Simple, Yet Effective Email Content

After a while of producing no new postings, an email I received today prompted me to get back into the game. Namely, I received a mailing from Orbitz that, upon first glance, seemed innocuous enough. You've seen this type of campaign a million times. You know, here are this week's special offers, better book now...blah, blah, blah.

However, after closer examination, I saw something really simple and straightforward that has become sort of a lost art amongst email marketers. In this case, Orbitz isn't just settling for a brochureware creative. Rather, it's treating email customers in a unique way. Here's the copy in question:

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Dear Russell:

Life is good on the beach! We'd like to offer you $75 off your next Caribbean, Mexico, or Hawaii vacation package, so escape to your sunny paradise faster and easier with these great getaways. To save now, enter this email exclusive promotion code when you book: WINTERSALE. Book select 3+ nights vacation packages by February 8 to save on travel through May 31!
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To play on Sally Field's famous Oscar speech, "They must REALLY, REALLY like me!" What I mean by this is that, too many times, etailers lump email in with the Web without paying deference to its unique nature. In these tough economic times, email marketers can no longer treat email as simply a conduit for getting customers to their site. They must do things similar to Orbitz by giving recipients a REASON to click through to the site and to let them know that they are special above and beyond "normal" online customers.

Holiday Carol and Message for Email Marketers

Deck the inboxes with emails aplenty
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah….blah, blah, blah, blah
Think the incessant emails will make customers jolly?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah….blah, blah, blah, blah
Hawking clearance crap like staid apparel
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
Why “Dear Valued Customer” instead of “Dear Bob or Carol”?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…..blah, blah, blah, BLAHHHHHHH!!

I'm having a little fun here, but seriously marketers ask yourselves the following questions next year when planning your Holiday campaigns:

- Is it really a good idea to send a campaign EVERY DAY for two weeks straight?
- Should we segment out those who are actually opening and taking action and focus on them?
- Is this the year to use true personalized content based on preferences or behavior history?
- What clever incentives can we offer to encourage recipient response?

Happy Holidays and New Year to All!

A Paradigm Shift for Retail Email?

Though I've lauded certain e-tailers like Barnes & Noble on this blog for some excellent campaign execution, it's still both frustrating and astonishing to see so many brands are not getting the message (no pun intended) that a lack of truly personalized email content is turning-off customers. However, I ran across a San Francisco-based firm (ShopItToMe.com) today that has implemented a customer-controlled approach that may start a trend in the way other e-commerce organizations communicate with their customers via email.

The beauty of this site is that not only do customers control the content they get, but they save money at the same time. When you start the profile building process, you define all of your apparel and designer preferences. For example, I may only want content relative to men's outerwear and athletic shoes in sizes XL and 12 respectively manufactured by Adidas and/or Nike that is currently on sale. Whatever your fancy, you are the Burger King as you "have it your way" when placing your email special order.

Once the profile definition is complete, ShopItToMe delivers the goods as the user gets his/her made to order email within a couple of minutes as seen below (note: click on the creative to enlarge):



Of course, I'm not privy to the level of effort required to pull this publishing model off, however it's got to be worth it given the well-documented disparity between the costs required to keep customers versus attracting new ones.

To conclude, I think this site is on to something great and I would highly recommend that the e-tail community to follow suit to help reverse the trend of lower response metrics (as cited in Epsilon's "Q1 2008 U.S. Email Trends and Benchmark Results" report) and, as noted above, increased customer apathy verging on scorn.

Political Campaigns: What Not to Do with Email

After watching the final Obama-McCain debate, I must admit that I was awakened from my political hibernation and I'm now looking forward to knowing who our next national figurehead will be. However, after checking my Hotmail inbox recently, it was like having an extra cold glass of water thrown in my face, reminding me of what I hate most about election season.

Is there a bigger turn-off than political email campaigns? Not only the is frequency completely annoying, but the relevance missed the bus to the town hall meeting, uh, about 6 months ago. Here's the typical structure you'll often see from both parties:

"Dear [Friend],

Did you know that [opponent] is a liar and unqualified to be [position pertaining to which the election is being held]? Nevertheless, we need your money to fight off their negative campaigning so please spare what you can by clicking on the following link:

[URL to donation system]

We'll see you at the polls and be sure to tell a friend about [candidate].

To unsubscribe, [click on the link that will lead you through a series of pages attempting to dissuade this decision]. What's the physical address of the sender? Ah, who cares- there's no time for that."

No personalization, no relevant content (how about an email highlighting issues I feel are important?) & no CAN-SPAM compliance. Donors are actually paying for this drivel.

Regardless of the way you may be leaning with your vote come November, please make sure NOT to follow the shoddy email practices used during the political season. If you do, you risk your customers not re-electing your brand.

