Stand Out Emails

Email Creative: Standing Out From the Crowd
by Karen Talavera
Published on September 15, 2011

In this article, you'll learn...

    Three ways your email messages can grab attention
    Why less is more in email design

With email inboxes more crowded than ever, your message's successful arrival in the recipient's inbox is half the battle. Assuming you routinely have good deliverability, the second half of that battle is standing out from the crowd.

The majority of email users (more than 70% by some estimates) view the lineup of email messages in their inboxes via preview panes, so only a snapshot of each message is visible either on the right side or on the lower half of their screens. Checking email via a mobile device can be even more limiting, eliminating previews altogether.

Like it or not, that is the reality for email marketers today, which is why it's essential that your email messages not only pop and get straight to the point but also make a memorable entrance!

What follows are three tried and true creative tactics that'll always boost your message appeal. Although you may have seen these tactics applied to marketing and advertising in offline channels, they can have a greater impact online than offline—especially because of short attention spans and email's deliverability and rendering issues.

1. Compelling, Colorful Headlines

Compelling and colorful headlines stand out and are easily readable in preview panes. They immediately draw the reader to the main point of your message.

Don't rely solely on a graphic header, such as the one that may be topping your blog or site, to do the job of a headline; they're two different things. Though a graphic banner or "masthead" may be fine for e-newsletters, other marketing messages require more punch and relevancy. Each deserves a unique headline.

Take a look at the following example from restaurant group Bonefish Grill (which has a history of great email headlines, by the way). Notice the great headline copywriting and how each section of the message has a sub-headline to draw the reader in.

Tip: Headline fonts, sizes, and colors are routinely tested, but you don't need to go to such lengths if you simply follow the graphic standards of your brand and marketing communications. So, don't forget that headline, and try tying it into your message subject line, too.

2. Pictures, Please!

Eye-tracking lab studies measuring how people visually interact with email have proven that messages with images have higher readability than those without.

Although including a picture of a product is an obvious tactic to increase advertising effectiveness, much email marketing is not product or retail oriented; it's service or content oriented. Finding relevant photos and images for those types of messages is just as important as it is for messages sent by clothing and furniture retailers, whose catalog-spread-style emails and sites consist largely of images.

See how much more interesting this B2B email for phone conference services looks with images vs. how it would have looked with text alone:

Tip: Include at least one image in every promotional email. Photos are ideal, but even illustrations, cartoons, caricatures, logos, and icons are effective. Experiment with different percentages of copy vs. graphic. Editorial-style emails are usually heavier on copy than graphics, but you might find that a highly compelling photo with a strong headline and short intro paragraph works as well as (or better) than your meatier messages.

3. Less Is So Much More

For effective email creative, simplicity rules. Too many marketing emails err using up all the "white space" in their designs.

Don't feel compelled to fill every pixel with color or content. Give your readers' eyes a rest, and remember that a few bold elements can draw more curiosity (and more eyes) than many detailed ones.

Just try this J. Crew email on for size to see what I mean:

We approach email with an incredibly short attention span, sizing up whether to open and act on messages in near sub-second timeframes. So for your email marketing, let clean, clear, simple, and to-the-point rule your design. Show as well as tell, and don't tell just in one way: Use subject lines, headlines, subheads, and message copy to tell, and tell again.

Clear, uncluttered email will gain the gratitude of not only your designer but also your customers.

Karen Talavera runs Synchronicity Marketing (www.synchronicitymarketing.com) and writes about email, social media, and other online-marketing conversation channels on her blog, Enlightened Emarketing. Follow her on Twitter (@SyncMarketing) and Facebook for daily tips and links to emerging email and social-media marketing trends, facts, and research.

MY THOUGHTS

Yes, less is much.  Just like with presentations, do it with a KISS: keep it short and simple (or sweet).

Ever Heard of Sensory Marketing?

I’ve heard a bit about “sensory” marketing – does this actually work?
Adam Ferrier
Wednesday, 14 September 2011 14:56
www.startupsmart.com.au

I’ve heard a bit about “sensory” marketing, which appeals to people’s senses. I run a gadget shop and I wondered if there

are any kinds of sights, smells or sounds that would work well to encourage people to come in and spend their money?

Don’t let anyone fool you, all marketing is sensory marketing.  It’s just that we need to acknowledge there are at least

five senses we can use to engage people with.

