Return On Subscriber – Email Marketing Blog

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

Our Creativity Journal Contest is nearing an end on February 28th. If you are still interested in getting your creative into the mix, send it on to create AT eroi.com.

This past holiday season, we put together a creative journal and send it out to some of our select customers. These journals were a hit, finding their way into the hearts of all who received them. Thank you emails rolled into our inboxes, many asking, “Can I get one more for a co-worker?” Well due to the love of these Creativity Journals, and the fact that we have a few boxes of them left, we wanted to hold a contest with our subscribers to send us their BEST email campaign creative. Now this is open to eROI customers and subscribers alike, so no pressure as everyone has a chance to get a journal. The only requisite: the creative must ROCK.

To enter, simply send us your email creative in HTML, JPG, or PDF format by February 21st, 2007 and we will hold an internal review by our entire team to choose 10 winners. These winners will have their work featured on ReturnOnSubscriber once they are chosen and our comments will follow on this blog. Please make sure to attach your name, company, email address and 100 – 250 words describing what the campaign was for, the target audience and what time of year it was sent. Also important is the Subject Line, or lines if you did an A/B list split by Subject Line.

We look forward to your submissions and if you have any questions, reach out and touch us at “create AT eROI.com”
Submit Your Campaign By Feb 28th

2 questions to ask yourself before doing online surveys:

1. Are you prepared to use the answers from this survey to implement change in your product/brand/service?

2. If you ask an open-ended question with a comment box, are you going to read every answer and respond to the surveyee with how you will use the input they have provided?

I don’t know too many people who like taking surveys. (“I took an awesome survey yesterday from my vendor!”) Make sure that this survey is going to mean something, and before you create the question, think about what you are going to do with the answer.

You are asking a lot of the subscriber, respect their time and energy by having a plan…and don’t forget to thank them for taking the survey. Twice.