Design for Email

• List Growth & Engagement Roundtable: Amy Bills, Bulldog Solutions; Nate Romance, ExactTarget
• Deliverability & Rendering Roundtable: Dennis Dayman, Eloqua; Michelle Pelletier, Return Path
• Speakers Bureau: Diksha Dua, Clementine Digital Boutique; Lana McGilvray, Datran Media
• Email Design Roundtable: Lynn Baus, Responsys; Megan Walsh-Regard, Williams-Sonoma
• Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable: Jeff Chamberlain, Aprimo; David Hibbs, Responsys
• Member Initiatives Roundtable: Joel Book, ExactTarget, Stephanie Miller, Return Path
• Measurement in Email Project: John Caldwell, Red Pill Email; Luke Glasner, Glasner Consulting

• Sundeep Kapur,  VP, Strategic Marketing, NCR eCommerce
• Debbie Kane, Director, Web & Partnership Marketing, Active Interest Media
• Aaron Smith, Director, Professional Services, Smith-Harmon, a Responsys Company

1. Ask yourself, "why should my consumer sign up for my email?"
2. Use intrigue versus incentive.
3. Build up 'reverse preferences' (track what people do & don't do).
4. Run subject line tests.
5. Use social media to increase open rates.
6. Test.
7. Analyze.
8. Use web and email designers.
9. Use clear calls to action.
10. Keep important content/messages above the fold.
11. Do respect image blocking and the preview pane.
12. Do render tests.
13. Do create an iron-clad email production process with tasks, individuals, and even days of the week associated with each milestone.
14. Do run a test with every send – and (this is key) – share your results with your stakeholders for short-term visibility; archive them for long-term learnings.
15. Do ask yourself these three questions:
           (1) What is this email about?
           (2) Why do my subscribers care?
           (3) What do they do about it?

1. Don’t assume something works.
2. Don’t convert print promotions directly to email campaigns.
3. Don’t overcomplicate your email creative.
4. Don’t over-mail your list.
5. Don’t under-mail your list.
6. Don’t make subscribing – or unsubscribing – too complicated.
7. Don’t try to say too much with a single email.
8. Don’t silo email – remember your other channels, both offline and digital.
9. Don’t forget about the landing page!
10. Don’t assume what worked yesterday will work today, or tomorrow. Keep testing and evolving!
11. Don't ignore your reports & front line.
12. Don't badger the lifeless (don't over-mail your non-responders).
13. Don't say everything in the subject line.
14. What should I do next? (no call to action)
15. Don't forget to be timely.

1. The ability for all marketers to benchmark their results against the metrics from any delivery platform
2. The ability for the industry to aggregate results knowing that all source data was acquired using the same definitions
3. The ability to compare data across multiple systems and databases
4. The ability to better integrate metrics with other platforms, such as CRM system

When tasked with designing the Email Experience Council's seasons greetings email this year, we wanted to do something out of the ordinary. After some brainstorming, we settled on a sidescrolling winter scene with lots of delightful bits of animation.

Since we were asking reader to scroll right instead of the usual down, we wanted to build in a few visual cues to get them going in the right direction:
(1) We used a headline and deck that stretched across the top of the design, so they'd have to scroll to read the whole thing.
(2) We included a message under the eec logo for readers to "Scroll right for your holiday gift."
And (3) we used two animated gifs that moved from left to right to get readers' eyes moving in that direction.

The other consideration we had in designing this email is that we wanted to stay within the display width limits of Outlook 2007, which after a test we determined to be 2110 pixels. Our design was 780 pixels wide, well short of that limit.

See it in all of its animated glory.


The Results
We were very pleased with the results. Not only did the season's greeting email garner 26% more opens that the typical eec email, but there were 10 times the usual number of forwards. The combination of strong design and compelling call-to-action clearly got subscribers' attention and encouraged them to share the email.

Chad White
Research Director
Smith-Harmon, a Responsys Company

It's time to shift your focus, folks, investment to interaction.

In the continually shifting world of email marketing, where nothing stays static for long, we're giving a new meaning to the ROI acronym. That's because the deliverability of your email is now being determined by the ISP based on the recipient's interaction with that email.

Goodbye, Return on Investment. Hello, Return on Interaction.

Or maybe it's more an evolution, of the term and of the email marketing industry. Before, you invested in the best ESP to ensure the highest deliverability. You invested in email designers who would make cleanly coded templates that would get past spam filters. You invested in organically growing your in-house, opt in list. You've protected your online sending reputation and kept your lists clean.

Now the bar is raised and your emails must rise above, too.

I think it will really boil down to relevance certainly, but in specific ways:

1) Content — Now more than ever you'd better be sending out emails that your recipients want to receive.
2) Frequency — And now more than ever, you'd better not be over messaging your list!

Some of the major ISPs are zeroing in on the inbox to decide whether or not your emails are to be considered worthy of being delivered in the future. How your recipients interact with your emails—and if they do at all—will now be taken into account. If you keep sending emails a certain someone never opens, the ISP is going to decide that in the eyes of that certain someone, you are in fact spam and should be blocked.

