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

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

Chad White: Holiday Retail Email Volume Soars
Frequency trends from the 2007 holiday season

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

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

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This past holiday season, our email inboxes weathered flurries of free shipping and gusts of gift cards. (I’m still digging out from under it all!) A few retailers produced gift card promotions that transcended the torrent by employing clever creative devices to effectively pop their perks.

ANIMATION & PERSONALIZATION
With an intelligent application of animation, at a glance, Borders communicates the opportunity to personalize their gift cards with your own photos. Click here to view the animation in this email.
Link to http://ebm.cheetahmail.com/c/tag/hBHTAf3AQfEXsBkZV41BC9Jxb80/doc.html

From: Borders Rewards
Subject Line: The Perfect Gift -- With a Personal Touch
Date: Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007

SIMPLE & EASY
Meanwhile, fredflare.com features a simple order form screenshot to quickly enroll clickers in what appears to be an incredibly easy gift certificate order process.

From: fredflare.com
Subject Line: super last minute gift idea...
Date: Friday, Dec. 21, 2007

HUMOR & INGENUITY
And Timbuk2 wraps ingenuity in humor for an unexpected inbox gift: their step-by-step instructions show last-minute shoppers how to deliver a unique, printable “Oragami-ish Gift Certificate.”

From: Timbuk2
Subject Line: Instant Timbuk2 gift for slackers
Date: Friday, Dec. 21, 2007

In 2008, particularly during high-volume seasonal windows when so many retailers send similar messages, let’s resolve to use smart creative to help our communications stand out from the crowd.

Here’s to a super New Year,
Lisa Harmon

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

Chad White: E-gift Card Promotions Popular During Christmas Crunch Time
Retailers focused on e-gift cards in the days before Christmas, relying on email as a last-minute delivery mechanism.

Right Now: Busting Out of the Inbox
Five New Rules of 1to1 Email Marketing

Premiere Global Services: 8 Thursdays - Edition 1
Eight email marketing topics you can't afford to miss.

Microsoft: Protecting Your Brand, Customers and Employees from Online Threats
Creating A Competitive Advantage

MagNews: The Funnel
A Scientific Approach to Measuring Email Marketing Performance.

Listrak: Outlook for 2008
Essential Email Marketing Deliverability Guide

Innovyx: Understanding Dynamic Messaging
Knowing the challenges and learning how to face them.

Ezemail: The Rising Popularity of Handheld Email Devices
How Are Email Marketers Affected?

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

Does this scenario sound familiar?:
Marketing: “We need to add another submessage to the 12/10 mail.”
Creative: “What!? We’ve already got five submessages in the 12/10!”
Marketing: “The VPs want to include gift cards.”
Creative: “Pass me another brownie, please.”

At this time of year, just as our waistlines bulge with too many holiday sweets, so our emails bulge with too many holiday submessages, stacking into unruly creative layer cakes.

I love cake. I also love a powerfully-packed multi-message. However, more than three pieces of cake – and more than three vertically-stacked submessages – make me queasy. (Did somebody say “garage sale”!?) That’s why this week, as a bookend to my holiday navigation post, it’s all about the GSF—the gift services footer!

Below, REI, Amazon.com, Macy’s and Crate & Barrel cut down on submessage layer-caking by finishing their emails off with smart little GSFs, fitting an average of four messages into the space of one. It’s like a super-dense, double-chocolate brownie!

REI, Dec. 4

Amazon.com, Dec. 5

Macy’s, Dec. 5

Crate & Barrel, Dec. 6

CHECK OUT THESE SEVEN TIPS FOR A SWEET GSF:
(1) Umbrella your GSF with a benefits-focused headline.
(2) Use equi-sized modules for easy last-minute message swap-outs.
(3) Link to your website gift center. It’s a great catch-all for gift givers.
(4) Promote gift cards. They’re so hot right now!
(5) Surface gift services —the unique ways you help make holiday shopping easy.
(6) Detail order-by dates, particularly as we approach mid-December.
(7) Dynamically generate local retail store info to drive brick-and-mortar traffic.

