The Birthday Email

My kids get cards and phone calls from the dentist on their birthday. It is the one place they really don't like to go, yet this call is something that they have begun to look forward to. Usually, this call is preceded by a birthday card, and includes a coupon to a treat at a local fast food place. Not a voice recording but a real person calling to speak to the kids. Very thoughtful of the dentist's office, and something we all appreciate.

I have two main financial institutions - one which serves as a conduit for my paychecks, the latter is where I save for the future. Both of them know my birthday date, in fact they both know a whole lot more, yet it is a credit union where I have less than $250 that doesn't forget to send me an email and a real card each birthday. The card is personally signed by the branch manager.

A major apparel retailer asks those who sign up for their birthday date. This information is then used to target the recipient with a special promotion during their birthday month. While this is good, it is interesting to note that the open rate on these emails goes from an average of 20% to approximately 60%. The next three emails from this retailer to the 'birthday recipient' leads to open rates of between 35 - 50%. Twenty percent of those who open the special promotion actually redeem it. This makes this particular promotion quite special for the retailer. Now you do have a few people that abuse this by creating a birthday to get a discount, but the retailer counters this by trying to get the recipient to provide some preference information.

A jewelry company asks you for your birth month so they can wish you and also talk to you about your special stone. Remarkably, this has done very well for this company. People are intrigued by their stone and what it all means. They read, they click, and they eventually buy.

A men's clothing company used to give out $10 gift cards on people's birthdays. This is a practice that has since been abandoned, as after much testing we realized that most of the recipients were redeeming up to $10 (only). Also, in split tests we found that it didn't boost overall response. This company has since switched to simply wishing the recipient on their special day. The results are almost the same. Now, if you are a higher tier buyer, you get a real birthday card from this company. This is appreciated and acknowledged in subsequent purchases by the customer.

Do remember, if you ask for a birthday date - please be sure you are going to protect the information. Also, if you ask people for the exact date, please use it as you have created an expectation.

I would like to borrow an approach from a Florida newspaper. They put in your luck for the year as part of their message. I know many people who used to cut that out and keep it in their wallet or purse (for the entire year).

From an email marketers perspective, why not ask for the birthday date - include a little snippet about their annual forecast, thank them for their past business, wish them the best, and introduce them to a special landing page where they can find great deals. Transactional email gives you the opportunity to make things conversational - you ought to leverage it.

So if today is your birthday - here is a little note - There’s plenty of activity this year, traveling near and far. You’ll get lots of practice scheduling and setting priorities. Don’t bet the ranch, you won’t be that lucky, but you should do quite well. Once you learn the game you can achieve your objective. Celebrity birthdays today - Billy Joel, Candice Bergen, & Reagan Taylor.

If nothing else, just wish the recipient - Happy Birthday! It goes a long way in building a relationship.

Service In Action: Email Review

According to a recent Marketing Experiments survey, a typical landing page visitor spends only five seconds on the page. This means your chance to further inspire the person – who clicked – on a portion of your email is pretty small.

So how do you stand out, inspire more click throughs and maybe convert someone in those five seconds? It’s a complicated engagement model that relies on brand recognition, perceived value and phenomenal creative – join tomorrow’s Service In Action call (2:00 PM EST) for one of our most popular discussions. Give your opinion on email examples in our The Good, The Bad & The Iffy session, this is your chance to learn from the best and avoid the some mistakes from the rest.

Look forward to hearing you on the call!

Pink & Orange

Those of you who have attended one of our workshops, you know my undying devotion to the pink and orange beacon that is Dunkin Donuts… this devotion stems back many years, to the Dunkin cart on campus and today to the store just over a mile from my house – where they recognize my car and have my coffee ready when I pull through.