You are truly now at the mercy of the recipient, but don't worry: you have more power than you may realize. You are in complete control of your relevance, regardless of the size of your email list. You are in control because you can:

• Segment your list and target your messages to make them more relevant.
• Set up a profile page where subscribers can choose how often to hear from you and the type of information they want to get from you.
• Put your subscribers first, offering them the content they want, not the content you want to feed them.

Your goal has suddenly shifted from making money off your investment in an email campaign (the old ROI) to making sure you're relevant so you keep getting your emails delivered (the new ROI) but in the end – with a focus on relevance, you'll achieve both.


Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

If you're still managing your own email marketing campaigns without any outsourced expertise, you might want to take a look at the benefits of outsourcing. Here are just a few of the many benefits of outsourcing for better managed email marketing:

• Increase your deliverability rate
• Improve your email design and email rendering
• Gain a deeper and more actionable understanding of your reporting and metrics · Protect your online sending reputation with expert advice
• Have more staff time for other initiatives
• Add the highest caliber email marketing expertise to your team without increasing your payroll
• Draw on more and broader email marketing experience with seasoned professionals guiding you
• Spend more time on strategy and planning, less on implementation
• Enjoy a solution that automatically scales with your growth
• Know you're working with the best email service provider for your business
• And ultimately, improve your email marketing ROI!

If you want to learn about better managed email marketing via outsourcing, reach out to ClickMail Marketing for more information.

The internet was designed to be a free exchange of information wherein anyone, upon a loose framework mainly having to do with networking and rendering capabilities, could join, share and digest what they wanted. Email was developed as a predecessor to the internet.  Again, one in which, as long as you had the most basic SMTP compliancy between networks, messages would be handed off between point A to B.

Today, email has turned into a monumentally powerful marketing tool and communication channel that still rivals the internet and other upcoming social networks, regardless of which side of the "email is dying" debate you fall under. With email marketing, forward to a friend, sharing links, email filters and forwarders, along with major ISPs providing outsourcing solutions (like Google Apps), the audit trail of an email is sometimes all but impossible to decipher without CSI level forensic header analysis.

But, you don't care about all this.


What should you care about?

When you place an order to have something delivered with the USPS, UPS or FedEx, that item almost never leaves that company's chain of custody.  Meaning, if you dropped it off with FedEx, the recipient will most likely receive it with FedEx.  Again, there are exceptions, but the vast majority of the time this is the rule.  When you send an email out, though, it may be going to a Yahoo! domain address, then forwarded on to a Gmail domain address and finally rendered in Outlook 2007.  What can you do to ensure that your mail has the highest rate of making it to its final destination regardless of the cyber hops in the middle?

1. Ask your recipient up front if their email address is still, indeed, the right one to be using. I check over 8 different email accounts on a normal day, and with inbox email aggregators with dynamic collection addresses (such as OtherInbox), I probably have several hundred email addresses (with OtherInBox I can use disposable email addresses) that will get to me somehow.  However, the email address to sign up with your service when I was a fresh college grad and using my Alumni account may no longer be at the top of my list.  So, I appreciate it when companies I do business with ask me if that's still the one I should have on my account.  If it is, I click through on a prompt when I login.  If not, it takes 2 seconds to change.  I don't get asked this every time I login, but perhaps, every 6 months or so to ensure the email address is fresh.  Guess what?  My Alumni account is forwarded to my Yahoo! account.  So, I changed it to have my Yahoo! account receive the email directly (and thus avoid any errant filtering on the part of my school).

2. Authenticate outbound email. Period. DKIM was designed not to break when making multiple hops in an email's path to the final destination.  Unfortunately SPF will because of the technical nature of email headers, but with DKIM enabled mail, if it comes through at Gmail verified and then is forwarded on to AOL, the DKIM signature stays intact and the message has a higher likelihood of being delivered.

3. Here's the bad part.  Just like you as a sender pushing mail out to a recipient, when email is forwarded to another domain by the recipient domain, the reputation and deliverability of that mail falls back on the ISP doing the forwarding.  For instance, I run my own domain hosted through Gmail.  When you send an email there, it gets forwarded to Yahoo! which is what I consider my central email nervous system.  But, sometimes, email from Gmail gets bulked at Yahoo! because of Gmail's reputation.  This means I don't get my mail.  What can you do about it?  Gently remind your subscribers to check their spam folders for mail that may have accidentally fallen prey to a filter somewhere.  In my case, I'll get email that randomly gets bulked (as opposed to breaking any obvious best sending practices) and have made it a habit to check my spam folder often.

4. Check your content in multiple web clients. Oftentimes, an email sent to a Comcast domain looks fantastic, but when forwarded to an AOL accounts, looks horrible.  Now, like in #3, a lot of this is out of your control if the actual content is changed en route by the ISP.  But, if you ensure that your content looks good in the different clients, you increase your chances that when an ISP doesn't reach in and play with the HTML when it's being forwarded along, it will look fine in the end email inbox.

