Hotels.com have recently sent out a campaign, in which they have sent out a survey to find out how their subscribers read their email.

Within their email they had a section with a call to action image saying ‘how do you read your email?’ and that was linked to this survey

This quiz asked recipients  things like what their email behaviours are like on mobile vs desktop, and asked subscribers about what time of day they are the most likely to read emails on their mobile, what is the most frequent type of emails you read on your mobile, what are some of the most annoying things for subscribers when they try read your email on their mobile,  and what would prevent you from making purchases on your mobile.

It is really valuable to see where and how your subscribers are reading your communications. Not only does it allow you to know what time of day they are reading them, you know if they are reading on tablet, smartphone or desktop, and by learning their preferences, you get a clearer idea on who your subscribers are, what’s the best time to send your email, and you can then start to assess demographic and preferences of your subscribers so ultimately you can send more timely, relevant emails.

So take a page out of Hotels.com ‘email book’, check out their email survey, and start thinking about how much or how little you know about how your subscriber’s read your emails and see how easy it is to find out.

If you’d like to know how to make sure you send mobile-friendly emails download our *free* white-paper here, and of course if you need a hand to redesign our specialist email design team is right here and ready to take your brief.

Are birthday emails really as effective as you say they are?

Yes indeed, a really good birthday email can not only help you stand out, create a positive brand impression with your subscribers,  increase revenue and customer loyalty,  birthday emails on average get a 300% higher open rate and a 100% higher click through rate than normal email campaigns!

In the email marketing world we call this type of email ‘Event Driven Email’ because it’s triggered off a specific event or date. It’s also a marketer’s favorite type of email because the results speak for themselves.

So who is showering their subscribers with birthday love? 

ASOS for one.  Their angle? They are offering a 10% discount, which is very enticing, and the call to action button is straight forward and says ‘shop now’.  So it’s still a benefit to the recipient but their intent is clear. See their email below.

Event Driven emails can be sent for other reasons apart from birthdays. Think about other celebratory moments that could work just as well such as anniversaries.

It’s never too late to start gathering profile information about your subscribers. The key is to be smart about it and don’t be creepy….  Combine it with another offer or promotion and clearly explain what they will get either now or later and tell them straight up the what, why etc. For example I would be happy if you sent me an email that said ‘Do you like free cake? If you update your birthday information we will send you free cake on your birthday’

The other great thing is a birthday email is a great way to drive traffic to a store, shop, movie theater, restaurant…  Think about how many people head to Valentines for their birthday because they get to eat free!

Are you using your customer’s birth date to good effect? Read our previous post about how to use birth date fields in your database to send personal and relevant eDM’s to your clients…

And here is previous roundup of great birthday email marketing campaigns !  Share!  Tell your friends!  Happy birthday!

When someone receives an email they skim the From Name, and then the Subject Line in quick succession, which makes these two areas the ‘gatekeepers’ for each message.

If you are a marketer relying on email to communicate with your audience you need to get past these ‘gatekeepers’.

Firstly you need a From Name that ticks three boxes: it must be recognised, trusted and relevant to the reader right now.  An email from my mum ticks all three every time.  With a business it’s a little more complex.  Even if I know ‘Air New Zealand’ and I love travelling with them, this year I am on a tight budget and so right now you are not ‘relevant’ to me. I might think ‘I have no intention of being tempted into reading your email offers no matter how good they are, and I will delete every email you send.’

It’s good to bear this in mind when you review your email campaign reporting as there simply will never be 100% of your database read your message – I’m on holiday, the dog died, this report is due – basically life gets in the way.  I suggest a rule of thumb that the ‘top mark’ possible is closer to 75% so if your open rate is 35% then that’s about half of your possible audience – a great result.

From another angle, it’s good to bear this ‘triage’ behaviour pattern in mind when you undertake engagement analysis of your database – Who reads every email? Who has stopped reading?  It’s important to make sure the ‘zombies’ who are effectively dead to your brand are cleaned out on a regular basis for email deliverability, so we do actively encourage this exercise.   But.  Just because I’m not opening your emails right now doesn’t mean I don’t want you to keep sending them.  I may well just be on a tight budget for a few months.  Arrgggh!  Why does email marketing have to be so complicated!

