Create Email Campaign

Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Gmail

Thursday, November 5, 2009 by Andrea Smith

This week we’re focusing on email rendering in Gmail. Gmail, like other web-based email clients, is constantly evolving. These updates continually change the way HTML emails are rendered. Not only do email designers need to pay special attention to Gmail, they need to be aware that their Gmail subscribers may be seeing one of two different versions of Gmail. Depending which browser and version you are using, scroll to the bottom of your account and select the “older version” link to test that version of Gmail. To revert back to the newest version, select the “newer version” link in the top right section of the account.

Below are some great tips to consider when building your email campaign in order to create the best experience possible for Gmail subscribers.  

Image Blocking - Alt Tags
 Images are blocked by default in Gmail. Gmail does display stylized “alt” tags, so add those to your design when it makes sense to help create brand synergy. 

CSS
In both versions of Gmail, CSS must be applied inline. External or embedded CSS in the head of the HTML will be stripped out.

 CSS Borders
The newer version of Gmail has difficulty rendering CSS borders in IE8. Occasionally, 1-2 pixels of white space will be added to the left or right side of the content enclosed within the border. This issue affects some designs more than others, so if you have a particular element that depends on symmetry, test both old and new Gmail versions to ensure your design renders properly. If CSS borders are giving you trouble, you may want to consider using a background color combined with a spacer .gif to create the same look.

Background Images
Background images are supported in both versions of Gmail. However, the “background-image” CSS property is not supported, so the HTML “background” attribute must be used to assign a background image. Previously, there were issues using the CSS property “background-repeat”, but that property is also now currently supported.

Gmail Themes
Gmail introduced the concept of “themes” this year, which allow the user to select different combinations of background colors, text and link colors to personalize their inbox. Some combinations may render light text on a light background, or dark text on a dark background. The bottom line: you must specify background, text, and link colors in your HTML, or they may be changed in accordance with your subscriber’s Gmail Theme.

Testing
Always be sure to test in major web browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox, and remember that there are both newer and older versions of Gmail. Gmail is a great client to test first when finishing your campaign, as it exposes rendering problems and is unforgiving of any HTML syntax errors. 

Personally, I love using Gmail — it has great features including shared docs, calendars, folder organization tools and other interactive capabilities, so let's make sure our subscribers continue to have a great experience in Gmail. Portions of this blog, Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Gmail, and more information on email rendering can be found in our whitepaper "Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials”.

Are Your Subscriber's Fan's For Life?

Monday, November 2, 2009 by Lindsay Niemiec

On my drive back from Chicago last week, I noticed a large billboard towering over the interstate. Of course, many billboards crowd every interstate, but this one was different. The advertisement for the Chicago Bears, read “if you’re not a fan, you’re a tourist”. What grabbed my attention was not only to how clever I though the ad was, but how applicable it is to the ExactTarget’s Subscribers Rule! philosophy. Everyone wants to be a part of something special, and marketers want their customers to feel as if they are special too. It starts with delivering 1 to 1 direct marketing of which subscribers are a fan.

Does your marketing program address what your subscribers want? Or do you blast out the latest news and hope for click-throughs? Do you dynamically target the content of your emails to your subscriber's preferences? Or do you batch and blast the same email to everyone, hoping they find it relevant? As the NFL season continues and the holiday season kicks off, the relevance of your email campaign programs could be the key component in making your subscribers true fans.

If you make your subscriber a fan, then much like a Bears fan, they're in it for life. If not, then they're just a tourist on your list for now waiting for the next best thing.

What is ExactTarget Embedded?

Thursday, October 29, 2009 by Eric Hensley

As one of the newest members of the ExactTarget Partner organization, I am tasked with managing and growing relationships with ExactTarget’s Embedded Partners. On its surface, that sounds pretty straightforward. However, for the past several months, I have been trying to better define around what an “Embedded” partner truly is. There are multiple ways to define the topic, depending on who you ask.   And, in my experience, most of the answers I have heard are right in some way or another.

