Return On Subscriber – Email Marketing Blog

Here it is, your May Email Marketing Idea Calendar. May is interesting month for marketers. The sun is coming out, people are starting to plan vacations and think about having fun. What a perfect time to establish a good season-long relationship with your subscribers. Time to brighten things up in your emails and have some fun with campaign ideas and creative.

Below is a list of holidays, wacky holidays, and pop culture events in May and ideas you can utilize to develop timely and relevant email marketing campaigns.

Saturday May 1st – Kentucky Derby

The “Greatest Two Minutes in Sports.”  Talk about an event rich in tradition! Roses, Mint Juleps, fancy hats, bottles of milk – the list goes on and on.

Tuesday May 4th – National Teacher Day

On National Teacher Day, thousands of communities take time to honor their local educators and acknowledge the crucial role teachers play in our society. Giving a discount code or special for teachers would be a nice touch. Or perhaps a gift campaign to allow your subscribers to purchase something for the teacher in their life.

Wednesday May 5th – Cinco De Mayo

If you sell goods or services, think buy 5 get one free, $5.00 off, 10% off all products that end in 5… you see what I am getting at. If you are a destination, Americans are always looking for a reason to go out and party. Why not celebrate Cinco de Mayo at your establishment or event. Make sure you get it on their radar a few days in advance, then send a reminder early on Monday.

Thursday May 6th – International No Diet Day

KFC, there has never been a better day to promote the “Double Down“!

Sunday May 9th – Mother’s Day

A holiday that needs no explanation, it’s for Mom. But how do you stand out in a crowded inbox? (more…)

Here it is, your April Email Marketing Calendar. April is an interesting month. From April Fools to Tax Day to Earth Day, the emotions run the gamut.

Below is a list of real holidays, wacky holidays, and pop culture events in April and ideas you can utilize to develop timely and relevant email marketing campaigns.

Thursday April 1st – April Fool’s Day

April Fool’s Day is the one day of the year you have free reign to play practical jokes and pranks on family, friends, coworkers, and most importantly your email subscribers. I will warn you, this is very dependent on your product or service. If your content is heavy and serious, you will want to consider whether a joke is appropriate. On the other hand, it may be the perfect opportunity for you to loosen up your tie and connect with subscribers on a different level.

Sunday, April 4th – Easter Sunday

The nice thing about Easter is that you have multiple angles you can work from a marketing standpoint. Easter bunny, Easter eggs, Easter basket, etc… One idea to consider is to add a hidden element to your email layout, which is essentially a hidden item that is only accessible by discovering a hidden link (known as an “Easter Egg”). Since users don’t typically spend a great deal of time with an email, you need to make sure the hover isn’t to difficult to locate – think 20x by 20x pixels instead of 5px by 5px.

Wednesday, April 7th – No Housework Day

Think of all the great products, services and locations that can be enjoyed instead of housework. Procrastinators world-wide will rejoice with your No Housework Day special!

Monday, April 12th – Walk On Your Wild Side Day

Push your edgy content on Walk On Your Wild Side Day. Some fun creative of your staff or some of your more eccentric content will do the trick. Lou Reed approves.

Thursday, April 15th – Tax Day

For the procrastinators out there, April 15th might not be the day. It might be the 16th, after a good night of sleep and dreams of refund or less worry about payment just paid. If you want your subscribers to blow off some steam and celebrate, it might be interesting to A/B split the 15th & 16th and see what works best for future campaigns. Stay away from politics and focus on the value your content of offer provides.

Friday, April 16th – High Five Day

National High Five Day originated at the University of Virginia in 2002, and has since spread across the globe. Anything and everything can be high-fived, and gives a perfect opportunity to focus on the social/viral side. The official website gives some great ideas. Can you adapt them to your email?

Monday, April 19th – National Hanging Out Day

The goal of this holiday is not to sit on a couch, it’s to educate communities about energy consumption. National Hanging Out Day was created to demonstrate how it is possible to save money and energy by using a clothesline. Can you come up with a list of ways to save energy with your product or service? If not, maybe just in general?

Thursday, April 22nd – Earth Day

This year is the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, and a chance to provide the tools and structure for individuals and organizations to organize around environmental issues. The official website offers ideas and tips to take action.