Consider the work we’re doing with the Renault Latitude at the moment. We’re using Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) to

measure peoples stress levels driving their regular car verses the Renault Latitude.

You can see the responses at www.stresstestdrive.com.au. The point being that this involves sensory technology to dramatise

the benefit of the car, but it’s still just marketing.

Further, another part of the campaign encourages people to actually sit in the massaging seats, smell the sophisticated air

freshening capabilities and listen to the Bose sound system.

Again, this is engaging the senses of consumers.

Remember you have at least five senses to engage people with, and tell your story with.  A good marketer will use these

senses as a checklist and ensure they have considered, although not necessarily used, all of them when considering their

marketing activity.

Perhaps the most interesting macro change in marketing communications is moving from the one-way passive image based

advertising of yesterday to interactive, immersive and engaging advertising of the future.

With this being the case, all the senses, not just eyes and ears, will become more and more important.

Adam Ferrier is a consumer psychologist and founding partner of Naked Communications Australia.  He began his career as a

forensic psychologist. Adam then had a stint at Saatchi & Saatchi before starting Naked Communications in 2004. He was also

State under-12 Chess Champion in WA. www.nakedcomms.com.au

Ask Amanda or any other StartupSmart Mentor a question here.

MY THOUGHTS

How do you do this when you're doing internet marketing?  Maybe just appeal to the senses?  A good enough appeal so

potential customers can imagine smelling and tasting and touching?  Something that will make them want to actually hold a

product in their hands and see how it smells or tastes?

Not sure.  Any ideas?

LEARN FROM DIRECT MAILS

Want to Create Email Marketing Value? Check Out the Direct Mail in Your Mailbox
by Ryan Morgan
Published on July 12, 2011
http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2011/5432/want-to-create-email-marketing-value-check-out-the-direct-mail-in-your-mailbox?adref=nlt071211

Though direct mail certainly isn't as popular or as effective as it once was, email marketers can apply many of the theories used for direct mail campaigns to increase the value of their email marketing campaigns.

First impressions are important

Picture what you do when you get home after a long day of work. You grab the mail and shuffle through it; "bill, bill, circular, overdue bill, credit card offer...." It takes a special type of mail to excite someone these days.

Now picture your inbox when you get to work in the morning; "SPAM, SPAM, email newsletter, SPAM...." The difference is you're not sifting through five pieces of mail, you're sifting through 25. (Some of you might be thinking, "Only 25? More like 225!")

Let's face it... in the midst of all that "junk," a white envelope with a simple return address doesn't cut it. The same goes for an email. Keep in mind the first few things a recipient sees:

    Subject line. Does the subject line accurately describe what the message is? Is there some value in the subject line that will make the recipient want to open the email? (e.g., "Special 20% Off Coupon Inside!")

    "From" address. Is the sender someone the recipient knows and is familiar with (company or person), or is it a random or generic email address that the recipient has no connection with? (e.g., marketing@mycompany.com)

    Graphics/layout. If you looked at your email for only two seconds, would it catch your eye? Does it have a good mix of graphics and text? Is the text separated into chunks that are easy to read?

Give me something of value

Every once in a while, I get an unsolicited mailer in my mailbox promoting a new real estate agent in town. I'm a new homeowner, so the odds of me needing a real estate agent any time soon are slim. However, one of the real estate agents sends me a well-designed mailer that has home-maintenance tips, mortgage-rate trends, and information about the area we live in. Now that's useful!

When crafting the content of your email, focus on sharing information that provides value to the recipient. Consider using the following:

    Monetary value. Sharing valuable coupons, discounts, or offers with your audience gives intrinsic value to your message.

    Informational value. Rather than sending me a press release about a new hammer you're selling, tell me how I could use it. Show me how to build a bird house with it. I could be discovering a product that I never even knew I needed!

    Opportunity value. Give me something that not everyone can get: a pre-screening of a movie, a sneak peek of a cool new product, an event that's not open to the public. I want to be an insider, and I want to feel special.

Be considerate

If you're like many people, and if you saved your mail for a while, you could probably build a small home out of "20% off" coupon postcards from Bed Bath & Beyond. But like many people, you likely drop those postcards promptly into the trash. Most mass direct mail follows that same path in millions of homes.