I look forward to breaking brownies with many of you in Park City next week!

Until then,
Lisa Harmon

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

Chad White: Cyber Monday Sees Record Retail Email Marketing Activity
Retailers embracing a variety of strategies in promoting their Cyber Monday sales.

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

The results of many a strategy session over the past few months will play out in the next 10 days as retailers launch their Black Friday email plans. Maybe some of these ideas will help you make some last-minute improvement to your own strategy:

- A number of retailers are doubling down on Monday and Tuesday by sending extra sale notices this week, so those days are going to be high-traffic days for the email backbone. Pace out your own mailings as much as possible and expect delays in delivery as the ISPs manage the volume. Keep an eye on your own program so you can course correct as needed.

- We always see that a campaign approach works better than one-off messages. Keep a consistent theme to the week and stay focused on the key buying offers. Remember, the inbox is getting much more crowded, so you have less time to make an impact.

- Friday morning may also be a good time for reminder emails. We've worked on a couple of programs that include a Saturday "Didn't find what you wanted" follow up notes to encourage offline shoppers to just stay online. The notion of Cyber Monday (a big online shopping day when folks get back to work) seems to be less prevalent this year, but may be worth including in your plan. If subscribers have a lot of email in the inbox when they come back after a long weekend, a Monday afternoon email might counter any "select all and delete" mailbox management done by consumers early in the day.

- Help your messages breakthrough by spending extra time on your subject lines. There will be lots of sales, and lots of cross channel promotions. What is unique about yours? Remember that the best subject lines are specific—clarity always trumps clever. So keep to the facts—"No one beats our prices" or "A gift for you with a gift for them."

- Create urgency by having online sales times that reflect your customers' habits—e.g., moms shop online early and late and need time-saving quick cart-building links. We have a number of clients testing a 24-hour sale on Friday or Saturday, and the email program all week is promoting that window of opportunity.

- Even if you are not a retailer, consider that there is more competition in the inbox this week and through the end of the year. Consider metering back and focus on making fewer messages more compelling. Try adjusting cadence too—like three days in a row for a particular message and theme (make sure the offer warrants the cadence) or focusing on a particularly frequency, like "Tuesday Tips."

- As always, respect the permission grant given to you. Sending more email than promised gets noticed and can be a huge turn off for subscribers. Be sure to balance your need to promote now with the very real long-term need to sustain and nurture an active file.

—Stephanie Miller of Return Path

For the next two months, both Starbucks’ coffee cups and most online retail email creative will share a similar shade of red. And as Starbucks introduces this year’s holiday-themed cup sleeve, so a handful of retailers wrap their emails with holiday-themed navigation. This year Target, Amazon.com, Apple and REI all rolled out their holiday navs during the first week of November. Check out these before and after email navigation captures:

Target, Nov. 4

Amazon.com, Nov. 5

Apple, Nov. 7

REI, Nov. 9



FOUR WAYS TO DECK THE NAVS

(1) Show a Little Bit of Spirit
I know how much we all love to get in there and go crazy with the décor, but don’t get so heavy with your holiday nav that it visually overpowers your main message body. Bring in a touch of color or a playful graphic element to say: “holiday is here,” but not “and here, and here, and here …” All of the navs featured above do a good job keeping it light.

(2) Stay Non-Denominational
Red and light blue seem to be creative favorites this season; green is just too darn Christmassy, isn’t it? Apple and Amazon bring in just the right amount of generic holiday feeling with ribbon and trees; Target’s holly is super-cute but excludes folks who don’t celebrate on December 25.

(3) Add a Gift-Specific Menu Item
Be relevant and accessible to gift givers: Amazon.com, REI and Target all added a gifting menu item to their standard navigation. REI gets bonus points by using red to “make it pop”.

(4) Plan for the Un-plan-able
Anyone who’s lived through even one holiday season in retail email creative knows: despite the best-laid plans, things get cah-razy. Amazon.com and REI get all “Art of War” on that action with flexible HTML text promotional spaces at the upper right of their email creative. Include a spot that’s both front-and-center and easy-to-update to accommodate all those last-minute markdown and rush shipping upgrade messages.

