Return On Subscriber – Email Marketing Blog

Just a friendly reminder for you to check to make sure your the images in your email have HTML “alt” tags, which displays a text description when the image does not display. Here is why…

Images Off (click to enlarge)

Images On (click to enlarge)

Need I say more? Well yes, I will say more. (more…)

It is hard for me not to rage about this email. I have covered My Coke Rewards Email Marketing in the past.  The emails are rendering correctly now, but today we have bigger issues. As always, we can all learn from others missteps, even Coca-Cola.

First off, I have no Coke Rewards points, which is clearly stated at the top of the email. Right next to that zero balance is a note letting me know my points “rollover” into the next year?!?!?  There is a missed segmentation opportunity here. Someone with a zero balance should be notified of all the great things they are missing. The only mention of what these rewards are is “rewarding experiences.”

Second, this email design is very flawed. The copy is too small and the value proposition is not clearly stated.  Always remember to clearly state the expectations with above the fold copy.

Lastly, the long gray sidebar doesn’t seem to have a purpose here. All it does is waste space that could be used for increasing the copy size or show subscriber value of the program. For me, this email misses on all marks.

What would you have done to make this email better?

As the holidays approach, the email marketing messages we all receive doubles and for some, triples.  With consumer spending grinding to a halt, marketers are going to have to get more creative.  A lot of times, with email especially, it not the deal per say, but how you phrase it and how quickly you can get you offer understood.

This email from Details Magazine contains a great offer, but I’m not sure they reached the full potential of the email.  While “Buy 1 Get 1 Free” is easily understood, the fact you could buy yourself a subscription and get a free X-mas gift for somebody else is a much better incentive for a subscriber.

This type of offer would be a perfect chance to A/B split your list and test phrasing of the offer.  For the B list on this email, I would try “Give your friend a Free Subscription to Details Magazine this X-Mas” or something similar.  Analyze both the click through and conversions, then launch the campaign.

When you come up with an offer for an email campaign, always create at least 2 versions.  It’s not always what you say, but how you say it.

How would you have phrased this offer?

Gwyneth Paltrow, who you may know from such films as Shallow Hal and Duets, has recently launched a new website called Goop. The site might best be described as a Oprah-esque lifestyle/advice site. There is plenty of commentary about the site and the point of it all. I am here to talk about the email marketing aspect of it, which I like a lot better than the website.

Home Page Opt-In

First off, a great top left email opt-in form on the home page.  Any company that doesn’t include an highly visible Opt-In for/box on their home page is simply not focused on growing their email list. In this day and age you also have to sell it a little bit – “Get the Scoop from Goop”. (more…)

Even though email marketing is a permission based marketing channel (hopefully), you still get some irate emails in all caps requesting removal.  Emails like “REMOVE ME NOW, I HOPE YOU DIE” or “I WILL NEVER USE YOUR COMPANY” are common replies. What can you do?

This particular email was a small victory in the email wars:

“Remove me please.  Nice looking AD, by the way.”

Validation of great creative from a unsubscriber. What more can an email marketer ask for?

Above the Fold (as defined by eROI):  the part of an email message that is visible without scrolling.

I have taken the liberty of editing an HBO email to show you how a simple change will increase email click through and overall campaign conversion. 

I have placed a line the creative to show where the fold would most likely be on a horizontal preview pan. (Usually the fold is estimated at 300 pixels top-down.)

Original HBO Email

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Fingerprint, a tool which shows you exactly which email clients your customers are using, has released a new report on the current state of the email client market. Some really interesting results on both B2B and B2C subscribers:

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Curiosity, according to Wikipedia, is an emotion that causes natural inquisitive behaviour such as exploration, investigation, and learning.

In the light speed decision-making of the Inbox, making someone curious is a key element towards engagement. 

As I like to say about the phrase ‘Learn More’ – “Why? I already know everything about everything.” Are you thinking about curiosity in your email markeitng?  You should be.

Here is a great example from Reader’s Digest in their weekly Humor newsletter:

This got me to scroll down. (more…)

Return on Subscriber HQ’s are in Portland Oregon, which is home to the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers.  The Blazers are a team on the rise, and the community is buzzing over the prospect of this team leaving the “junk folder” and returning to the “inbox” (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Naturally, email marketing is an important part of the mix for building buzz and driving revenue for the upcoming season. The last thing you want to take away from this buzz is email rendering issues (how your email appears across multiple email clients) and a confusing conversion process.

This particular email, which highlights single game suite options, appears fine above the fold in Gmail.  But once you get into the options, the bullet points strike right through the content. Unfortunately, the calls-to-action are right below this.

Did this result in a complete failure for the Blazers?  Probably not. But it had to have a negative impact on conversion. Similar to looking at your watch in a movie, you are not fully engaged anymore.

Instead of breaking down why this email rendered incorrectly in Gmail, I wanted to talk about 5 simple tweaks to this email campaign that would increase click through and conversion.
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TeNo, a manufacturer of some really nice men’s and women’s jewelry, sends image-heavy emails that are great for showcasing their product but in this day and age of image blocking, it can be…unreliable. This email I received from them last week is a prime example of why you use Alt Tags. The entire preview pane is blank. They did not even chop up the image into multiple smaller images to help in load time, so I sat and waited for about 5-10 seconds for the image to download (on a T1). When the average time an email is looked at is just under 3 seconds, this is totally unacceptable.

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