5. Have unique identifiers in your unsubscribe links tying an email address back to a particular sender.  If I unsubscribe from my Yahoo! address on an email that was sent to me originally at a Gmail account but was forwarded on, you could end up shooting yourself in the proverbial foot.  I could have any wanted email to my Yahoo! account stop but the Gmail email continue.  Recipients will oftentimes setup multiple email addresses for one account, or across multiple accounts you as an ESP or single sender support, so directly tying that recipient's unsubscribed email address to their preferences (and not the one that happened to actually do the unsubscribing) is key.

This is pretty technical stuff, folks.  But, in order to stay on top of the original intent of email being free flowing and having as few barriers as possible, you must be cognizant of the challenges in your path.  Reach out to your technical team to ensure you've got these points covered.  And remember, an email address is easily disposable.  We, as marketers, tend to see them as having high stickiness.  But, recipients can come and go with fluidity and tracking them along the way with their permission (ultimately their keeping you informed of their moves) keeps you in touch with your customers.

Chris Wheeler
Director of Deliverability
Bronto Software
@ChrisAWheeler

More than ever, consumers are thinking about the necessity of their purchases before they part with their hard-earned dollars. Adding to the problem, 65% of Americans believe they are bombarded with too much advertising, according to the Art and Copy trailer.  This becomes a major issue for email marketers who are trying to walk the fine line between inundating the inbox and delivering timely messages.

So, how do you convert consumers from window shoppers to buyers when there are so many companies vying for their affections? Simply step out from behind the corporate curtain and create a connection that's rooted in authenticity. One way to do this is to put a face with the name.

As the fashion visionary and Creative Director at J.Crew, Jenna Lyons is the ideal voice for the brand. By devoting an entire email to Jenna's Picks and supporting the story in-store, in the catalog and online, J.Crew is inviting people into her office to see what inspires her. Adding the quote from Jenna is yet another way to personalize the content and up the authenticity.

The founders of Serena & Lily take this a step further by devoting two separate emails to their distinct styles: Serena Hearts and Lily Loves.  By incorporating a quote for each top pick, they create a conversation. Without the quotes, it would be a list of items without any personality. Of course, in both of these examples the assumption is that the quotes are real, and if they truly want to emanate authenticity then the words should be unedited, as though part of an interview or casual conversation.

Ann Taylor recently introduced their subscribers to Lisa, their new head designer, in a gorgeous email.  It includes a quote, a pic of Lisa, and swatches from her inspiration board. Unfortunately, the story ended there. Clicking on the CTA under Lisa's photo dropped you straight into the shop path. Building out an online landing page where people might be able to learn about Lisa's inspiration would have been a spot-on execution.

Catering to the true fashionista who scours the web looking for the latest trends, Tobi delivers all kinds of editorial extras into this email.  From taking subscribers behind the scenes at Velvet to strolling the San Francisco streets with their resident style scout, Tobi turns shopping into a full-on fashion experience. (On a best practices note, they fall short in some key areas, including SWYN and FTAF, which are major misses, especially when you consider the great content.)

At the other end of the authenticity spectrum, we have Old Navy's Super-modelquins campaign.  Basically, their public-facing spokesperson, who supposedly embodies the Old Navy brand, is actually...a mannequin. While they've done their best to create personalities around these characters and make them more "human", the fact remains that they are plastic, so this comes off as fake and, to be honest, a little creepy.

Without a doubt, Banana Republic has a lock on classic and affordable go-to-work styles. While their emails are always polished to perfection, they feel the same week after week, whether they're featuring white shirts or the must-haves for fall. They get points for creating cool extras, like the City Stories short film competition and the Mad Men walk-on competition, but lose points for never letting their customers into the design studio. What was it that inspired them to make the white shirt the big staple for fall? Wouldn't it be fun to know?

Knowing who you are as a company and inviting consumers to see the face behind the name will help you navigate away from the corporate speak and towards a more casual conversation. In other words, keep it real. No one wants to feel like they're buying something that's generic and mass produced. By giving them a story behind the product, you're creating a connection for your consumer to carry with them every time they button up that shirt, slip on those sandals, or wear those must-have jeans.

- Darrah MacLean & Lisa Harmon - Smith-Harmon

So we are deep in a recession economy, marketing budgets and headcounts are being cut, yet we are seeing an increase in requests for the outsourcing of email production and campaigns. Why is this?

Well let's take a little time to explore the variables in play here.  As marketers turn to more cost effective channels, email is becoming more popular than ever – according to a recent Forrester study the number of marketing messages for the average email user is predicted to double by 2014.  This makes the email channel even more competitive and crowded, causing a dilution of open, click and conversion rates.

