Email Marketing Lounge

Welcome to the 2nd edition of our weekly Fun Friday's Email Design Creative Spotlight. As we mentioned in last week's creative email design post, we want to get YOU involved with us in the email creative services team. As we look... More

Welcome to the 2nd edition of our weekly Fun Friday's Email Design Creative Spotlight. As we mentioned in last week's creative email design post, we want to get YOU involved with us in the email creative services team. As we look for inspiration in previous email designs, we would love to give you a chance to be inspired and inspire us with your comments.

This week we focus on a mobile-friendly email we created for the 'My Coke Rewards' program. When looking at the open data we noticed Coke's open-on-mobile numbers were skyrocketing. There became a need to create a template that looked stellar on both pocket-sized and traditional displays while combining a personalized mega merge tailored to the individual. A points balance merge and a customized comic were introduced to keep users coming back for more and a sharp increase in mobile code entry was observed after the redesign. Best of all as Shaunmarie Gutbezahl, Sr. Designer at Yesmail said, "Big, bold, flat, and simple. And the code is light as a feather!"


There were 7 key areas of email design we focused on:

1. Enhanced personalization
We wanted to lead off with a personal greeting and design a large, highly visible area to display the member's point balance. After all, this is a loyalty program and points and rewards is what it's all about.

2. Simple and fun looking with short burst communication style
The new design reads more like a magazine--large editorial-style photos, eyebrow text for easy skimming, short headlines and brief body copy. Following this style also made it possible to create a mobile-friendly newsletter that scales down nicely.

3. Rewards in a grid (4, 8, 12, 16)
Our research proved that readers love browsing rewards and they will scroll through a larger quantity of rewards than we ever expected. We created a rewards grid that can expand and contract as necessary and offer rewards based on editorial content, points balance or anything in between.

4. Sticky content and author introduction
We introduced a monthly comic starring the Baxter family who are avid MCR members. We hope to archive these for our members viewing pleasure on one of the MCR social sites. Alongside the comic is a friendly message from the MCR Team. We included a handwritten sign-off to add a human element to the newsletter.

5. Mobile: Narrow body design and large type format
We restructured the width of the newsletter to minimize the amount of scaling required when viewed on a mobile device. We enlarged the text, CTAs and gutter spaces to ensure readability on mobile devices while still looking great in the traditional browser space.

6. Social : 'Likes', Reviews & Dispatches
We created a content space dedicated to social news and promotions from MCR's social various social media channels.

7. List based sections
We added html lists intermixed with the photo-enhanced editorial stories to mix up the template and add more information without cluttering the newsletter or requiring too much more scrolling.

So now we want to you to hear what you think about this design, what do you like or what would you recommend? Will you be signing up for Coke Rewards any time soon?

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"I usually am the biggest email geek in the room, but probably not here," joked speaker Sonia Simone of Copy Blogger blog. Indeed the biggest email geeks gathered last week for the annual Marketing Sherpa Email Summit, held at the... More

"I usually am the biggest email geek in the room, but probably not here," joked speaker Sonia Simone of Copy Blogger blog. Indeed the biggest email geeks gathered last week for the annual Marketing Sherpa Email Summit, held at the Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, NV. If I was the betting type, I would have put my money on the fact that every attendee walked out of that conference overwhelmed with enthusiasm and knowledge on how to optimize their own email marketing program. With all the incredible advice offered by the many speakers during the event as well as talking to fellow peers in the industry, I learned a ton. Here's some quick advice I picked up during the event:


Overall, the Marketing Sherpa Email Summit was two days jam-packed with useful and actionable tactics to close that gap between the marketer and customer. I left with pages and pages of notes, new friends, and a lot of re-energized strategies to bring back to my clients... but then again I'm usually the biggest email geek in the room too.  Less

There are Super Bowl ads, and then there are Super Bowl campaigns.  Brands that understand the need to have fully integrated digital campaigns will receive the most benefits, garner the greatest customer interaction, and achieve the most long-term success.  We... More

There are Super Bowl ads, and then there are Super Bowl campaigns.  Brands that understand the need to have fully integrated digital campaigns will receive the most benefits, garner the greatest customer interaction, and achieve the most long-term success.  We used Yesmail Market Intelligence to identify which brands were using the top four digital channels (email, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter) to promote their big game ad.  Acura's 'Transactions' campaign, featuring Jerry Seinfeld, was an instant match for our search criteria. Yesmail Market Intelligence profiled this campaign's digital lifecycle to help illustrate the importance of using all 4 channels together.