Good luck!
Lisa Harmon

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Halloween is my best holiday. On Oct. 31, it's absolutely OK to do two of my favorite things: dress up and eat candy. I monitored my inbox today (in costume – I was a nun) to see which retailers were celebrating with me. The results were frightening! Out of the 42 commercial emails I received, only 3 directly referenced Halloween—that’s scarcely more than 7%. Bluefly, J. Crew and Lands' End each offered up a treat: a percentage discount, a free shipping offer and a dollar discount, respectively. (They also used eerily-similar subject lines, following a “Boo!” + “Offer” paradigm. We do have our SLs down to a science.)

From: Bluefly
Subject Line: BOO! Extra 10% Off-Today Only
Date: Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007

From: J. Crew
Subject Line: Boo! Free shipping's ending…
Date: Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007

From: Lands' End
Subject Line: Boo! A $10 Gift For You.
Date: Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007

We all talk so much about relevancy, and while many of us find technological obstacles between our email programs and that fabled state of totally targeted, segmented, dynamic-data-driven email nirvana, there is absolutely nothing stopping any of us from sharing something as simple as a batch-and-blast Halloween greeting with our subscribers. I certainly received a deluge of Halloween-focused messaging in the weeks leading up to the event—costumes, treats, décor and more, right?!

As we move into our next phase of holiday preparation—Thanksgiving—let’s consider ending our T-day-focused communication stream with an exclamation—Happy Thanksgiving! You know you’re gonna send out a Black Friday sale message anyway, so why not offer it as a gift in thanks? Check back post-turkey; I’ll report on whether the well-wishing ratio is any more bountiful.

Until next week!
Lisa Harmon

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

The 2007 Guide to Gearing Up for the Holiday Email Season
This roadmap to the email holiday season will help retailers and other companies better formulate their campaigns this year.

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

I am a huge fan of email marketing and really believe in its strength and ability to deliver a dynamic offer in a quick and to-the-point manner. So I wanted to add a personal case study to show how great a medium email marketing is for companies to produce sales in an immediate nature.

As we hopefully all remembered, this past Sunday was Mother’s Day. It’s a day to say “thank you” not only to the women who put up with our crap and issues for the better part of our initial lives, but also (in my case) to the woman I hope to drop my kids off with for hours at a time so I can play golf or have some alone time with the wife. It’s also a day for me to celebrate my wife, the amazing mother of my two children, so she knows how much I appreciate her (all the time).

But on Wednesday of last week it occurred to me that I had yet to think about buying a single gift for anyone. My mind raced while I was at work—what should I get, when should I get it, where should I get it—and I could feel myself drawing nothing but blanks.

Then suddenly the skies opened and the sun shined down on me as I opened up one of my consumer email accounts. I had at least seven emails waiting for me from companies I had purchased from in the past, all with amazing Mother’s Day offers and ideas for the clueless like myself! This was relevant email times 10! Not only relevant with the offer, but relevant with the timing of that offer—combine those two things together and you truly capitalize on the value of email marketing.

So I opened every single email, clicked on every link I could find, and let the companies walk me through what they were offering. It was like having seven different personal shoppers at my disposal. All the advertisers did a great job of making the Mother’s Day offers front and center to the landing page they took me to. Free two-day shipping was referenced numerous times in numerous places, clearly showing the value and benefit they planned to offer me for making a purchase. Because they took me to a specific page with Mother’s Day offers and specials they did the one thing I think any consumer appreciates—they made the buying experience and searching experience easy.

The moral of this short story is that many of the fundamentals we all read about as it relates to email marketing—relevance, timing, value, clarity, offer—were all spoken to in the messages I received. It really gave me the motivation to take the call to action. So companies are getting it. They’re getting what they need to do and how to use those things to their benefit. This then will grow their sales and continually enable them to build their brand online. I ended up buying four things from two different companies, and the reality is that if I hadn’t received those emails, I wouldn’t have purchased anything from any of them.

Kudos to them!

—Rob Fitzgerald