I wanted to take a minute to thank you for all of your support of the eec so far. Thanks to fantastic people like you, the eec continues to grow in both size and stature within the email industry.

Over the past three years, the eec has been able to create a community that offers those from all areas of the email marketing industry the opportunity to come, learn and act collectively in positive ways that help change increase the respect and value that email receives from the marketing and advertising worldl.

Collectively, we have helped increase the ROI of email marketing, lobbied for better laws, stronger relationships with ISP's and better integration into other channels like social marketing, mobile markeitng and even search, display and TV. A few of us even wrote books about it!

With all that we have accomplished, we can't sit back and be satisfied. We need to strive for more! More effective email campaign results, more impactful creative, more leverage with ISP's, more innovation with the technologies we use, and more networking to strengthen our collective spirit.

It is with this call for MORE that I am pleased to extend a personal invitation for you to join me at EEC09 in Scottsdale, Arizona, February 9-11th. Use discount code JAN09 to register for just $999* (register at www.emailevolution.org).

Join me, Jeanniey Mullen, as well as our well respected powerful keynote speaker and father of Direct Marketing: Stan Rapp, along with David Daniels, Bill Nussey, Kath Pay, Peter Horan, David Baker, Stephanie Miller, Dela Quist, Ali Swerdlow, Loren McDonald, Stefan Pollard, Jeanne Jennings, Dave Hendricks, Bill McCloskey, Skip Fidura, Dylan Boyd, Aaron Kahlow, Chris Baggott and many other email superstars at this year's event.

In challenging times like these, attending conferences that offer insights and actionable learnings is critical. And, sometimes the networking that happens at the event proves to be even more beneficial. You have my word that you will not be disappointed at this event.

I really hope to see you there. And, if you can make it, drop me an email when you register: jeanniey@emailexperience.org. I would love to say hi at the event and spend some time with you.

Sincerely,

Jeanniey Mullen
eec Founder and Executive Chair

*Only applies to new registrations

Test, test and test again.
- Spencer Kollas, StrongMail

View your campaigns through the eyes of your recipients. Test out your from name, subject line, creative, call-to-action, etc on subscribers who are *not* in your office or affiliated directly with your product/brand.
- DJ Waldow, Bronto Software

"Focus on reducing opt-in friction by testing and optimizing preference centers and other points of data collection – new signups will be especially critical to your business in 2009."
- Nicholas Einstein, Datran Media

Predictions for 2009:
1. Preheader text will be used by the majority of email marketers.
2. More email marketers will launch preference centers, giving subscribers more control of the content and frequency of the emails they receive.
3. Marketers will experiment with videos embedded in emails.
- Chad White, Smith-Harmon

They say that no two snowflakes look alike. Does the same hold true for any two holiday email campaigns? With so many brands celebrating the season via email, it's been interesting to watch unique ideas emerge within the creative snowflake flurry!

This year's snowstorm…

• REI created a distinctively modern and stylized snowflake for the holiday season. They also lightened up their color palette and introduced bright pink so that their messages have a more festive feel that stands out from those using more traditional holiday colors.

•Staples' snowflakes are whimsical, playful and convey a hand-made feeling, which is an interesting choice for an office supply store. If we want to get really interpretive, we could say that these delicate and individual snowflakes imply a personalized attitude towards each subscriber. Or maybe it's just that they're cute.

•Lands' End went with really simple snowflakes—they almost look like a child could have cut them out of paper. The animated banner really conveys COLD as the problem, and the answer is, of course, FLEECE!

•Dickies roughed out the edges of their email, managing to give snowflakes a gritty, edgy look that appeals to their masculine audience. Hey, guys get cold too!

•Circuit City's itty-bitty snowflakes can also be seen as twinkles, making the product seem bright, shiny and special.

•Nine West's subtle snowflakes are unlike anything we've seen before. They incorporated the number 9 to create their flakes. This design has a nice, subtle nod to the holidays, but ultimately most people shop at Nine West for themselves… We're fans of the light blue/dark red color palette for the holiday, too. It's unexpected and can make a brand stand out, yet it still feels festive!

•Cusp has edgy, modern snowflakes in their header and their background. Somehow these snowflakes seem fashionable or even trendy, which makes sense for Cusp.

•LL Bean chose an ornate snowflake that fits in with the fun, intricate patterns on their holiday sweaters. Especially with the Nordic-inspired sweater in their secondary message, this snowflake seems nice and appropriate.

When snowflakes collide…

With so many brands and so many snowflakes, it's only a matter of time before some unwanted creative overlap occurs. This winter Nike committed early to using a bright blue striped background. In each email they changed the color that they paired with blue, which usually looked nice. But when they chose to pair their blue with orange, the resulting email looked uncomfortably similar to what their competitor, Lucy, developed for their holiday creative, especially since both Lucy and Nike used small, subdued sparkly-snowflakes that melted into their backgrounds.

Hey, those aren't snowflakes!

While there has been heavy snowfall in the inboxes, there are, of course, other ways that brands have been festive without literally saying "Christmas" or even "holiday." Here are a few others that we liked:

•Ann Taylor's sale email calls out gifting but not holiday, and sticks to shades of red and pink. Without mentioning the holidays, it still looks like a wrapped present or a deconstructed candy cane.

•Lucy's sale email uses a bow to add a little festive gifting flavor, but it doesn't
deviate from Lucy's trademark orange.

•Sephora's cute bell and use of gold is a subtle and classy-looking holiday approach.

Weigh in and let us know what you've seen and liked this season, with snowflakes or something else. Looking ahead to next holiday, what other design approaches might bands try in order to stay festive without being overwhelmingly holiday- or Christmas-oriented? Let us know what you think!

Happy Holidays!
Lisa Harmon and Alex Madison, Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

Ever wondered what drives response – pictures or words? Red or blue? Flash or plain html? A great way to capitalize on the democratic medium of email is to put your burning questions, late night hunches, and out-of-the-box ideas to the test with an A/B split test! Allow your audience to vote with their clicks and get instant answers that can help drive stronger results!

