MindComet

Snapfish: A/B Testing Fail

I’ve been a subscriber of Snapfish’s emails for a good year and a half now.  Overall, I’ve been content with their emails (although they do have a tendency to over-send sometimes).  And lately, it seems as though their content has become less and less relevant to me.

Smart email marketers always conduct some sort of A/B testing to determine how their subscriber base reacts to certain aspects of email.  Whether it’s a varying subject line or call to action; knowing what your customers like and how they react is crucial to a successful campaign.

But what happens when you send both the “A” test AND the “B” test to the same subscriber?  Well, they tend to opt out or report you as SPAM…  Which is what I had to do last Friday.

I first received an email at 9:47am with the subject line “Start school with 20% off a photo calendar” with a CTA that read “new school year, new calendar!“.  Not really interested or relevant since I’m not in school.  I also need to mention that I had received this same exact email 5 days prior.  Frustration was starting to set in.
Then 4 hours later I received yet another email which looked very similar.  The subject line this time around read “Just 3 days left - 20% off photo calendars” and the call to action was “Get 20% off on Calendars”.  This email is more my speed, but by this time I had overlooked the offer since I was so annoyed.
This is sloppy email marketing, plain and simple.  Always make sure you split your database down the middle and exclude any subscribers from the previously sent list.  This prevents any duplicates and overlap in your subscriber base.

And I’m sorry to say that Snapfish has lost this subscriber.  And if this issue was across the board, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who hovered over and clicked the “unsubscribe” link.

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Posted by MindComet on Sep. 02, 2008

Beginning of the End at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit

After a long day yesterday of gaining some great knowledge on various aspects of email marketing as well as a networking gala, we are diving right back into it this morning!  We just attended the first presentation of the morning here at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit, from Pam McHugh from Mintel.  Her presentation was on a New Proprietary Study: How Consumers Interact with Email.  She had some great stats and info to share. 

As mentioned various times throughout each day, she began discussing the daily challenges we see as email marketers.  Two main topics she discussed was Subject Lines and Frequency. 

“Subject lines transcends familiarity,” is something that sort of echoed in the room when Pam made the statement.  Her role is to study email marketing and they have found that subject lines can get you past the reader not knowing who the sender is.  A reader is more likely to open the email if the subject line is relevant and catching. 

When she touched on frequency, which is a very touchy subject around email, there were some interesting points she mentioned.  Consumers reported a high tolerance for multiple communications if their perceived relationship with the company was high.  They were more than likely to tolerate up to 9 emails a month.  This did not necessarily mean the emails would be opened, but they would not get annoyed that they were receiving them.  If the perceived relationship with the company was lower, the tolerance or receiving emails was significantly lower.

On to more breakout sessions here at the Summit, more to come!!!

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 26, 2008

Day Two - Email Marketing Summit

Although we are in Miami, the heat isn’t on…Yesterday we attended an all day email certification course put on by Marketing Experiments which was great and so was the temperature of the room.  Today, its like Im back in the office and its 67 degrees.  I guess going from 400 people yesterday to over 800 today, they felt the need to accommodate or perhaps the fact that it’s in the 80’s and only February.  Coming from Orlando, we didnt think the temp. would change as much as it has.  Don’t get me wrong, I love 80 degree whether but the Summit isn’t being held out on the beach but I’m going to leave that in my feedback that next year it should .  Anyway, just so I don’t confuse you and make you think we changed our blog from an email marketing blog to a weather blog we’ll get on to the good stuff.

Today was the official start to MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Summit which started off with a Research Keynote from Stefan Tornquist, the Research Director of MarketingSherpa.  Stefan provided the group with key takeaways on some tactics to follow this year as it relates to email marketing.  One that I found was interesting was shortening the subject line.  I completely agree that the subject line should try to stay under the 45 character limit which has been the previous standard however getting shorter than that, gets tough.  However, I do agree that subject lines need to be short so it will only encourage our team to work harder at keeping the sub. lines short and to the point. 

Later in the day I sat in on a thirty minute session put on by Cori Mozilo, the Interactive Marketing Manager of Cold Stone Creamery.  We didn’t get any ice cream however she did enlighten the group on how she uses a different vendor for each of her interactive needs.  Her internal team only consists of three resources so it makes sense in her case.  The main takeaway I received from Cori was that regardless of your situation or how big your team is, if you have the right experts, internal or external you can execute campaigns to be over the top successful.

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 25, 2008

Miami, Here We Come!

Only 3 days until our email marketing team arrives at MarketingSherpa’s Annual Email Marketing Summit in Miami!

We are so excited for all of the email info we can fit into our ears!  Hopefully a lot of our readers will be attending as well, but if you are not and would like real-time updates, I will be blogging live from the Summit! I will be sharing breaking news from the presentations, workshops, and one on one interviews, so make sure you stop by the blog a couple of times each day to receive great info and updates.  If you have any specific requests, don’t hesitate to leave a comment and I will follow-up.

Until then, to get your fill on some email marketing news, check out a special report MarketingSherpa just released: “Dirty Dozen: Email Newsletter Mistakes That Nearly Everyone Makes”. It’s available only in PDF so download here: http://DirtyDozenPR.MarketingSherpa.com

This report has samples of well-known, frequently made mistakes that happen with email newsletter campaigns and messaging as well as examples of companies who are doing newsletter emails correctly.  It will help you understand why your newsletters need to change in order to keep results moving and examples of what you need to change to show successful results.  This report touches on mobile readers, increasing revenue by focusing on good deliverability and subject line importance.  It is a great read for any email marketer who is looking for direction to increase newsletter campaign success.

Stay Tuned!!!

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 21, 2008

The Axe Effect: Using SPAM to Their Advantage?

A co-worker recently passed me a link to a video showing one of the most creative (yet spammiest) email campaigns I’ve ever seen.  The campaign is for Axe Body Spray in Germany.  It’s a viral campaign which when the referred user gets the email and clicks on the link embedded within, they’re sent to a landing page which displays a can of Axe Body Spray.  When you click on the can, it plays a songs and animates.

Then…

The user gets 15 emails from women, all with subject lines along the lines of “Hmm… hot computer! But not as hot as you =)”  and “Can you do me a favor? Then I can give you my flavor!” with the final email being “You just got the AXE EFFECT!”

Now, this is an extremely creative and unique way to go about a viral email campaign, but it’s a very risky move… the agency who came up with this campaign obviously didn’t take Can-Spam compliance laws into consideration when they were executing this.  I’m sure many major email clients blocked the IP this email was being sent from.

Do you think the benefits outweigh the risks in this case?

Check out the video here.

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Posted by MindComet on Nov. 15, 2007

Where’s the Call to Click Through?

I received an email today from RedEnvelope, a great place for unique gifts. I was a bit discouraged and confused by their message. Their subject line read, “Last Chance - First Glance”. The reason Im confused is because I hadnt seen any other previous messages come through so how could this be my last chance? So I opened the email and its for their summer sale. Do they have that robust of a tracking system in place where they know I havent visited in a while, and even if they did, the subject line has still discouraged me in that I should be receiving more frequent email updates on their sales opposed to having to visit the site to find out. Lastly, here is how the message read:

So you would think the RedEnvelope in red would be the clickable links yet its the “summer sale” text that is clickable.  Maybe they are trying to keep this sale a secret.  As for the first glance, its about launching their new website.  At least they are giving me proper notice on their site launch so Im not completely surprised next time I visit, Ill give them that.

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Posted by MindComet on Aug. 14, 2007