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The Future of email
July 31, 2006
David Baker wrote a very good article in the Sunday edition of Email Insider. I thought the information in it was very insightful and worth posting here.
EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE you come across a great article that just spurs your intellectual juices. One such article was written by Paul Gillin in BtoB magazine's print edition last month, titled "New Technology, New Media and New Paradigm." If you have not read it, I highly recommend you do.
We read a lot about strategy, issues, trends and client work, but rarely do we see anything written about the future of e-mail and its dependence on the rest of the digital world. I don't have time to wait for the analysts to make their predictions. I need a far-reaching vision of how this channel fits into our business and consumer lives now and in the future.
So follow this logic and let me know what you think. A couple of passages from Paul Gillin's article rang particularly true, not least for the sheer simplicity of how he laid out his thesis. He said:
"We hear a lot about blogs, but blogs aren't important. What's important is personal publishing, or the ability to communicate a message to a global audience almost instantaneously. Personal publishing will permeate electronic media, providing counterpoint to mainstream sources and adding depth and color to the conversation.
"We hear a lot about podcasts, but podcasts aren't important. What's important is time-shifted media. The phenomenon that started with TiVo has spread to digital audio and will soon capture portable video. Information consumers will no longer be beholden to program schedules or even their living rooms. Our TV shows will travel with us.
"We hear a lot about RSS, but RSS isn't important. What's important is the ability to subscribe to information that really interests us. RSS is mainly used to subscribe to blog posts and podcasts. But in the future, they will use it to subscribe to ideas."
So, as someone who aspires to effect a change in the paradigm of digital communications and consumer behavior, I put my spin on the future of e-mail using this same logic. I conclude that we hear a lot about e-mail, but e-mail isn't important. What's important is our ability to communicate in a synchronous and asynchronous fashion in a mixed media world. E-mail will be our notification agent, alarm clock, Post-it® Note, pager, cell phone, fax machine, instant messenger, and document management system all combined. It will be supported on any device via many different sources.
Users are becoming creatures of their communication devices and are already molding their communication patterns to mixed media. Younger generations are already driving this through social networking, reliance on instant messaging, the growth of mobile usage, personal publishing and online video.
Today you have people answering e-mail in the strangest places, mobile devices that keep them connected longer and new generations developing their own cultural traits. You have a household of four people who instant-message each other rather than walking into the next room to chat.
Then you have this rather faceless channel of e-mail. E-mail will evolve and people will develop their own digital signature, voice, personalities, behaviors and preferences, all of which will lead to the customization of the devices and communication patterns. There will be a blur as to what e-mail, RSS and mobile messaging are to the consumer. In the future, people will say, "Remember when we had SPAM? It was such a nuisance," the way today we might recall when televisions sets were only available in black and white and programming was limited to eight channels.
As someone who has invested dearly in this channel, I am charged with building a business, talent and partners to support its evolution, as well as creating a global connection that will allow it to permeate our environment. If we continue to think of e-mail as a singular channel with its own unique issues, we'll never see the potential it brings as a communications tool in driving consumer and business experiences.
The future is bright, and consumers are even brighter. How well we stay open to the possibilities will determine our success.
Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 9:53 PM | Permalink
Starbucks is a Lifestyle Marketer in Email
July 31, 2006
I stop once a day, 7 days a week, for a Venti cup of Joe from the Green Siren herself. I know that they are hawking everything else under the sun from cups, to cakes, to clothing, and now music. I enjoy the tunes playing there, and yes I even bought a new Dave Mathews Band CD there one morning for the drive in. But I want to know about one to one marketing here and not mass marketing. I come for coffee everyday. I have a Starbucks card tied to my email address. I buy coffee. I buy others coffee. I want to hear about moving me from a standard cup of coffee to a larger transaction item beverage rather than music.
I would think that they would really be data mining up there in Seattle about who the customers are, how to segment them and how to drive more value from each, or to each customer.
Is my line of thinking out of reach? Could they maybe send a "Thanks for spending a chunk of change with us each anc every day for the past 7 years, could we offer you a cup on us?" Right?
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:44 AM | Permalink
Smart Car On Brand in Emails
July 28, 2006
As many of you are frustrated (we all are) with the rising costs of gas and getting the most out of your dollar, I went out to find out where I could look at a new Smart car from Mercedes Benz. Now I was upset that they still have not worked out who is going to sell this in the US, but I signed up anyways hoping to hear soon. I mean 120 some miles to the gallon and a roll cage that might stop an H2 from crushing me on the way to work is appealing, right?
I loved the site and the email trigger that came out, but I wanted some "smart" icons to represent the brand and take me to an action rather then a text link. I know that most of us are smart enough now to know what an underline word link looks like, but a button or arrow or something would have completed this for me. Must have put that creative budget item in the car design and not the email budget.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 10:39 AM | Permalink
Using Image Personalization in Email
July 27, 2006
This email from Shop.org blew me away. It is done by a technology that creates personalized images and adds them to emails or ecom sites based on the database information. Now this is just my name, which rocks in lights, but I have seen it done in many other ecom sites lately. Really connects the user to the experience.
Something to think about, the impact of your name in lights.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:36 AM | Permalink
North Face Needs to Use The Whole Space
July 26, 2006
Now I have been rocking North Face for years and find them to have some amazing sites and gear, but the emails frequently let me down. I might be banging the gong lately about the use of area in an email, but it only makes sense. When you have an opportunity in a limited amount of space in an email client preview window... use it all. Use what you ahve created to maximize the delivery as well as the content.
