You gotta see this. MoveOn.org, sent me a very unique unsubscribe confirmation today. I commented on Twitter this morning about the massive unsubscribe requests they must be receiving now that the election is over. The subject line read: “Don’t Go!”.
While I admire there sales pitch here, it seems a little across the line of a unsubscribe confirmation email.
Thoughts? Creative or Crossing the Line?
One of the more frustrating promotion ideas in email marketing to me is the one day deal, as seen below.
There are multiple reasons I don’t agree with this concept. On the top of this list is the fact that most people can’t make it through their inbox in 1 day anymore. This fact has a domino effect on the rest on the conversion opportunity.
If your goal is to get a conversion, don’t start with “Today Only”. Why? Because know you might not even get the email opened, as someone might concede the offer as over. (What day is it anyway?) The date is a very small piece of Inbox landscape. Words like “Hurry!” and “Limited Time” can get the same meaning across without losing subscriber interest.
Another issue here is that this is actually a pretty good subscription offer. Why not get it into the subject line? ”All Titles $6.99 for a Limited Time. Don’t Miss Out!”
So I was a few days late, but clicked through out of curiosity. The landing page was still intact. This frustrates me because they didn’t stick to their guns and take the offer down.
If you truly have a timely promotion, like a re-release of event tickets, or 1 television to giveaway, by all means go for it. If not, create a great offer and give it a few days to convert.
I think I may have received the more random Back-to-School email today, which made very little sense to me.
I am guessing 2 ideas went into the strategy behind this campaign:
1. We have a lot of Playboy bags left, let’s try to say they are needed on campus.
2. “What can we send that could tie into Back to School?”
Regardless, they came up with an timely offer and tied into a cultural event. I have a hard time believing this sold a lot of Playboy bags though….
This is an email I have been meaning to post for a few weeks, but travel and weather had me behind the 8 ball in many places. I had kep this one as it came into my inbox on Christmas Eve. They were already announcing the sales that were going to hit the day after Christmas. Now not that I would have any desire to run out and buy that night but could it have caused me some buyers remorse if I saw what I just bought that last week already marked down again? Would I driven to now think about taking my receipts to the store on the 26th to get the discount credited back to my account?
This is a tough call as I know being first to mind is important and many people actually buy more at the sales after the holidays than they do leading up to them as the sales are out of this world. BUT it rides a fine line of letting me know I might have just paid to much and I might want to look at how to get some money back now.
Just food for thought… think about those that you are emailing and possibly drive multiple creatives to those that bought online versus those that did not in the weeks leading up to an event. The last thing you want is someone wishing they had waited to spend their money with you as it might cause them to hold out next time.
When you opt in for an email, it would be nice if more companies were to educate you on what to expect to get in coming months. We use our Archives to do this before they subscribe, but I was struck by what American Airlines is doing as a good idea. They have create a 4 email series that you get over a few week’s time to let you know where you are in the education process AND what you can expect to need to know or learn to use their site and services better. Now it took me a while to join this newsletter as they don’t have too many flights in and out of Portland but I applaud they way that they brought me up to speed as to why I am going to want to read these emails.
Look in the top right hand side of the email to see that they indicate what step you are on in the welcome/education process. Kudos and maybe a few of us can learn from this idea.
This article, written by Dianna Dilworth, ran today in DM News and featured >ReturnonSubrciber.com scribe (sorry, it was too easy), Jeff Mills.
Free shipping gets e-mails opened: eROI
“Free shipping is the No. 1 offer that customers look for and will respond to in an e-mail, per online marketing firm eROI Inc. in its 2006 holiday e-mail marketing survey.
The study interviewed consumers and found that free shipping is important because it gives online shopping a competitive advantage.
When you are driving people to an offline or online event it is important to not send one email and call it good. DWR does a good job of sending a series of emails out that really keep the event at the top of your list. They do not send too many or too few. The mix is just right.
Think about this the next time you have an event to promote. We suggest a combination of 4 in most cases. Two months out, 1 month out, 2 weeks before, and then a subtle 3 day out reminder.
Good Article on email targeting and what can be done from MediaPost.
Beyond Batch And Blast: Direct Marketers Start To Get BT
by Phil Leggiere, Friday, August 4, 2006
THE PROMISE OF E-MAIL AS an advertising medium has been to bring brands and consumers together more directly than ever before. Reality, unfortunately, has proven more complicated. For consumers, finding the needle (the offer they really want) in the haystack of info-glut has become more and more frustrating, For advertisers, it’s meant their “signal” has been increasingly lost amidst the noise. One way of moving beyond these limitations is for direct marketers to adopt and adapt behavioral methodologies still mostly associated with their brethren in the online advertising world, as Elaine O’Gorman, vice president of strategy of Atlanta-based interactive marketing firm Silverpop, explains below.
Behavioral Insider: Why has e-mail advertising remained largely siloed in relation to other Web advertising?
O’Gorman: The advantage of e-mail is that you have a more precise idea of who the customers are on your list than you would of just who’s browsing your Web site. But it’s a different mindset to do e-mail marketing from the one advertisers bring. E-mail marketing has been the province of direct marketers. And, frankly, most direct marketers don’t do a good job of executing e-mail campaigns. They haven’t changed the way they work. Most direct marketers are stuck in an old-school mentality where you do mass mailings based on very broad and rigid targeting criteria, the broader the better. Messaging and creative were set far in advance and once set were not seen as variable.
Konami, whom we love, dropped this email a few weeks back and I like it. the only thing I would have done differently would have been to add COLOR to the action link in the creactive. The BW email is good and on brand with the new UMD email, but using color to POP out at me and drive my eye to learn more, buy the UMD or even know what to do in less time would have made this perfect.
Now I know that the spend on men for fathers days is so much lower than the spend on women. Not that it really makes a difference, as a man, we are simple creatures. But could it be any simplier than just giving us a Starbuck’s card? Is Father’s day just another day for a cup of Joe and a pat on the back, “Good Job Dad, Stay Awake”.
I like event based marketing but I never get alot out of a Starbucks email. Hey, we have some new beans, or looks like you could buy a stored value loyalty card for “X”. I want to see some relevant meat from Starbucks in my inbox. I am there EVERY day for my daily heart pounding cup of Joe, so start to learn about me and try to establish a two-way dialogue instead of just taking the easy route.
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