MindComet

The Magic Comeback

Last month, I received a co-branded email from T-Mobile and the Orlando Magic, promoting their “Shot of a Lifetime” campaign.  I was noticeably upset with what I saw in the email; no hard-coded HTML text, no opt out link, no physical address; just one image.  It was a failure on all fronts.  With the promotion coming to a close in two weeks, another email was sent as a last ditched effort to generate interest in the campaign. The email I received this morning is almost the EXACT OPPOSITE of what I received in March.

It seems like the person(s) responsible for the Magic’s email marketing efforts took notice of our post and turned their final “Shot of a Lifetime” email around 180°.  This time around the email has separate links for their rules & privacy policy, HTML text, a physical address and the oh-so-important unsubscribe link.  Their subject line “This Is Your Last Chance To Enter Into T-Mobile’s “Shot Of A Lifetime” Contest” is still a little long, but does inject a much-needed sense of urgency to garner opens.

It’s good to see that the Magic and their promotions division are taking emails more seriously.  Here’s to them taking the Sixers in 5!

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Posted by MindComet on Apr. 23, 2009

I Love Good Lookin’ Emails

Although some of the emails below don’t follow design best practices (they consist of single images), they all left an impression on me. 

The most impressive design came from the NHL a few weeks ago.  This email celebrated Martin Brodeur as the most winningest goalie in NHL history.  The “chk” marks are a nice, subtle and effective way to communicate all of his wins.  The three buttons towards the footer all revolve around Brodeur: his history, merchandise and you can even send him your very own congratulatory email.

Apple has always been a design-oriented company.  From their products, to their marketing to their emails; their impact on the design world—especially the last eight years—is undeniable.  You can see their influence just about everywhere these days (most notably the deck of the new USS Enterprise).  The email below was sent when the new iPod shuffle was released.  The email has the perfect balance of images vs. text, sells the product well with the “small talk” feature tagline, and provides a guided tour of the miniscule companion. This is one well-executed email.

This email from MacHeist really impressed me. As I just mentioned, Apple’s design influence can be seen everywhere… especially in this email.  Although it has a more loud and fun feel to it, its still consistent Apple’s look & feel.  Much like the Brodeur email, the MacHeist email consists mostly of images.  Again, its not the smartest strategy to have a sales email where 80% of its contents are images—but, that’s neither here nor there.  The point is this still looks good!

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Posted by MindComet on Apr. 13, 2009

Hold True to Your Offer

I love food, who in their right mind doesn’t?  When it hits the lunch hour I’m usually one of the first in our companie’s breakroom preparing whatever it is I brought from home.  Typically four out of the five work days, you can find me microwaving a Lean Cuisine meal.  They are quick and easy, low in calories and have found the ones that appease my taste buds allowing me to purchase them week after week without growing tired of the taste.  OK, so you get it so far, I’m a big brand advocate.  Yet the other day I was visiting their site to check out some of the nutritional information on one of my meals and stumbled across their email sign which although was nicely put together I was let down.  Here’s why. 

The newsletter sign up is made prominent on the home page of the site and calls out what to expect (news, coupons and more) - the word ‘coupons’ catches my eye considering the amount of products I buy week after week. 

I sign up and immediately receive my welcome message which I anticipated.  Sure enough, the email continues to meet my expectations, the email contains news, a coupon call to action and additional tools to benefit from.  Again, being interested in the coupon offer I click through and am abruptly disappointed.  The campaign is over and although I just signed up and was expecting this coupon offer to be apart of my new subscription, it turns out to be a false advertisment.  Really, I should care less, the coupon was only for $1 off, but Im more let down that the offer is no longer valid. 

With that, I wanted to share my feedback with Lean Cuisine, coming from an email marketing standpoint and regular customer, I want to share my input so they can make their program better and keep customers happy.  I go to hit reply and notice the ‘from address’ is meaning to me no one is on the other end of this communication and if I spend the time providing my input, it’s going to go to email outer space.  What Lean Cuisine could have done was provide an address that customers are able to respond to making them feel that this is in fact a two way communication.  Instead Lean Cuisine took a different route and it works as well.  At the bottom of the email, they ask for feedback through a rating system.  So I click on the number that I felt the email deserved and was pleasantly taken to a page where I can add additional input.  It would do Lean Cuisine no good if I gave them a rating of 1 without being able to explain why. 

Although I’m slightly disappointed Lean Cuisine isn’t going to lose me as a customer, I just hope my input is put to good use and Lean Cuisine sees that customers do find great value in a welcome offer (something many brands still miss the mark on) and takes the corrective measure in not only fixing their existing one but giving out an incentive regardless of how small the offer is for becoming a subscriber.

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Posted by MindComet on Apr. 09, 2009

Goodmail Merges Video and Email

Video in email is inevitable and that inevitability is now closer than ever before.  And I’m talking legitimate video in email here, unlike the Gmail YouTube feature I covered last week. Don’t get me wrong, I still think the Gmail YouTube feature is a step in the right direction, but Goodmail’s newly announced video service is definitely some next level ish.

Goodmail CEO Peter Horan says:

“Americans watched more than 14 billion online videos this past January alone. With CertifiedVideo, consumers can now watch videos within their e-mail in-box without having to click to an external Web site, and brands can tap into shifting media consumption habits and craft truly interactive, e-mail 3.0 marketing campaigns,“

For $5 per 1k emails (CPM), you can embed a video into email and it will actually work when sent to any AOL, Yahoo, Cox, Roadrunner or Comcast subscribers. You can check out their demo here. It can support and stream of SWF and FLV files, using Adobe Flash to play them.  Now $5 per 1k is a little pricey, but just think of the potential return you’ll get using video in your email.

The power and influence of online video is undeniable and email still garners the highest ROI of any other form of direct digital marketing. It’s a match made in heaven.

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Posted by MindComet on Apr. 02, 2009