The only way to genuinely attract attention and boost performance is to send more relevant and personalized mails.  To experienced email marketers this will not be news, and it is common wisdom nowadays to absolutely progress beyond broadcast (or blast) mailing tactics to attain any kind of click thru and conversion response.

There are a number of campaign types that increase relevance beyond broadcast, such as 'life cycle', 'clickstream' and 'targeted'. JupiterResearch states that these types of campaigns are up to 18 times more profitable than broadcast.  Each of these types leverage known intelligence about the recipient, whether based on a user triggered event, online behavior, or persona driven.  BUT in order to actually create a highly relevant campaign, each mail needs to be customized to each identified audience segment and ideally personalized for each recipient - both of which increase the number of steps and effort in the overall process of producing a campaign from start to finish. 

You have a choice here: do you create individual email templates for each audience segment, or minimize the number of actual email templates and leverage conditional email content for a more dynamic 'data driven' approach.  More email templates means more production effort to create, optimize and test each and every template – whereas the data driven approach needs more advanced skills/technology to design and test more complex templates. 

Are we at a tipping point?  Has the amount of extra effort, technology and skills required to execute more advanced email campaigns pushed email campaign production to a point where outsourcing makes more strategic and tactical sense?  Perhaps.  Organizations need to be competitive and need to consider ways to execute these types of campaigns.  The tremendous ROI (as stated by Jupiter) more than outweighs the additional operating cost, so each and every marketing department who takes the email channel seriously will need to formulate a strategy here.

With headcounts diminishing, outsourcing is an obvious path forward.  Having a tried and tested production team getting your mails out of the door in good time, with great quality (...under SLA), allows you to not only benefit from advanced campaign performance, but to focus your time on higher value marketing initiatives!

- Andy McCartney, Vice President of Strategic & Account Services, Premiere Global Services

Andy runs a team of email marketing gurus and specialists who help clients of all shapes and sizes with their emarketing initiatives.  Advice and service engagements are delivered in areas such as strategy, campaign production, list health and deliverability.  Andy has over 20 years of experience in marketing and services with hi-tech companies, including 10 years in business intelligence and analytics and 12 years in interactive marketing leadership roles.

The eec Email Design Roundtable recently spent some time discussing an industry hot topic: the integration of email marketing and social networking.

Social networking generally makes its way into email in two primary ways:
(1) Through appeals in email for subscribers to join an existing social network.
and
(2) "Share with Your Network" (SWYN) invitations for subscribers to share email content with their networks. While these are each fairly simple, there are important creative and strategic considerations that contribute to email success, as well as innovative ways to bring user-generated content (UGC) into email.

Each Design Roundtable member offered fresh insights and ideas to the evolving body of best practices around social optimization in email. Below is a summary of key points from the conversation:

I've been in the business of delivering email now for quite a long time. I've spent more than 10 years managing, creating, or observing email communications in some fashion. I have worked on the client side, with partners, with vendors, and on the ESP side. This week while I was reflecting on what I've learned (don't laugh, I can get introspective), the thing that kept coming back to me was one word…process. Process is such a basic thing that is so often ignored. We have very little margin for error when delivering an email. If you make a mistake it is out there for the world to see, usually with bells and whistles as Mr. Murphy seems to take over. I wanted to talk today about how solid process can help eliminate errors, increase productivity, and boost morale within an email team.

I am going to give away an interview secret of mine here for everyone to see. I guess that means I will have to make up another one, but here we go. I always ask candidates to tell me if they have multiple tasks to do, how do they stay organized? I am not looking for any specific answer, just an answer. A person who has a clear method of organization can go a long way in our business. You can use a white-board, sticky-notes, calendar, reminders, you name it. The key to organization is an understanding of how to prioritize and remind you of critical tasks as crunch-time nears. All email campaigns have a moment of truth where everything has to come together. I believe that predetermined process is the single most important factor in making that moment of truth a smooth one.

Here are the main areas where it is important to inject process:

As we all know from our own experiences as subscribers, the marketing emails that people look forward to are those with the most distinctive personalities. Subscribers are much more eager to engage when they feel like they have a relationship with an individual or a persona than with a company.

For most brands, infusing messages with personality means cultivating a unique and consistent tone with design and copy choices. Increasingly, though, brands are finding ways to put actual human faces and/or human emotions into their email, making the messages seem more personal and creating continuity between messages. Below, we'll take a look at how some top retailers are adding personality to their email.

• Backcountry's memorial message is the most sincerely poignant example of personality in email that we've seen recently. The April 10th Backcountry email was sent with the sole purpose of memorializing a professional skier and inviting subscribers to help support his family. The message fosters a supportive sense of community between Backcountry subscribers.

• SmartBargains' holiday message shows subscribers the actual people behind the brand. This is an approach not usually taken, very literally demonstrating that actual people are creating and sending the emails.

• Crutchfield's marketing email features a picture of and quote from their CEO. In a similar way to the SmartBargains message, this makes it easier for subscribers to feel an individual connection to the company.