Assuming your email has passed the above gatekeeping/triage process of the From Name, next up your reader is looking to the Subject line for indication of a value exchange that is in his or her favour.  Their time is worth an awful lot to them.  Your email must deliver more value in order for it to be open and read.  And so your subject line needs to hint at that value as clearly and quickly as possible.

To get a Subject Line right, there are many many many possible approaches to take. The subject line is often promoted as a good thing to ‘test’ and see if your readers respond better to a particular set of words, or tone.  The reason testing is good idea is that the answer to the question ‘What works best?’ is almost always ‘It depends’.  I have seen tests show more words work better to get clicks in the email, and I have seen tests show that less words work best.  Similarly I have seen marketers use a set format for every campaign of a similar ‘type’, and I have seen people change the format for every single email they send, to good result.

Focus on clearly describing the value that is within your email, and then make sure you deliver that value in a way that makes sense and is easy and intuitive to action for your reader.  We have written about good subject lines before – read those posts here and an older post about the importance of your From name is here.

Now you are fully equipped to get past the first two hurdles of a successful email campaign, how do you ensure it makes you lots of money?  That’s fodder for the next article or ten.  See you then.

When the DMA and the EEC sent an email to talk about their upcoming conference this morning we were a little taken aback with what we received.

We might be all the way down here in New Zealand but after 12 years we know our way around email design best practice… and this wasn’t that.

Turns out there was some kind of error somewhere, so we thought we’d try to help and jump in and make it look a bit more like email marketers would expect to see from their guiding lights.

Check out the before and after shots below (you need to click to enlarge them to full size) and please let us know what you think in the comments below or via @JerichoCrew on Twitter:

BEFORE:

Click the image to see the full version

Overall, the original design was quite disorganised. The main focus in terms of imagery seemed to be around the location of the conference, rather than the content. And we’re unsure what re-purposing the classic ‘Got Milk?’ advertising campaign adds to the communication.

The images used are quite rough and, in places, have been stretched disproportionately to fit a gap. The headshots used for the speakers are of varying sizes (which again makes the design look rough/messy) and are laid-out in a way that means they aren’t associated with their corresponding text (profiles on the left).

The various logos aren’t given space, making the composition quite cramped. The main call-to-action for this communication should be to register, but although it features at the top of the email, it doesn’t really stand out and is given no more prominence than the other calls-to-action.

AFTER:

Click the image to see the full version

We looked to simplify the layout and make it easier to follow. The conference name and date are given prominence, with supporting imagery which ties in with the content of the event, rather than the location.

We used a short blurb to explain what the event was about, followed by the call-to-action, in orange, so that it stands out. We placed the speakers’ images with their profiles and gave their logos space to breathe. The speaker section is followed by the same call-to-action. The reason for this, is that we don’t want recipients to have to scroll back to the top to take action – we’re making it easy for them to do what we want them to.

Our secondary calls-to-action (Join EEC and Join DMA) then follow this and are treated in a way that they are still obviously clickable, but they don’t detract from our primary CTA.

What do you think?  We hope they use it, or at least let us have another try at a design they will use.  Watch this space.

If you are not already doing triggered welcome emails, you probably should be. Here at Jericho we encourage clients to look hard at what they are doing repetitively, and at their customer life cycle, and look for opportunities to add value and human touch.

It’s not surprising that timely, and relevant emails have the highest engagement rates, and deliver much better ROI than your usual ‘run of the mill’ emails.  And birthday emails have even higher engagement rates than other types of triggered emails?

“Triggered email is a really under used trick of email marketing, and just like optimising emails for mobile – if you are not already doing it, you are leaving your customers out in the cold.”

Triggered emails have higher opens, lower unsubscribes, and higher engagement rates, often leading to significant spending (just to name a few good things!) because they are personal, relevant and specifically targeted to the recipient.  They feel different.  They feel like they are ‘just for me’ – because they are.

The email relates to an event: an action the person has just performed or a date specific to them. So it goes without saying they will respond more positively to a triggered email that relates to them or something they are doing, or have just done. Welcome emails are STILL not used by many businesses, and studies have shown that the difference between getting a warm welcome, and not, can be many many thousands of dollars over the lifetime of that person. Post purchase & post visit work great too.  We have a client who sends a personal letter to everyone who visits their premium car showroom.   Other ideas are almost in the ‘infinity’ range!  Just ask us!