But today’s post isn’t about knowing your customer’s vehicles, but instead focuses on this brand’s eMarketing creativity and timeliness. First things first, for those of you who haven’t enjoyed your free donut, run out now! Dunkin Donuts is giving away a free donut with every coffee purchase. As a devoted fan, I got the forewarning email and enjoyed my strawberry frosted (AKA Homer Simpson) donut this morning. This timely email has mass appeal – it’s hard to refuse free pastry – and offered a nice twist to the typical promotion/ event-based marketing (not everyone’s brand ties in with tax-time.)

They’re giving a way more than donuts, Dunkin is also running a total of five contests; my favorite is the YouTube based contest that asks loyal fans to submit videos on How Do You Keep America Running? To date they have received 42 video submissions that have been narrowed down to the Top 10; the prize is a year’s supply of coffee (heaven!). Dunkin Donuts is promoting this contest from their site, as a splash in their emails and through their own channel on YouTube – a medium that has garnered over 222K channel views and over a thousand subscribers.

Not a bad strategy for a brick-and-mortar food services company, huh? Their creativity has spanned so much further than the typical in-store and/ or mass advertising approach to include user-generated content and timely emails to bring you back to the store – kudos Dunkin!

Give the People What They Want

I received a great email today from Sticky Fingers, a local BBQ restaurant in South Carolina. Here's the email:

There are three things I like about this email:

1. Sticky Fingers had run a survey a couple of weeks prior. Note the comment from the owners in the bottom right hand corner of the creative. They've actually run this promo before, but now they have the added value that this was in response to feedback they had received in the surveys. What a great way to create a conversation with customers.


2. This is a great way to leverage your email program to drive people in to your brick and mortar location. Note that you have to print the email out and bring it in to the restaurant in order to redeem.


3. I like the way that this email acknowledges the economic crunch that some customers are experiencing, and offers a special discount around that. If you're an online only retailer, you could highlight the value of shopping online, underlining the fact that customers will save money and time shopping online with you.

Try out some of these tips with your next email, and let us know how it goes.

Matchmakers

If you think about it, Matchmakers and email marketers are very similar; each specialize in the pairings of their recipient based on likes, dislikes and a little good fortune. Here are some recommendations to both populations on ways to strengthen their offerings.

The Matchmakers
Start simple, gather responses to your general questions but then try something a little different; have the respondent provide something off-the-wall, maybe the story of their worst date. Behind the scenes, have the entry flow to your marketing team – have a member of your team acknowledge the new subscription and follow up with a personal note thanking them and telling them what to expect. Let the news subscriber know that the emails you send will be relevant and targeted, insist that if they don't like what they are receiving they should feel comfortable to reach out to you/ your team.

Your messages should leverage preferences, they should be catchy and personable – after all you’re making a love connection, not selling orthopedic shoes! Engage them with some intrigue, ask questions, make the recipient think – get them to click through to your landing pages… maybe for a particular article, some current events, something that they could apply on that first date. Keep your call to action distinct and assertive.

Always test your subject lines – maybe “Invest in Happiness” versus “See what a few minutes can do” – there are no limits to the possibilities here; also test your timing pre-/ post lunch should be good test times for your demographic.

The eMarketers
A similar strategy applies to your campaigns; capture basic preferences and use them to personalize communiqués. Make it a dialogue, create that conversation and continue on your landing pages by making your call to action loud and clear.

Wishing all of you great connections.

A Bear Crescendo…

Happy Valentines Day! Yes, two things - first, enjoy the holiday & second, I wish your email marketing program a lot of success. There were so many good campaigns, I want to highlight these one for grabbing our attention.

On 1/28 I received an email from the Bear people asking me to view the Prince Charming Bear & save 15% on the order - the copy said - 'Every woman wants a Prince Charming.' Then on 2/1 I receive an email giving me the opportunity to CUSTOMIZE a bear for my valentine. On 2/3 I get another email giving me many options and tell me to show her that I truly know her & save 15% - I can customize the bear to one of her hobbies. On 2/8, my email reminds me that I only have three more days to save for Valentines day. Plus the animation on 2/8 was phenomenal.


To view the animation simply refresh your screen.