However, the official definition is that ExactTarget Embedded Partners are typically ISVs that go to market with messaging as a part of their platform. As an Embedded Partner, your software product's user interface contains features and functionality that enable your customers to manage the process of creating and executing email campaigns (as well as SMS and Voice). This is about the most comprehensive and accurate description I can come up with myself. But, with the growth in popularity of “Cloud Computing”, I believe it is and will be much more than that.

Cloud computing has garnered a lot of media attention in the past year or so as the next big technological breakthrough. But, in my opinion, the concept isn’t really all that new. Companies have always looked for ways to combine technology services in a more commoditized way to drive efficiency and cost savings. Amazon.com has been doing cloud computing within the company for a long time. Essentially, that is the exact same goal for cloud computing. I think the biggest difference with cloud computing is that the concept is getting turned outward to the Internet, hence the “cloud” tagline. As more companies sign on to utilize these services, the less they will be inclined to build internal infrastructure to support corporate applications.

Think of the advantages:

    *No capex/low capex to get started

    *Highly scalable with on-demand allocation of resources

    *Reliability of multi-location architectures

So how does messaging fit into the cloud? I see integrated messaging becoming its own service or platform in the cloud. Just like clients are looking to Salesforce.com to quickly and efficiently deploy CRM as a service, why not for marketing and other communications? It even makes more sense when you look at what the future of ISVs might be. More and more we are seeing a drive towards SaaS applications. Do you think it makes sense for a CRM or Print-on-Demand application provider to build their own messaging infrastructure? Probably not for several reasons, the most obvious being, it’s not their core competency. They will continue to be focused on what pays the bills. But, will they be eager to provide a marketing communication platform to their customers….absolutely. These companies will turn to partners that are similar to them…on-demand/SaaS/Cloud Computing…whatever the tagline of the week is. Why, because it provides the same advantages to them as to their clients, mainly low/no capex, highly scalable, and reliable service. This is where ExactTarget Embedded becomes the Messaging as a Service platform for the cloud.

Obviously the push towards SaaS and Cloud Computing is real.   As the industry continues to evolve, so will ExactTarget Embedded and our partners. Our robust and flexible integration capabilities will allow ExactTarget to become the industry leader in Messaging as a Service.

Time for your Halloween email...I mean Holiday Email Program

Monday, October 26, 2009 by Shelly Griffin

I don't know about you, but I like to enjoy each holiday on its own and in order. Especially in the Fall when the three big holidays come hurtling at you back to back from the dark days of Fall: Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don't put out Halloween decorations until October, I don't buy a turkey until November and I don't really start planning for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. I definitely do not shop for Christmas presents in July! Who really does that anyway?

Unfortunately in the world of email marketing, you need to start planning your holiday email program now - today - Yesterday! You need to ensure that your emails are planned, designed, tested, scheduled and ready for delivery. The holiday season is when the inbox gets the most congested and without advance planning, your emails may be lost in the crowd. In addition to driving for results, you want to ensure that you are not one of those marketers that over do it - sending a different offer everyday. After just a few of these emails, your subscribers will start ignoring (and deleting) your emails. Chip House spoke to this very subject in a blog post from last year "High Holiday Frequency Drives the Ignore Rate to New Heights".

You also don't want to be one of those marketers that make no significant change or improvement in your email campaign. Those emails seem uninspiring at a time of year when you should be grabbing the attention of your subscribers. Make sure to check out our design tips and tricks at Email Marketing Design blog. Then on top of everything else, there are deliverability challenges at the holidays.

Where will your email program land?

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Friday, October 23, 2009 by Karen Balle

When my nephew was much younger, we watched The Nightmare Before Christmas together on VHS until the tape broke. He even thought his name was Jack the Pumpkin King! The soundtrack will be stuck in my head for the rest of my life.

Not only is this one of the best movies of all time, but it's a wonderful commentary on the state of email marketing during the holiday season. I don't just mean that trying to get email delivered is a nightmare starting around Halloween or that marketers find themselves in somewhat different situations than they're used to during the rest of the year. The flow of the movie and the soundtrack fit with how email marketing happens during the holiday season. It happens every year.