Wednesday, April 21st – Administrative Professionals Day

We all know how important the administrative professional is, don’t we?  Celebrate them, empower them, reward them, or spoof them (in a fun way). Think about your list…how many of them consider themselves “Administrative Professionals”?

Last Friday in April - National Arbor Day

You can find the official date for your state here. Continuing on the environmental kick in April, how do you reward your subscribers for planting a tree?  How can we prove that they did it?  Easy: through user-generated content on Flickr, Twitpic, YouTube, etc. Sounds like a perfect chance to seed a social campaign through email!

See you next month for the May Email Marketing Calendar… in April.

Here it is, your March Email Marketing Calendar.

Below is a list of real holidays, wacky holidays, and pop culture events in March and ideas you can utilize to develop timely and relevant email marketing campaigns.

Tuesday, March 2nd: Read Across America Day – Dr. Seuss’ Birthday

It doesn’t have to be a book does it? How about blog posts, white papers, or customer reviews?

Thursday March 4th: March Forth – Do Something Day

I’m sure there quite a few things you have in mind for your subscribers to do, don’t you? This day is also used as a celebration of goal achievement.

Sunday March 7th: The Academy Awards aka The Oscars

Lots of folks getting together on this Sunday night, if your site or product or location can enhance their experience, get out in front of it.

Monday March 8-12: National Make a Referral Week

A perfect opportunity to ask and engage your loyal audience to refer you to their friends, write a review, or send a gift to a friend from your store or site. Make sure to make the process easy using forms or social sites. The official hashtag on Twitter for the week is #marw10.

Wednesday, March 17th: St. Patrick’s Day

Green Email. ‘Nuff said. (more…)

In email marketing, if you aren’t planning a week or two ahead, you’re too late. If you really want to plan a successful campaign, and avoid “blasting”, you need to give your self some time to create content, creative, landing pages and the like.

That is why we are starting a new series of posts this year called the Email Marketing Calendar. Below is a list of real holidays, wacky holidays, and pop culture events in February you can utilize to develop a timely and relevant email campaign. We will post this list a week or two ahead of the next month.

Tuesday, February 2nd – Groundhog Day

If a groundhog fails to see its shadow, winter will soon end. If the groundhog sees its shadow, winter will continue for six more weeks. This would be a great theme to use for consumer campaigns, from apparel retailers to ski resorts to restaurants. If weather is a driving factor in your business, more winter or less winter is most likely something to take advantage of.

Sunday, February 7th – “The Big Game” (aka Super Bowl XLIV)

Due strictly enforced trademark infringement, you can’t use the words “NFL,” “Super Bowl,” or “Super Sunday” in your marketing campaigns. However, you can use colloquialisms such as “The Big Game,” or other generic descriptions for Super Bowl XLIV. Aside from the game itself, you also have the commercials and the half time show which have a lot of cultural currency as well.

Monday, February 8th – Boy Scout Day

A tounge-in-cheek brand might be able to get something out of boy scout day – Scouts Honor!

Friday, February 12  – Abe Lincoln’s Birthday

You are free to create unique artwork of a US President’s likeness, but you are not allowed to use anything that has “authorship”. Abe Lincoln has one of the most iconic and trustworthy brands in American history. How can you buddy up to Honest Abe?

Sunday, February 14th – Valentine’s Day

If this is a big day for your company, hopefully you already have a plan. If you are B2B, here’s an idea: “Will you be our Valentine?” with a link to update their profile or take a survey. Maybe you can use Cupid’s spell to clean up your subscriber data or ask a few questions without having to give something away. Or you could play against Valentine’s Day and ask a subscriber to be selfish and by something for themselves.

Monday, February 18th – Washington’s B-day aka Presidents Day

First off, it’s spelled “Presidents Day” not “President’s Day”. This is a federal holiday and many are off work. It is also known as much for big sales at stores as it is for honoring US Presidents. Creatively, you can really use iconic American symbols and imagery. But make sure to work on your subject lines and copy, as their will be considerable activity.

Tuesday, February 16th – Mardi Gras aka Fat Tuesday

Here’s a day you could really have some fun. Mardi Gras is a great day to have an event or a sale. The opportunities for fun creative don’t get better than this. From a charitable side, you could also send your subscribers to donate to the Katrina reconstruction efforts.