Valentines Day is probably one of the best ways for you to engage someone with a gift from Vermont Teddy Bear. The 'suave' with which they came to me over these four campaigns was absolutely amazing. The beauty lay in the crescendo leading up to the final offer. Of course, I got two more emails from them - on 2/9 I was reminded - show her you know her, & on 2/10 I was told to 'Make her heart skip a beat - of course, my last chance to save.'

You may think that this is too many emails, but I would like you to remember t'is their season. Of course, keep this in mind too - their creative is absolutely brilliant! Also, if your stuff is good and interesting, why won't people read it?

So a nice lesson to us email marketers - if you need to step up your campaigns during any season, make sure you 'sprinkle' some superb copy & design. Look at this as an opportunity for customers to look at your creations & enjoy all that you offer.

Hope you can leverage their learning into your own campaigns. Nice work Michelle, the Vermont Teddy Bear people excel again!

Best Cupcakes & Best Practices

You may have heard of Sprinkles Cupcakes; luckily we had the chance to taste them at their Dallas location a couple weeks ago. We were there for a little field research; we needed to send something unique to one of our customers in the gift-basket business. Here’s a little recap of our experience and how it relates to email marketers like you…

The company was started with the vision of helping you re-live the joy of making cupcakes as a kid with your family. Not sure about you… but these taste better than any I’ve ever made.

1) Banana Cupcakes, Monday through Wednesday only: They have a schedule of the different types of cupcakes they bake daily so your favorite is tied to the day of the week… Lemon Coconut is on Tuesday and Friday, Peanut Butter Chocolate on Wednesday and Saturday. The point is that in addition to the regular daily cupcakes, they offer special flavors only on certain days of the week. The lesson for email marketers is to remember to have your regular email schedule and the extra email each week with a surprise/ special offer.

2) Madagascar Bourbon: A key component in the Lemon Coconut with lemon coconut cream cheese frosting; the Carrot Cake Cupcake is a walnut-studded with cinnamon cream cheese frosting. Each of the creations is a delicious work of art – so if your favorite isn’t there the descriptions of the others may help you choose an alternate. As eMarketers we should use fantastic descriptions to define our offers; don't make the assumption that people will see or hear what you are trying to say. You can also enhanced descriptions on the landing page (a search plus too.)

3) Superb Service: It’s easy be overwhelmed with all of the pretty options; so the staff walks you through what’s available. EMarketers should apply the same using your call center and branch people – make sure they know about your offers and are able to exude the same excitement that the cupcake people can.

4) Phenomenal Gifts: Their product is fresh, neatly displayed and delivered with care. The recipients of the cupcakes (who as I mentioned are in the gift basket business) liked the packaging and raved about the product. So retail eMarketers, encourage your readers to give your products as gifts it’s an easy way to extend your product line – if you add something special it will really benefit.

5) Follow up: I had a question about the delivery of the cupcakes so I left a message with Sprinkles. The follow up was prompt, cheerful and sincere. This is a challenge, especially in the eWorld, but use the phone instead of email. Take a small segment of users and offer them direct phone access to you, tell them you are personally interested in their feedback – you will be surprised not only in the good feedback but the friends (AKA loyal customers) who will continue to be big fans.

So if you’re in the area, have a sweet-tooth and in need of a pick-me-up stop by – and try their Red Velvet cupcake, you will not be disappointed. You could get the same pick-me-up for your campaigns at our Panel of Peers workshop – maybe someone from Sprinkles will attend our LA session on Tuesday.

What’s in your Message?

Message Content is probably the most subjective component of an eMarketer’s job – is a message successful because of opens, or clicks, or conversions? Or are these analytics the result of the offer, the images or the timing… seems an eMarketer could go mad trying to balance the aesthetics to achieve those analytics.

So to cut the guesswork out of determining the right mix, you must test. Take a small portion of your list – say ten percent – divide this test segment in half and use this to try alternate subject lines or creative and deploy the top performer to the balance of your list.