Follow a few simple guidelines provided in the eec Email Design Roundtable's A/B Test Checklist and start testing your way to more engaging email program.

Let no area of your message be safe from scrutiny! The checklist provides test ideas that will help you optimize:

Subject Lines
Pre-Headers
Navigation
Layout
Copy/Messaging
Imagery
Calls-To-Action

According to the vast and varied experiences of our very own eec Email Design Roundtable, there are 3 golden rules to follow when executing a successful and insightful test:

Rule #1:
Focus on one key variable at a time. Note before you start the test what key metric you are looking to influence to declare a winner. Subject line testing is generally about getting people to open the email; calls to action are more about clicks and conversion.

There is one caveat to focused decision making in A/B test scenarios - while it is necessary and rewarding to get answers to your burning questions by tracking a measurable change in a single metric, it is important to realize that your fidgeting with things can cause unintended side-effects…

• When SL testing, you might focus on change in open rate in order to determine which worked better, but also consider post-open actions (did the subject line set the person up to convert in the email?).
• When image testing, keep an eye on your overall file size, does this negatively impact your deliverability?

At the end of the day, email is a direct response medium, so just be clear what you are trying to test/achieve, and make sure your positive results in one area aren't sabotaging another.

Rule #2:
You MUST use a random distribution for setting up your "A" and "B" audience groups. The sizes of the segments don't need to be the same if the key metric you are looking to influence is expressed as a "rate", but they do need to have the same general characteristics to be a fair test (don't test all buyers in the A group and all prospects in the B group).

In fact, if you can't decide between one hero image and another, do an initial AB split test with a small percentage of your audience on Monday, then send the winning creative to the remainder on Tuesday.

The initial test will give you enough of a sense of "what worked" to roll out the best variation to the remainder of your list. Be ready to act on what the data tells you – you might be surprised!

Rule #3:
Ron Blum of Upromise astutely points out that while the purpose of A/B testing is to find out what works - "don't assume what works today will work tomorrow…
tastes change, people get used to and fatigued by getting the same look-and-feel".

Continuous testing is the best recipe for continued success.

Advanced A/B Testing

If you are one of those highly-evolved, weekly A/B test prodigies and are looking for a new angle on ye old A/B test, try multi-variate testing on for size.

Not all customer / audience segments behave the same way. As your mailing strategy gets to be more complex, there is no reason to stop A/B testing. In fact, segmenting your audience allows you to exponentially increase the insights provided by your A/B testing!

Take this example from Williams-Sonoma:

In general, we find that including the price for a featured item on the hero image of an email drives clicks and conversions. However, when we recently tested the presence of price on an email that was segmented between customers who had a history of spending more than $100 per transaction vs customers who had a tendency to spend less than $100 per transaction, we found that low price customers were more likely to click when the price was NOT provided whereas the opposite was true for customers who had spent more than $100 with us.

Not only did this test help us drive response rate for all customers in the first test, this insight helped us develop a strategy around talking to our lower price customers that will continue into future campaigns.

In order to set this up correctly, just remember golden rule #2 and make sure you have a "control" group in both segments.

With these four segments:
Low Price A vs Low Price B
High Price A vs Low Price B

You can test A vs B in Low Price Segments and see if it's the same as A vs B in your High Price Segments.

Please join us in the pursuit of more perfect email by using our A/B Test Checklist, available in the eec's Whitepaper Room, and returning to post your results below!

Megan Walsh, Williams-Sonoma
eec Email Design Roundtable Co-Chair

You've swept your customers off their feet with a dazzling email creative and message. To help you give them somewhere equally stunning to land, we at the eec Email Design Roundtable have added a Landing Page Checklist to our Email Checklist Series. With so many details to think about, our checklist offers a collection of ideas that you can easily apply to your program.

Landing pages should feel like a continuation of the positive experience initiated by your email so that the motions from opening the message to clicking through to responding to the call-to-action (CTA) feel like one fluid movement. Brush up on your landing page best practices to increase conversion:

● Audience and Goal. Thinking about your intended audience and the actions you want to inspire were your primary foci in creating your email, and they're also the core of the landing page. Construct your landing page to propel your audience toward1s the next step. Anthropologie landing pages like this one often add an extra step between the message and the product pages, but their whimsically artsy landing pages are on-brand and engaging to their particular audience.

● Design. To facilitate the unity of the experience, the creative elements must stay consistent with the email—use similar graphics, text and imagery. Keep your designs quite simple—consider losing the navigation and extra links that will distract from the primary message. Use images if they can earn their keep by relating specifically to your offer—steer clear of distracting, generic imagery. This Horchow message shows a nice progression from email to landing page design. The landing page picks up the basic creative elements of the email but shows larger and more compelling imagery and CTAs to move the viewer to the next step.

● Main Copy. Best practice is to use a white background behind text. Keep your copy brief, and start it off by stating the benefits of the offer concisely and in manner consistent with the email copy. This Land of Nod landing page repeats the headline from the (very cute!) email but includes more detailed information about the features. It often works well to use bullet points and a large font for readability, listing the benefits in order of value. Every word should work toward getting the visitor to act.

● Forms. If you need to gather customer information with forms, hold interest by keeping them short and sweet. Ask only for the most necessary information, clearly indicate required fields and pre-populate those fields whenever possible. Include all forms and CTAs necessary for conversion on the landing page. Which brings us to the big whammy…

● Call-to-Action. Your landing page's great love, its reason for existing: the big CTA. But don't stop at one: repeat your CTA multiple times to maximize clicks. The initial CTA should live right after the summary of the offer details and needs to fall above the fold. The CTA copy must be direct and obvious and pack a punch that inspires action. Be careful not to drive your sale to soon—let the CTA match the subscriber's place in the decision-making process. If you're a retailer, consider using an "Add to Cart" button as opposed to something like a "Buy Now" button, as Crate & Barrel does in this focused landing page from this message.

● Other Tips. It may also be a good idea to create multiple landing pages so that they can get as specific as possible to different customer segments. Keep your landing pages live for longer than you'd expect. You don't want people who read their messages later than the rest of the crew to be sent flying with nowhere to touch down and act.