The Pre-Game:
Acura's 'Transactions' Multi-Channel Deployment Breakdown:
Acura kicked off the 'Transactions' campaign on January 30th (six days before the Super Bowl) by uploading the commercial to YouTube and promoting it through Facebook and Twitter.  The campaign timeline below showcases Acura's usage of the top four digital channels to promote the 'Transactions' campaign.
On February 1st Acura used email, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to cross promote the campaign.  These campaigns have been highlighted below:

Email: Jerry Seinfeld is #2 on the list.
Facebook:
Twitter:
YouTube:
Post-Game:
Acura continued promoting this campaign from Feb 6-12 encouraging users to view this campaign and provide feedback.

Multi-Channel Campaign Total: 48
Yesmail Market Intelligence was easily able to tally that Acura deployed 48 campaigns across the 4 digital channels promoting their Super Bowl spot 'Transactions'.

Total Social Engagements: 18,719,371
Yesmail Market Intelligence recorded 18,719,371 direct user interactions through Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube with 'Transactions'.  Given that social media promotion is virtually costless, being able to reach 18,719,371 for FREE is making a BIG statement on the need for expensive marketing mediums (TV, Radio, and Display).

The Wrap-up:
When done right, conventional creative television ads are a great way to reach a large number of eyes but in order to optimize them, they can no longer be standalone assets.  In order to achieve the greatest long-tail effect from marketing efforts, marketers need to develop fully integrated campaigns that optimize digital channels to support and promote costly television ads.  The success that the Acura 'Transactions' campaign achieved speaks for itself.  As we profiled, allowing a 'sneak preview' of their television ad had a strong impact on interactions within their community.  Marketers utilizing this technique may consider asking viewers to enter their email address to view exclusive content ahead of schedule.  Acura could have possibly captured 500k-1M new email addresses, potential leads, if they structured the initial 'Transactions' web preview in this manner instead.

For information on how Yesmail Market Intelligence could be a vital part of your marketing strategy, please attend my upcoming webinar, "Keep your customers close and your competitors even closer". Or request a demo of Yesmail Market Intelligence today and discover how creating multi-channel strategies, similar to Acura, can help you stay ahead of the competition at sales@yesmail.com or 1-877-YESMAIL.
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Due to our recent email design awards, we decided to release our Email Design Look Book 2012. We love Email Design Look Books - they're great sources of creative ideas and a great way to focus and look at what we... More

Due to our recent email design awards, we decided to release our Email Design Look Book 2012. We love Email Design Look Books - they're great sources of creative ideas and a great way to focus and look at what we have done in the past. Going forward we want to make sharing what we are doing creatively on a regular basis a priority in 2012 in order to get YOU involved. With that being said, we decided to start a weekly post showcasing our email designs called 'Fun Friday's Email Design's Creative Spotlight.' Our goal is to get you involved in and in touch with the creative process, highlight why certain email campaigns worked, and add a little fun and creativity to your Friday afternoons.

So with that being said, let's kick it off with an email we created for eBay's Green Team. The idea behind this was to create an editorial-style newsletter with supplementary, non-product related "eco-content" to help further engage their audience. Our Sr. Designer Jack Satta emphasized, "Single-column, stacked sections with strong delineation are great for newsletters and a must-have for mobile."


Key Areas of Email Design We Focused On:
What are your thoughts on this design, what did you like or what would you recommend?
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Thanks to everyone who was able to join us for our recent webinar "Digital Channel Analysis: How top retailers used email, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube during the 2011 Holiday Season." I know... quite a mouthful but it basically answers the... More

Thanks to everyone who was able to join us for our recent webinar "Digital Channel Analysis: How top retailers used email, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube during the 2011 Holiday Season." I know... quite a mouthful but it basically answers the question "What did the best Digital Marketers do this Season?" We know they did a LOT of things right and that was directly proven by all the ecommerce records that were broken (we share those too...).