If you're an email marketer, however, you have the upper hand in deliverability and conversion.

Here are a few ways to nurture and engage your email subscribers:

    Always use opt-in and stay CAN-SPAM compliant. Doing so will ensure that you're reaching people who want to be reached and you're not doing harm to your brand or your sending reputation.

    Always segment. Sending relevant messages to relevant segments is one of the keys to email success. Segment your list by demographics, recipient preferences, engagement, or other useful criteria.

    Never stop testing. Compare subject lines, use different layouts, and test with different audiences and segments. You'll be able to continually improve your campaigns by making analytics-driven choices.

    Always let them leave. What if you were in a store and the salespeople wanted you to buy something so badly that they locked the doors and wouldn't let you leave? Sounds horrible, right? Don't lock the doors on your email recipients... allow them to easily change their email preferences or opt out.

Email marketers can learn a lot from direct mail practices. Applying just a few direct mail principles will drastically increase the value of your email marketing campaigns.

MY THOUGHTS

valuable lessons.  You'll never know when something that's almost extinct can provide you with the answers you're looking for.

Reconciling Traditional and Digital Marketing

Tradigital Values: Reconciling Traditional and Digital Marketing
by Rob McCready
Published on June 6, 2011

Read more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2011/5176/tradigital-values-reconciling-traditional-and-digital-marketing#ixzz1OYDHHR4r

In this article, you'll learn...

    Four ways to make traditional and digital values work together at your company

    How traditional and digital agencies can better collaborate for success

What do you do when your digital partners passionately complain that people "just don't get the new reality"—and your other agency partners assure you that the traditional notions of branding and marketing haven't really changed? You listen.

The gloom-and-doom digital prophets who foretold that the world would be unrecognizable in 10 years turned out to be premature to an extent that we still haven't sorted out. But they had a few points, didn't they? Does anyone now disagree that digital is one of the most critical components of the marketing mix?

And considering the permanently distracted nature of many of today's consumers, doesn't it stand to reason that now, more than ever, a brand needs to have a singular, well-articulated idea of what it stands for, across all media? Isn't that what branding experts have been telling us for decades anyway?

Respecting traditional branding ideas in the face of an increasingly interactive marketplace may best be described as "Tradigital." It's a very real and very practical approach to managing your brand communications and getting the most out of your team and your agency partners when building digital properties. Frankly, it strikes me as the only logical adaptation to an environment where the consumer is demanding more and more interaction with, and control over, your brand—especially the type of control you should by no means simply hand over.

Here are four ways you can make traditional and digital values work within your own organization.

1. Tell the truth

If digital isn't your strength, that's OK. You've employed an agency for that reason. But in the long run you'll want to take a hard look within your organization. Is your commitment to digital obvious by how you staff? Are you identifying and deploying appropriate project leads? Be honest about your capabilities and intentions. This isn't a place where you want to fake it.

2. Share

Make sure all your partners are sharing information, ideas, and expertise. If your digital team isn't included in the process of understanding and defining the market and your brand within it, it will be relegated to a strictly tactical role—a pair of hands creating digital content that may be disconnected from the big idea.

Keep in mind that agencies may not always prefer to play nicely together (even when they say they will). It's not uncommon for agencies to promise "full service" to their clients to keep profit in house. But all involved must understand that the needs of the brand come first.

If you like a little healthy competition between agencies, that may be OK. But don't expect them to work out the hierarchy on their own. You'll need to make the decisions and let them know how you expect them to work together to best serve your digital needs.

3. Question analytics

At this point, everyone knows they're supposed to be measuring something. It's just not always clear what that "something" is. Become familiar with what the industry values. Identify your key performance indicators. As a colleague once told me, effective analysis is a "hardcore skill set."

This is a function you may want a specialist for, or someone willing to become one. Ultimately, though, you'll want to appreciate that not everything meaningful can be measured, and not everything measured is meaningful.

4. Be tech-agnostic

Challenge yourself and your agency to understand the limitations and the capabilities of several digital platforms. Assign a competent technical director who has a working understanding of the latest technologies and trends.

It's all too common for developers to get comfortable with one platform, either because they've invested in the licensing of it or because they have simply gotten complacent about evolving. Relying on only one platform will substantially limit your digital potential.

