is not a risk. This email that arrived this week was sent to announce the celebration of their 30th Anniversary (B-day) and drove to a video that has as of now gone viral.

Now the great thing about this email is that it references the email but does not deliver the email in the creative itself. It makes the shock value even stronger once you get in to watch it. Why try to deliver video in an email if you think it might scare people from clicking on it, or even worse it does not play in your email client.

I also love the landing page (which is built by city) for the fact that they still only give away sparse details on the party but you need to stay tuned to get the event location information. I can only bet that this is going to be a bash and I have asked our eROI NYC Office Director to follow this, go, and get some video of the event to post later.

There is also a good article on iMedia about Viral today you should read.

Video on the next page.

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Today the team sent me an intervention email. It is not that they don’t like me, it was that they are “concerned” about my love and embracing of ALL things digital. I IM, I email, I Tweet, I Facebook, I Skype, I blog, I comment, I Flickr, I YouTube, I Vimeo, I post in forums, and most importantly I forget to notice that it is still sunny out in Portland, Oregon. I guess that they have a point now that I have taken the first step in admitting I have a problem. 

So I am happy that they took the time to intervene. At least they used email as the vehicle, as last time the all company “meeting” in my office was a bit over the top. Guess they forgot about the baseball bat and the fire escape so close to my desk…

But on the other side of the coin, this is one of the simplest and best sites using email as the “viral” vehicle that I have seen in a while. MeetUp used a great idea about all of us and our dependence on online communication, “friends” (watch the video and see if you catch the 433,000 BFFs copy there, classic), and the fact that we need to use these mediums to gt back out and physically interact with those in the real world. After all it is where LIFE happens, not the inbox or the web. Sorry to burst your bubbles.

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Funny but back in the day we named the company that is now an interactive marketing agency eROI, emailROI as this was our first product. Did you know how we came up with the name? Well it was a tag line based on the French word “le roi” meaning the KING with the whole ROI thing out there. We knew back then that email marketing is king and not going to be dethroned no matter what was next out there. 

Over and over again people have tried to attack email in hopes of shifting people to the next “trend” in communications. Let me tell you this, email is not a trend, unless you consider the chart released from Social Media company ShareThis that only shows it as the leader in communication percentages. So if being a leader is a trend… sign me up to drink the punch. 

CLICK THE IMAGE TO SEE THE FULL CHART LARGER

Read the whole study at the ShareThis Blog

So much was made these past two week about the strategy of Barack Obama using email and sms to alert those following the campaign and supporting the campaign to learn about the VP he selected FIRST by these two methods. So what happened late friday night when the news was released to the world? 

Well I was out that night, but learned of it first not by email or SMS from his campaign, but from Twitter, websites and friends that the announcement had been made. Heck the news channels even had it before anyone go the SMS or the email letting them know that the choice had been made. 

Others noticed this as well: 

“Word of Obama’s decision leaked out hours before his campaign was scheduled to inform supporters via text and e-mail messages, and hours after informing two other top contenders for the vice presidential nomination – Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana and Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia – that they had not been chosen.”

So the email finally arrived in the AM on Saturday after 7am. I have attached it below for two reasons. 

1. The promise made across the web was that you would know FIRST by signing up and opting in. And yet we knew from more sources besides those two 12 hours earlier.

2. The email I thought would include video a photo and some excitement from his staff since this announcement was so hyped and so media hyped for so long. What a let down to just get this HTML text email. 

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There have only been 4 campaigns I have seen to date that defy the rules of the horizontal scroll thus far in my life. And every single one of them I have loved. As we at eROI are about to release one like this for an ongoing client campaign I wanted to ask you if you have seen any others. I have seen Coors Light, Diesel, FHM and a luggage company. In every case the creative has rocked and the implementation has worked successfully. 

Well in our attempts I wanted to share some knowledge with you about what we have found. 

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Today I was in a bind to grab some tickets to a concert up at the Oregon Zoo. I had no choice but to go online to TicketMaster and pick some up prior to the event. With the kids in tow I did not want to have to worry about standing in line, hence why the internet rocks. So I ordered my tickets, paid to print them online right then and there, all the while wondering why I would pay $2.50 more just for the convenience of not standing in line. Well I think I stated 2 kids under 6 makes it worth it. 

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To lead off I really like the new look of the Ben and Jerry’s emails. They are much better than past emails I have seen. And being that we are moving into the hot summer ice cream months, it is timely to share this one with you. They have a good use of real TEXT in the image blocks which scores points with me for rendering if the images are off in many email clients, but what stood out to me is WHY do they have a link in the footer to ask me if I want to join the newsletter?

After some thought it became more obvious to me… if this email is forwarded it allows others to use the link to opt in to the newsletter. So is this a good idea? Of course it is. Word of mouth wins you more subscribers. And who does not like ice cream?

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In the world of viral email I am often not that impressed with the value of the “viral” pre-planned ability of a campaign, but in the meat of the campaign. IF it is truly something that is authentic, credible, transparent and worth sharing for cred or value… then it has legs to be “viral” or sent on to someone in the peer group of your subscriber. So many times I hear companies, service providers or agencies talking about how they will make it viral. No secret sauce here, you all have the abilities to give your subscribers the content that will help them spread your meesage.