A solid landing page that attends to best practices offers customers a memorably smooth experience with your brand while effectively increasing conversion. For even more tips and tricks, check out the new addition to the eec Email Checklist Series.

Comment below to tell us about some of your own smooth and rocky landings.

–eec Email Design Roundtable co-chairs Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon and Megan Walsh of Williams-Sonoma

With pink emails filling our inboxes throughout Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the merits of cause-related marketing have come more prominently onto the Smith-Harmon radar. We wondered how well it really works, and MediaPost came through for us by publishing an article on this very topic. MediaPost reports that cause-related marketing can generate double-digit sales gains for brands—woah! No wonder so many companies jump on the pinkwagon in October. Not only do the companies get the satisfaction of contributing to important research; their customers also get to feel good about shopping.

Not surprisingly, there are complicating factors to consider. Paul Jones, president of Alden Keene & Associates, explores such factors on his blog about cause-related marketing. On the issue of transparency, Jones argues that "cause-related marketing trades on trust." Customers are more likely to trust in the sincerity of brands that are upfront about where money goes and how much money is going there.

An article by Steven Van Yoder also makes the point that the marketing focus should never be lost in the cause. Cause-related marketing is sustainable only if it yields mutual benefits for the charitable organization and the brand supporting it.

We looked at examples of how brands have used email to approach cause-related marketing for several important issues. Here's what we found:

● Breast Cancer Awareness Month: Judging by this month's inbox, pink is the new black. Among many others, Lucy encouraged subscribers to "Shop for a Cause," White House Black Market invited subscribers to "Give Hope," and Sephora asked subscribers to "get gorgeous while giving back." In each of these cases, the brands advertised products and donated a portion of their proceeds or advertised a window of time during which they would donate a portion of total sales.

Betty Crocker's message was a bit different, encouraging subscribers to celebrate women's health by making pink (Betty Crocker) cake and announcing General Mills' donation, which was not tied to sales of certain items. They also invited dialogue on PinkTogether.com, where cancer survivors can share stories.

● Women's Cancer Research: Saks Fifth Avenue also supported women's cancer research, but they stepped away from all of the pink of the month and partnered with Key to the Cure to donate funds to the Entertainment Industry Foundation's Women's Cancer Research Fund. At first this struck me as a little odd (was it just so that they could feature stars like Gwenyth Paltrow in their ads?), but with deeper thought it's clear how Saks' approach was on-brand, speaking to their audience of high-end fashion connoisseurs. Oscar de la Renta designed the pricey Key to the Cure t-shirt this year, and Mercedes Benz partners with the organization as well.

● St. Jude Children's Research Hospital: The Williams-Sonoma Inc. brands included banners in their emails last holiday season advertising their fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and they then sent out a thank-you e-card announcing the results of the fundraiser. Gymboree also supports St. Jude, but the link to the fundraiser in their email is tiny and very subtle. I wonder how results differ between this understated approach and the more prominent Williams-Sonoma Inc. treatment.

● The Global Fund (to help women and children with AIDS in Africa): This Gap email is almost wholly devoted to the Gap(Product)Red effort to benefit the Global Fund, featuring a special limited time promotion. The subject line: "Can the Shirt off Your Back change the world?" speaks to the headline: "This One Can." This message barely mentions regular Gap items, but because Gap has established (Product)Red as such a prominent element of the brand, the focused approach doesn't seem to detract from Gap marketing, and even solidifies Gap's charitable image.

● Musicians on Call: Boomingdale's "Charity is Chic" message looks pretty much like any other sale email. The headline is cause-oriented but vague, and only in fairly small print does the copy inform the subscriber of where their money is going. I wonder whether it's effective for Bloomingdale's to downplay the charity in their creative.

With the high sales increases reported from cause-related marketing, it's worth considering what could happen if brands began using it more frequently—monthly or quarterly, maybe, instead of at just one or two key points throughout the year. In addition to driving huge sales, brands could all do a lot of good. We're interested to hear what others have tried and discovered in cause-related marketing.

As ever,
Lisa Harmon and Alex Madison of Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

We all know that America's economy is hurting and that a lot of people (even those who aren't personally feeling the crunch) are worried enough to slow down their virtual and in-store shopping trips. Retailers aren't lying down and waiting for the storm to pass, though. Let's take a look at some of the interesting marketing emails that have been delivered by retailers working to push through the slump.

Creative Sales. Many retailers have responded to slow spending by getting more inventive with their sale techniques and infusing great deals with a sense of urgency.

● Old Navy's "Early Columbus Day Sale," with its 1,492 items priced at $14.92 or less, takes the cake for creativity in the sale category. Who would think that Columbus Day could feel like cause for retail excitement? It's early and limited-time, so it feels urgent, too.

● Threadless also has a sweet deal with a deadline, selling Girl's Tees (usually $18) starting at just $12 until Oct 12. The urgency and the significant savings strengthen the sale.

● Moosejaw's sale email generates extra excitement with its exclusivity, sending each subscriber their very own secret code that yields one of (what we must assume is) a selection of discount offers.

● J. Crew and Horchow are just two of many retailers who have been pushing limited-time free shipping messages over the past couple weeks. J. Crew's include the cute seasonal touch of asking subscribers to enter code "ACORN" at checkout, and both Horchow and J. Crew have sent multiple reminder count-down emails.

Straight Talk. Some have opted to confront the economic downturn head-on by mentioning it and even joking about it.

● Restoration Hardware sent a one-day-only "spend $400, save $100" voucher with a bailout theme on October 2. They may have missed the mark—as a joke, it's a bit off-color and politically-slanted. They were using current events creatively, which can be clever, but they probably should have played with something less controversial and stressful for many subscribers.

● Overstock.com launched a new Real Estate service on October 2, which they introduced in a letter at the bottom of this email beforehand. In the introductory letter, they remind subscribers that Overstock.com is committed to helping subscribers save money, and the letter makes their new service seem on-brand and sincerely subscriber-focused.

● Splendora also takes a branded attitude towards the economic crisis that is gutsy and dismissive, urging subscribers to check out the upcoming trends that they'll be able to shop after this "little rough patch."