• Urban Outfitters' top reviewers email creates a community feeling and also encourages the subscriber base to become more active. When they see reviewers recognized, subscribers understand that their own reviewing efforts are valued, and they may be inspired get more involved. Sephora customer reviews function similarly.

• J.Crew's Jenna's Picks is a novel way to put a face on the fashions. The only problem? In many J.Crew emails, we don't quite know who Jenna is! In this message, they describe her as "our in-house style expert and muse" (vague, but we'll take it), but in other messages they just call out "Jenna's Picks" without reminding subscribers why we should care about Jenna.

• Barneys New York's Barneys Babble invites us into the sharp, funny mind of Simon Doonan. We get to follow Simon's adventures and hear his insights on fashion, and Barneys thereby takes on more character.

• Nordstrom's "At your service" email makes online shopping seem more personal by calling out special services. It's always personal to shop in-store at Nordstrom and interact with sales associates, and this email extends the service experience across the email channel.

There's room in almost any brand voice to add a personal touch that will invite your subscribers to feel more connected with your company. For more musing on this topic, check out Silverpop's Engagement Marketing Blog article, Do Your Emails Have a Personality?.

Bubbling with Personality,
Lisa Harmon and Alex Madison, Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

There is a consensus among email marketers that keeping uninterested subscribers on your email lists does more harm than good. Before your unengaged subscribers unsubscribe or – gulp! – report you as spam, take measures to reengage them and reinforce their positive relationship with your brand.

Here are a few ideas for keeping your subscriber base active and excited about your email:

• Run a relevant, engaging email program in the first place. The most important way to keep subscriber attention is, of course, to pay attention to your whole email program at each step. Maintain relevant content, design creatives that subscribers enjoy seeing, and refrain from overmailing.

• Send a "We Miss You" message with a special offer to inactive subscribers. When you know you have unengaged subscribers on your list, show them that you still care. One way to do this is with a "missing you" message, sweetened with a special offer. Smith-Harmon clients Pottery Barn and Pottery Barn Kids added a dynamic "We've missed you!" banners to emails sent to inactive subscribers.

• Involve subscribers by inviting them to help support a cause. Strengthen subscriber relationships with your brand by encouraging them to help you support a cause. This shows subscribers that you care about more than just dollars and also fosters a sense of investment in your brand's efforts. For example, Lucy has encouraged subscribers to help support the Breast Cancer Network of Strength, and PetSmart has invited subscribers to join them in helping homeless pets.

• Run contests or sweepstakes that encourage interaction with your brand. Everyone loves to win. If the reward is enticing enough and the process is simple enough, subscribers will jump at the chance to enter your brand's contest or sweepstakes.

In a recent contest, The Cheesecake Factory asked for new flavor idea submissions from subscribers and then went a step further by letting other subscribers vote for the winner (I'm particularly pleased, since my pick won. Yum, Red Velvet).

Last winter, Urban Outfitters enticed subscribers to create a holiday wishlist by allowing them to enter a drawing to "win their wishlist." Even the contest losers (such as myself) received an email with a discount offer to keep them shopping.

• Marketing a good or service your subscribers aren't familiar with. By showing your subscribers something that they may not have known you carried, you may inspire them to revisit your site. For instance, The Container Store took Earth Day as an opportunity to reveal themselves as a vendor of environmentally-conscious storage options.

Hopefully your email program is so relevant and engaging that no subscriber would ever DREAM of hitting the unsubscribe button. But if you happen to be seeing a high number of inactive subscribers, give some of these ideas a try and see if you can recapture some attention.

Always Active & Engaged,
Lisa Harmon and Alex Madison, Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

It's spring! Everything around us is green and fresh…why not our email photography treatments? This week, we took a look at how brands have been discovering new ways to treat imagery in email, ranging from simple to strange.

Spicing up silos. Products silos are so effective that they're fairly prevalent, but that's no reason for bland designs. Check out these brands' sweet silo treatments:

• Piperlime's propping grounds their silo products while adding interest. What could look fresher than daisies?

• Sephora's props help products pop on an otherwise stark background. They break the grid and add sensual context to products with benefits are tough to convey visually.

• Barneys New York makes their silos stand out against a black background with a jagged, artsy cut.

Thinking outside the grid. While sometimes the straight and simple product grid is the best option, it's worth looking at how some brands have stirred up their gridding for a fresher look.

• Restoration Hardware's clean design shows products framing body copy. It's still a grid, but it offers an alternative to a hero with products gridded beneath.

• Urban Outfitters' checkerboard collage of lifestyle shots features products and art imagery. The individual products don't stand out the way they would in a conventional grid, but they create a strong impression of what the brand offers for spring.

• Boden's use of product silos laid out on a mat-like background image shows a unique alternative to boxes. The inclusion of environmental shots in each section adds even more interest to what could have easily been laid out as a long, less interesting grid.

Why choose? Fun image combos. By incorporating more than one form of imagery, designs take on an artistic look that can suit unique themes.

