Delta’s 2011 holiday ecard took those who opened the email on a world tour, tying in season’s greetings with Delta destinations. The interface was simple yet inventive, a vertical scroller that users could navigate by swiping, sliding or clicking. Each slide represented a different destination, with a button to click to hear “Happy Holidays” said in the native tongue and other buttons that displayed facts about the city when hovered over.Find the complete list of 2012 OMMA Awards Finalists here.Winners will be announced at the 2012 OMMA Awards reception in New York on October 1, 2012
Ask an email expert any question about email and the response is usually, "It depends. You should A/B test it to find out." No matter what you are testing, following the same set of rules produces the most accurate and replicable results. This list of 10 rules includes advice on how much, how long, what and when to test, as well as tips for interpreting results.
This supermarket chain used email as a way to connect and activate its fans, both in the email content and through heavy Facebook integration. The four-week Holiday Bake-Off Promotion coincided with the winter holiday season. The campaign encouraged people to submit their favorite recipes using Food Lion’s Facebook tab. Once people submitted their recipe — in one of four categories — an email was triggered, real-time, using an API call in ExactTarget. The email had the user-submitted photo and the recipe in a shareable format that linked back to the brand’s Facebook page.Find the complete list of 2012 OMMA Awards Finalists here.Winners will be announced at the 2012 OMMA Awards reception in New York on October 1, 2012
In this and past political seasons, one often-discussed topic is whether it’s OK for a candidate to change his stance on an issue. If candidates change their opinion because their views and assumptions have truly changed and evolved over the years, then I would argue changing one’s views is a positive sign. It can show a willingness to change and evolve as they learn more – through facts, real-world use cases and personal experiences. On the other hand, changing your stance simply to get more votes -- or because that’s the way the wind is blowing -- is cowardly or calculating or both. As I write this column, I hear an interesting story on NPR about the University of West Virginia, which took the counterintuitive step of selling alcohol at football games to reduce drinking and violence. What you say? When the college started selling alcohol inside the stadium, combined with forbidding fans to leave and return to the stadium (thus eliminating underage fans from drinking outside and then coming back in ), drinking-induced issues declined. "In 2010, we made 117 arrests on game days. In this past year, we only made 79. See, that’s almost a 35 percent reduction in arrests we made,” said Bob Roberts, West Virginia University police chief. Now this is only a single sample at one college, so it remains to be seen if this antithetical approach will work at most colleges. But the important takeaway is that the school’s athletic director, Oliver Luck, was willing to think outside the box and try a potentially unconventional approach to solve a serious problem. What does this have to do with email marketing? To encourage you with two ideas: 1. To rethink virtually every aspect of your email program. Ask yourself why things are done a certain way. I often discover when meeting with email marketers that they often aren’t even sure why a particular approach is taken or process is used. Frequently, this is because they’ve inherited the email program from marketers no longer employed at the company -- and no one in the company knows or can remember why the particular approach was taken. 2. Coupled with rethinking aspects of your program is the idea of stepping outside your normal comfort zone and perhaps testing a radical new approach. This doesn’t necessarily mean pushing the envelope so far you risk annoying subscribers and breaking their trust, but do check your old thinking at the door. So what are we talking about? What are some examples of email programs, tactics and processes you may want to consider rethinking?
With fun, engaging creative, Yesmail spread the word about an HP clearance event. At first glance, the email looks like a static email, with art displaying HP products. Then poof! One by one they begin to disappear in a puff of smoke. The playful message that shoppers needed to hurry or miss the best deals was effective: Compared to the same event the year before, the 2012 campaign saw a 132 percent lift in clicks, a 37 percent lift in conversion and generated a 29 percent lift in revenue per message sent, even with a send volume higher than that of the previous year.Find the complete list of 2012 OMMA Awards Finalists here.Winners will be announced at the 2012 OMMA Awards reception in New York on October 1, 2012