Archive for the ‘Email Marketing Trends’ Category
Posted by Dave McCue on February 17th, 2012
Advertisers shell out big bucks and roll out their best commercials to reach millions of viewers during the Super Bowl. Whether or not you’ve got that type of advertising budget at your disposal, a lot can be learned from the spots that aired during this year’s big game.
Think multi-channel
Chrysler’s “Halftime in America” featuring Clint Eastwood caused a big stir among viewers, but why stop there? Shortly after the commercial aired, Chrysler deployed an email message with a link to view the commercial. Not only did this strategy help Chrysler get in front of potential non-football fans, it also provided the commercial in an easily share-able format, helping expand the potential reach of the campaign into the social media space.
Familiar, or stale?
Nobody was surprised to see the Budweiser clydesdales, the Coca-Cola polar bears or GoDaddy’s latest “web content unrated” teaser, but at what point does the familiar begin to become background noise? It’s an important point of discussion for email marketers as well. If response rates aren’t where you would like them to be, it could be a case of recipients tuning your messages out. Try something new to get their attention.
Listen to your audience
Doritos’ “Man’s Best Friend” and Chevy’s “Happy Grad” both received high marks in the various audience polls conducted after the game, and both were user-generated contest entries. Does the audience understand brands better than brands understand themselves? Not likely, but from an email standpoint your audience can offer valuable insight into what “works” and what doesn’t in relation to your communications. See what they have to say, you might be surprised.
Posted by Rob Ropars on August 2nd, 2011
QR codes. You’ve been seeing them more often over the past year as smartphone adoption exploded in the United States. They’re square, they’re here and we’re dealing with it. Designed by a Toyota subsidiary in the mid-1990s, QR codes have a long tradition in Japan. As barcode readers reach the masses via smartphone apps on both iPhones and Droid devices, more and more of us are scanning and exploring.
Marketers are seeking new ways to bring the QR code into the marketing mix. Companies have set up giant QR code billboards with only their name and the code. This then leaves the passerby to be intrigued and find out what it links to (A secret website? A video?). When Iron Man 2 came out, some of the marketing posters had a circular QR code in the center of the Iron Man suit. This linked to a “hidden” site with all kinds of goodies. Read more about it here.
I read recently about an artist having a QR code made as a tattoo linked to his animation which he will update over time (a long term art project). This is a bit extreme to be sure (and hopefully fading/stretching over time doesn’t render that project null and void). You can read more about this art project here. Spanish street art crew La Pluma El√©ctri*k has been using QR codes in art since 2008 that are sort of anti-QR codes in that they reference nothing. I won’t get into a debate over what is and isn’t art. But their works are supposed to be more existential and reference nothing which is their “statement”: you end as you began saying that you don’t get it (got it?). Check out their work here. I was going to suggest using a translation tool since much of it is in Spanish, but I think they’ll appreciate if their site doesn’t make sense to you either.
The BBC has a great plan for using QR codes at this year’s Comic-Con related to its highly successful Doctor Who franchise. They have devised a QR code scavenger hunt for attendees to seek out and scan for entries into a contest. The first code is online so that those of us who can’t attend can still enter. You can read more about this scavenger hunt here.
They used a clever trick to alter the appearance of the QR code from the usual black/white barcode which was pretty cool. Marketers can try to break “out of the box” of traditional QR code design and be more artistic. One of our clients, Tekserve in New York has a big QR code over their entrance. It’s made from Mac keyboard keys and thought it was a interesting use of recycled product parts and modern marketing tools.
Just be sure your creativity doesn’t render the QR code useless or hard to work with. The scanner should be able to read and act within seconds. If the person has to wait while the scanner tries and retries it you’re going to lose them. The BBC contest QR code for example wouldn’t work on my computer screen or printed out. I thought the screen might have been causing some distortion but even printed out, the non-standard 3D tweaking and shading apparently is throwing my Droid app off (Barcode Scanner). At least they had a manual entry so I could enter at least once (always have a back up plan!). But it would have been more exciting if their fancy QR code had worked outright.
This leads me to the most important part of QR codes-optimization. From my experience, the QR codes I’ve seen have been linking to full websites, videos, etc. that are regular websites not mobile-optimized landing pages. I rarely see a link where a person can download a barcode reader (though many smartphones have at least one pre-installed). You want to design/control the entire process from the person scanning to reading on their phone to acting on whatever it may be that you’re presenting.