• Betsey Johnson's cartoon illustrations always complement their images and make the photography seem more interesting.

• Fossil's combination of environmental photography, illustration and a product silo makes this seem like a page out of a scrapbook, suiting the style of the bag and the theme of "reclaiming pastimes."

• Coach uses a silo shot right alongside an environmental shot of the same product. The contrast is visual interesting, and allows Coach to position the product both aspirationally and with functional details.

Set for success with inset images. Including smaller, inset photos over larger imagery is a sleek, simple way to add interest to designs.

• Macy's inset photos set over an environmental shot add product imagery without disrupting the design's windswept desert theme.

• Anthropologie insets a small image of a model over a larger photo of the same model in the same set. The photography is conventional but this treatment makes it seem fresh.

• Fossil includes small close-ups of the models' hands over the larger environmental shot. This makes particular sense for Fossil as it allows them to highlight their watches while still using rich environmental photography.

Poppin' play with color. Brighter spring and summer color palettes (in both products and design) offer an opportunity to have more fun with color.

• Nordstrom uses bright background colors behind their models to make the vibrant clothing stand out even more.

• Shopbop's mix of color and black-and-white photography creates a somewhat jarring contrast and adds an edgy flare to their design.

• Free People's use of a similarly-staged photo with four different-colored pairs of shorts is fun and playful – perfect for spring.

Other creative trends. Freshening up image treatments means taking risks, trying unique approaches and sometimes even getting a little strange….

• Neiman Marcus tries something fun and funky by showing faded version of their model behind the clear hero image. You get the sense that she's actually spinning, per the headline.

• Barneys New York adds intrigue by playing with the orientation of their images in an inventive way.

• Bloomingdale's, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman all demonstrate the recent trend of incorporating snapshots into designs. (This must work; Lisa bought the "Taylor Momsen" look dress straight from the email!)

In many cases, the image makes the email. This spring, we challenge you to take risks and try photography treatments that will set your email apart in the inbox.

Getting Fresh this Spring,

Alex Madison and Lisa Harmon, Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

Marketing to a belt-tightening consumer base, it's now more important than ever to entice subscribers with the most compelling offers you can dream up. It's equally important, of course, to deliver the offers in the most compelling emails possible. It's been interesting to see more inventive sale messaging strategies and design approaches appear in the inbox recently.

Stunning Strategies:

Fun Themes:

• Spend more, Get More: Barneys New York recently offered gift cards to high-spenders: the more you spend, the more you get! Offering gift cards in climbing denominations makes it possible for Barneys to offer fewer straight discounts.

• Find the Savings!: Last year, Disney (scroll down a little) created an Easter egg hunt-themed sale, where browsing was rewarded with "hidden" discounts ranging from 15% to 40%. Not only was the childhood throwback brand-appropriate, but the tactic also encouraged subscribers to keep browsing in search of that elusive 40% off.

• Daily Deals: Piperlime recently ran a fun "Five Days of Treats" series. They presented a new special deal each day, keeping subscribers checking back to find each exciting offer.

Value Messaging in Full-priced Messages:

• Emphasizing Value: Nordstrom, traditionally comfortable in its position as a higher-end, higher-priced retailer, has been shifting its email messaging to include an emphasis on value. Recent subject lines and body copy call out lower costs available on full-priced Nordstrom goods.

• Eating In: In their subject line, "Eating in? We've Got all the Essentials You Need," Pottery Barn acknowledges that their subscribers are likely spending less time and money out on the town. They take advantage of the opportunity to remind subscribers that Pottery Barn's high-quality, long-lasting wares provide the necessities for nice evenings at home.

• Living Simple: Anthropologie uses this email to emphasize how they can cater to an earthy lifestyle rather than highlighting their clothing collection. It's a bit off that their landing page shows their fashion rather than housewares or books, but the message conveys how Anthropologie acknowledges the turn towards simple living.

• DIY: Sephora's "DIY" angle caters to recession-savvy shoppers with eyes on beauty. By calling out salon pricing and the savings of styling oneself, Sephora finds their niche in the value-conscious arena.

Dynamic Designs:

• Unique Text Treatments: A lot of brands send crisp and direct copy-only emails for unfettered sales messaging. Using unique text treatments, like Banana Republic's, can add visual interest without requiring graphics or images.

• Placement of Special Offer Submessaging: Some brands, like The Container Store, add sale messaging as a banner or promotional text in the preview pane. This calls attention to savings without disrupting the rest of the email message. Gymboree manages to convey three different savings offers by packing some punch in their preview pane space. Others add sale submessaging at the bottom of the email so that their main message makes the first impression, as in this Janie and Jack email.

• Graphic Representation vs. Product Imagery: Most brands avoid product imagery in their sale messaging, instead using graphic treatments to create interest, as in REI-OUTLET.com's use of logos. Another graphic approach, still fun and fresh, takes the form of discount tags, like those of Chicos and Old Navy.