Spend and Save. In line with Restoration Hardware's discount approach (but without the bailout theme), Bloomingdales, Boden and Neiman Marcus, among others, offered limited-time, "Buy More, Save More," offers (as Bloomie's called theirs). These not only encourage higher spending; they also encourage spending NOW, before the offer expires. The messages warn subscribers that their offer isn't waiting for Wall Street to stop reeling, and neither should you.

Many retailers are feeling the squeeze, and we're sure to see more and more unique approaches to email as the situations unfold.

Still spending,
Lisa Harmon and Alex Madison of Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

Your call-to-action (CTA) tells your email recipients what you want them to do, and what they can expect from you when they do it. Subject lines get a lot of love, but once you get an open you need a click, so don't forget to lavish some much-needed attention on your CTA.

FOUR GREAT WAYS TO MAKE YOUR CTA POP!:

1. Stay focused. Design the entire message to direct recipients towards the CTA. Don't distract them with too many equally-weighted links and offers. Select imagery that draws the eye toward the point of conversion. Make the path appealing and clear, and make sure that it extends beyond the email itself to the landing experience.

Pottery Barn achieves serious CTA-focus with this summer sale message. The email is simple, text-based and entirely pointed toward sale shopping. The CTA whisks the recipient away to a coordinated landing page where a simple product grid offers customers the opportunity to dive into the shop category that interests them most.

2. Keep it direct and clear. It's fun to write clever copy, but make sure that even the quirkiest wording is to the point. This Ann Taylor CTA, "Click and See," feels pointedly enticing as does Piperlime's "See for yourself"… I DO want to see!

This Anthropologie message is lovely, but lacks clarity. I'm not sure what the CTA is, or whether the message even has one. The sweater and all the buttons are beautiful…they make me want to do something, but I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to do.

3. Make sure it's above the fold. It doesn't matter how adorable and endearing your email is—there will still be subscribers (many of them!) who will be too rushed to scroll down and get to the bottom of it. Keep the CTA above "the fold," or in the part of the message that's visible without any scrolling. While the fold location can be hard to predict with all the varying preview panes and computer monitors out there, put your CTA up top where it gets the attention it deserves.

I love this Giggle email, but the CTA is way down there. Keeping it above the fold doesn't have to stifle creativity. This Banana Republic message has some fun with image layout while keeping what's important up top.

4. Make it POP! Keeping it above the fold is a good start, but go further. Make your CTAs stand out visually. Try using HTML buttons as opposed to text links. You'll grab more eyes that way and generate a higher CTR.

In this email, it almost seems like Free People is trying to hide their CTA. Why is it so tiny, tucked away in weeds? If it were right beneath the body copy, Free People would better serve their shoppers and increase sales without compromising their low-key approach.

While this Land of Nod CTA falls below the fold (gah!), the green button totally pops, and the very specific wording makes the destination absolutely clear. If you're looking for copy inspiration in general, check out Land of Nod; they have tons of fun with CTAs and beyond.

For more on buttons, check out my article on "The Bulletproof Button". Learn all about how to optimize your button design for maximum performance.

Which CTAs get you clicking? Please share your experiences with the eec community by posting a comment below.

As ever,
Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

Last week we talked about giving ourselves enough time to get creatively inspired for the holidays. Post-percolation, let's get real. Let's funnel our freshly-focused creative energies into constructing successful holiday email creative. The recipe for success: think like a shopper.

The holidays rouse as much stress as excitement, so accommodate busy bees by matching your approach to their frenzy. How do people shop during the holidays? How can you make their ever-expanding to-do list less cumbersome? Tweak your usual creative tactics to meet consumers where they are.

Each part of your email can serve a special role during the holiday season:

1. Navigation: Place everything your subscribers need at their fingertips by packing your nav with relevant messaging and links. Alert customers to shipping deadlines. Call out popular holiday items or shopping categories. Add just a touch of holiday with a graphic or a color change. Remind them what you're there for.

2. Main Message: Know your customers and know how they shop. Sort items by categories. Gifts for girls, boys, men or women. Gifts for husbands, mothers, best friends or colleagues. Gifts by price range. Under $20, under $50, under $100. (I love that little bird on the branch, by the way.) Help customers out by breaking down their shopping lists, and they'll feel it. Send a series of recipient-themed messages—like these bloke and baby mails from Barneys—or try a gridded approach to keep it all nice and neatly-packed…like a beautifully wrapped present.

3. Gift Services Footer: The Gift Services Footer (or, as I adoringly call it, the GSF keeps your holiday templates under control when you're trying to squeeze in a couple extra submessages…or four! Layering gift card promotions, order-by dates, gift-wrapping offers, local retail store adjusted hours, and on and on, can get to be too much for one little email to handle. Cut down on overwhelming creative layer cakes by fitting an average of four messages into the space of one with the GSF.

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

The holiday season sends everyone into a flurry. It should be a fun flurry for email senders, giving us a chance to mix up our typical creative. But accompanying this potential for uniqueness and experimentation is the potential for the sort of holiday clichés that cause consumers to cringe. Bring freshness to your holiday approach this year by indulging in a percolation period before starting in on your design work.

Start now: Allow time to gather inspiration that embodies the holiday attitudes you want to convey. This first stage of the creative process can take the form of a physical bulletin board or a digital archive—anything that lets you store and revisit images and other touchstones. Whether you find yourself digging through old boxes at the back of the closet or clicking through internet collections of ads from years past, look for anything that might make your emails sparkle.

(1) Consider new ways to use traditional imagery: Look through old childhood holiday photos and stills from favorite movies. Sift through magazines and online ads. Seek fresh stylistic choices: unusual backgrounds, unique croppings, interesting camera angles.

(2) Envision inventive color palettes: Browse ads and emails from past years or try out combinations of wrapping paper scraps and ribbon. If you're stuck, visit your local hardware store and peruse paint swatches, or browse the Adobe Kuler site to see what color palettes others have used.

(3) Focus on fonts: Consider the effects of different font treatments you come across in holiday cards or magazines and how they might fit into your creative scheme.

