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The NFL Email Marketing Project

September 27, 2007

As an avid football fan, and sports fan in general, I decided tonight to opt-in to every NFL team's email list through my AOL account. This took about 45 minutes.

I have always been frustrated with my favorite teams and their inability to treat me like an individual fan. Fans have such brand loyalty, why can't pro sports email marketing make you feel like they care about you? They treat you like a herd of brainless followers (maybe we are).

Over the next month I will be breaking down the NFL and what is done right and wrong by each team. We will look at the opt-in process, creative, content, and segmentation.

First team-up: The Indianapolis Colts.

Look for breakdown next week

Comments (0) | Posted by alex at 10:44 PM | Permalink

Even Agencies Screw up sometimes

September 25, 2007

We recently put up a post about howEven Major ESPs screw up but some people can see that as normal since many pure software providers have very little design sense, but this email below is from an agency, one that has a specialty in email marketing. Outlook 2007 is brutal on email, but this one is missing entire chunks of content (due to white on a white background) and the design is mangled. I know we are not without our rendering issues here and there, but this is pretty bad.

View image

Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 8:58 PM | Permalink

Halo 3 gets it

September 21, 2007

I was taking a look at the Adverblog email today and it had a story about the new Halo 3 site. The site is built from an actual diorama. The level of real world detail that went into an online experience to promote a video game is astonishing.

There is great use of images, video, characters throughout your site "travels" - this really ups the ante for storytelling when it comes to videogame microsites. The level of detail that went into the visuals of games has been amazing for a couple years now, but always lacked some real meat to the storyline.

View image

Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 12:00 PM | Permalink

Ask the Swami

September 19, 2007

No, we are not Chris Berman, but we are completely open to answering any question you fire at us. Send us a question, rant, etc. and we are happy to respond and answer your question in a post. So comment now.

Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 7:52 AM | Permalink

What is the opposite of High-Definition?

September 18, 2007

I am in the market for an High Definition Television, so I have been paying close attention to the BestBuy.com emails as of late. I received this campaign yesterday. Shouldn't an email promoting "High-Def" have a larger image that is a little more appealing?

View Email

I know HDTV is hot right now, and this campaign will probably do ok, but shouldn't you still have to sell the experience a little more? There is a lot of debate about image heavy emails, but I think when you are selling an experience - be it a resort, art, electronics, events, etc.... - you need to still excite the user and give them that feeling that they are missing out through dynamic imagery. A little tiny picture of a screen just doesn't do it. It looks like just another TV set....

Comments (0) | Posted by alex at 11:01 AM | Permalink

Don't send me a contest I can't win

September 10, 2007

My favorite baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, has just threw a 3rd strike to me with their email marketing program.

They have sent me 3 contests this summer which I have no ability to even enter since I live in Oregon. i could forgive them, except they have years and years of data on me. From my email profile, to my merchandise and ticket purchases, to my "Cubs Club" membership, and so on.

View Entire Email

With this last campaign - "Win a 2008 Cubs Spring Getaway" - I knew from my past frustrations of filling out a from only to see that only residents from IL, WI, and IN were eligible for the contest.

If you have the data, why put your loyal fans threw a frustrating experience?

Another frustration is that with someone as large as the Cubs, who must send millions of email every month, you know there is no one on the other end of this email address to send feedback too.

If you are listening Cubbies marketing team, please quit getting my hopes up and segment your contest list to people who actually have a chance to win.

By the way, I am closer to Arizona than the people in Chicago anyway, it would be a cheaper trip :)

Comments (1) | Posted by alex at 10:36 PM | Permalink

ESPs and self promotion

September 10, 2007

Everyone has seen it, the logo of the company "powering" the email at the base of the email. Now we, along with every other email marketing firm have uses this tactic to help promote our business as well as help with SEO.

Most of the time companies put a small image in the footer to help promote themselves and strengthen brand awareness, but this example from the DMA email is a little over the top - it is the largest image in the email.

Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 10:03 AM | Permalink

Inverge, time to converge

September 6, 2007

Today is the kickoff of the Inverge 2007 Conference here in Portland. Inverge is a conference focusing on how we are experiencing and what we will experience when it comes to the convergence (content, etc.). The first speaker today was Joshua Green the Research Manager for the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT.

Joshua had a lot of great points and one that stuck with me is: convergence of content (participation) is cultural and technology facilitatesconvergence. See what Joshua was talking about

So many marketers today feel that if you make a viral or social campaign people will participate, but the fact is that if your audience is not into participating, the best constructed (technologically speaking of course) campaign will fail. On the flip side if you have a brand where your audience wants to interact, if you are not facilitating this, you are seriously missing out.

I am curious, and please comment, what do you think marketers are missing with it comes to true cross platform marketing campaigns and convergence?

Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 12:52 PM | Permalink