Wednesday, February 17th – Random Act’s Of Kindness Day

Random Act’s Of Kindness Day is an unofficial holiday in order to encourage acts of kindness. This is an opportunity to give something back to your loyal audience of readers. Maybe it’s just to say thanks. Maybe it is a no strings attached coupon for something free or at cost. Don’t send your same old 20% coupon, do something original and kind. Your subscribers won’t forget it, and it could really work to lift your next few emails.

Saturday, February 20th – Love Your Pet Day

This one may be a stretch, but here me out. We are always looking to humanize our companies. How about you send out a link to a flickr gallery or blog post of all of the employees pets? Or, offer a link to the local humane society to adopt or volunteer. We all love our pets, don’t we? This may be a connection you never knew you had with your subscribers.

Sunday, February 28th – National Tooth Fairy Day

This one I am leaving up to you guys, aside from companies that sell children’s products or dentists, I got nothing. Give us an idea in the comments section.


Good luck and happy emailing! Stay tuned for the March Email Marketing Calendar…in February.

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Watch this post for live updates from Email Marketing Twitterati at the Email Evolution Conference in Scottsdale, AZ.

The goal of the eROI Resource Center is to provide best practices, case studies of client work, informative survey results, and fresh ideas to the online marketing community.  We want everyone to market more effectively, client or non-client. 

I thought I would share with you today the 5 most downloaded resources in 2008.

1.) Wacom “Power of the Pens” case study
2.) Email Marketing Guide
3.) Pre-Launch Email Marketing Cheat Sheet
4.) Cradle & Grave Email Marketing Survey Results (Q2 ‘08)
5.) Elements of Email Marketing Survey Results (Q3 ‘08)

Have you signed up for the Resource Center yet? Tell ‘em Return on Subscriber sent you!

As with most agencies, we have a lot of talented folks here at eROI who bring additional skills to the table we don’t get to showcase.  Music is one of those things. We have a lot of part-time DJ’s who rock the clubs afterhours.

Our own DJ Vize and DJ Atonloshe have partnered up to create some unique holiday mixes to make the season funkier.

Thank you for reading the blog this year, and we look forward to growing old with you in 2009!

Visit the eROI Holiday Microsite

Woot.com has built a great business and brand using great copy and a unique business model.  The following personalized email they sent to me really illustrates this.  I will let you read for your self:

WOOT, INC. INTERNAL EMAIL 
STAFF EYES ONLY 

Attention Woot employees - 

We are now entering the final phase of preparations for the Woot-Off planned for midnight tonight. This is when we depart from our usual deal-a-day model and sell one product after another, offering a new deal as soon as the previous one sells out. For some reason, Woot members like my name continue to have high expectations for this event. We must make every effort to ensure that they feel disappointed and betrayed. 

All workers should be physically and mentally straining to make this Woot-Off a success, like every muscle in a wolf’s body strains to capture and devour its prey. We expect total compliance with the following objectives: 

• Make sure the stables are thoroughly cleaned and the horses properly groomed and shod. As you know, Commander Rutledge prefers to lead us on horseback during Woot-Offs. (more…)

“1 week only: Free Custom Cover Book”.  Awesome right?  No.  It’s actually a “Buy one Get one Free” offer. Semantics?  No.  Bummer?  Yes! These types of misleading subject lines do more damage to the brand than the subscriber.

Fool me once? Shame on you.  Fool me Twice?  Ask George W. 

Now maybe I misintrepreted this email from Snapfish, but it look like to me it says: “order one, get the second free with Coupon Book108″.  Isn’t that called “Buy One Get One Free”?

This tactic may work in other marketing channels but it’s not going to work in email.  We will find out the true offer the moment we open the email.

Be honest and your audience will trust you.  Trick them and they will stop listening. Or worse, they will unsubscribe.

College Basketball is in the air and that means it is bracket time. We are working with our InFocus to bring the 2nd annual InFocus Hoops contest. This year winners take home PlayStation 3, Bose systems, and lots of other goodies. This site shows you the power of encompassing a campaign around a large social event.

Check it out and see how we use the Send to a Friend or Invite a Friend feature to drive more competition and a larger base of participants