If being Tradigital sounds a little complicated, or even a little gimmicky, perhaps a simple analogy might help: If you were to say that the principles of the internal combustion engine haven't fundamentally changed over the years, you would be unquestionably right; but that doesn't mean Henry Ford wouldn't be hopelessly lost under the hood of your BMW 5 Series.

With new technology comes new challenges and opportunity. Make sure your company is poised to drive on.

Rob McCready is co-founder, partner, and client-services director at Oregon-based full-service digital agency Blue Collar Interactive.

MY THOUGHTS

With new technology comes a chance to try something else.  Something better, maybe. Wouldn't you rather know than keep on wondering.

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IS YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PAYING OFF?

How to Know If Your Social Media Is Paying Off
By David Rogers | May 23, 2011

One of the most exciting aspects of digital marketing is its measurability. From website visitors, to ad impressions, to geo-location of discounts, every digital marketing initiative seems to produce its own bountiful data–in sharp contrast to many aspects of the pre-digital world. (Anyone know how many customers saw your billboard?)

But just because you can measure your digital marketing does not always mean it is easy to know if your efforts are paying off. Sure, you’ve added a thousand Facebook fans, but how much are those Facebook fans worth? How much value is your blog generating for your firm? What about your online community for sourcing innovative ideas from customers? Much as we might wish for it, there is no single “silver bullet” metric to measure the impact of all digital marketing in a single bold stroke. Instead, businesses need to develop a variety of metrics to measure the return on their own digital marketing efforts.

Figure out your goal

The first key to developing good metrics is to know your objectives. Are you trying to support market entry and drive awareness of a new product line? To build a relationship and maintain loyalty among your existing customers? To reduce the cost of customer service by helping customers help each other in an online community?

Secondly, understand how close your metrics are to measuring a financial value delivered to your business. Some digital metrics measure firm value quite precisely, whereas many others are almost useless.

I find that it is helpful to think of digital marketing metrics as falling into one of three broad stages:

Stage 1: Activity Metrics

This is the lowliest level of digital metrics. By definition, an activity metric is one that really only tells you that “something is happening.”  Classic examples are: number of page views, site visitors, Facebook fans, or members joining your online brand community. Not that you should ignore these numbers or fail to gather them (they can be helpful in tracking trends, and benchmarking). But you should never be satisfied with activity metrics alone.  Don’t get stuck on stage 1.

Stage 2: Engagement Metrics

“Engagement” is one of the most over-used, and under-defined terms in marketing. So let me propose a definition here: an engagement metric is anything that measures the level of your customer’s involvement, attention, and commitment. Examples could include: average time spent by members in your online community, percent of Facebook fans who “like” or comment on your wall posts, or the number of ideas actually submitted to your innovation sourcing site. Engagement metrics are much more meaningful than activity metrics. And in some cases, they may be the best measure that you can get.  (It’s hard to ever know how many cars were sold because 20,000 people “liked” your pre-launch product photos on Facebook). At the same time, it is hard to justify a major marketing investment on engagement metrics alone. So wherever possible, you want to reach beyond stage 2 to the next stage.

Stage 3: Business Metrics
Business metrics measure the impact of digital marketing on critical business outcomes: your KPIs (key performance indicators), or ROI (return on investment). Business metrics could include direct sales through a digital channel, lead generation, or cost savings to existing business processes. If you are running an online forum to generate innovative business ideas from customers—how many of their ideas did you bring to market? What was the business value achieved, perhaps in terms of new sales, better customer retention, or increased market share? These may be financial measures, or established KPIs used across your business, such as a Net Promoter Score. Business metrics allow you to optimize your digital efforts, compare their results with traditional marketing activities, and decide how to best allocate budgets.

Books can be filled (and have been) with metrics for every kind of digital medium and every digital marketing program. But as you look at what’s being measured in your own company, it’s critical to make sure you know which stage of metrics you are operating at. Because only when you get to stage 3 can you actually answer the most important question: is my digital marketing paying off?

What are you measuring in your own digital marketing? What stage do your measurements fall into?