One of the hardest thing about email marketing is to consistently send emails that are relevant, personal and timely. Triggered email is the solution that makes the hardest thing the easiest thing by allowing you to automate your ‘customer love’.  Imagine if you could just tell your girlfriend that you love her and cook a lovely dinner once, and then hit a button and have it roll out every time she looks a bit sad!  Voila!

Triggered emails are triggered from a meaningful event or date such as a birthday, anniversary, online purchase, or membership club sign up. So you need data to trigger the email. This is where data collection and having a clean database is so important. However if you don’t have the data to create the triggers, you could use the email series functionality. You can use this as Jericho does and set up a series of welcome emails, where when someone signs up it triggers a series of emails to be sent at certain intervals (Once a week for a month for example) and each email could show the subscriber a new tip, or different information or new advice each week.

“Did you know welcome email series out-perform normal welcome emails in terms of ROI –this is even more under used and undervalued email marketing tool.”

Yes, yes, it all sounds great, however before you jump in; you need a plan.  You need to think about  your overall objective. Is it to get more customers? Sell more to each customer? Build reviews on your website?  Be the most credible company in your niche?   Whatever it is, a combination of measurable objectives and value to your subscribers will result in a more positive sentiment and higher engagement. (We will talk more about this in a future blog post).
So where to start? Well one of the best things you can do, both in terms of using triggered email functionality and increasing engagement, is to send Welcome emails, and triggered birthday emails.

As we’ve noted before, once you reach about 11 your birthday becomes less of a big deal, so when someone takes just a moment to remember your birthday it’s a lot better than nothing!   Yes as a business you don’t want to look creepy by knowing their birthday, however with the right copy and the right tone, sending a friendly yet professional birthday email is one of the nicest things you can do and you will undoubtedly brighten your subscriber’s day.   If you don’t have anything to sell then just say Hi!  But don’t underestimate the willingness we all have to buy ourselves the treat we won’t get from our loved ones!

Are you doing triggered emails now and perhaps want to supercharge them? Integrate dynamic content into your triggered emails…. For example you could use dynamic content to show the items in their shopping cart they ‘forgot’ or send different weather updates to people in different areas. There are many ways you could use triggered emails, and our team have lots of ideas.

If you want to talk about how you could use triggered emails, email series, and birthday emails to enhance your email marketing comms program, talk to your you Account Manager or the Jericho service team – phone 09 360 6463 or email accountservices@jericho.co.nz

There seem to be more and more highly designed, image heavy emails coming out, and the following emails make a stunning job of it. We are forming quite the collection of well-designed emails at this end and thought we would share some of our collection with you.

1: Fancy 

This email is from Fancy. It takes the concept of Pinterest, where it lets you find and like images of things you like, and takes it one step further, by linking to where you can actually buy the item instead of simply admiring it from your chair.

I have been on the site for a few months now, and every week they send me a stunning email, dressed top to bottom with rows of the most arty, delicious, affronting, and outstanding images and products I have seen anywhere. I love the design because they are such an image heavy site, and their email reflects this. It’s basically a series of rows of images, only broken by a minimal amount of copy. There is nothing to clutter the top of the email such as an intro/contents/links or any shiny buttons or call to actions. It’s clean and simple, and really we know they know that we are all here to see the images. It’s also so compelling because you can’t help but be drawn down to see the next image… and the next…. before you know it you are at the bottom clicking on their ‘check out what else is new’ link…

Click here or on the image to view the full email.

2: American Apparel

This month’s email example is a highly designed newsletter from American Apparel.

Why did it stand out?

It is very simple, with a clean, bold design and is very image heavy.

Visually, they have their call to action at the top right corner, which means people can click to see more and are not required to scroll.  All the images are the same size and all line up perfectly which both great design-wise, and the bold images and straight lines really appeal to the eye. Each image is also a call to action, taking the recipient to their campaign online. And I found that because the images take up the whole email, I found it was hard not to click on at least a couple of images. Also having a variety of bold images like that gives people a lot to look at and take in, and I found myself drawn to look at every image from top to bottom.