The Retailer Archetype: B&N

I ran across an excellent email this morning that I believe every retailer should emulate. Too often, retailers fall into the trap of trying to bombard the customer with a "look at all the cool stuff we have on sale" approach to the campaign creative. However, they fail to realize that many of the items presented have no relevance to me.

Therefore, if a retailer isn't going to go the extra mile to produce true one-to-one campaigns based on preference or purchase history data, the email example from Barnes & Noble below is the next best thing and its simplistic elegance is something to behold:



As interesting as "This week's featured novel by [insert author name here]" would be, a discount is always more profound in my opinion. This message makes it crystal clear what the offer is and folds in flexibility as the incentive may be used in-store or online. The graphics are not too busy and the terms and conditions are clearly noted. Though not shown via a screenshot, the use of alt text with the images is also very well done should they not load by default. The benefits of the offer still resonate based on the descriptions used.

It is rare for any retailer campaign to move me to action (except Nordstrom's around the Holidays when I'm in a bind), however this one prompted me to print the in-store coupon not too long after opening and I plan on buying something cool at my neighborhood location this weekend. Well done B&N!

CAN-SPAM: Useful or Histrionic?

Is it me or does the CAN-SPAM legislation (read about it at: http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.shtml) seem to be tossed about more frequently than Caesar salad or name-dropped more readily than Larry King disclosing his life-long friendship with [insert your favorite celebrity or sporting hero here]? Chances are if you go to any ESP Website or deliverability-oriented blog page, you'll see ample references made to it. Though any ethical member of the email marketing community wants to do his/her part to curtail Spam, I've never seen much empirical evidence as to the earth-shattering benefits derived from this legislation's existence. Blasphemy say you?

I've always thought the elements described therein can be categorized to be common sense best practices more than anything. Let's take this opportunity to see what the important aspects under the kimono are if you will:

1) Prohibits the use of misleading subject lines. Not sure why you have to mandate a legitimate email marketer to do this. You mean I won't sell more porn by using "Information on New Joel Osteen Book" in my subject line?

2) Senders must use a physical address within the email body. Sounds quite straightforward, doesn't it? Your customer/recipient needs this context to feel more comfortable continuing the email conversation with you. In fact, why would you not want them to have that information if trying to engender trust in your brand/message?

3) Senders cannot use false headers in messages. Again, such a blatantly obvious mandate falling under the "Duh!" category. Thou shalt not spoof headers.

4) Specifies use of a clearly defined and expedient opt-out process. No "please allow 3-4 weeks for us to process your request" BS. The fact is that you shouldn't be doing any kind of email marketing if not employing this best practice. If you really love your customer/recipient, let them go.

I know there is other minutia included in CAN-SPAM for smarter people than I to bicker over, however let's be honest in stating that it's not really that important when compared to the four aforementioned items. Following them will give you all the compliance you'll ever need to have as things currently stand.

Goodmail from the User Perspective

I've found Goodmail is one of those companies/topics that tends to polarize marketers and technologists alike. In one camp, you have the "Apathetics" who don't feel enough information is available to draw any conclusions about the service or they're otherwise skeptical. They may believe that their current deliverability rates and sender reputation are "good enough" and that's it's not necessary to pay for having premium delivery status. In the other corner, you have the "Evangelists" who are constantly looking to push the envelope in terms of trying any perceived "latest-and-greatest" technology or service. In some cases, they are desperate to get into the inbox and are willing to try any mousetrap holding this promise. Regardless of what side of the argument you might fall, the one thing that hasn't been widely discussed is the Goodmail experience from the recipient perspective.

If you speak to anyone from Goodmail, one of the value propositions they'll mention is that messages signed with CertifiedEmail tokens stand out from other mail in the inbox. Here's what the recipient sees:





Note the blue envelope to the left of the From: name. I would have to agree with Goodmail on this point, though I'm not sure if this is in a positive or negative way. You'll also notice that Yahoo adds some explanatory verbiage if one clicks on a tokenized mailing. Though the recipient is invited to click through to get a more detailed description of what Goodmail is and why such messages are safer than other e-mail, I believe some recipients will actually be freaked out by the icon and will write the message off as just another elaborate phishing attempt made on securing some personal information.

However, as you also see at the bottom of the screenshot, a highly-viable benefit to the marketer is that images are enabled by default even if only viewing using the preview pane.

So, as new advancements like Goodmail continue to be made to help increase trust in the e-mail channel and improve overall deliverability (oh no, the "d" word again), you should also be mindful as to how your subscribers will react to these breakthroughs. Stay vigilant with your comparative testing processes and keep in tune with your audience as you introduce new technologies like Goodmail to your e-mail efforts.