****
David Rogers examines the five core strategies of successful networked businesses in his newest book, “The Network Is Your Customer: Five Strategies to Thrive in a Digital Age.” He teaches Digital Marketing Strategy at Columbia Business School, where he is Executive Director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership. Rogers has advised and developed marketing and digital strategies for numerous companies such as SAP, Eli Lilly, and Visa.  Find him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/david_rogers

MY THOUGHTS

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Gettng Paying Customers Thru the Web

6 YouSendIt Lessons for Increasing Customer Conversion Rates
By Erik Sherman | May 5, 2011

Any business depends on converting prospects into paying customers. For a technology business like YouSendIt.com, which uses a freemium business model of giving away service and getting a small portion of customers to opt into a paid account, conversion rates are critical.

But there’s more to conversion than hoping that someone will ask you to dance. That realization, combined with practical applications of direct response marketing, is what has helped YouSendIt, which lets people send large files, to increase its conversion rate by 200 percent to 300 percent. A phone conversation with CEO Ivan Koon offered lessons for companies that are heavy on tech but less savvy on the necessary direct marketing.

In-product promotion

The first step was to add promotional elements when people sent files. “We used to do zero promotion as you sent a file,” says Koon. “Now at a critical moment, like you’re trying to attach a second file, we’ll say a multi-file [transmission] is a premium service and click here to upgrade.”

    Lesson 1: Hit people up for paid conversion when they need a service you charge for.

At first, YouSendIt would pull a person out of the process and force them through a sales process:

    Look at a comparison chart of account types.
    Choose the account type.
    Enter credit card information.
    Press send.

Many people abandoned the process. Now, when someone tries to send files that are larger than the free option or multiple files, the person gets a form offering premium service. “It drastically changed the conversion rate,” Koon says. “Don’t take the customer out of the send flow ”

    Lesson 2: Make the upgrade process as simple as possible, or you lose customers.

For a while, the company offered a pay-per-use (PPU) option, but dropped it from the form. “We don’t want you to buy PPU. We want you to buy subscription. It makes more business sense to us,” he says.

Stretch the price

Next step was to test price elasticity. For years, customers bought monthly subscriptions over annual at a 9 to 1 rate. But monthly increases the chance of someone discontinuing use. “In the second half of 2009, we started to target different people based on [things like] usage frequency and offer them the annual plan at a lower price,” Koon says.

    Lesson 3: Often you make more money when you charge less, so test pricing.

YouSendIt’s annual premium price is $109. The company tested $99, $89, and other prices until it found “a pretty optimal annual price” that maximized the total revenue from subscribers. During these trials, YouSendIt kept the $9.99 a month price fixed. “We want to set a main street price,” says Koon. “We don’t want to confuse the user too much. ”

    Lesson 4: Give customers a perception of stability so they can compare pricing or other terms and have the sense of getting a bargain.

Not only did YouSendIt make more money overall, but the churn rate of annual customers is much lower than for monthly, which reduces overall customer acquisition costs. The company’s paying customers are in a roughly 50-50 split now between annual and monthly plans, with only about 5 percent remaining pay-per-use.

Get by with a little help from some friends

Up through the end of 2010, 70 percent of customers came from word-of-mouth, with the remaining being people who had received files through YouSendIt and decided to use the service to send files as well. The company was missing many other opportunities, so began to test search marketing and, starting January 2011, became the large file attachment solution for Yahoo Mail.

That last step doubled new registered traffic overnight, from 320,000 to 600,000 by February. In March, the number jumped to 800,000. YouSendIt has begun an in-product conversion program with Yahoo. Through the rest of the year, it will strike deals with other sites to increase the flow of prospects.

    Lesson 5: Experiment with different ways to reach customers. Don’t sit on your laurels.

YouSendIt has found that the direct marketing process is a real grind. “If you just make an assumption, 75 percent of the time it will be wrong,” Koon says. “The kind of people that will fail in direct marketing are the people who are adamant that their ideas sounded good.”

    Lesson 6: Keep trying and don’t be discouraged. If it was easy, everyone would do it and you’d have no competitive advantage.

Later this year, YouSendIt plans to introduce new product lines: persistent storage, file synchronization, and electronic signatures. “I think we’re going to have to test like crazy to figure out how to package it,” Koon says.

MY THOUGHTS

I don't know. Marketing has never been way down my alley.  Maybe reading enough information about it will make something inside me click.  Something akin to an acquired taste. Feeling like throwing-up in the beginning. Managing to take in a few punishing gulps.  Getting used to the taste somehow.  And eventually liking, even loving, the taste which was absolutely awful in the beginning.