Anyway, if you didn't get a chance to attend, here's a quick rundown and links to watch or download the presentation. Would love to hear what you think!

Our analysis was unique in that we were able to track and analyze marketing activity across multiple digital channels. Here's a quick look into the agenda -
A few exciting tidbits (just a few of many, many, and many) we included: There is more... so if you have some time, be sure to check it out here and let me know how 2011's holiday trends will fit into your 2012 strategy!

Take care! Less

Keeping tabs on your competition has always been a necessity for any company to protect their customer base. We see it every day with "Joe's gas station" shaving 2 cents off Shell's gas price down the road. In many organizations,... More

Keeping tabs on your competition has always been a necessity for any company to protect their customer base. We see it every day with "Joe's gas station" shaving 2 cents off Shell's gas price down the road. In many organizations, analyzing a competitor's online marketing strategy has fallen into the hands of everyone from the email marketing associate to the senior marketing director.

A few years ago, this was a very manageable task signing up for newsletters and email marketing programs. However, since the onslaught of social media, this effort has become a very daunting time-consuming process. Not only must marketers stay on top of competitor's email marketing campaigns, but marketers now must be aware of their competition's Facebook fan pages, Youtube videos, Twitter campaigns, etc...you get the idea.

Having all these different avenues to communicate with the ever evolving customer gives your rival more of an opportunity to get their message in front of your customers...whether that be a catchy viral YouTube clip or a last minute Valentine's gift promotion email. The need for a multi-channel competitive intelligence tool has never been more of a necessity. Up to this point, there has been no easy way to track all of these dominant digital channels within one centralized view...until now.

Using Yesmail Interactive's latest Market Intelligence solution enables the marketer to easily analyze their competitor's marketing strategy. It allows marketers to compare a brand's campaign deployments while reviewing engagement and digital channel ranks. The quicker they can understand emerging trends, themes and multi-channel strategies, the faster they can apply these insights to their own future campaign strategies.
 

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We're delighted that Chad White and the Retail Email Blog mentioned one of our Creative Services Team's designs for HP Shopping in the 'Design Hall of Fame: 2011 Inductees.'Our clients at HP Shopping really pushed us to create a layout... More

We're delighted that Chad White and the Retail Email Blog mentioned one of our Creative Services Team's designs for HP Shopping in the 'Design Hall of Fame: 2011 Inductees.'


Our clients at HP Shopping really pushed us to create a layout that stood out. Their new Folio Notebook is an amazing product, and we wanted to show that with a "breakout" email layout.  Here's what Chad White had to say about it:

"I'm a big fan of email design best practices, but I'm also a big fan of occasionally ditching those best practices to stand out in the inbox. HP does exactly that in this email, where they jettison their preheader text, header, and navigation bar and increased their email width to 800 pixels from 570. Those changes helped put more focus on the hero image of their new ultra-thin laptop."

It's an exciting time to be a part of the Yesmail Interactive team, and, as we announced this week, it has been especially exciting for the Creative Services Team as we're a part of 4 awards in the last 3 months! 

While we would love to take all the credit, we have to thank our clients for continuing to strive above and beyond the ordinary and inspiring us to create innovative email templates.

Last but not least, if you happen to be attending the Marketing Sherpa event in Vegas next week you're in luck, I'll be there both days providing FREE email design audits in our dedicated clinic room. Be sure to register to here today as space if filling up quickly.

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I had a chance to chat with Kristin Kleweno and Jason Warnock and got a sneak peek at their deck for the upcoming webinar on February 2nd, 'Digital Channel Analysis: How top retailers used email, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube during... More

I had a chance to chat with Kristin Kleweno and Jason Warnock and got a sneak peek at their deck for the upcoming webinar on February 2^nd, 'Digital Channel Analysis: How top retailers used email, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube during the 2011 Holiday Season' In this webinar, Kristin and Jason provide in-depth analysis and insights from 100 of the top 500 online retailers who were randomly selected based on the key holiday spending periods (Cyber Monday, Black Friday etc.).