The proposed strategy will do more than help you in the short term, it will also help you build your own predictive modeling – you’ll know that “Free Shipping” performs better than “Buy One, Get One” for instance or that a certain hero photo will surpass others. This customer insight (and associated statistics) will give you the ammunition needed to plan your campaigns and come in handy when you’re being pressured by the forces of inventory overflow.

So test often, keep records and you’ll be able to turn out top performing campaigns while gaining insight on your customer/ prospect base.

Subscribe to our Newsletter by visiting the Service In Action, Panel of Peers or NCR eCommerce sites.

2008: Five Must Dos...

1) You MUST grow your list
Look back at your list over the past five years (or longer) and see how many new names you have added. Look at your direct mail file. I have checked with financial institutions, catalogs, retailers, travel, entertainment or other companies to find a common thread – the average percentage of names for which people have email ids is less than 20%. Meaning you have another 80-something percent to tap into. More importantly you have to look for constructive ways to grow your list. This means every name counts, so reduce churn and get creative. Your entire team needs to work on helping you grow the list.

2) You MUST know more
About your customers and prospects, that is. Just having an email association is not enough. You need to survey your list at different stages – during the sign-up process, various transaction points as well as stages of inactivity. You need to keep this information in a preference table and also build up operational preferences. Operational preferences are tracking information about a particular recipient – whether they open your emails, they click, or they simply haven't cared. Your approach to asking questions needs to be direct and beneficial; put on your own user hat and see what is really helpful.

3) You MUST interact (across all channels)
No more left hand right hand dislocation – your recipient is on the receiving end of a number of different communiqués. They expect you to make sure they are served appropriately. There is no channel conflict in their mind and you better treat them that way. Some of my friends have started splitting parts of a story across their paper communiqués and online messages… their recipients are beginning to realize that it is the same company that is communicating seamlessly across multiple channels. During a subsequent post, we will discuss ways to make sure your paper communiqués are revered by your recipients.

4) You MUST sizzle
The three Cs – Creative, copy and overall content; focus on what is inside your newsletter or email offer. Recipients are expecting you to grab their attention, keep them tuned-in and steer them towards the offer. Depending on the size of your email program you can have a person or a team dedicated to the online media. You can leverage the same information you put together across other Web 2.0 channels. Think about every email as a piece of art – take time to put it together, and you will see your efforts pay off. The email channel has arrived.

5) You MUST make it to the party
As recipients, we often take deliverability for granted; we expect you to show up in our inbox. As email marketers, deliverability should be monitored and perfected daily. Your other customer touchpoints should be trained on what bounces and deliverability means so they can carry out intelligent conversations with intended recipients. You are legitimate, your offer is legitimate, and you have taken time to put together the offer – make sure you make it to the inbox.

One more… A MUST Attend!
This year we have invited our friends to our Annual Panel of Peers – a peer-based discussion group that brings together marketers across industry in an interactive discussion around best practices. Our event will focus on these subjects and more with real case studies, best practices and practical learning that will help you with your email endeavors. Mark your calendars for March 24-26; visit the site for more details.

Again, happy New Year and best wishes for the year of 1… (more on 1 later.)

Loosing Steam?

It's time to switch gears, the major holiday rush is drawing to a close but it’s not really time to start pushing main-line content. Why not put out a thank you email to your list – a couple nice examples we’ve seen are from The Salvation Army and King Arthur Flour.

The Salvation Army sent a thank you and holiday message to donors and friends – their campaign featured an animated central image, reminded recipients of the volunteers with the kettles and even thanked those who volunteered their time.

King Arthur Flour featured their employees from various departments and created some clever content that tied in the season with their products.

Remember the end of the year doesn’t have to be the end of the line. Use this time to put out a creative campaign thanking your loyal customers, prospects and friends.

Gobble Gobble

Get ready for the upcoming holiday season by helping the Stave Puzzles Clown feast on falling foods – just beware of escaped turkeys!

