MindComet

Simple Shoes, Simple Emails

I’ve blogged about my love for Simple Shoes’ emails before, and this post will continue that trend.  Their emails are the most consistent—both in style and messaging—that I’ve come across in a while. The email I received from them this afternoon is no different.  Although, it’s just a string of large images (with subtle alt text) with little to no supporting HTML, it still works just fine.  And it really sells the products they’re pushing.  See, Simple is an environment-conscious brand. It seems as if everything they do revolves around impacting the world less.

The messaging focuses on how most shoes uses 2 shot glasses worth of glue PER SHOE.  The shoes and bag within the email only use a “thimble’s full” of glue to hold it together. Stitching joins the seams in this product line, not glue. “The Lesser of Glue Evils” is a genius tagline for this campaign.  It ties everything together cleverly and effectively.

Another reason I love Simple is due to the fact that they also embrace and utilize the most popular forms of social media: facebook, blogger, twitter.  This opens up a direct line to their consumers and supporters of their brand.  I hope more companies follow suit.

Less > more is planted to wrap up the messaging in the email.  For me, this sums up everything I love about their brand… and their emails.

See the email below:

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 25, 2009

Length of Sales Promotions

Im not going to comment on Pet Supermarket’s email template and the best practices they are missing out on, as that’s not what this post is about.  This post is actually going to tell you how their email, sample shown below, is driving me to convert.

When I first received the email promotion from Pet Supermarket, I laughed at the subject line, “Breaking News!!! Sale at Pet Supermarket!!!“.  From this point I knew I wanted to write a post on this email however didn’t know what it was going to be about until today.  eMarketer published an article today titled, The Powerful Potential of Permission-Based E-Mail with a chart on ‘Attitude of US E-Mail Users Toward E-Mail Sent by Companies, 2005’ & 2008, shown below.

The first attitude, ‘I like receiving e-mail from companies I’ve registered with; even if I don’t always read it, it’s good to know it will be there when I’m ready for it’ is what got me to thinking about promotional emails.  So often, I see marketers, retail in particular, use time based communications to persuade customers to shop now.  What Im finding personally is that when I receive these communications, is that they are not relevant to me at the time and when they are, the promotional period has ended.

With that, I went back to Pet Supermarket’s email and saw that they had it all right.  In reading their subject line, “Breaking News…“ I thought any sale they were promoting in the email would have already passed but it turned out the sale is still going on (3 weeks duration).  This got me to reviewing the content of the email.  Sure enough, as I scrolled down, the brand of dog food I buy for my pet (lab/retriever puppy named Fenway) has a promotion running where if I purhcase a bag of dog food, I get a bag of dog treats for free.  Hadn’t I known about this promotion through email, I would have gone to the store, bypassed the weekly store flyer, grabbed the dog food I needed and be on my way but now my puppy will be going home with puppy treats too.

It’s clear from the eMarketer study that email users are saving communications for when they are relevant to them.  With that, until more email marketers start sending more relevant, targeted communications, they must give their customers a reason to come back.

Note - I used the spelling of ‘email’ as ‘E-mail’ when referencing eMarketer.  Don’t they know there’s no capitalization or hyphen?

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 24, 2009

Yahoo Decides What’s Best For Your Emails. Not You.

Yahoo has been inserting their Shortcut links into emails for a while now.  Whether it’s the name of a company, a physical address or a title of a popular book or movie, the blue-dashed links will appear underneath, sending the user to a site they dictate.  This is definitely a plus for the user receiving the email, as it gives them more supporting links and information on the product or brand they opted-in to receive information from.  But for the marketer sending the email, this can ultimately turn out to be a nightmare.  The Shortcut links are untraceable, and may link the email to sites they did not intend to link to.

The best way to combat this issue with Yahoo is to link every possible bit of text that may be misconstrued as a Shortcut link.  This is another great example to TEST your emails in every client and browser you can think of.

If you’ve dealt with any frustrations or successes with Yahoo Shortcut links, comment below!

Thanks to the MailChimp Jungle for inspiration.

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 17, 2009

Is Double Opt In Dead?

The Email Evolution Conference wrapped up just a few days ago in Scottsdale, AZ. I really wish I could’ve been there to soak up all of the rich information and keynotes they had to offer. But since I couldn’t make it, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the outcomes of some the sessions.  A whole slough of topics were covered—more specifically being opt-in standards and practices.

Now there’s always been a debate between single and double opt-in methods… There are pros and cons to both, but DOI has been the agreed standard among the majority of email marketers for some time now.  But as it turns out, DOI as the standard may be a bit outdated.

I understand why most would think this is outdated and inefficient… it’s an extra step the user has to take to receive emails from your brand. This lends itself to minor list growth, which is really never a positive thing.  The potential drop-off of DOI has the potential to be pretty high.  For example, it could fall into the spam folder.  It also has the potential to be delivered, but end up overlooked by the perspective user—forever sitting in email sign-up purgatory.

Furthermore, many spammers use “double opt in emails” as a ploy to dupe unsuspecting email addresses into signing up for services they never asked to be apart of in the first place. This of course cause ISPs to block any email that may be considered a DOI message.

But with all this, I’m not sure that this being a blanketed, core practice for everyone to follow is the best idea, as Bill McCloskey reported. This should all be done on a case-by-case basis, depending on what your campaign’s goals are!

If you’re looking to send your message to as many people as possible—no matter what their demographic or background is—then yes, by all means use single opt in.  But if deliverability is important to you and your clients, then I believe precautions need to made in order to lower your bounce rates and consequently raise your open and click-throughs.  One way this can be done is to employ the DOI method of user acquirement.  It’ll weed out inactive and invalid addresses, and you’ll have a much stronger and reliable list.

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 13, 2009

Gmail Unveils Multi Pane Viewing

Being the masters of all things related to email organization, Gmail has yet again outdone themselves.  They now have a new feature which allows users to simultaneously view multiple panes within one window.  You can save searches based on labels, which makes Gmail even more efficient for existing users and appealing for non-converted.

All you have to do is activate Gmail Labs, then enable Multiple Inboxes and click saves changes.

From there enter the “code” of your label by searching for “label:coworkers”.  Anything that’s tagged with “coworkers” will pop up in a separate pane.  It also allows you to integrate multiple searches such as “is:drafts OR is:sent”.

With labels & themes, and now with multiple panes, Gmail is undoubtedly paving the way for the ultimate in email personalization.

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 06, 2009