When looking back, a record number of email marketing campaigns were sent out to help fuel a sales increase. They did just that, as analysts' reports showed a between 15-20% growth for Cyber Monday alone. After learning this and being a data geek, I couldn't wait for Kristin and Jason to take a deeper dive into the actual data and trends behind retailers' digital approaches this 2011 holiday season.

A few exciting trends they focused on (just a few):

Needless to say there is some exciting data and trends they plan on sharing, and while I was sworn to secrecy to not spoil all of them in this post, I am able to share a few of trends from the top 100 retail marketers.

So as you continue to put strategies in place for 2012, there is no better period to learn executable strategies than the busiest and most exciting time of the year for digital marketers, the holiday season.

Be sure to register and join them tomorrow at 11am PT (1pm CT, 2pm ET) to learn and gain insights that will impact your digital marketing strategies for 2012 and beyond. Less

We at Yesmail Interactive are incredibly honored to be included in the most recent Forrester Waveâ„¢ for email marketing vendors.  We have much to be excited about as we received perfect scores for: Dynamic content setup, testing, delivery executionMultiple, flexible... More

We at Yesmail Interactive are incredibly honored to be included in the most recent Forrester Waveâ„¢ for email marketing vendors.  We have much to be excited about as we received perfect scores for:
Yesmail Interactive also received top scores for:
Additionally, Yesmail Interactive's proprietary research tool, "Yesmail Market Intelligence", contributed to the perfect score in the multichannel correlation evaluation.  Yesmail Market Intelligence, among other things, monitors the correlation between digital channels, like email, and social activity, i.e. how email activity drives social buzz, and how social activity drives email response.  Yesmail Market Intelligence combines social, mobile, and email monitoring to power competitive, market, and digital content intelligence from a centralized, easy to use console.

Yesmail Interactive's email and social media integration functionality also received above average scores.  With several ways to integrate social media with email, users can seamlessly schedule and deploy social campaigns, show growth and response trends in social channels via the Social Insight Dashboard, track click-throughs of social 'share' buttons, and create social opt-in forms.  

Yesmail Interactive has made noteworthy leadership changes including the appointment of Chairman Mike Iaccarino as CEO.  His outstanding industry track record will help bolster our growing business, as will Purandar Das who brings his extraordinary expertise in email marketing technology and analytics as CTO.  We have further strengthened our expansion in the market with the hiring of Linda Vetter as Director of Marketing and Marc Shull as Sr. Director of Strategic Analytics.  These highly experienced professionals bring demonstrable successes and domain expertise in email marketing with them.

Along with significant new technology features, functionality and benefits we are releasing this year we are aggressively investing in strategy and analysis skills so that as customers evolve we're evolving with them. More exciting news to come.  Watch this space.

Michael Fisher
President, Yesmail Interactive
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Using our soon to be released Market Intelligence tool, our Strategic Services team discovered that over the holiday period, online retailers were sending approximately four tweets to every one email, often staggering an 'offer tweet' in between 3-4 'engagement tweets'. ... More

Using our soon to be released Market Intelligence tool, our Strategic Services team discovered that over the holiday period, online retailers were sending approximately four tweets to every one email, often staggering an 'offer tweet' in between 3-4 'engagement tweets'.  Twitter is a great channel for interacting with current and prospective followers and it can also be utilized to spread the word on special promotions and grow your email list.  There are three simple steps to follow to make this happen:

Step 1 - Setup a Sign Up Form
While you may already have an email sign up form in place to use, you will want to review it for a few key aspects:

Step 2 - Tweet your Message
There are multiple ways you can motivate your followers to opt-in to your email list.

Step 3 - Track growth and interest
After you have sent out your Tweet (you may wish to repeat the Tweet using slightly different wording over a few days, but with the same sign up link), track how many link clicks you have received (using a service like the aforementioned bit.ly) and how many subscribers have signed up. You can also track these sign ups as a special segment to experiment with specific offers and content to see how email subscribers that also follow you respond to different messages.  

Adding your email sign up to your Twitter communications is a quick and easy way to further engage your audience.  Just remember to keep your Twitter 'voice' the same when you tweet your information and highlight the value of signing up for emails to see your list start to grow. 

What ways in social media are you utilizing to build your email list?

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