The game was launched via email on Friday; it included a clever subject line and takes an interesting twist on the year-end close-out sale. They are giving away something big on November 26; to win you must accumulate points, which are gathered by playing the game. The game is fun and engaging, it’s timed well with at Thanksgiving theme. The goal is to get you to play everyday, accumulate your 200 points (daily minimum entry) and get another entry in their grand finale.

They’re doing a great job at keeping you engaged; it also entices new users to sign up for emails and pay attention to the brand. As an email marketer, I absolutely love their style because its simple, straight-forward and effective – they’ve even started a user community/ blog titled, Stave's PuzzleNuts.

So until you’re ready to launch a game or start a community, visit their site enjoy the game and enter to win – you may even figure out a way to get your users involved.

What’s your Vote?

What happens when you mix two pressed apples, a crushed pink guava, half a freshly squeezed orange, chunks of mashed banana and mango with five crushed goji berries and a dash of lemon juice? According to the guys at Innocent, a tasty super-smoothie; a product as interesting as how these blokes started their business.

Their beverages were introduced at a fair; they set up a stand and began serving their smoothies and drinks. Across from their stand they set up a sign and two garbage barrels – the sign asked, Should we quit our day jobs to make these drinks? The barrels were marked with yes and no – at the end of the day they ended up with barrels of yes votes.

Today they offer a healthy, tasty drink that is good for you, they think green (this bottle was made of 100% recycled plastics) and they listen to their customers.

Follow their lead – not necessarily making smoothies – but, every now and then ask your email recipients what they really think about your campaigns. Put out two versions, one for those who have opened previous campaigns and another for those who never have. For those who have opened, ask them what they think about your work, it could be something simple like:

I know you receive these emails on a regular basis;

I (your humble email marketer) would love to get feedback

from you. Are we doing our jobs effectively,
do you like the stuff? What else would you like to see?

A couple nice examples are the customer service section of the Paul Fredrick Menstyle’s site; the guys at Innocent even have an inner circle – visit these and see how they engage their users.

Asking for and applying feedback strengthens your bond with your customers – some immediate results will be seen in your open rates, click-throughs and conversions. If you keep asking and applying, you may garner ideas, quotes and testimonials for upcoming campaigns or marketing; you may even help your management team evolve products/ services… I guess it really is all about creating interactive conversations.

Timely Sizzle

You can imagine how many emails our team receives each day – we get a copy of every campaign and often receive multiple segments, so we see a number of campaigns from all customers. We act as a regular recipient, looking at the content and timing.

One company that has capitalized on perfect timing (and superb content) is King Arthur Flour. Here are some of their secrets to make your creative sizzle with great content and perfect timing:

1) Their emails are timed perfectly, typically triggered around 2:30 PM when you’ve just come back from lunch and in your inbox is a shot of a tempting dessert or bread or… As a result, all you want is what’s pictured.

2) Their layout is very clean, the content is delightfully delectable. Plus PJ’s recipes are always part of each campaign so each week she throws out a new treat.

3) Their subject lines are simply intriguing. They get you to open the emails to see what treat is being offered. Some of my favorites are:

Brag-a-Muffins
Our shelves runneth over
A tasty trio for tailgating

4) Their surveys, a few weeks back they asked questions in a very unique style building upon my appreciation of their campaigns and brand.

5) They have fun, but their customers gain too. They ran a SweetStakes contest that was both relevant and effective, engaging the customer and sharing value.

I am a customer – a very happy one – I have absolutely enjoyed their merchandise and have also thoroughly enjoyed their email campaigns.

So join their mailing list – you’ll gain inspiration for your email marketing efforts and maybe even your culinary skills.

Highlighting the benefits of Online Shopping

The holiday shopping season is rapidly approaching. Last year, holiday shoppers spent between 25% to 30% more than they had in 2005. Much of that success was due to special discounts and free shipping offers.