There's a dramatic uptick in all email marketing, be it legitimate email marketing or spam, that starts when the weather gets cold. Some years, it triples or quadruples normal email volume. And that means slower mail servers, more filters, more complaints, and slower response times. It also means overworked, cranky mail and abuse admins. I know. I've been one of those cranky abuse admins.

The rules surrounding email deliverability, which are confusing enough, get more complicated during this time of year. It feels like every company you have ever driven past and every partner of theirs is vying for your attention. There are a lot of little things that you can do, from holiday ramp-up strategies to promoting special holiday-only marketing campaigns that draw customers in.

I'll leave you for now with this very important thought.

Engagement is more important than ever. If you don't get the attention of your recipients, you'll find your email in the spam folder or blocked during your most crucial sales period.

As I've been writing this, the song "Making Christmas" has been running through my head. It makes me want to ask which mindset do you have for your email campaigns, going into this holiday season?

"Snakes and mice get wrapped up so nice with spider legs and pretty bows.
It's ours this time."
(Your focus is on your ideas of what your recipients should want. You reach years back into your subscriber database. You send out email to people who didn't give you permission.)

Or
"This thing will never make a present. It's been dead now for much too long.
Try something fresher, something pleasant."
(Your focus is on what your customers are really interested in. You're interested in actively engaged subscribers rather than the number of subscribers on your list. You use dynamic content to create a one-to-one experience for your customers.)

Do people really report legitimate email as spam?

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 by Karen Balle

Gmail and MSN Hotmail have recently started offering an unsubscribe link instead of a report spam button for some permission-based mailing lists, using the hidden X-List-Unsubscribe header that many email marketers and ESPs include in their emails. It makes sense, as many people use the This is Spam button instead of unsubscribing from opt-in email.

A customer asked us for some solid numbers on their unsubscribes, as they're trying to make some internal decisions on how to handle their unsubscribe process. I knew the number of subscribers who click on the spam button was significant, but the numbers were eye-opening. I looked at data for almost 80,000,000 emails sent (Yes, 80 MILLION emails), with complaint rates that never came near where an ISP would block and bounce rates that would make you drool.

17% of unsubscribes came from customers who hit reply and asked to be removed.
43% of unsubscribes came from customers who followed the unsubscribe link in the email.
40% of unsubscribes came from customers who clicked the This is Spam button.

That's right. 40% of legitimate unsubscribes came through the feedback loop as a complaint. ISPs take this figure into account, but it should give you something to think about next time you look to expand your email campaign.

Even though they recognized the brand.

Even though they signed up for the email.

Even though they recently purchased from the company.

Even though many of them will continue to purchase services from this company.

On a list with engaged and active subscribers, 40% of the subscribers who no longer wanted to receive promotional materials that they had signed up for used the spam button instead of the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email.

Email Design Tip of the Week: 3-2-1, Wait! A Checklist Before Hitting Send

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Andrea Smith

written by David Hoang

Question: When do email marketing professionals usually take a break or step out?

Answer: When he or she just hit the “send” button for a mass email.

There is nothing more nerve wracking than hitting the button with no return. Unlike web publishing, there is no turning back with email. So what’s the solution? You can say, “don’t make any mistakes” – but it’s inevitable. What you can do, however, is strategically make a checklist of what to do before hitting the send button to make sure mistakes are avoided.

Here are some quick tips on what you should run through your mind; so you don’t have to leave the building after delivering an email:

Is it legit? After every round of revisions, always validate the message; the simplest way to see if you have everything to get it out the door: physical address, unsubscribe link, etc.
Do an email test. It's practically unheard of wherein you send out a mass email campaign without testing; so don’t do it. Set up a few test email accounts (Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!, AOL, etc.) and spend some time to see how it looks in each email client.
Spell check. Repeat. Your email delivery is intended for 1-to-1 marketing, so write like you’re taking quality time to communicate with your subscribers. Run spell check, manually look for spelling errors and yes, read the message out loud. If this seems like too much work, make someone else do it!