Church of the Consumer had an inspiring post about this below:

How free goes viral - By Jackie Huba
Michele Miller posted this on SWOM. It’s so good I wanted to repost it here:

One of the hottest videos on YouTube today is the Free Hug Campaign - one man giving away free hugs and the effect it has on the people around him.

It’s a perfect parallel to building a viral campaign for your business.

Watch the video and observe:

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I love news and information, as it seems so does the rest of the world. Every after Daily Candy burst onto the scene many new companies have sprung up over the past few years for daily emails. Let’s back up… new media companies are being created around the sending of emails on a daily basis. Now they are all in different niches and I know that there are readers for all of these, but can you build your list and maintain it with daily opt in and opt out churn to make it rock? And if so how are you managing to launch them and gain traction fast.

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I love getting emails from people showing me them wearing the Tshirts we made for the Bloggers Unite panel at the eec Conf in San Diego in Feb. Makes me happy that I made a 100 of them for everyone.

Funny as I am still getting emails from people asking for them. Might need to make another run here soon as I am out. Gave my own to a guy they call SCO at Exact Target, it was REALLY the one off my back from the panel. Hope you are enjoying it SCO.

If you have one and read this blog, send me your photo in it at dylan AT eroi.com.

Cheers.

So if you are still on the fence about Twitter, below is a video to help you understand it more. But just to throw you a curve ball, I want you to also look at www.shifd.com and www.pownce.com. Both very cool and all three serve similar and different means. Just wish I could MASH these three up.

Besides the fact that I lead strategy across all product lines at eROI and not just on the email side, I am constantly looking at what is going on across the marketplace. I look for email marketing disrupters. You should too. So many technologies hammering customers during the day. It is not just an IM/Email/RSS world now. It is an always on, uber connected, new new new, info overload world. And we all absolutely love it.

Hoping to find some great new ideas and tech at SXSW this weekend. If you are there, twitter me at twitter.com/dtboyd

Greatest thing about Tech, I just posted this blog post from the runway of PDX on the way to Austin. Imagine that one…. Place, time and technology shifting.

The Guys at CommonCraft do some of the best new media video. This one is about Twitter.

I could not but help post this video that was sent on to me from another eROI employee today. I was watching it thinking HOW in the world would this impact your b2b email campaigns?

Would it drive more clicks? Would it impact your read rate? Would an office worker even be able to focus on their computer screen while sitting in this.

This might be one of the most horrific infomercials I have ever seen. It made me laugh thinking of sitting in a meeting at a conference table surrounded by these, let alone imagine going to an office where everyone is sitting in one of these.

This page was not sent in an email campaign, but passed on to me from a co-worker here at eROI. After watching what should be a standard ecommerce page it made me think that this is an amazing idea of how to create a landing page that drives a person through the page from top to bottom and then back.

Take a look at HEMA’s product page. You can’t order anything and it’s in Dutch but just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens. It creates a connection, even when you cannot read it.

If this was a landing page experience I would wager it would not only convert, but also drive people to talk about it and share it. Completely unexpected and very powerful.

Let’s continue how email is the driving force behind social media site growth. Not RSS, not widgets, not PR but email marketing campaigns launched by people’s personal address book when they dump it into a social media site, like LinkedIn. Now Stefan, don’t hold this against me for using yours, but it is honestly my favorite personal invite yet. Straight to the point and brutally honest.

And to set the record straight we did not get drunk on a plane, although I will now on the next flight I see you at. Maybe we need a linked in for frequent travelers to meet up in boarding areas, airport bars and on planes to pass the time. WAIT I think that there was an Idaho Senator not to long ago that had something like this going on… so forget that. Glad this email did not say foot tapping in a bathroom stall.

“Invitation to connect on LinkedIn
From: Stefan Tornquist
Date:November 15, 2007
To: Dylan Boyd
Status:Pending

Dylan,

Once a year I clean up Outlook whether it needs it or not, so sorry for another linkedinvite. At some point we’ve emailed, exchanged cards or gotten drunk on a plane, I promise.

-Stefan Tornquist”

Sure email fosters community and drives traffic, but how can it be used to crowd source creative and content to build out your site? Even your next design, commercial or product have a chance to be grown from a single email drop. (notice I don’t use the word “blast” when I refer to email marketing, as it makes me cringe.) They also used a nice touch of an animated GIF in for the boot (you will need to see the live email and not the image below) to give this email color and life and want me to dig in and participate

We have long used email with campaigns (take a look at Kettle Foods People Choice 4 running as of last week) to drive participation and build buzz. No it is not viral marketing, but the match that can light the fire.

Doc Martens did a good job today in dropping (via one of my favorite shops Summit Projects in Hood River, Oregon) a simple email that is spot on with the See the Campaign Site campaign URL creative. The site is clear, fast, and easy to use and gives you so many options to create your shoe via web tools (and they are SEXY web tools) as well as offline Photoshop templates that you can work on and upload later. The voting engine is the part that stood out to me as we have tried many ways to make voting and rating less cumbersome and not a road block to customer campaign success. I think they nailed it. What do you think?

I am waiting to see what other touches come from this campaign or if it was just a one shot pony.

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