(4) Eat chocolate: Get in the holiday spirit with a piece of the good, dark bittersweet stuff! I have become no less than obsessed with Theo's Madagascar Dark Chocolate Bar.

Looking around early with an eye to inspiration will give you a storehouse of options when it comes time to actually build your holiday email design library. By focusing on the creative process upfront, you discover the tone and style that dresses your brand in its own holiday best.

As ever,
Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

Diving headlong into the world of email creative is tough if you don't have all the lingo down. Here's a handy cheat sheet for those who are still polishing their grasp on the glossaries, and a brush up on definitions and best practices for those who already know their stuff:

(1) The Preheader
These small and subdued text blurbs at the top of your emails are getting more play these days. Particularly as more folks browse their inboxes from mobile devices, this first glimpse of the main message becomes your crucial chance to grab their interest. A preheader informs a recipient of what the email is about, how to view it with images and/or from a mobile device, and how to ensure future delivery via content teaser snippet(s), the "view with images" prompt and/or the "add to address book" prompt. Think about what text snippet you want customers to see first. Probably something a little more engaging than "If you are having trouble viewing this email with images…"

(2) Header and Navigation
This often takes the form of a colored banner and encompasses anything that lies between your preheader and main message. It's the space for your company logo, and—depending on the message content—it may also include menu items that link to other pages of your site, just in case the main message doesn't quite strike the fancy of the viewer.

(3) Primary Message
Your email's big push deserves a lot of attention from you since you're looking to earn the attention of your subscribers. A harmonious balance of headline, body copy and supporting images delivers maximum impact. This should include a prominent primary call-to-action (ideally in the form of a big, beautiful, "bulletproof" button!) and a link to a landing page with a cohesive look and message that will maintain enough interest to turn that clickthrough into a conversion.

(4) Table of Contents
These come in handy for longer, newsletter-form emails that contain tons of content, allowing customers to skip right to what interests them rather than having to scroll all the way down. The TOC works most effectively as a bulleted list at the top of your email that is anchor tagged to hotlink directly to content. Fitting this into your preview pane, along with your primary message and call-to-actions, will also help it gain enough attention to earn its keep.

(5) Submessage(s)
Adding secondary and tertiary messages to your email gives you the opportunity to present another story or two. Just make sure you don't lose your viewers in a maze of information. Keep it clean with visual prompts like color, strong headlines, imagery and graphics. Submessages are usually organized in a siderail or layer-caked below the primary message.

(6) Recovery Module
This is your final outpost, your last chance to capture the clickthrough of anyone who may have sailed through your main message or submessages. The recovery module is often a bar at the bottom of the email that includes a list of links to your site, or potentially an incentive to grab your subscribers' interest before they slip back to their inboxes.

(7) Footer
Using the same sort of subdued, "legalese" text that comprises the header, this is another place to include the essential nuts-and-bolts info. The unsubscribe link is tucked away here along with company contact details, "forward to friend" and customer service links. And of course, make sure it's CAN-SPAM compliant!

Now that you know all the lingo, can you identify all seven message components across these two REI emails?
–> REI Triathalon
–> REI Paddling Newsletter

Talk the talk; walk the walk!

As ever,
Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

The Truth about Email Marketing, an email marketing book by Simms Jenkins, eec member and the CEO of BrightWave Marketing, will hit book stores on Aug. 1. Ahead of the release, the eec's Chad White had the opportunity to ask Simms about the book and the truths he reveals:

Chad: What is the most surprising "truth" in your book?

Simms: This will depend on the reader but for many email newbies making the transition from direct marketing or another world, Truth 21: Length and Your Call to Action may be surprising to some. So many emails I receive these days are brutally long and bury the calls to action. I think many major retailers are guilty of taking their offline ad campaigns and forcing them into email templates. Frankly, that doesn't work, so hopefully this truth sheds some light on optimizing layouts and messaging.

I also cover what the future of email (Truth 49) and what it may look like. This may have surprising thoughts for many. Here's the complete list of truths.

What are some of the email marketing myths that you debunk?

One of the most important and obvious to you and your readers may be the notion of permission email and how that draws a line in the sand of where you stand in utilizing email marketing. It must be a part of any conversation about email marketing regardless of your knowledge and experience. I think some people forget and that is an important part in setting up this book as an end-to-end guide about what makes a successful email marketing program.

On the other end of the spectrum, I address how email marketing can exist within the current world where social media grabs much of the spotlight (Truth 48: The Impact of Social Media on Email). The truth is we always hear about how email is on its deathbed but it still acts as the communication hub for many companies and specifically, should get a major boost because of the popularity of LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

Email marketing is evolving quite quickly. To which recent change have people been the slowest to adapt?

I am still utterly shocked about how email marketers fail to change and adapt to a world where 50% of consumers block images. One would think that companies would change their messaging strategy, optimize their creative and deal with this very significant and real challenge. However, many are not.

Your recent study that cited tangible revenue that is left on the table should get people's attention, but I have my doubts. I speak quite frequently to diverse audiences and meet with some of the top corporations and many are flying blind or clueless when it comes to how their emails render in many of their subscribers inboxes. What if their TV commercials were showing up blank during prime time? Do you think they would address that?

The most shocking aspect of this issue is when I am told that the company is aware of their emails showing up as a red X with no links, branding and messaging but they have their hands tied due to political and organizational issues. That screams to me the need for more education, awareness and participation with groups like the eec.

What's your best advice for folks that are new to email marketing?

The best part of our industry is the amount of great thought-leadership and free resources. Whether it is your blog, the eec newsletter, Email Marketing Reports, EmailStatCenter.com—the list goes on and on. You can find many of the best listed on the book's companion website's resource center. The amount of places to learn and network from peers is incredible. It is pretty unique to have an industry where so many high-level executives blog frequently—and not just fluffy PR-related blog posts.

The other exciting thing about diving into our industry is because it is still relatively a young one and changes so frequently, the opportunity to have an impact on your company and the industry is a very real and attractive one. We need so many more passionate and energetic professionals, so it is a place that one can enter today and become a leader rather quickly given the right situation. That can't be said for all industries.