What are some other things that you can highlight in your emails to drive shopper to buy online? Here are a couple things:

• Save time - Online shoppers don't have to drive to the mall, fight the crowds, wander the aisles looking for what they need, or wait in line to pay. This is valuable time that they could use for other things.
• Save money - not just on the great deals you offer, but customers save on gas and in some cases sales tax (great article on who does and doesn't pay sales tax here).
• Save heartache - the store the customer went to might have sold out of the item they wanted to purchase, but your store (should) always have the items they want in stock.

Try highlighting some of these things in your emails today.

Hop the Pond

I’m in the process of planning a trip to Merry Ole England later this year and have consequently become obsessed with everything British. So when I saw mention of a British email study – I had to read.

PsychCentral published an article today that focused on email stress and its impact on some workers. As email marketers, I suppose we must take the sheer volume that individuals receives into account so that our message doesn’t get lost in the crowd – the application of best practices and communicating a real message also become a must.

But what can really be done? Fortunately, we promote the permission-based genera of emails, so we should be a joy to the recipient. If there is a way to insert humor, some good news or just a brief release into their day then we’ve done more than simply promote our brand.

Just a few points to keep in mind while designing your next communiqué, ole chap!

7/7/07 Promos

I was talking earlier about planning emails around special dates; well today I got two excellent examples of this from Aeropostale and Papa John's - both offering a special 7/7/07 deal that is good tomorrow only. That's good planning!

Papa John's email subject: A Lucky One Day Only $7.77 Pizza Offer from Papa John's
To view it, click here.

Aeropostale's email subject: It's Lucky 777 and it's only Online!
To view it, click here.

Both of these mails do a good job of tackling immediacy, and build a sense or urgency with the one day only sale. Plus, they give email subscribes a sense that they're getting something special, as these offers are available only online through the email.

Take your email on Safari

Apple has released a beta version of it's Safari browser for PC. Safari was exclusive to Apple up until this release. What does this mean to you as an email marketer?

Safari's usage share has grown from 1.89% to 2.94% in the past year, which might not seem like much, but now that it's open to use on PC, there is a potential that more users will be on the browser in the coming months, especially with how well the browser integrates with Apple's other popular applications like iTunes.

Initial reports have seen somechanges in formating and fonts styles in Safari, but not anything to be overly alarmed about. But, it's a good idea now for email marketers to look at how their emails as well as their website will render in this new browser, before they hear about it from their customers.

You can download Safari for PC for free here.

Service In Action - December 2006

In case you missed this month's Service In Action call, here is the presentation that was reviewed. To find out when next month's call is, visit www.serviceinaction.com

Holiday Email Creative - Aeropostale

Aeropostale is sending out a series of emails during the holiday season, beginning with an email on Wednesday alerting it's readers to the increased frequency of the emails that were coming, and the great offers these emails would have. Here is the text of that email:

Dear Aéropostale.com customer,

It's that time of year again! As we all sit down to celebrate Thanksgiving Day, Aéropostale wants to say thank you for your loyalty to our brand and for your business. Thanksgiving seems to be the perfect time to do so!

As our way of saying thanks, we have put together our most exciting offers of the entire year this holiday weekend. From amazing prices on our best styles to great giveaways and online special offers, you are sure to be delighted by how easy it is to get all your holiday shopping done early. We don't want to ruin all of the surprises, but please keep an eye on your inbox each of the next 4 days...we promise you'll be glad you did!

Wishing you and your families a joyful, peaceful and very fashionable.

Below is part of the email that was sent early yesterday morning:



Lots of nice things about this email, here are three of the points I like:

• Reminder that the online store is always open, even when the brick and morter is not; so people can start their shopping early.
• A very attractive offer that is good only online and only for one day, with that offer being promenatly displayed at the top of the email.
• Three bullet points for the added value displayed after the main offer.

Aeropostale followed up this email with one this morning reminding customers of the contest they're running, but this time with more focus on driving people to the stores rather than online.

Certainly, this is an interesting sales cycle using email to drive sales for the brand.