Keeping it simple and creating some icons that would drive me to move forward with the click, other then the text links, gives me that 3 second idea of what you want me to do.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 10:33 AM | Permalink
Konami and Metal Gear Solid Black and White
July 25, 2006
Konami, whom we love, dropped this email a few weeks back and I like it. the only thing I would have done differently would have been to add COLOR to the action link in the creactive. The BW email is good and on brand with the new UMD email, but using color to POP out at me and drive my eye to learn more, buy the UMD or even know what to do in less time would have made this perfect.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:30 AM | Permalink
Driving New Lines with Email
July 24, 2006
In the retail fashion world I am a big fan of simplicity and wanting to learn more. Metropark does a failry good job in creative and driving me to click though to see more. Where they let me down is on the click and site itself. The click always takes me to the home page and not the line itself or item level page. And when you get into the site they don't actually house any of the product info on the site. Sure this will drive you to the retail offline store and keep them top of mind, but I find it odd that they link out to allthe brand sites to look at items once in thier site. And for this email, they did not even have a functioning link to the brand site. The link just went back to the home page.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:25 AM | Permalink
Please Take Our Short Email Marketing Survey
July 24, 2006
In an effort to expand our latest study we are currently working on, we would like to invite you to participate in this survey. This survey will help us to combine some key data points we analyze over our emailROI network and provide you with the combined results in August.
Sign Up for our Study Release and download past studies.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 7:40 AM | Permalink
Lucy.com Gets the Look
July 22, 2006
Now this isn't a true example of personalization the in real sense of the word, but they did follow some ideas we mentioned in our last meeting. We talked about putting the idea together so that someone could get an idea of what they could create when combining all the elements together instead of just showing all the items alone.
I like this as it should result in a higher sale per transaction by showing what a complete outfit could look like. Anyone could see this layout with thier own head at the top.
Lucy.com has done a good job lately in mixing up the looks of the emails from simple sale emails, to multi product emails to this that brings it all together.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:01 AM | Permalink
Crowne Plaza Needs to Use the Whitespace
July 21, 2006
Now the button use gets an A Grade. But it should have been moved up to the top right to keep me from scrolling down farther in the window below the fold in the preview pane in my email client. And then I was shocked again at the abundance of white space that followed the message. Once again they could have increased the font size, or shrunk the size of the text area to keep it cleaner.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 12:00 PM | Permalink
The Bees Knees Goes Email
July 21, 2006
If you have not learned about Burt's Bees products, you need to try them out. They have a great consumer brand and the products rock. I got this email the other day (the first ever after opting in some time ago) and was a little let down at the poor use of the area they left empty. If you have a template and not alot to say, try using a larger font to fill it in or rework the template.
Leaving so much area really is a poor use of the inbox preview window. Keep it top loaded with the calls to action and draw the user down or to the site.
What was more of a shocker was I got a personal text emails about an hour later appologizing for sending this email out. Seems that they were still testing and did not mean to braodcast it to everyone. But on that same note, I never got the final one, nor have I got another since. Need to work on the frequency here.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 11:14 AM | Permalink
Makes Me Want to Return
July 20, 2006
I was fortunate to have my first stay at the Boulders Resort in June for the Email Insiders summit and would go back in a heart beat. I think that they know this as the stay there is truly unique. What has impressed me is that they are carefully reaching out to me once a month after my stay (and sent me an exit/check out survey days after leaving) and keeping it simple and top of mind.
The clear actionable button (I am of late a big fan of the Button) makes me know exactly what to do to learn more and plan my next stay. When I was checking out I actually asked them what Property Management system they used and if they had the ability to connect the two in order to send me emails in the future. I asked, as you might be surprised, many Boutique hotels do not have this ability and in my opinion miss the opportunity to bring me back and stay in touch.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 10:09 AM | Permalink
Apple on the Mark
July 18, 2006
I will admit, I am an Apple fan, but also go both ways on my desktop with an Apple and a PC. I get this campaign so well, as I would assume everyone does, that it drives me to want to learn more. They keep it simple in ALL emails and focus in on the driver to make me take action.
Humor works, as well as focused copy and clean images .
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:07 AM | Permalink
Alaska Air Knows Me
July 17, 2006
I am always impressed with Alaska Airlines in the Monday AM email I get each week. It is always at the same time and loaded with information that is really (or appears) focused on my needs as a frequent traveler. The only draw back is that there is a lot of text to read. But they have me waiting for it every Monday AM to see what new offers and great additions they have in store.
Hats off to Alaska Airlines for creating campaigns that are always on time and on the same day. I have not noticed much change up in these emails in a while, so it must be working well.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 7:03 AM | Permalink
A tip for E-Commerce driven email marketing...
July 17, 2006
Here is a tip for every BtoC website whose goal from email marketing is to drive sales online. Many people get paid on the 15th and 30th of each month.
Why not drop your email on the 16th....when their paycheck was most likely just direct deposited in their account. They are a lot more likely to buy a shirt, stereo, etc... with a full paycheck in their bank account.
Give it a try...
Comments (0) | Posted by alex at 12:30 AM | Permalink
The Email Acid Test
July 7, 2006
I found this from Glen Tomlinson. A good litmus test for your best practices in email marketing.
A/B testing or split list testing is a simple and relatively easy method for testing the various elements of your marketing campaign. You divide your customer base into two equal groups, and then expose the first half to one version of your message, and the other half to an alternative version with slight changes. You then track both sets of results and determine which elements provide the best returns.
Email is ideal for A/B testing because of the immediacy of the response to your communication. Within days, your campaign will yield all the information you need to determine which elements were successful, and which were not. For maximum return on your email investment, testing should become a regular and disciplined activity.
Let’s take a look at a few simple elements of an email that should be tested in order to maximise your email performance
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 10:08 AM | Permalink