Email marketing's reputation as being "cheap" often leads to budgets that are undersized compared to email's ROI. Do you have any advice for helping marketers communicate the value of email to their bosses so that they can get larger budgets?

The Truth about Email Marketing has two entire sections on budgeting and ROI and organizing a proper email team so this is covered in depth and is one of the most frequent issues that I tackle on a daily basis. We in the email marketing industry are certainly a victim of our own success, at times, as the depth of measurement and efficiency of email often overshadows the potential for deeper investment and greater sophistication, all of which lead to more relevant and valuable emails for subscribers.

I am a believer in using your metrics to champion your success and your potential. Not enough email marketing pros use their email analytics outside of showing open and click-through rates. The biggest breakthroughs we see with our clients is when we can show the impact email has on broader business goals, like product awareness, loyalty and revenue. CFOs don't care about open rates but you can have their ear when you show the crossover impact and power email can have on a business.

Thanks, Simms.

My pleasure, Chad. And as a special offer to the eec community, I've arranged an exclusive deal through the publisher to make The Truth about Email Marketing available for 25% off, plus free shipping. Just purchase the book through the FT Press store and enter the discount code Emailmark01 during the checkout process.

–>For more books on email marketing by eec members, check out our listing of Books on Email Marketing.

Ben Bernanke delivered another gloomy assessment of the American economy to congress yesterday during which he pointed out that the seemingly antithetical dual risks we currently face—slow growth and rising prices (due in large part to energy costs and the credit crunch/housing collapse)—are likely to plague us for some time to come. A "perfect storm" of macroeconomic forces is currently ravaging us, and it seems as if we may not even have seen the worst of it.

Could this be good news for email marketers?

While I believe it's probably not great news for anybody—especially for those of us who may own a house, have investments in the market, drive gasoline-powered cars, consume goods and services, or eat food—I do believe the current economic downturn we're facing represents an opportunity for email to shine.

Marketing budgets across the board are shrinking, but in my recent experience, email is being allocated an increasingly larger percentage of that budget. As a highly measurable channel, we are immediately at an advantage. The fact that the average return on investment for a dollar spent on email marketing was an estimated $48.29 in 2007 according to the DMA doesn't hurt either. When budgets shrink, it makes good sense to invest a greater percentage in email, and I am already seeing it happen.

So with an increasingly large share of budget, many of us are now charged with selling goods and services to segments that are increasingly price sensitive due to the $4.89 per gallon they are paying at the pump (I just paid that much). Many segments are looking for deals right now, and while we obviously still need to send the right ones to their inboxes, it seems as if consumers are now taking more time to review the offers they receive, which may be good news for good senders. I've seen evidence of this in the KPIs and test results of many of my clients' programs, primarily in the form of higher than expected open rates for certain segments.

HERE ARE FOUR EMAIL MARKETING TIPS FOR THE DOWNTURN:

1. Now is a good time to test that reactivation program you've been thinking about.
Those inactive customers could be brought back into the fold with a juicy offer, and in these rough times, each win-back is more valuable than ever.

2. If you don't already, leverage automated campaigns to the hilt.
Internal marketing resources at many companies hit hardest by the downturn are getting scarcer, but don't let this inhibit the growth of your program. Focus on high-value, highly relevant, triggered and serialized campaigns that run without needing daily attention.

3. Think about creative ways to monetize your data.
Do you send targeted third-party offers to your list? Do you include banner ads in your newsletter? If you don't, now would be a good time to test it.

4. Make a strong business case for more budget.
Few in your organization boast the ROI numbers you do. Build a cogent business case and get the additional budget you need to take your program to the next level—your business needs you now more than ever!

So while inflation drives prices higher and the credit markets seize, drop the Wall Street Journal, erase your E*Trade bookmark, and focus on messaging that appeals to your increasingly price-sensitive consumer. With any luck you'll be able to uncover some rational exuberance in your email program.

—Nicholas Einstein of Datran Media

As we send more segmented, triggered and dynamically populated emails, it becomes necessary to approach email creative design in a new way. Rather than seeing each email design as a separate entity, we need to start thinking in terms of an email creative framework.

An email creative framework is like a set of LEGOs: It is a library of modular, flexible design elements from which we can build an exponential range of message configurations. Think of the components within each email you send—the header, the main message body, the submessages, the footer—as separate LEGO blocks that can be mixed, matched and stacked into different arrangements to build marketing and operational messages, skyscrapers and castles.

THREE STEPS TO BUILDING YOUR EMAIL CREATIVE FRAMEWORK:

(1) Get Serious: Audit all of your current and planned message types to get a clear sense for the kinds of content your creative framework needs to accommodate. Then consider the LEGOs you'll need to support them. For instance, perhaps you send marketing and operational messages. The two different message types might share header, footer and submessage LEGO components, but have different LEGO block bodies. If you are a retailer, you might send product promotions featuring 4, 8 or 12 dynamically generated featured items, for which you would use a stackable 4-item LEGO block to accomodate all three configurations.

(2) Get Creative: Once you've identified which LEGO blocks you need, it's time to have some fun with graphics, type and color. Email creative has always been about extending pre-existing brand attributes appropriately and effectively to the inbox. Now that we are building creative frameworks to accommodate a growing number of segmented, triggered and dynamically populated emails, we have to make our color, font and graphics choices even more carefully. In addition to being "on brand," they have to be "evergreen," working with different types and configurations of information. This might mean choosing lighter colors and graphics to create a more neutral shell, allowing content to pop with blue, burnt sienna or another eye-catching hue. And it defininitely means using more HTML as opposed to graphical text. While we already recommend using HTML text because it appears in images-disabled inbox environments, it becomes doubly important now since HTML text—unlike graphical text—can be auto-generated as dynamic content.

(3) Get Practical: After succesfully choosing your LEGO block types and colors, you can begin to create your content library—an archive of pre-built components you can reuse again and again. For instance, perhaps you have a 150×180 right rail LEGO block submessage module with a blue headline, grey body text and an orange call-to-action button. You can now create and cache multiple submessages built to these specs—perhaps a "free shipping" message, a "become a member" message and an "update your email profile" message—to include across multiple emails over time. As you add to it, the content library becomes more and more valuable. It's like having a cache of special LEGO pieces—think traffic lights and pink ponies—on-hand to help you quickly and easily build a more dynamic email experience.

