Email Marketing Voodoo

Aug31

call to action, must subscribe, rei

Must Subscribe: REI - A Lesson in Call to Action

REI has always been consistent in their email-marketing. They tend to try new things, which I always respect them for. For example, their implementation of animated gifs (as a replacement for embedded video) was brilliant. That is something I’ve been dying to test and apply to one of our future campaigns.

REI’s sales emails have the same look & feel (wireframe, font selection, etc), but differ enough from one to the next so each one grabs my attention in their own unique way. The email they sent on Friday afternoon sucked me right in. See below:

Everything about this email screams “BUY BUY BUY!!! CLICK!!! BUY!!!!“ From the stark “SALE” text with the father and his two kids riding their mountain bikes to the “sale & clearance” navigation link to the sub call to action consisting of a “SUPER CLEARANCE”... they all get the point across. The point being, “click through and save & spend money with REI!“.

Some might argue this email is desperate and may come across as being a bit obnoxious and pushy… maybe so. But it worked on me, as I’m the happy owner of a new Half Dome Tent. I wasn’t really in the market for a new tent really… but I was compelled enough to click through, saw the tent, saw how much I was saving and couldn’t help myself.

I think a lot of B2C companies can learn from REI’s emails in general. Their call to action strategy is solid, but so are other aspect of their designs. They always include links for mobile / text versions, their email navigation reflects their site’s navigation and they embrace all of the major social media sites. All of these components are absolutely necessary for a successful email campaign.

If you haven’t already, you should sign up for their emails here.

Aug11

esp, campaign monitor, hack

Campaign Monitor Hacked

In lieu of what was reported by Campaign Monitor today, I must ask… has this ever happened to a major ESP before? And if so, has it ever happened so publicly? Either way, I’m impressed with the level of transparency they’ve shown with this debacle.

I hope they don’t lose too much business over this… they deliver an extremely effective product & service, especially for small businesses and designers. It’d be a shame if this caused them to downsize, and in effect, lead them to be less ground-breaking in the world of email. In the past, their blog has provided many useful findings in client testing as well as being one of the most prominent purveyors of the Email Standards Project. I also hope they track down and find the hackers who compromised their system. They at least deserve that much from all of the money they have already or will potentially lose.

We’ve got your backs. Good luck!

Aug04

preferences, reebok

Reebok’s Preference Center

No one enjoys filling out forms… at all. I don’t care what it’s for; it’s always a tedious and mind-numbing experience. Just about every website that requires a login has the same boring form waiting to be filled out: name, email, password, address, birthday, gender… you know the type.

Reebok‘s site, however, is not “run-of-the-mill” or typical in any way… especially their sign up process. Since they make sporting equipment for a variety of athletic endeavors, they give users the option to scale up or down their interest in a specific sport. If you are an avid basketball player you can slide your level up to 10. If you train in the off-season, you can slide fitness & training to 6. You get the idea. There’s also a color preference and an “on the field / off the field” setting. This determines where you’re most likely to wear their products: off the field or on the field. Clever stuff. I signed up last week and I’ve yet to receive anything from Reebok other than the confirmation email. I’m hoping the messages I receive reflect my interest settings.

What Reebok is doing is very smart. They’re surveying their users for future product development as well as potentially messaging their users on a very specific and personal level. It’s a win-win. And to get back to my original point: I wasn’t bored stiff by filling this form out. It was an interesting user experience which kept me engaged and on their site for a good fifteen minutes longer than I normally would be.

Has anyone else seen any unique email sign up forms?

MindComet