White is the New Black - Friday

Or..how to be different on Black Fridays

Best Black Friday Email in my Inbox

Will This Inforgraphic Change When You Send Your Emails?

Responsive Email Design - Stick or Twist?

Every thing's going Mobile. Well actually that's not quite the case for email design.

With the numbers for how many emails are being opened on mobile ever increasing, Litmus suggesting over 40%  you would think that brands would be jumping on their digital teams to ensure that their email designs were responsive.

But look at your emails on your smartphone and take a look to see how many are optimised for that screen. Not many I'd suggest

So why is that?

Is it because brands believe that email has no future ?

Well according to Radicati that might be a mistake with their recent report claiming that the number of worldwide email accounts is expected to increase from over 3.9 billion accounts in 2013 to over 4.9 billion by year-end 2017 and actually marketers are expecting growth in email alongside other digital channels

Maybe its because even with the use of Media Queries that still won't cover all the various operating systems out there including versions of Blackberry , Microsoft and even Mobile apps such as Gmail ( check out the list at Campaign Monitor)

Or is it because the open or click through rates done seem to vary too much whether you bother with an optimised design or not? 

That's what Tim Watson from Zettasphere seems to suggest with this chart take from his report produced in conjunction with Communicator Corp




So we should stick?

Or should we twist?

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken” – Oscar Wilde

To be honest only you can answer because only you know your brand and your audience.

Some questions to ask yourself

• How many of my customers are opening on mobile devices?
• Which devices?
• How well do my emails work on those devices based on what I'm asking my customers to do when receiving the email?
• What would it cost me to redesign to make my emails mobile friendly?
• What would it cost me to make them mobile optimised?
• What will lose as part of any redesign and making my emails simpler?

..and the biggest one of all..

• how much will my customers thank me for improving their overall experience?

The Welcome Email - An Infographic

This infographic is brought to you by ExactTarget, a leader in social media marketing.

Bad Timing

Why would send me an email promoting your new product

...when right at that moment if I go to your website I get this?

Obama and Subject Line Testing

Testing up to 18 copy / subject line variants at a time, the Obama team discovered that the subject line 'Hey' was the one that drove the most donations. It literally brought in millions of dollars!





Original article can be found here

Strange But True

You Only Send Emails Every Now And Again

...so it makes perfect sense to get your 'Fans' to get the 'news' when it's 'news'

Nice touch from my beloved Leeds United in setting up separate Twitter accounts for Ticket News, Commercial and photos.

Only one thing missing..... getting back into the Premiership!!!

Too Many Shirts For One Email ?

No problem in this latest Boden email

Feedback On Your Emails

There are a number of ways we can improve the content we send out to our newsletter subscribers.

We can

1. send out surveys
2. ask for feedback at the point of unsubscribe
3. analyse our metrics around open, clicks and link analysis

Or we can simply add the option in every single email for subscribers to improve the relevancy of the content.

An ASOS email that dropped into my inbox this morning did just that, with a  link towards the bottom of the email

This led me to a simple survey that asked

 questions to relevancy both in terms of 

content and frequency

And as this was achieved using a Survey Monkey form, it was no doubt cheap and easy to set up!

No excuses not to ask for feedback now!!

My Favourite Email Of The Year So Far

It's never too late to wish me a Happy Birthday

Trying Too Hard To Be Personal

Do I really appreciate warm wishes from your family Mr Lauren?

To be honest, I've never met them

Happy Birthday.. But If It's Not, Even Happier Un-Birthday

Thank you YO! Sushi for my birthday gift

But if it's not your birthday

Maybe next year I will change my birth date...or perhaps they can give me something extra?

Still..I did quite like the graphics

Starbucks Brighten My Sunday / Monday

With more and more people reading their emails on a Sunday, what better time for Starbucks to send me this email about their Monday Tall Latte offer

The link to their website 'history's greatest Mondays ' gave me access to this neat video








Open rates are pretty good on Sundays according to this chart from MailerMailer

The full report can be accessed here 

The email arrived in my inbox in the evening at around 6pm. With over 60% of emails being read between 6pm and 12noon, they are certainly increasing their chances of getting it read.

But of course this is all going to vary depending on your business model and your audience. These stats are always a nice pointer but as in the words of Oscar Wilde

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken”

Don't be like everyone else..everyone else isn't you!



As the offer runs for the next 3 Mondays, it will be interesting to see if they follow up over the next couple of weeks

To the Brands Who Wished Me a Merry Christmas

And didn't overtly try and sell to me on Christmas Day
Thank You and a Happy New Year!

12.12.12

Favourite Subject Line of the Day

Nice email copy too..

How to Anger Your Customers By Offering Them A Discount

If you follow the email trail in reverse order, you will see why

Convince me I'm getting a good deal with my 20% offer

Wait until I place an order

Send me an offer for 25%!!!

Either Figleaves intend to anger me or are just too plain lazy to use their data properly!

Russell and Bromley's Missed Opportunity

As a Russell and Bromley fan , I was interested to see if their shoes could be purchased online.

It seemed that I caught them mid-upgrade

But it was great to see that they offered me the opportunity to keep in touch and find out when the new website was up and running sometime in the Autumn. ( Having worked with a few Marketing  Teams, they love to be that vague with the launch dates - not that the customers like it)





So the email sign up looked like this, and it was great to see that they didn't ask too much of me

And a matter of moments later I got a welcome email.

But that was the beginning of October 2012, and not having had any emails since I thought I'd take a peek at their website today...and can you spot the subtle change in copy?

Looks like a slight slip in the delivery date.

Now of course they still have bricks and mortar stores so surely there was an opportunity a month into the 'relationship' to keep me in touch as to what was happening both on and off line?

Easy Subject Line Testing

Looking to see how to test your email subject lines?

It can be as simple as this example from ASOS that mistakenly appeared in my Inbox

But here are a few other ideas / tips

Test according to segment to understand how different audiences react to different copy

Length. I've usually found that shorter, to the point is better. Your audience may be different

Do versus Say. Does your audience react better to actionable or informative headlines?

Search and Copy. What's your audience searching for using Google or perhaps on your own website ?

Be careful what you wish for

But please don't act your agency the question I had put to me last year.

'Why does the subject line including the free offer get more opens than one without  but then the clicks remain the same?'

Getting your audience to open the email is not the end game. Your end game is always the ultimate conversion whether that be a sale, whitepaper download or an event booking