Posts Tagged ‘tips’

Curiosity is King. Curious?

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

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…)

Goaltending on what should be an Email Slam Dunk

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

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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Ecommerce Email Call-to-Action - “By Size” Navigation

Monday, August 18th, 2008

Threadless is a hip t-shirt company that allows users to upload designs and create t-shirts for sale through their site.  After receiving emails from them for a while now, I noticed a feature of their email design that I am clicking on more and more: “Browse everything that’s in stock in your size:”.

I have never been a huge fan of website navigation “above the fold” in email marketing designs, as I feel it will receive clicks from users that aren’t reading offers/content in the email.

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Steal this idea for your Newsletters - Mobile Friendly Version

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

This was the first time I have seen this at the top of an email:

“Click here for the Wireless Version: URL

Brilliant idea by the AAAA. I personally would change it to “Mobile Friendly”, wireless is kind of confusing.

Most HTML email is worthless on a Blackberry, so daily news briefs, professional newsletters, etc… would be smart to add this feature.

How you do that, either through your ESP tools, or creating that mobile browser friendly version in HTML, you can figure that out through testing.

Click on the image to enlarge
wireless-optimized.png