Return On Subscriber – Email Marketing Blog

In email marketing, if you aren’t planning a week or two ahead, you’re too late. To plan a timely and relevant campaign – and avoid “blasting” - you need to give yourself some time to let an idea “marinate”, create unique content, creative, landing pages and the like. We’re here to help jump-start that process.

Below is an Email Marketing Calendar of real holidays, wacky holidays, and pop culture events in August and September that you can utilize to develop timely and relevant email campaigns

August 13th – International Left-Handers Day

If 7-10% of the world is left-handed, there’s a good chance your email list is the same way. Have you ever watched a left-hander use a pair of scissors? If you have, you know that the world is designed for us righties. Even if you don’t have any products for lefties, such as Barrack Obama and Bill Clinton, a simple shout-out would probably go a long way. If you do, that would be an amazing and rare segmentation opp.

August 15th – National Relaxation Day

Cue the massage music and fire up the black tea! It would be hard to make s case that reading email is relaxing. It’s more like the exact opposite – except for maybe Inbox Zero. Because the holiday is about unplugging and recharging, maybe you can leverage this before the 15th, and let your subscribers know they won’t be hearing from you that day, out of respect for National Relaxation Day.  Then go ahead and queue up a great email for the 16th or 17th. Namaste.

August 16th – Roller Coaster Day

The Roller coaster was patented on this day in 1898. See if you can beat this splash-worthy email from Beach Park in Brazil.  If ever an email embodied the spirit of the Email Marketing Calendar, this is it.

August 19th – National Aviation Day

There are less than 1 million pilots in the USA, but over 1.5 million people take a flight each day in America. If you ever had a chance to make a case that your products or content are worthy of those mostly miserable hours packing, traveling to, waiting for, flying on, waiting for, traveling to, unpacking…today might just be your day. (I personally couldn’t do without my Bose Noise Cancelling headphones, almonds, and an Esquire.) If you have some great advice on traveling, don’t be stingy!

August 21st - Wilt Chamberlain’s Birthday

There are 3 numbers that spring to mind here you may be able to tie to pricing or creative:

- 7′1″
- 100
- 20,000

August 26th - National Dog Day

“Spoil your dog on this day and always.” If there is no relation to dogs with your services, how about connecting with your audience on a more personal level?  Create a gallery on Facebook of all your employees dogs and ask your audience to head there and Become a “Like” (this “Like” thing is hard to work into a sentence, maybe stick with “Fan”).  A good opportunity for Email Marketing and Social Media collaboration.

August/September – Back to School!!!

Let’s be honest, there are very few “school kids” on your email list. You need to connect with parents. You can do so in 2 ways – sell them on things for their kids, or sell them things to pamper themselves.

Things for the kids: You’re really going to have to connect with a budget-minded parent in this economy. A sale isn’t enough, you need to resonate with their state of mind.  Here’s an example: “The last calculator you will ever need to buy…for 30% off!”. A sale is not enough right now. Go deeper and connect with the emotional and long term side of buying. If the hand-me-downs are going to keep your audience from replacing or upgrading, you better change their mind. Or, go for retro/nostalgia connection and remind them of how much they loved their Trapper Keepers and new duds. Connecting with their memories might be a better approach.

Things for the Parents: I don’t have children, but those I work with are ready to get their kids back-to-school. A week night dinner or mid-day lunch might be the perfect gift offer right now. From a B2B perspective, late afternoon webinars and marketing events will see more attention. If you are doing heavy Back-to-school messaging, you may want to mix in an option in your preference center for a subscriber to specify if they have children or not. If they don’t, a nice offer for a non-parent would stand out with all of the other kid related messaging.

August/September – Labor Day (Sept. 7th)

With the lack of economic growth, it looks like another Staycation weekend for Labor Day. Anything that can be used for fun at the house or at a park is good to promote, make sure the shipping options are clear and the items will arrive on time. Sometimes, people need more than a product, they need a reason to use it. Give them a reason, then sell them your product. This weekend also marks the beginning of the holiday email marketing season, and competition is going to be fierce. As I said with Back-to-school, discounts aren’t going to be enough. Your going to need to do better. Stay tuned for next months Email Marketing Calendar where we’ll talk about how you can cut through the noise this holiday season with your subscribers.

Here it is, the original Email Marketing Idea Calendar for June. We’ve had some copycats recently, but no fear, you are in the right place.

“Summertime, the livin’s easy.”
- George Gershwin

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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I got together with Chad White who runs The Retail Email Blog, a tactical daily guide to what’s going on in the world of retail email marketing.

In this podcast, Chad & I discuss his annual “Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season” for 2009. Our goal is to give you the tools that will help your email marketing program end the year with a bang!  Even if you aren’t a retailer, this guide gives great information on planning, trends, strategies and more.

Listen: 

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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