Copy wise, the heading is large, and self-explanatory, and it matches the bold simple nature of the email. The little bit of copy they do have is at the bottom; however I think it works for this email. It is also easily and quickly digestible, but it still manages to tell the reader about American Apparel, and about their campaign.

Click here or on the image to see the full version. And then tell us what do you like about this campaign!
I challenge you to find more visually compelling and outstanding image-heavy emails than these. Please, go ahead. If you find any, let me know.

I know we talk a lot about following best practice, about not having emails that are too long, and not sending image heavy emails, but sometimes it’s good to innovative to go against the rules and do something unique and truly creative. So we provide to you, the following two examples, as examples of how to break the rules in the right way.

This promo email for a new 14 story high water slide at Brazilian water park Beach Park is a prime example of this, and boy does it breaks all the rules. (Click on the image to see the full version of this email)

It weighs in at a hefty megabyte, and it’s 12,000 pixels high, so i’t s lonnnnnnnng and requires people to scroll a long way, and it’s 100% image based, but for this campaign it works. Because it is a unique campaign, a one off promo, for something really crazy and fun. Also it might have something to do with the fact that as you scroll down you get to experience going down a 14story high slide yourself first hand – a bit dizzying I must say. But I scrolled back up and went down the slide 2 more times, so it obviously did the trick!

For our second example it is a great email campaign that Chad White over at Retail Email Blog recently posted about. This campaign also breaks all the rules, but it does it in style, and as a result it really stands out from the crowd. (Click on the image below to see the full version of this email)

This Brooks Brothers email campaign features a huge stack of polo shirts, about 40 of them in fact, in every imaginable color, and presents this stack of shirts as a box set. It goes against the usual ‘best practice’ rules, but in breaking the rules it makes it point. It shows the variety of it’s products, it appeals with humor, and it compels people scroll right to the bottom of the ‘everlasting stack of Polo shirts’ which I found pretty entertaining.

There’s also a lesson here about the way we think everything needs to be above the fold. I have seen a few campaigns doing recently. Instead of packing the top area with call to actions, links, and big shiny buttons, it actually draws you in and compels you to scroll right to the bottom….where you find the call to action. Surprise!

So if you have a concept you want to get across, or just want to create an email that’s out of the box, look to the water slide email, and the polo shirt email, as outstanding examples of how to do it right.

I recently signed up for this new start-up called Thumb. Thumb is a site where you can vote on user submitted questions and images with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. (It’s very addictive if you like giving your opinion on things!)

So, I signed up, and immediately after signing up I receive this welcome email,  and I liked it so much I wanted to share it with you.

Why is this email so outstanding, above and beyond all the other emails/sign up/welcome/confirmation emails I receive?

• Because it is simple in its design and it makes good use of white space.
• It is easy for me to read and digest quickly. As I read a lot of my emails on my iPhone (And so do a lot of you I imagine) I appreciated the simplicity. I have received some welcome emails with too much information and I can’t digest it as easily.
• Copy wise, it is not too wordy, yet it still manages to give me the vital information I need to get started. This is important for the user – tell them who you are, how you can help them, what they do now, and tell them how to do it. Simply.
• Design wise, it is on brand with a look that matches their website and app. But I would expect no less from a modern start-up. Take a page out of this book and make sure your branding is the same across the board, so for new users, they recognise you when you arrive in their inbox, and not think ‘who is this’ and accidently delete you. We don’t want that.
• It gives me some tips about how to contribute to the site. It’s nice to give people some guidelines straight up if there are any ethics or codes they should be aware of.
• It gives me a link to to get started, which I appreciated as an easy way to get to the site quickly. This increases engagement and for me, I think it gets people onto the site sooner than if I had just gotten a welcome note, thought great, and delete it, and forget to visit the site.

This example to me is a good all rounder, and shows me a welcome email can be both short and sweet, and effective. We look at Welcome email examples regularly on the GetSmart blog so here is a past article that’s one of the most popular we’ve ever posted.

Do you have some welcome email examples you want to share? Got your own questions about welcome emails? Give us a bell!