With the upcoming months economically uncertain, all we can do is hold on tight and keep an eye to inventive and engaging approaches.

Scoping out the sales,
Lisa Harmon and Alex Madison, Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

Much has been written in the category of "the best" when it comes to email marketing. For example:

*Best day to send
*Best time to send
*Best subject line
*Best copy, design, call to action

Best. Best. Best. There certainly are email marketing best practices and guidelines to follow; however, "best" is often relative to your company's situation. It depends on your audience (subscribers, readers, lurkers), the industry you are in (b2b vs b2c, retail vs government, etc), and many many other factors. At the end of the day, what matters most is did the email campaign reach or exceed expectations? Did you achieve the open/click/conversion numbers you had intended?

Below is an example of an email I received recently from Egencia. (Egencia , formerly Expedia Corporate Travel, is the "fifth largest travel management company in the world." Bronto uses it to book corporate travel). Let's break it down into the "best" categories outlines above. How did they do?

1. Best day to send: The email was sent on Thursday. It was sent to my company email address, so sending during the middle of the week makes sense. If they had sent this email to me over the weekend, it may have been buried in my inbox until Monday morning.

2. Best time to send: I received the email at 11:02 PM. Many people are not awake at that time, and if they are, they're probably not checking their work email (well…wink, wink). However, based on the time sent, the email was near the top of my inbox on Friday morning. Also, sending during off-peak times *can* result in better deliverability.

3. Best subject line: Determining the best subject line can certainly be subjective. If possible, I'd recommend performing some form of A|B subject line test on every single email you send. Most email service providers (ESPs) offer this option. Take advantage of it. In this case, I thought the subject line was so-so. It certainly caught my attention as it was asking a seemingly personal question, "How are we doing?"; however, without sender recognition (I knew who Egencia was), I may have deemed this email spammy. Egencia could have offered some incentive for completing the survey and/or added a deadline or sense of urgency into the subject line. But…I opened it. So, the objective of the subject line was met - for me.

4. Best copy, design, call to action:

Copy: The copy here was short and to the point - exactly how it should have been. After all, the message is simple: Fill out the survey. Sometimes marketers clutter these emails with sales pitches, partner offers, and other items that distract from the intent of the email. I like Egencia's KISS approach.

Design: I am usually a big fan of an email that balances text and images; however, as mentioned above in the "copy" section, this email was intentionally image-light. They could have included a few images to spice up the email a bit, images that would have added and not detracted from the message. No harm either way.

Call to action: This is one area where I would've like to see a stronger call to action. "Just click this link to begin" followed by the full URL "http://expedia.qualtrics.com" is pretty weak. Give me reason, an incentive, to complete the survey. Just like they preach in sales training, WIIFM - "What's In It For Me?" Provide several options to get to the survey. Perhaps a bullet-proof button or a "Take Survey Now" link.

Overall, I really like this email from Egencia. I opened the email, clicked on the link, and even spent the 3 minutes to fill out the survey. Well done Expedia team.

What do you think? Would you have opened, clicked and/or completed the survey? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

- DJ Waldow, Director of Best Practices & Deliverability at Bronto

The eec blog post introducing the new "render rate" (by the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable) has drawn dozens and dozens of comments to date – from supportive to some that question the value of the standardization initiative.

There were also a number of comments and questions that indicate many people still don't understand what the open rate does and doesn't measure and how open rates are actually tracked. This blog post will be the first of a series from various members of the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable that address the comments and questions posted on the blog.

Before diving into a detailed explanation of how the open rate works and what it does and doesn't measure, I wanted to remind everyone of the core objective and purpose of this initiative.

The Measurement Accuracy Roundtable was formed with two primary purposes:
1) To ensure that email industry metrics that were widely adopted accurately measured what they were designed to measure;
and
2) That the metric was measured consistently by vendors and marketers. The intent was not to eliminate metrics or pose our opinion or preferences on email marketers.

With that background and reminder, let's dive into the basics of the open rate, which hopefully conveys why the eec took up the initiative to standardize this popular email metric…

How open rates are measured: Your email technology automatically inserts html code that references an invisible (often referred to as a "clear" or "1×1″) tracking image in your email, usually at the bottom of the email.

Like the other images in your HTML emails, they are actually hosted on a server, not embedded within the email. When a recipient opens the email, and images are not blocked, the image is called/pulled into the html message from the hosting server. As the image is pulled into the message, it is appended with a unique identifier that is associated to the receiving email address. That rendering of an image associated to an email address has been commonly referred to as an "open." Now, it gets more complicated.

When an "open" is counted: With the above definition in place, let's look at the scenarios in which an open is counted or reported:

Email marketing copy can sometimes start to feel stale. For instance, how many ways can we say "sale"!? It's often necessary for us to actively seek ways to refresh our messaging. As spring begins, let's take a look at some strong, unique copy treatments. Let's look at words with fresh eyes.

