The Email Wars

Diesel has always had a strong approach to email marketing. They typically use content and images to suck you in that you are not expecting, driving at least me, to spend some time on it. Now this one in particular felt like a hot mess. At first I thought who messed this one up and how did the rendering go so sideways. With a little further review I realized that it was all on purpose. Once I had spent time reading it through my opinions shifted. But there were some more things I noticed after a later look into the email itself that led me to think more about “was this a test of social media in email OR just a clever copywriter using marks that lend themselves to social media?” Seems that they might have missed something larger here.

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.

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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As I had just published a post about Replyforall I was then sent an email from a co-worker that had the Microsoft system in place. To boil it down simply the more that you use email and IM from MSN, Live and Hotmail a percentage of the ad revenue driven from that ad impression is given to the charity that you have selected.

The thought, I assume, behind this is that the more that people use their tools… the more money can be shared with the cause. Now this is a nice idea that email can be a driving factor not only for your programs, but that it can be a fund raising tool from your normal behavior. Sure they want you to use it more and using a tie to your social conscious might actually make someone think about using it more in order to raise awareness and funds.

But what I thought about it why could we as ESPs not take a collective action to not only think about ourselves and our clients, but about collaborating to raise funds from a portion of our business proceeds of providing email marketing services. As we are all trying to connect better with the consumer about why we are not all evil maybe something like this would be worth discussing.

I am going to take this idea to the eec council on consumer awareness to see if we can do this.

Would you or your ESP participate?

If e-mail signatures can be put to work to help support a political candidate, just imagine the impact they could make for charity. That’s essentially the rationale behind Replyforall, a site that uses custom e-mail signatures to raise not just awareness but cold, hard cash for a select group of charitable causes.

San Francisco-based Replyforall gives users a way to raise money for their favorite causes by simply adding a tailored signature to the e-mails they normally send. The service is currently available for Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail/WindowsLive/MSN – with others coming soon – and it’s completely free for users. Cause-minded people need only sign up on the site and choose the cause they want to support. The signature they create will show that cause along with Replyforall’s participating financial sponsor, and it can also be personalized to include additional elements such as a rotating fact associated with their cause, a school club or the user’s contact information. Either way, the result is that when users send e-mails, their Replyforall signature is automatically inserted into their messages (it is possible to omit it for select messages, however). Sponsors pay to reach users and their recipients, and Replyforall shares sponsors’ payments proportionately among the causes users have selected. Users can track the impact of their own support via a personal impact page. Replyforall, meanwhile, donates funds to the causes every quarter and regularly reports back with the impact of those donations.

Sponsors on the site include Virgin Mobile, TOMS Shoes, The Body Shop and confectioner sweetriot, while causes include the ASPCA, Wildlife Trust, the Clean Energy Coalition and Engineers without Borders. Replyforall is actively seeking more sponsors. One to team up with for a better world – and better image?

Website: www.replyforall.com

Twitter. Yes you might be a user. (I am what many call an addict) If not you have heard it mentioned in articles, the news, in conversations and with others that you have in your circles then you might be living in a cave in the hills. Well it is here and growing at a rate now that is close to insanity. It is not the next thing, it is a thing that drives some additional reach if used right with your email campaigns. The smart email marketer will start to realize how to use it. The smarter email marketer will see how it can be used to drive viral, word or mouth, and even subscriber growth when used right.

@alexcwilliams at @eROI knew this a while back, before many others saw the power of the combination of this tool with email campaigns. Since he wrote his article we have seen the increase by brands to use it as a driver or supplement to their email newsletters and campaigns. IMHO it is pure genius on his part to think about this and see how to test it for our own programs before rolling it out into the mainstream. 

A lot is being written lately on email and how social media can work in email, but how about this, how about starting to think outside the inbox and test how social media systems can work in harmony with your email campaigns to drive them back into the inbox from other locations. IMHO this is a better approach to some of the other ESPs that are simply adding Add This or Share This functionality into their emails. Get outside of the narrow view that everything needs to take place in your yard. There are just as many other yards where the conversations might be stronger and the kids have more friends that might want to come play with you on their terms.

And while we are at it did you know that by following eROI on Twitter you can get alerts from all 5 of our blogs when new articles are posted? Novel huh? Like RSS only (s)Tweeter.

With the markets in a downturn, which some have now officially called a recession, using a little humor in your emails can go a long way. Especially when you are throwing a party. 

For those of you not familiar with the Barbarian Group, who brought us The BK Subservient Chicken viral site and many more, they sent out their holiday party invite to friends, partners, and others to show how they were cutting costs in order to still throw the bash we would expect from them. 

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I have seen this email “trick” used over the years as a great ploy to make you think that you are part of a secret insiders only group and that this discount is one that only you are privy to. Not this being said it is a good trick that works. 

If you were to just tell me 30% off it would feel like another ploy to tap my wallet. But when you put it out like this we seem to feel that it is something that we MUST take advantage of. To the typical consumer an insider discount that ONLY the employee gets is a great campaign in the making. 

I love that not only did they make it online but also bar coded it so that you could take it in, use it, pass it to others, print it out and make copies for friends, etc. Well executed and well done. And guess what, you don’t need to get that holiday night and weekend job to get the “employee” discount. Now when it fails is when you do it more than once. If this becomes a once a year deal or even twice a year fine, but you cannot run this promo more than once in the same season. It loses it’s implied value. Sure it might drive some more sales, but you are just making it another couponing event that makes us numb. 

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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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