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…)

First off, Happy Birthday! (whenever your b-day is).

Birthdays are great opportunity to mix up your messaging to an email subscriber and give a non-sale oriented, warm and fuzzy to build trust and enthusiasm with your brand and email program.  That doesn’t mean you don’t get to sell and covert though!  Let’s take a look at how to set this up, automate, and also a few content ideas to get you thinking.

Setting up a Birthday Email

First off, your going to have to know their birthday. The best practice here is to capture that data at the opt-in. You can always get this information later through progressive profiling, but I would recommend adding it to the initial email capture so you can automate the email trigger from day one. Making this a required field is also a good idea if you are serious about birthday emails.

Remember, you don’t need the year they were born, unless you plan on sending different content based on their age. It will also make the opt-in process faster.

Triggering the Birthday Email

Your ESP should have the ability built in to capture this in your form generator. In emailROI, one requirement is to choose the format of the date:

Once you have chosen the format, you will have a consistent format in your database to work with. Then, you can assign that birthday event trigger to a specific email message in your email app. This email will either reside independently or within a list or group.

This email should allow for personalization of name and or creative elements and coupon codes or offers. This also gives you flexibility to contiunally edit the message with out changing your opt-in code.

Birthday Email Ideas

Restaurants & Retail are going to have the most flexiblity here, as they can allow for free items or discounts. Let’s take a look at few that provide these:

Here was an email I recieved from Wendy herself. Along with a birthday greeting, it gives me a link to $1 off coupon I can use at any location.  This is effective and trackable outside the online channel.  They use Coupons Inc. to facilitate barcodes and personalized online printing. They also make good use of the preheader space with “Get Coupon” to tease the present.

Here is an email from Adidas that does a technqiue here that is noteworthy.  Aside from the 15% off coupon, they give a secondary call-to-action to join the Addidas Insiders club. This takes advantage of the Birthday message to cross promote their club.  I would be intrested to know how this element performs. Lesson here is that the email doesn’t have to include only 1 item.

El Gaucho, a fabulous NW steakshouse, doesn’t waste their birthday email opportunity with a small discount.  They come right out with a $25.00 off discount that is sure to drive visitors. Every business is different, but to me, if your going to give someone a birthday gift, give them something they will remember.  A halo effect will be placed on future campaigns to that subscriber, both online and offline.

Before you Implement Your Birthday Email Campaign – Some Things to Consider

I wanted to do a quick post on a great email in my inbox today from Lucky Brand. I found this to be a very effective example to promote your Facebook Page in an email.

I found this effective for 2 reasons:

1. Top Right Placement: By placing this in the top right corner, it didn’t take away from the message of the email, but was still highly visible

2. Using the Facebook Font Color & Graphics: By using the Facebook font style and graphic, it was immediately clear and recognizable.  Large promotional banners for this can get lost in the overall layout.

One optimization I would add to this is to change “Add us on Facebook” to “Become a Fan on Facebook”, since that is the ideal action when the subscriber gets to Facebook.

What would you suggest?

Various studies have reported that 25%-50% of your subscribers are blocking Images in HTML emails.  So why are so many companies still sending image-only emails?

Let’s take a look at an example of both the right way and the wrong way from JetBlue Airlines.

All Image Email

Image/HTML Text Email

You can clearly see above, that a balanced email with HTML text still gets the point across, while the all image email is basically blank. So why would a company like JetBlue, or any company which knows the best practice way to do it, still send an all-image email? Here are two reasons this happens: (more…)

I wanted to share with you a great email design I recieved today.

The image really stood out and made me smile. I spent more time with the email because of this image, which is what good design is supposed to do at the end of the day – make you stop and take notice.

My question to you: Are you giving your email design the attention it deserves?

Email marketing is a statistic goldmine which gives the ability to track everything – except a smile.  I may not have purchased anything from this, but the positive brand impressions might impact if I open more emails in the future, and better yet, lead me to purchasing a product.

Here is the email from Guitar Center (click to enlarge)
Yes, that is George Washington on the 1’s & 2’s.

The eROI crew descended on the desert earlier this week for the Email Evolution Conference. While attendance at trade shows has been spotty die to the economy, the EEC pulled together a lively event.

eROI participated in a few panels and attended almost all of the sessions collectively. The saying at the New Orleans Jazz Fest is that “it’s not what you saw, it’s what you missed to see it”, which is exactly how I felt this year.  Rather than go into deep analysis of each session, I compiled a few of my favorite soundbites, quotes and tidbits from 4 of my favorite sessions from the event:

Topic: Email Design

3 things that need to be in your pre-header: Branding, Primary Message, Main Call-to-Action. Keep it tight.

Whitelist requests need to happen early (welcome, confirmation, transactional) in your program, so you can use the pre-header more effectively.

A logo (with link) in your header is not only a consistent branding impression, it will drive the most traffic to your site over the life span of you program.

Navigation menus (above or below header) drive sales, especially “sale” or “clearance” links.

Pay more attention to your Footer – add more options, branding, social, viral SWYN/FTAF link, and repeat the main call-to-action. (more…)

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!