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.

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

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.

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!

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.

If you take some time to look at some of the screen shots I made you can really gain some respect for the time and thought that they have put into this page. It goes to show me that email is a major driver of visits and engagement for them as well as I would assume a revenue generator in the ad sales for the paper in this electronic age where we are gathering more of our news from online than offline.

One of the things I wanted to call out was that they clearly present not only the text and html preferences but also the frequency and days of the week you can expect to get these emails. Win Win for them and for the subscriber here. One draw back is I had to make some changes to the ones I was subscribing to as I thought I might have too many on certain days. But on the flip side of that thought it was really nice to be able to make those decisions. I would assume that even with me opting in to 7 different editions that I would be happy with my selections and have better understanding of when they would arrive in my inbox.

On top of that if you dive in deeper you will notice that they are also VERY clear about helping you to make the right version selections if you are reading them on a mobile device. The thought that went into this email subscription/preference page is so inspiring that I almost want to go work for them for a week and see behind the curtain as to how they pull all of this off and manage all that data.

Bringing back down to earth now it makes me wonder why more people are not taking the time to create email preference centers that work as well as this one does. Sure you might only have one or two email marketing programs in place but could you do better by clearly presenting how it is all going to work and helping to explain to your subscribers some benefits they might have by selecting different versions from a simple Text vs HTML preference? Think about what you can do to make life easier for your subscribers. It will pay off in spades.

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.

1. They allow you to still see the content you are there for. Sure it hurts the ability to interact or read it, but it does not create a bad user experience IMHO that makes you have ill will toward the site.

2. They opt in takes place quickly and then fades away to let you continue your visit.

3. They just look so much prettier than another window spawning outside of your browser or opening a new tab.

I would think that we will see more of these start to appear as this year goes on. As long as they are done in a creative way and are easy to move past I would not expect that we see much hostility towards the use. I have also lately seen them not open on a first page but X pages into a visit. We have used them in a magazine site to appear after 3 pages viewed with good success. One thing that we did test was based on the user analytics after a few months of testing. We found the average visit page view patterns and fine tuned them to 3 pages as we noticed a drop off in visits after 3 pages. By adding this we did not interfere with the intention of the visit and did not interfere with the content. The list growth has been directly tied to this tactic as we can tell the difference in subscribers coming from the normal newsletter sign up forms/boxes vs those that opt in via the light box. A little creative form tagging can do this for you as well.

Take some risks with this and see what you find. Try it on a few unique pages where you see drop offs or exits in the visit patterns. Or try it based on average page views and work backwards from there with an “X” variable. It all takes testing but without trying you will never know.

Long live the light box – or at least until we find a new way to advance the experience in a non obtrusive manner.

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.

This is something you must consider. Sure, you may say that you work for a software provider, an online retailer or another company that already provides a great service with happy customers, and I’m sure you do, but are people really taking notice and telling their stories, as related to your brand, without being prompted? Most likely, no.

So what can your company do to create this level of customer relationships this year? Well, there are a host of things that can drive this forward (and I list some suggestions below), but in the end it is important to remember that it will take your entire team, company or organization to truly make it happen.

Here are some ideas that I believe are worth exploring with your team…

1. Call your customers. Seems simple, right? But in today’s world where people are so caught up with email, text, tweets, etc. they often forget that just a simple phone call can make a big difference. Sure this takes time, but in order to make an impact you need to invest this time, as it will come back in spades. You could start small, such as picking one person a day who has placed an order or downloaded a resource and give them a personal call to just make sure everything went ok. Not only will this catch them a bit off guard (in a positive way), but it may actually move them a bit closer to you or your brand. Another idea is to run a report of top customers and call at least one a day just to check-in and see how things are going. The purpose of these calls are not to get more orders, business, or make sure you have a meeting set, but simply to make a connection.

2. Change something in the delivery. A long held story in ecommerce is the one where a Zappos customer places an order selecting normal ground shipping then gets an email informing them that their order has been expedited for overnight shipping at no charge. This is just Zappos’ way of saying “thanks for your business” but it’s something that many of their customers experience, and share, each week. Periodically expediting a customer’s shipping is an effort to create a delighted customer experience and drive repeat orders. And it works. We all know (as reports from this past holiday season have shown once more) that free shipping or faster shipping drives orders. In fact, I believe that Zappos led most of their subject lines this past holiday season with some variation of free shipping. So if it is working for them, could it work for you? It is something to explore as a cost/benefit trade. Worth a test.
3. Say Thank you and Welcome. With a goal of driving subscribers to their email programs why do so many companies simply grab the sign-up and move on? I am a firm believer that simple things, such as telling subscribers thank you on a welcome page or sending them a series of welcome emails with helpful information, can lift the lifetime engagement of each subscriber. Take it a step further and periodically give subscribers surprise discount codes. Finding ways to say thank you throughout your relationship is a great way to deepen your connection with your subscriber and show the value you place on them.

