Posts Tagged ‘Email Marketing Trends’
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:
Posted by Dave McCue on March 26th, 2010
If you’re involved in email marketing, you’ve likely heard about the rising number of mobile users viewing emails, and the challenges in designing for such devices. A few years back, “optimizing for mobile” meant offering a text-only version of your emails, but the browsers used on today’s smart phones have made mobile users much more likely to receive HTML versions of your messages.
But before you panic at the prospect of designing for those tiny screens, it’s important to get a read on how your audience is using mobile. After all, just because one marketer’s list is heavy with mobile users doesn’t mean that your audience fits the same mold.
If you’re using SubscriberMail’s Google Analytics integration to track email visitors to your website, here is a quick way to see how many of those email visitors are using mobile devices. When viewing a site profile in Google Analytics, there are two options for Mobile under the Visitors menu—Mobile Devices (iPhone, Android, etc) and Mobile Carriers (Sprint, Verizon, etc). Either option should display the same visitor data, it’s just a matter of preference if you want it broken down by Device or Carrier. The data displayed will represent all Mobile traffic to your site, but by selecting Source from the dropdown menu directly above the first column of data, you can filter the results based on the traffic source. By default, the Source for your email traffic will be listed in Google Analytics as SubscriberMail. Just look for the SubscriberMail listing, and that will show you how much of your total mobile traffic is being referred from your SubscriberMail emails.
It should be noted that mobile users who viewed one of your emails without clicking any links will not be factored in to any Google Analytics traffic totals. That being said, getting an idea of how many of your engaged subscribers are using mobile devices can provide valuable insight into how high-priority of an item mobile optimization should be for your email program.
Posted by Dave McCue on October 13th, 2009
Does your email marketing program operate inside a vacuum? Sure, you might give recipients the option to reply directly to your messages or provide a reason when they choose to unsubscribe, but more and more online communication is taking place outside of standard email. Are you turning a deaf ear?
While email remains an immensely popular communication tool, many users prefer to communicate using a combination of tools; social media and instant messaging among them (the interest surrounding Google Wave is largely due to its ability to consolidate these different communication tools into a single interface). Email marketers often talk about the importance of “engagement,” but their recipients’ definition of the term will keep changing along with their preferences.
For example, I get frustrated when I reply directly to a marketing message with a question and receive nothing in the way of a response—or worse, an automated message telling me my message would not be read. So, to avoid that headache, I’ve recently tried using Twitter to respond back to senders instead.
The first sender was Wrigleyville.com, a website that promotes happenings around the Wrigleyville neighborhood in Chicago near Wrigley Field. I received an email announcing a new partnership between the site and a new coupon website called the Daily Dinger. Apparently, some kinks were still being worked out, because I received the same message three times over the course of a few hours. There was a link on the email to the MyWrigleyville Twitter page, so I decided to send them a message on Twitter mentioning a possible issue. I received no response at all.
I tried the same approach shortly after in response to a message I received from Eventful.com. I had registered on the site the previous weekend, but did not expressly opt-in to any mailing lists. When I received a marketing message, I checked out my preferences and noticed that the opt-in boxes for quite a few mailing lists had been pre-checked. A little miffed, I posted an update on Twitter directed at the Eventful account. Shortly after, I received a reply on Twitter, complete with the email address of an Eventful representative who said he would unsubscribe me if I contacted him. I was able to contact him directly and offer some opt-in tips that might help reduce complaints, which he seemed thankful for.
In each of these cases, I operated under the assumption that an organization communicating with me through one medium would be just as likely to communicate with me through a different medium. As social media use continues to rise, and tools such as Wave begin to spring up, marketers will have less and less ability to dictate the realm in which these conversations take place as email recipients may choose to communicate with senders in other ways.
These days, what begins as an email could take the sender-recipient conversation down any number of paths—and isn’t that a good thing? After all, it’s the engagement you’re looking for, how you get there is less important. Lose the tunnel vision, and get ready to communicate outside the (in)box.