As much as email marketing is mass-produced, the one-to-one messaging is its key to effectiveness. Therefore taking time to communicate a message and doing it correctly, with no spelling and grammatical errors, should be top priority. Not only will avoiding these common pitfalls save you face, it will also make your recipients feel like you have taken that extra step to make sure it's perfect.

Check the details. Take a look at every aspect of your message to make sure something is not missing. Do you have a subject line? Is it the correct one? Do all of the links in the email go to the proper pages?
Do a final once-over. Think of this as when you were taught crossing the street. Look left, look right, then look left again. Test your email to make sure that there are no mistakes, especially if revisions were made. Scan with the mindset that you are looking for mistakes. If you don’t find them, hit the send button.

Ultimately, you want to come up with a method that's most comfortable to you. Make an actual checklist and cross off the steps as you prepare the send. With a routine checklist in mind, you can hopefully sit back and relax (a little bit more) after delivery.

1-to-1 Marketing and Beyond: Success Stories

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross

When you hear The World Society for the Protection of Animals you probably don't think of a standard B2C with a targeted marketing message. Even so, this group has achieved a 50% increase in online donations with the power of 1-to-1 marketing tools, specifically dynamic content through ExactTarget.

Meanwhile, Motorcycle Superstore realized double-digit increases in open rates as a result of integrating online browsing and purchase data into their email marketing decisions. In this case, the ExactTarget tool driving the relevant message to the customer was the integration with Webtrends.

In another case, the online photo book publisher, Inkubook, announces that email marketing through ExactTarget drove more than 60% of its first year revenue. While PetPlace.com went from zero to $1 million in online sales in less than 12 months with the help of ExactTarget email campaigns.

It doesn't matter whether you're selling sidecars or gathering signatures on a petition, people are more likely to hear your message when you're saying something that's important to them. Using the tools that help you send a more customized messages not only create more fertile ground for conversions, but also create more fertile ground for building a lasting relationship.

User engagement. What does it mean?

Friday, October 9, 2009 by Karen Balle

Al Iverson and I spend a lot of time talking about user engagement. It's been around for a very long time, but it's now a standard for inbox delivery. How do you define engagement? Quality over quantity. Targeted email marketing. True one to one communication. But what does it really mean to you? How does it make for a more effective email marketing campaign? If permission is king, engagement is emperor.

How do you create an effective marketing campaign that keeps your customers coming back in the age of DVRs, satellite radio, and short attention spans? How do you get your customers to pay attention? This is vital now for inbox delivery. Yahoo has started measuring whether or not your recipients are spending time reading your email, whether they're looking for you in the spam folder, how vital you are to their daily lives.

I found a gentleman today who gets what it means to really engage with your customers. You can visit Bob Gilbreath over at Marketing with Meaning and download a chapter of his book, The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing with Meaning.

He gets it. This concept of engagement, and he calls it meaning. Marketing now, whether it is effective offline or effective email marketing, can no longer be interruptive to your customers' lives. Your communications with them need to be not only permission-based but need to add some value to their daily lives.

When you create email campaigns, what do you do to add value? How do your targeted email marketing campaigns add to your recipients daily lives? What do you put in your marketing campaign or to your email newsletter that drives your recipients to want to spend time with your company?

Get Personal: One-to-One Marketing with Personalized Product Recommendations

Friday, October 2, 2009 by Joel Book

An article in the October issue of Internet Retailer, observes that “although the Internet makes it possible to personalize offers to shoppers, most e-retailers and other online businesses are failing to optimize web site content to improve the chances that shoppers will become buyers.”

Mike Chertudi, vice president of demand and online marketing for Omniture notes, “The majority of businesses aren’t optimizing their on-site conversion,” Omniture has teamed with Marketing Experiments to conduct the 2009 Online Conversion Benchmark Survey. The purpose of the survey, which began in June, is to help online marketers better understand best practices in onsite conversion, and know how they compare to their peers. Data is being compiled from more than 1,000 companies, of which more than half are retailers. Among the findings as of late August: About 80% of retailers don’t present personalized content based on shoppers’ interests suggested by analytics and clickstream data.

One-to-One Merchandising Works for Motorcycle Superstore

Proving that personalized product recommendations work, Motorcycle Superstore saw a 21.7% revenue increase in the first week after launching an email campaign on September 21st that incorporated personalized product recommendations.

Motorcycle Superstore uses behavioral data -- gathered with WebTrends technology combined with its e-mail marketing application from ExactTarget -- to send email messages with personalized product recommendations. These items appear as “Your Picks” in the lower part of the email and are based on the customer’s website visiting habits over the previous two weeks.

Commenting on the power of data-driven offer personalization, Erick Barney, vice president of marketing at Motorcycle Superstore, says “I believe this feature is so effective because rather than guessing at a handful of products to appeal to our entire customer base, we can merchandise products directly related to each customer’s historical interaction with our store.” Motorcycle Superstore is No. 223 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.

Learn more about combining precision one-to-one communications and comprehensive web analytics by integrating ExactTarget and Webtrends.

Holiday Email Marketing Programs: Time is Now!

Friday, September 25, 2009 by Shelly Griffin

Wednesday was the first day of Fall - the Autumnal Equinox. It's funny...one would think that when the weather starts to cool down and the days become shorter that things would start to slow down. But quite the opposite happens. Fall is the time for holidays and holiday planning - Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hannuka, Christmas and New Year's Eve - parties, open houses, pitch-ins...you name it. They come at you fast and furious and before you know it kids are at your door looking for candy...while you sit inside your house in the dark hoping they go away because you hadn't planned ahead and bought any candy. That doesn't even take into account all the fall cleanup that usually happens in and around the house.

This is my favorite time of year but it can be crazy busy - especially if you don't take a moment to get organized and plan ahead. The same can be said for your email marketing program. More than any other time of year - planning and organization is going to be key to your campaign's success: plan the content and call to action of each email, plot on the calendar each campaign (initial and follow-up), review your current trends (opens, clicks) to see if there are improvements that can be made, clean up your list by segmenting those who have opened from those who have never opened your email, review how you are using the analytics of your email campaigns, and ask yourself if your subscribers would categorize your emails as Personal, Relevant and Anticipated. This is also a great time to take a moment to re-read ExactTarget's Email Marketing Field Guide.

How do you plan for your holiday email marketing program?

Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Hotmail

Friday, September 25, 2009 by Anna Meier

We know by now that all email clients are not created equal. Your email campaign will not render the same in Outlook 2007 as it does in Yahoo, Gmail or Lotus Notes. This week we’re focusing on email rendering in Hotmail. Look for design tips for other email clients in weeks to come. Below are six important topics to consider when building your email campaign in order to create the best experience possible for Hotmail subscribers.

Preview Pane
Hotmail users have the option of viewing their email in a vertical or horizontal preview pane. Be sure to consider the content of your top left email real estate to ensure your primary message is received. Read Considering the Preview Pane for more information.

Image Blocking - Alt Tags
Images are blocked by default in Hotmail. Hotmail also uses gray rectangles in place of blocked images and does not display “alt” tags. While there is no way to force Hotmail to display “alt” tags, we recommend including them for other email clients that do render them when images are blocked by default.

Images
When a subscriber uses a Firefox browser to view email in Hotmail, the subscriber may see extra white space under images, severely impacting email rendering. Avoid this problem by placing a “display: block” style in image tags: <img src=“image.jpg” style=“display: block;”>. This workaround could potentially cause rendering issues with other email clients, so be certain to test.

*View in Hotmail with images on and off.

Links
Hotmail automatically displays all links without an underline, and the underline only appears when the mouse hovers over a link. If underlined links are desired, you will need to set the “text-decoration” property to underline with inline CSS in the <a> tag of every individual link. For instructions, read last week’s Design Tip of the Week.

Non-Black Default Font Color
Hotmail will set any text without a specific font color to dark gray. To ensure colors maintain brand standards and display as intended, assign a specific color (even if it’s black) to all text in your message.

Avoid Forms
Hotmail will render forms properly, but disables the submit button—so forms will not function as intended. Encourage subscribers to view the email as a webpage or drive them to a website where the form can be rendered properly.

Be sure to read our design tips in the coming weeks for rendering tips in other email clients. Portions of this blog, Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Hotmail, and more information on email rendering can be found in our whitepaper “Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials”.

How Can I Link ExactTarget with My Web Analytics Provider?

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 by Dawn DeVirgilio

When looking for ways to drive successful email campaigns, clients often ask us, “What are the ways ExtactTarget can integrate with my web analytics provider?”

They’re in luck! By leveraging existing technology, ExactTarget is able to offer customized integrations through partnerships with leading analytics vendors.

Thanks to these partnerships, there are three ways for ExactTarget to integrate with your web analytics provider:

Web Analytics Connector
The Web Analytics Connector allows you to send information to your web analytics tool through links in the ExactTarget email application. If you are currently using a web analytics system, your web analytics tool stores the URL used to call individual pages whenever your website is displayed in a browser. To connect this data with ExactTarget, you can include attributes in the target URL of the links in your emails. For example, if you included a campaign ID in the target URL of your links, you could identify the web traffic generated by that campaign.

Exporting Tracking Data
A second way to integrate is by exporting tracking data from ExactTarget into your web analytics package. By extracting email tracking data - such as opens, clicks and bounces - and pushing the data back to your analytics package, you capture a 360-degree snapshot of email performance. Both link performance and overall email performance data can be extracted from ExactTarget. These extractions allow you to assess the impact of email campaigns with online activity, where you can facilitate data exchange to consolidate reporting.

Automating a Behavior Marketing Campaign
Segmenting messages based on email and web analytics data is possible through our third form of integration. ExactTarget has the capability to automate a behavior marketing campaign for you, which begins with importing web behavior data into the ExactTarget application. (Typically, the data you will be importing will relate to products viewed, products purchased and cart abandonment information.) This data can be queried to allow deeper segmentation, thereby allowing you to create more personalized and targeted email. By automating the daily feeds of individual web data to trigger emails, you ensure timely, relevant emails to your subscribers.

For more information on how you can integrate ExactTarget with your web analytics provider, contact us via email at info@exacttarget.com or at 1.866.558.9834.

Till next time,
Patty Rayl

What do you mean my tracking is phishing?

Monday, September 14, 2009 by Karen Balle

Click tracking. We all do it. It's a best email practice. We all want to see who is following our links, what draws our subscribers in. Was this targeted email marketing campaign effective? What was the most interesting part of the email? Where are my readers engaged? Was this email campaign better targeted than last week's?

But how you do it makes a huge difference with spam and virus filters. What do I mean? I'll tell you a secret. Phishers and spammers like to use IP addresses and URIs of popular websites in the text of their emails and then put in HTML that makes it look like the recipient is clicking on http://www.bank.com. But you don't do that, right? What you might do is use http://www.partnercompany.com or even http://www.yourbusinesssite.com in the email that you're sending out through your favorite ESP, ExactTarget.

That's a no-no. Definitely not an email deliverability best practice. Why not? Because you want us to track email clicks in those targeted emails. You have a domain set aside just for us and that's the domain that we use for your email campaigns. Your subscribers see http://www.yourbusinesssite.com, but they click on a link to http://email-yourbusinesssite.com.

And that, my friends, looks like you're trying to be tricksy.
"So what do we do, email guru?" you cry in despair. Let me give you a little email design tip that will make a huge difference with filters like Postini and MessageLabs (both of which are used frequently in B2B email), or email providers like Gmail and Hotmail.

Use your words. Wow your targeted opt-in audience with your awesome descriptive powers.

What's more appealing to you anyway? I know which one I'd click on.

Look how we've grown! or http://www.exacttarget.co.uk/
Come party with us! or http://www.connections09.com

Make yourself an Email Marketing "To Do" List for your next campaign

Wednesday, September 9, 2009 by Shelly Griffin

After all my talk about homework, I have to give myself an "F" for failing to blog last week. We all know that it can be really easy to let things and time get ahead of us. Everyday we have the best intentions...whether it's to get the laundry done, the bills organized or to clean out the garage. Planning for an email marketing program can also have the best intentions. You wake up saying to yourself "today I am going to test my email content and my subject lines"! Before you know it, you are lucky if you remembered to hit the send button at all. So let's make today a new day with a short and simple "To Do" list for your email campaign.

1. Preview how the email will actually look upon receipt using Inbox Preview
2. Conduct a simple A/B subject-line test by sending the email to a smaller segment of your list using Groups.
3. Analyze which subject line preformed better using Tracking
4. Send the email with the winning subject line to your list excluding the first two groups
5. Sit back and relax

Look at you...you did it! You conducted a simple A/B test on your email marketing campaign. It wasn't hard and it wasn't cumbersome. It was easy to do. Now there is no reason not to test every email campaign. As our mothers always taught us - never put off what you can do today.

It Pays to Be Like Mike

Friday, September 4, 2009 by Joel Book

Mike’s Express Carwash is a chain of 37 carwashes located across Indiana and Ohio. They recently announced that their email marketing program had enabled the company to boost online sales in June by more than 60 percent over June 2008 totals.

Email gives us a way to reward our loyal customers,” said Sally Grant, marketing director of Mike’s Express Carwash. “We’ve also been able to build a great list of highly-engaged customers and send them special offers and discounts to thank them for their loyalty and drive increased sales.”

What I really like about Mike’s is how they invite the customer to become an email subscriber.

Customers are invited to participate in the email campaign when they purchase a car wash. Every receipt includes a unique offer code and provides a link to the survey site (www.talktomikes.com). Customers log on to the Website, enter the unique receipt code and their email address and then complete a two-question survey. Once the survey is submitted, the data is immediately sent to ExactTarget’s Application Program Interface (API) which automatically triggers an email to the customer that includes a bar-coded coupon for a free car wash. To prevent multiple uses of the same coupon, the company uses ExactTarget’s Live Content feature to automatically generate a new bar-code for every coupon. Data from each coupon barcode is automatically uploaded to Mike’s Express’ point of sale system to ensure the code is only recognized once.

Does this email opt-in strategy work? You bet it does!

In August, Mike’s Car Wash ran a “Back To School” campaign that offered customers a free carwash in exchange for completing an online customer satisfaction survey and subscribing to its email marketing program. The 10-day campaign added more than 40,000 new customers to the company’s email subscriber list!

You Can Be Like Mike

Whether it’s implementing Triggered Email Promotions based on POS Customer Data Capture, or using SMS text messaging to capture new email subscribers, marketers like Mike’s Car Wash are proving that email marketing is smart. And successful email marketing begins with a well-planned subscriber acquisition strategy.

If you want to be like Mike, gives us a call. We'll be happy to help.

Utilize Video to Bring Emails to Life

Thursday, September 3, 2009 by Vince PeGan

After receiving an email yesterday linking me to the video of "Ethan the Laughing Baby," I laughed so hard I nearly cried. When done correctly, video can be the perfect medium for grabbing your customer's attention, even if you don't have a cute laughing baby. Has your company thought about adopting a video email campaign?

A recent article on Email Insider shows how some of the nations biggest brands are using video in their 1 to 1 email marketing campaigns. These companies are using new and dynamic design approaches to showcase their products and services. If you want to learn how to create your own unique email design check out ExactTarget's Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials.

Your video can help drive some serious ROI. Last month a download link in the YouTube hit “JK Wedding Entrance" gave Chris Brown's song Forever a serious boost to 50,000 downloads (up from 3,000 the previous week). So what are you waiting for? Grab a camera and get to work.

To keep up to date with the latest in 1 to 1 marketing news and practices sign up for ET InSight & Scene today.

Email Design Tip of the Week: JavaScript in Email?