Choosing from our favorite brand "artists," we've compiled a "mix tape" (or, these days, an iPod playlist) of copy treatments. Check it out and see if it inspires any new moods.

I Saw the Sign: Subject Lines

• Boden subject line: "A Boden offer to get your knits in a twist." Including branding at the front of the subject line has shown to boost open rates in some studies, implying that some subscribers just scan subject lines without looking hard at the "from" name. Boden picks up this tip and also entices subscribers with the promise of an offer inside. Love the "knits in a twist" rhyme .

• Sephora subject line: "Pick 5 samples!" This short subject line stands out amongst the longer ones and engages the subscriber with a direct call-to-action and a fun offer. While there's some debate around subject line length best practices (check out Chad White's Email Insider article), most email marketers aim for between 35 and 45 characters. Some of the most attention-catching subject lines are shorter than that, though, like this one.

• Nordstrom subject line: "Dive In: New Swimwear from Miracle Suit." The subject line is clear about the email content, and the unique punctuation and fun intro "Dive In:" may garner some extra attention.

RESPECT: Preheaders

• Staples: Last week, Chad White blogged about Staples' preheader in his Retail Email Blog. Staples used clever copy to appeal to their subscribers' point of view, asking them "Is your coupon not displaying correctly? Prompt to view." as well as prefacing their whitelisting request with "Don't miss the savings." Staples recognizes that their subscribers don't care about missing emails, they care about missing savings, and the copy conveys this understanding.

• Piperlime: Because their (adorable!) headline "Tailor Made" probably wouldn't make sense to someone viewing the email without images, Piperlime writers include a different headline for the preheader text, which maintains the playful tone but adds clarity: "Turn it up in menswear-inspired heels. Shop now."

I Heard it Through the Grapevine: Forward to a Friend
Most "forward to a friend" links are direct and clear, but some brands spice it up.

• J.Crew asks subscribers to "spread the word" to their friends as a main CTA in this message.
• giggle includes their FTAF link prominently at the bottom of their email and prefaces it with "Psst," to give the impression that they are inviting their subscriber to pass on a secret.

Greased Lightning: Headlines

• Apple always has great headlines. Their recent email for iPod Touch games is particularly genius: "Score major points this Valentine's Day." The play on "scoring points" is fun and, coupled with the image of the iPod Touch Scrabble game spelling out "LOVE YOU," the whole message is playful and engaging.

• Urban Outfitters: The headline on this email, "YOU LOST" is hilarious. It came long enough after I entered this sweepstakes that I'd forgotten all about it, and the headline caught my attention and led me to read the rest of the email, which contained a special consolation prize discount offer.

• J.Crew's headline "On it way…" freshens up a shipping message that would otherwise be drab. Cool copy can make the simplest messages satisfying for the subscriber.

Baby One More Time: Subheadlines

• Barneys New York's subheadline, "You really need to read today's barneys babble," sounds like an urging from a friend. The subscriber feels like she'd be missing out if she didn't check it out.

• J.Crew gets a third shout-out for their subheadline from a while back. It reaches subscribers right where they are—on their computers, presumably working on something—and invites them to take a quick shopping break.

Twist and Shout: Body Copy

• Land of Nod has some of the most consistently strong copy in the industry. The body copy in this email reaches out to its audience of mamas by making it clear that Land of Nod really understands what it's like to have a newborn. "We know it'll be hard to put the baby to sleep", they're saying, "but at least you'll have this cute bedding to look at."

• Sephora's body copy in their main message and submessages often appeals to the senses, enticing subscribers with quick snippets.

Jack and Diane: Personalization

• Virgin America (whose copy always rocks!) took a fun approach to personalization in this message. Saying "Hey Darrah," instead of "Hi," or "Hello," is conversational enough to immediately engage the subscriber in a dialogue. While "Hey," doesn't fit the voice of every brand, it's worth considering the perfect form of personalization for your subscriber base.

Where Are You Going: CTA

• Piperlime: Piperlime shows some sweet spring sandals and then calls subscribers to "Find Yours". The CTA make sense coming off the body copy. We feel like the perfect sandals are awaiting us if we just click.

• Anthropologie's "See for Yourself" CTA fits nicely into the theme of this email, which introduces some loud and unusual prints and challenges potentially-skeptical subscribers to see how good they'll look.

• Backcountry uses the straightforward-and-proven "SHOP NOW" CTA in their primary message area, but they get creative in their secondary messages with "Get Layered", "Skin Up" and "Little Stuff." A nitpicky point is that the third CTA would have been stronger as a verb phrase for the sake of consistency, but we'll let it go since all three links are so fun and inviting.

Bye, Bye Baby: Conclusion
All brand "artists" mentioned above have consistently on-brand, unique and compelling copy. If you aren't already on their subscriber lists, you might consider signing up for some new ideas. The most important consideration, of course, is the harmony between the design and the copy, so get collaborating and see what jives.

Dance party, anyone?

Feeling the Beat,

Alex Madison and Lisa Harmon, Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

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