4. Mix things up a bit. As marketers, it’s easy to get caught up in doing what works. Unfortunately, after long periods of doing “what works” you actually risk driving down the overall engagement of your audience. Give your audience an unexpected campaign element; try incorporating a new idea, angle or medium in to your campaign. For example, we have worked with a few clients to add PIN-coded direct mail pieces into their campaign mix. The mail pieces drove recipients to a landing page and were tightly integrated with their standard campaign elements. Your first reaction may be that traditional forms of media (such as direct mail) are dying, but when used as part of a larger “modern” campaign, traditional elements can absolutely create a high rate of engagement. Experiment with adding a new touch point where you audience isn’t expecting it and you may find that you unlock engagement from a previously silent part of your current audience.

5. Create your own holiday. One of my personal favorites for sparking engagement between you and your customers is to pick a day that you can produce a new event around.  Your audience gets hammered with messaging and offers around all of the major holidays, meaning that your campaigns may very well be getting lost in the shuffle. Instead of fighting so hard to get noticed during those holidays, why not put the effort into a totally “unique” holiday where your campaign is sure to get attention. Choose a day with some sort of historical significance. Or maybe look to a holiday from another country. Better yet, simply invent one. Even if your audience has never heard of the holiday you select, it can become an event that your entire company rallies around and develop into a something that really makes your brand shine. I have witnessed campaigns of this sort in the past that not only drove sales, but got great media and PR coverage. Not ready to try this on a large scale? Start with your regional business.  It’s likely that there are annual “events” specific to each region that a big campaign can be created around. One of my favorite examples of this is from right here in Oregon and was hatched by the legendary Tire Magnate Les Schwab. Being a rancher he had an abundant supply of beef. So he created, the still running, Free Beef Month. The campaign is simple – You buy a new set of tires and you get beef. Odd yes, but each and every year during “Free Beef Month” Les Schwab becomes a topic of conversation all over the region.

So go forth and think about how you can do the unexpected to deliver unique customer experiences that will get your new, current and past customers and subscribers feeling more connected than ever to your brand.

But to get back on track I wanted to share their opt in and welcome email as I thought it was well done. The opt in does a good job of presenting 3 variations of the emails I would receive by opting in. I am always thankful when I get to see some examples located around the opt in process. I feel that it is a good way to condition people to what to expect. Almost in a way of setting up the experience of when I see them in the inbox for the first time. Adding the birthdate to the form must be a legal requirement for them or even one that helps them to look at age data in targeting. Heck we will see in about a month if they have a birthday campaign as well.

One thing I did notice was that they do have a cause co-registration for the Surfrider Foundation which is is line with their audience and most likely a cause that they support as a corporation. It was a nice touch to use their opt in to support a like organization. Might be an idea for other retailers or even B2B companies.

But it did not stop at the opt in page. They had a very nice thank you page that presented some options to help you engage and move forward. I would have been happy with their efforts right there, but then came a timely (not too delayed) Welcome message. Right up my alley in what I like to see in best practices and lifting the engagement. But they also took the extra step I often see so many retailers miss, they presented right there a 15% off discount code. Now I would wager that a large majority of people use it in the coming days if not right then. The fact that it was quick to arrive was also a good thing as if I had continued and loaded some items into my cart, bought them, and then got this email a few days later, I might have experienced some buyers remorse. So nice job guys. Love to see the capitalization on the increased engagement and hopefully an uptick in sales from this effort.

Overall even with the high frequency (38 emails tracked in the past 60 days) I have remained highly engaged with the email program due to what I attribute to the well done welcome email program. Now looking at this time period might be a little uncharacteristic of the overall program as I am looking at the holiday season, but they are doing it right. Knowing that I am engaged keep them in my inbox and has trained me to expect every few days now to see them there in the AM hours.

The takeaway is to really look at your welcome program no matter what industry you are in. Making the touch points line up and behave in a way that sets the course for a strong program will lift your sales/goals and drive your sales and engagement. What are you doing to say thanks and welcome with your subscribers?

Now how can you resist? Join us. We swear it won’t hurt… too much.

If you want to follow the writer of this blog, aka me @dtboyd, (on Twitter since July 26, 2007) you can do that do, yet it will not be all email marketing related. That account is more  personal and digital marketing related – and private. But please request some friendship as I rarely say know, just  like to know who is following (I know my 3rd grade teacher Mrs Plath is out there still looking for retribution.) It is more like gravy, unicorns and smurf trivia actually – so if you like that (and who doesn’t) jump on in.

All the best and hope we can connect in ways that are relevant while providing you with meaningful insights – and humor.