So if you’re jumping in to this exciting new facet of marketing, don’t forget to follow the whole experience yourself. Make sure the code leads to a great place and drives the actions you want.
Read more about the history and technical details of QR codes here
Posted by Dave McCue on July 25th, 2011
Anyone who has tested email marketing campaigns understands the challenges presented by the idiosyncrasies of different desktop clients, browser-based clients, and even PC vs Apple displays. With that in mind, the idea of “optimizing for mobile recipients” almost seems like piling on—not to worry, a few small steps can go a long way toward providing mobile users with a better email experience.
How mobile is your audience?
Why spend time stressing about mobile optimization if 99% of your recipients aren’t viewing your emails on a mobile device? It’s certainly a fair question, and worth investigating. SubscriberMail’s “Recipient Drilldown” reporting metrics let you see how many recipients rendered and/or clicked your messages using mobile devices such as iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile.
Mobile-ize your template
If you’re sending to a sizable mobile audience, you may want to re-structure the layout of your email template(s) to make it more compatible with mobile devices. For example, the previous two-column layout of our Digital Spin News email (*subscribe here!) has been modified to a single-column with a focus on being more vertical. Realizing that it would be next to impossible to optimize for every single mobile device, we’re also providing a link to a mobile-friendly version of this message through a button in the pre-header. This mobile-friendly version is even more streamlined.
A mobile “touch”
Touch screen smartphones can be tricky for email users. Make things easy for this rapidly-growing segment of email users by putting enough space in between links that they are easy to click without accidentally clicking the wrong one.
Keep length in check
A vertical approach forces more of your newsletter content below the fold. In cases like this, it makes sense to use an abridged or shortened snippet of article text and link off to a full version on a website
Think top-to-bottom, and back again
Help mobile users by providing a table of contents near the top of your message. This will allow them to get an idea of what content lies lower in your message without having to scroll all the way down. To make it easy to navigate within your messages, use anchor tags to let recipients click the table of contents and immediately be taken to that piece of content lower in the message. Along the same lines, a “back to top” link can be a convenient way to navigate back to the table of contents.
The already large number of mobile email users isn’t going to stop growing any time soon. Even if your email/web traffic doesn’t indicate that a large portion of your audience is using mobile devices, it’s a safe bet that the day is coming when your audience embraces mobile as well. Whether you’re playing catch-up or you have a chance to get ahead of the game, mobile optimization is something you should be thinking about.
Posted by Rob Ropars on October 27th, 2010
Recently Pew Research published the results of a new study on adults and cell phone usage. It’s not surprising with the ubiquitous nature of mobile devices that texting is popular. In fact, according to Pew, adult texting has increased from 65% to 72% since the same time last year! It is comforting to note that people reported actually using their phone to send/receive calls an average of five times a day.
With an increasing number of people having the ability to send and receive text messages, it makes sense that there has also been a surge in mobile/SMS marketing efforts. Working in conjunction with other marketing efforts (telemarketing, direct mail, email marketing, social media etc.), mobile/SMS marketing can be an effective part of a full marketing campaign.
SMS marketing allows for an additional interactive component to your marketing campaigns. The Pew research shows that adults have their mobile phones with them almost all the time, so the speed at which a subscriber can receive and read your message is one of its greatest advantages.
Posted by Dave McCue on July 1st, 2010
Using animated images in emails can help your communications stand out among the crowd in recipients’ inboxes. However, there are a few important things to keep in mind if this is a path you’re looking to explore. Avoid Flash files, as they will not render properly in most email clients. Use animated .GIF files instead (see the example on the left). Animated GIF files can easily be created through programs such as PhotoShop, and can be a very effective addition to an email campaign. Whether showing a new product in action or giving the impression of a video in progress, animation not only catches the eye, but can help illustrate important points where words sometimes fail.
Optimize for Outlook users. Though animated GIF files are widely accepted by email clients, some versions of Outlook will only display the first frame of animation. The example to the left was purposefully not optimized for Outlook users to show this in action.
If you can see the animation, here is an example of what you would see if only the first frame displayed: Single frame sample
If you can not see the animation on the left, here is what you would see if your email client rendered animated GIF files:
