This week, ExactTarget launched the 21st research report in our SUBSCRIBERS, FANS, & FOLLOWERS series: The Digital North. This cross-channel report covers the online habits and preferences of online Canadian consumers, through detailed analyses of the channels they check daily and the communication methods they respond to best.

If Canadian consumers are part of the target audience for your digital marketing campaigns, you'll want to download this free report to power those campaigns with critical statistics and numbers. But even if Canadians aren't a primary audience for your brand, the...

This is one in a series of columns exploring the examples and trends highlighted in The Best of the Email Swipe File.

Anthropologie

Type: Promotional email
Send date: 3/15/13
Subject line: Denim on the rise | Free shipping

“This email proves the adage that a picture’s worth a thousand words by making it super easy to see at a glance the difference between Anthropologie’s different denim styles. For good measure, they also include some words, offering advice on what to wear with each style.”
—Chad White, Principal of Marketing Research

View this Anthropologie email on Pinterest >>

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Lan...

This is one in a series of columns exploring the examples and trends highlighted in The Best of the Email Swipe File.

Levi’s

Type: Promotional email
Send date: 4/9/13
Subject line: Denim Die-Hards‏

“Partnering with fashion website Refinery29 to get their interpretation of 501 jeans for the photo gallery presentation in this email is just the beginning of this social-driven campaign. Subscribers are asked, ‘What’s your interpretation?’ and encouraged to upload photos of themselves styling 501s, and ultimately asked to vote on a Pinterest-inspired landing page to determine which finalist is the...

This is one in a series of columns exploring the examples and trends highlighted in The Best of the Email Swipe File.

Zulily

Type: Welcome email series
Send date: Q1/2013
Subject lines:

1st welcome: Get shopping credit! Invite your pals to join zulily too
2nd welcome: Go ahead ... play favorites
3rd welcome: Anytime. Anywhere. Take zulily with you.
4th welcome: Calling all social butterflies
5th welcome: Smart shopping is your superpower

“With the vast majority of marketers still sending a single welcome email, Zulily is well ahead of the curve with this five-email welcome series that seeks a closer...

This is one in a series of columns exploring the examples and trends highlighted in The Best of the Email Swipe File.

TOMS Shoes

Type: Promotional email
Send date: 4/12/2013
Subject line: New Ballet Flats & free shipping on all orders!

“The really interesting thing about TOMS’ use of responsive design in this email is that the hero image is animated only in the narrow screen version, with the shoes changing as the feet push back and forth. They are serving up a mobile-sized gif instead of cramming a desktop-sized gif onto a mobile screen, keeping the load time as quick as possible.”
—Kristina...

A swipe file is a record of your top-performing campaigns that you return to for learnings and ideas. It was this concept that inspired us to create the Email Swipe File on Pinterest, where we share the emails and landing pages that excite and impress us. In The Best of the Email Swipe File, we highlight the 20 examples from the past year that we love most:

1. Kickstarter email and landing page
2. TOMS Shoes email
3. Moosejaw email
4. Reiss email
5. Jetsetter preference page
6. Fitbit notification email
7. Lowe’s progressive profiling email
8. IVCi email
9. Zulily welcome email series
10. Foursquare welcome home triggered email
11. Crutchf...

Email is the foundation of online communication—after all, according to recent studies, more than 90% of online consumers subscribe to a brand via email. (Stats come from the 2013 Global Executive Summary, part of the SUBSCRIBERS, FANS, & FOLLOWERS research series that compares and contrasts the digital marketing habits of international consumers.)

But what are consumers hoping to receive in their inboxes when they subscribe to a brand’s email program? What brand messages are they most likely to open and read? When we look at the top “Motivations to Subscribe” across various countries, there...

As the sun rises across each time zone, where do consumers start their online day? Your customers' activities first thing in the morning can reveal their priorities and motivations (whether those are business-, social-, or news-oriented), and also provide an indication of how and when to engage with them.

In our 2013 Global Executive Summary, we compare and contrast the findings of our award-winning SUBSCRIBERS, FANS, & FOLLOWERS research series to bring you insight into what consumers worldwide are doing in the morning, as well as how they spend their time on multiple digital marketing...

That is a familiar image, isn't it? The well-traveled, world-weary suitcase, littered with stickers from places visited from Alaska to Zimbabwe. The trusty suitcase that is lugged from state to state and country to country: it may be battered and bruised, but it serves its owner well as they globe-trot across the world.

I used to be envious of the owners of those suitcases. That image motivated me to have my own beat-up, decorated travel companion to visit far off places with.

I have been living outside of America for almost nine years now. I lived in Sydney, Australia for just under five years...

As we head into the busy summer travel season, travel brands will be looking for ways to connect with consumers. Of course, brands are constantly chided to avoid over-communicating with their opted-in subscribers. Even after consumers have subscribed to your brand's email or chosen to "like' you on Facebook, your brand's connection with them remains tenuous, because they can break off the relationship at any time.

A major temptation for some brands is to over-communicate with customers, inundating them with offers, deals, product news, and just about anything else that marketers believe could...

It’s amazing to think that just a little over two decades ago, consumers had only two options to communicate across long distances: telephone and mail. In today’s mobile, post-PC world, consumers have countless ways to communicate with each other.

They have similar options when it comes to communicating with brands. The question is, how do consumers determine the proper channel for their communication needs? The decision appears to boil down to six factors:

CONTENT: Is this a marketing message?
As we document throughout the Channel Preference Survey, consumers are much more selective about the...

Chances are you don’t wear the same kinds of clothing today as you did when you were a teenager. And much like wardrobes, the channel preferences of consumers evolve and mature with age. Without major life responsibilities (e.g,. a job, a spouse, a mortgage), teens have lots of time on their hands to communicate (and dress) as they please.

Teens are more likely than any other age group to use text messaging, Facebook, and Twitter. They are also more likely to communicate through a greater number of channels on a daily basis, picking the right channel based on speed, convenience, and privacy.

When...

Digital channels have revolutionized the way we communicate with our customers. We’re all in hot pursuit of new and innovative ways to effectively deliver the right messages, through the right channels, at the right time.

At ExactTarget, we recognize that creating and maintaining relationships with consumers requires more than clever writing and glossy marketing materials. To truly connect with customers, marketers need to understand both consumer behaviors and motivations. That’s why we went straight to the source and asked consumers how they view and use each unique communication medium.

Five...

When it comes to daily usage of various online channels, our Marketers from Mars research reveals some interesting trends and differences between marketers and consumers. In many ways, usage rates follow similar trends of prior reports, with email, text, Facebook, and Twitter rounding out the top four.

What’s interesting to note is the higher rates of consumer usage in emerging channels such as Pinterest, Instagram, and Foursquare. While marketers use nearly every digital platform more frequently than consumers, these platforms show different usage patterns.

If consumers are there, should...

In researching our recent report, Marketers from Mars, we found that the majority of marketers and consumers are generally positive about the way the internet is evolving to benefit consumers. When it comes to issues of online privacy, over three quarters of both marketers and consumers agree that it’s a big concern.

However, our research suggests that the root causes for privacy concerns differ between marketers and consumers. Marketers’ concerns tend to stem from their knowledge about the amount of data that’s available online. Consumers’ fears tend to originate from a lack of knowledge about...

Marketers need to understand that they do just about everything online more than the average consumer--and they must be careful not to apply their professional "explorer" behaviors to consumers as a whole. In our recent whitepaper, Marketers from Mars, we studied how this fundamental difference translates to activity on email, Facebook, and Twitter.

When it comes to Twitter, we have a channel with its identity still very much in flux. Its development stages are the perfect time for experimentation, and its fast pace means that marketers can see results--both positive and negative--very quickly....

Each Thursday at 11am EST, marketers from around the world join the ExactTarget user community on Twitter for a conversation about trends and campaign ideas across the interactive marketing industry. We call this virtual coffee chat the ExactTarget Café.

During a recent #ETCafe chat, we discussed how user research can help ensure customer engagement. Led by our featured guest, Lisa Dragin, the Research and Customer Experience Director at Precision Dialogue (@pd_engage), the #ETCafe community discussed different forms of email research. Precision Dialogue was able to share some great techniques...

These days, nearly everyone I know owns a smartphone. People (and myself included) are switched on 24/7. We can access email, social media, and other online content anytime, anywhere.

Marketers are finally catching on to this trend worldwide and are starting to target mobile devices in their planning. According to The State of Digital Marketing in Australia, marketers will be dedicating up to half of their marketing budget to digital activities in 2013. How incredible is that? And for a channel that wasn’t even on marketers’ radar five years ago. Anyway, here are the three themes from the...

Communication is changing and changing rapidly. Consumers are awash in technology (desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets) that facilitates unprecedented mobility and social connectivity. And mobility is leading the charge. 

We believe that 2013 will be the year of mobile return on investment. Marketers have already invested the resources into experimenting with content marketing throught mobile and now is the time to act.

We had the pleasure of partnering with Compendium and the Marketing Tech Blog to produce this infographic on content marketing in the mobile age. Below you will find the...

I'm pleased to announce the release a new collection Inspired Marketing Predictions for 2013, specific to Australia. The guide features predictions for emerging trends across email, mobile, social, cross-channel, and marketing automation from industry leaders, including Jeff Bullas, Chris Baumann, and Iggy Pintado, as well as thought leaders from Adobe, Microsoft, ExactTarget, and the Direct Marketing Association.

“The new year provides new opportunities for marketers to create innovative customer experiences that build loyalty and deliver business results across email, mobile, social media,...