As ever,
Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

Every week the EEC adds new content to its Whitepaper Room. Here are the latest additions:

eec Reportlet: 7 Tactics for Driving Traffic to Stores With Email
How to Leverage Your Store Base in Your Email Marketing

Email Checklist Series: Email Design
What to check to maximize your email creative's performance.

Email Checklist Series: Code QA Testing
What to check to make sure your email looks and acts exactly how you intended.

*Have a whitepaper you'd like to contribute? Email it to whitepapers@emailexperience.org.

Hitting "send" on any email campaign always leaves us with a small feeling of dread in the pit of our stomachs. "Did I forget something? Did I double-check EVERYTHING? Will my message render properly? Will I have a job in two hours?" We feel your pain.

Ever wish you had a buddy to rely on—someone competent, steadfast and efficient who would remember to help you double-check all the key elements of design and QA success? Well, now you have one—in the form of two email checklists from the eec's Email Design Roundtable.

The first is the Code QA Testing Checklist, which covers what to check to make sure your email looks and acts exactly how you intended. The second is the Email Design Checklist, which covers what to check to maximize your email creative's performance.

Both checklists are available in the eec's Whitepaper Room—and all this week you can download them for free.

As part of the creation of these checklists, the Roundtable members discussed their value, their own send-button "feelings of dread," and even some mistakes they've made. Learn how their real-world experience contributed to the checklists and about some trouble spots to avoid:

Brent Shroyer of Listrak: When you put together a web page, you can always go back and fix it later. But in an email you only have one shot. You have to be perfect. The importance of a checklist is critical for email more so than any other online effort, since it is once and done.

Chad White of the Email Experience Council: Subject lines are so important. Subject lines are right up there for the most frequent spot for mistakes. We tend to put writing them off until the end.

Stephanie Miller of Return Path: Yes, and then the result is that messages go out with TBD or "subject line goes here" or misspelled words or missing words. Instead, view it as a critical part of the content and spend time making it relevant and engaging. Oh, and that there are no errors!

Raj Khera of MailerMailer: Test different subject line lengths to see what garners higher open rates. In studying our customer base, we found that subject lines with 35 characters or less had a significant boost in opens.

Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon: One essential that often gets missed is that the primary link shows up just below the preview pane, so it's not visible without scrolling. Oh, I think to myself, ouch! If they had just looked at it and moved it up 30 pixels, it would improve response so much!

Joanne Carry of DMG World Media: Always check the rendering. Ignore Lotus Notes! It's increasingly important with Outlook 2007 not supporting CSS and Gmail being a growing part of many marketers' files.

Brent: Be sure that everything that can be HTML text is actually HTML text. Avoid unnecessary images so that your message is completely visible even when images are turned off.

Chad: Image suppression is like a philosophy—a new way of constructing the message and approaching design. This needs to be adopted by email marketers.

And here's one that is so fixable, and yet happens all the time: I so often see dead links. I know it seems silly to say that we would double-check the links, and it's tedious, but it must happen frequently that this step gets skipped. I know what I do, when the link doesn't work—I just abandon it and go on with my life.

Lisa: Oh, yes! And then what happens is that follow-up and conversions are down and no one can figure out why. Well, it was because the links were not working. Another important step is making sure not just that the link works, but that it goes to a place that is logical. Optimize your landing page as part of the overall email experience.

Stephanie: Isn't it true that whenever response is down, the first thing we do is blame the creative? But it's often the case that deliverability was poor, the message was not mailed at the optimal time for subscribers or there were back-to-back messages from the same company, or even that the list was not segmented properly. So many things that are not a function of design.

Brent: Make sure the price in the alt tag text matches the pricing in product imagery. If the price changes during the production cycle, then you can get caught with an old alt tag. Also make sure that the landing page matches as well.

Lisa: I've seen renewed interest in text files because of mobile, thinking about its importance being slightly renewed. Although I confess that it's easy to never look at your text files or to bother matching them to the current offer. How many times I see that the copyright is last year, or the copy is outdated or is last week's promotion.

Share your own pre-send jitters or advice by commenting below.

—eec Email Design Roundtable co-chairs Lisa Harmon and Julie Montgomery of Smith-Harmon

Type the phrase "centralizing email marketing" into a search engine and you'll be served up an impressive number of results (at this writing, about 247,000). And it's no wonder—email marketing continues to rank among the most popular tactics that marketers use to reach their audiences.

The arguments for centralizing are compelling: Managing emails through a single platform enables companies to not only more effectively manage their brand and good sender reputation, but it's also much easier to manage the frequency of communication—no one wants to frustrate their audience to the point of unsubscribing. Sounds like a no-brainer, right?

Not so fast. According to JupiterResearch, only 38% of companies have a single department handling email communication—while 24% have six or more. With all the benefits of centralizing email marketing, why aren't more companies taking this approach?

For some companies, it may come down to resources and priorities. For example, within very large organizations, email is used to communicate with many different audiences—employees, partners, end user customers, and prospects—among others. Each of these audiences has different expectations for how they should be communicated with and likely, a different group managing that communication stream.

Because email marketing was often developed as a grassroots effort within each group, it's not unusual for larger organizations to be actively using several different email platforms to manage their campaigns. In these instances, transitioning to a completely centralized approach requires almost Herculean effort.

However, in the absence of a completely centralized approach, there are still things you can do to streamline email communications and ensure a positive experience for your audience. Here are three specific tips that are reasonably quick and easy to implement:

1. Develop and share an email marketing calendar.

Wherever there's a risk of message crossover, establish a marketing calendar to track these campaigns and assign a calendar owner. Although the owner is ultimately responsible for keeping the calendar updated, all groups should participate in the calendar development and notify the owner if campaign dates shift.

My team uses a web-based calendar hosted on our intranet site; however, tools such as Google Calendar or even an Excel spreadsheet are simple, no/low-cost alternatives.