Thursday, September 3, 2009 by Andrea Smith

written by Michael Moriarty

Currently, Javascript paired with HTML is more or less the norm on the web as a large percentage of websites use it for high-level functionality. Why then aren’t we seeing more Javascript-infused email campaigns? Is it even possible? Including Javascript in email is possible, but that doesn’t mean it should be included. Let’s examine why.

JavaScript is stripped out of HTML email by default in all major email clients. JavaScript is a powerful vector for executing malicious code on a user’s computer — let’s compare a user’s experience browsing the web against a user browsing their email inbox. A user browsing the web has more control to avoid dangerous websites. If a website looks sketchy, it’s common sense to not click anything except the ‘back’ button. With web, there’s an opportunity to visually inspect a link’s destination or surroundings before clicking anything. Modern browsers also help protect users against phishing and virus-laden websites by letting the user know that they are about to stumble into a dangerous area.

Email, however, puts the control in the hands of the sender. This is one reason why so many malicious emails exist, as opposed to websites. The recipient only has the from name and the subject line to judge whether or not to open an email, both of which can be manipulated by spammers. Spam filters are in place to help mitigate this problem, and while they do a pretty good job, some spam may eventually make it through. JavaScript can be used to perform malicious activities upon email open, so if the from name and subject line are crafted properly, it can be very difficult to avoid being compromised by an email containing malicious JavaScript. As a result, all major email clients strip JavaScript out of emails by default. You can include JavaScript in your email to your hearts content, but doing so could harm your deliverability and cause your email to end up in the junk or spam folder.

Thankfully, JavaScript isn’t necessary to craft a successful email campaign. Consult our design best practices whitepaper if you are having trouble getting the results you expect, or if you DO want to use JavaScript, include it in a landing page — check out our landing page field guide.

return 0;
Mike

Time for some Email Marketing Homework

Friday, August 28, 2009 by Shelly Griffin

Back to School brings back many wonderful memories...crisp autumn air, new clothes, and football. It also brings back memories of homework. Homework methodology varies from student to student. There are the procrastinators that wait until the very last second to complete their homework. Many live by the "all-nighter" rule whether prepping for exams or writing a thesis on "Great Expectations". Then there are those that are completely organized. They have their #2 pencil and pink pearl eraser ready to tackle each and every assignment in precise order - starting at the top of the list of subjects with Physics or Calculus.

For many, email marketing programs seem to follow similar methodologies. There are those that come in to work realizing that they forgot to schedule their email for that day. They scramble to get the content written and the audience prepped. There is no time for testing. As long as the email has been sent on time, the job is done. Homework handed in on time! If a teacher were grading, we would see tons of red pen marks all over this paper - noting every error along the way. Grade for this program? Probably a C.

There are those that prep to the Nth degree following each and every step as declared by industry experts as the "have-to-do's" for a successful email campaign: sending to test lists, analyzing each response, modifying content and re-testing, ensuring proper optimization in each and every email client, and so on and so forth. They are so prepared that they have a hard time actually hitting the send button for the actual email campaign. The grade for this program might be an A for effort, but an F for execution.

My recommendation - make sure your email marketing program is somewhere in between. Don't wait until the last minute but don't prepare so much that nothing gets done. Your homework assignment for this week is to take a few minutes and grade your own email program.

PS - Connections 09 is the perfect study group!

Mike's Express Carwash Leverages Email to Grow Business

Tuesday, August 25, 2009 by Shelly Griffin

Increase Online Sales with Email Coupons

One of my goals for this blog was to share email marketing success stories from some of our small-to-medium size business customers. In keeping with last week's "Back to School" theme, I especially love stories where success was derived from getting back to basics.

A recent story comes from Mike's Express Carwash which boosted their online sales 60% through email. They did a very nice job of leveraging a quick survey to help grow their list, and then a triggered email that included a unique coupon for a free carwash. The really cool thing about this program is that although this particular email campaign was done leveraging some of our more sophisticated applications (Live Content, Triggered Emails, Surveys and API), any business could easily enact a similar email marketing program by leveraging segmentation/groups and tracking.

Learn More about Dynamic Content for Email Marketing.

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