2. Ensure that all stakeholders are on all campaign seed lists.

Whether you're sending a campaign to a house or rented list, be sure and add the appropriate people to your seed lists. You may want to send test seeds to a smaller group for review and feedback, and then to a larger group for live campaign drops. This is additional insurance that everyone is aware of what messages are leaving the building.

3. Share examples of campaigns and results at cross-functional monthly or quarterly reviews.

At least once a quarter, get together and share examples of campaign creative and results. Even if you're mailing to completely different audiences, best practices are sure to emerge that you'll want to apply to your line of business.

If you work for a large organization, the idea of centralizing your email marketing may seem difficult, if not impossible. But by doing a little detective work and implementing some quick fixes that don't require a lot of administrative overhead, you can do a lot to improve the quality of your email communications and set yourself up for more formal centralization in the future.

—Cheryle Ross, the eCommerce Marketing Manager of Xerox Corp.

*Cheryle was invited to be a blogger for a day after sharing her thoughts in our Voices from the Email Evolution Conference post.

A few weeks ago, I enrolled in Saks Fifth Avenue Online Customer Care (I wanted to pay down my Saks Credit Card). At the end of the process, I opted in to receive Saks emails. Below is a day-by-day timeline of what ensued from the moment I hit "confirm."

Day 1: Opted-in - Redirect to a thank you page, but…no welcome email

Day 2: One day after sign-up, the welcome email arrived. I would've like to see it immediately, but a one-day lag time is not the end of the world. I thought the subject line - Welcome to saks.com. We have a special offer for you… - wasn't great, but at least was very clear and direct. The body of the message contained a call-to-action that included a 10% discount. Pretty good overall.

Day 3: Not 1, but 2 messages from Saks in one day. Oops?
—Message #1: Subject Line - SAKSFIRST Double Points + From the Heart, received at 10:31AM EST, Valentines Day call-to-action
—Message #2: Subject Line - Get SAKSFIRST Double Points!, received at 3:53PM EST, Double Points call-to-action

Day 4: Subject Line - SAKSFIRST Double Points + Have-To-Have Handbags

Days 5 and 6: Nothing (Super Bowl weekend)

Day 7: Not 1, but 2 messages from Saks. Hard to believe that they would make this same "mistake" only 4 days later.
—Message #1: Subject Line - Dior…Take it Away!, received at 10:08AM EST, Women's Shoes call-to-action
—Message #2: Subject Line - Video Exclusive! Days 1 to 3 of Fashion Week, received at 4:51PM EST, "Fashion Week" call-to-action

Day 8: Subject Line - Fabulous Valentine's Gifts

Day 9: Not 1, but 2 messages from Saks. Another "mistake" 2 days after the 2nd one (3rd double email day in past 6 days)
—Message #1: Subject Line - David Yurman Gifts, received at 9:47AM EST, Women's Shoes call-to-action
—Message #2: Subject Line - Day 4 Video of Fashion Week, received at 5:05PM EST, "Fashion Week" call-to-action

Day 10: Subject Line - NEW: Reyes, Wayne… + SALE

Day 11: I clicked on their unsub/change preferences link, fully intending to unsubscribe. But, alas—they did it right! I was able to edit my preferences and elect to receive updates only "Once a Week."

TAKEAWAYS…

THE BAD:
1. Over a 7 business-day stretch, I received 10 emails (including 3 days with 2 emails/day).
2. Call-to-action was one big image—could've easily used a text-image combo.

THE GOOD:
1. Their opt-out allowed me to "receive fewer Saks Fifth Avenue updates."
2. For the most part, subject lines were creative, unique, direct, and consistent with the body of the message.
3. Preheader gave me (some) instructions to add to my address book (see Make it Pop!: The Preheader Express for more on preheaders).
4. While the body of message included one big image, the headers and footers were consistent.

Overall, for as critical as I've been, I applaud the effort of Saks. We all know that most online retailers don't get it right. Saks, on the other hand, does many things well. I'm not a big fan of an average of greater than 1 email per week, but they did allow me to change the frequency. It would have been nice if I had this option up front. Why risk losing a consumer only to try and salvage them when they are ready to opt-out? Kudos to Saks. They've won me over…assuming they honor my frequency preference change.

—DJ Waldow of Bronto

How many hearts does it take to Make it Pop!? I spent the past three weeks reflecting upon this exceedingly serious email creative quandry.

After counting the number of hearts that have appeared in over 50 V-Day-themed communications, I've finally calculated the definitive answer: eight.

It takes eight hearts to Make it Pop! Include only seven: you don't show no love. But at nine you step over the heartbreak horizon—that's a heart attack.

For your edification, the simplified results of my highly scientific study appear below.

How many hearts does it take to Make it Pop!? (Click the links to view creatives.)

01 Heart: One Love, Urban Outfitters

02 Hearts: Two Timer, Tumi

08 Hearts*: That Pops!, Harry & David

11 Hearts: A Hole in the Heart, Costco

13 Hearts: Unlucky in Love, Kate Spade

17 Hearts: Eat Your Heart Out, Williams-Sonoma

31 Hearts: I Swear I Counted, RedEnvelope

*Tabulations are halfhearted: partial hearts round to the half.

XOXO ;),
Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

From the end of November through the start of January, I received 16 holiday cards from retailers in my email inbox. That's more than double the number I received from friends and family in my snail mailbox! I suppose that's what happens when you spend more time interacting with retail brands than you do with human beings.
Of the messages I received:
• 13.5% featured a Thanksgiving message
• 25% included generic season's greetings
• 25% included direct references to Christmas
• 62.5% featured a New Year's message
• 37.5% sweetened the greeting with a sale promotion

Ralph Lauren wins the "Most Frequent" award, sending three separate messages for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, while Harry & David takes the "Most Original" title for their highly entertaining placement of pears. I hope the Harry & David creative inspires more retailers to think of ways to interpret holiday greetings in a way that's both unique and authentic to their brand in 2008.

–>Click here to view the holiday card collection PDF

Enjoy!
Lisa Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.