Can you guess which brand veered from their usual imaging and sent this patriotic email image to promote a sale?

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Can Michelle Obama single-handedly save the fashion industry? Some have suggested, rather dramatically, that the fate of all fabric hangs on the new first lady’s shoulders. All of the coverage surrounding political fashion this year seems a little overkill, if you ask me.

But taking a look at my email inbox today, I realize there might be a bit more weight behind this theory than I originally thought. 

Spiegel went all-in on the presidential festivities, offering to “Get Michelle’s First-Lady Look For Less” in their subject line, followed by images of Mrs. Obama alongside similar outfits by Spiegel. Meanwhile, the folks at InStyle also got into the mix, dedicating their Look Of The Day to the First Lady and her multiple outfits. 

I can’t figure out if hitching your business wagon to a political figure is a smart business move, but surely time will tell. It’s definitely an email trend worth keeping an eye on in the next year or so.

We all know what our branding exercises say about our companies, but how do we know if our customers are absorbing the message? One way would be to follow the lead of Axe Body Spray (a.k.a. Lynx, for those of you in the UK), who was recently the subject of a scientific study by the International Journal of Cosmetic Science.

According to a recent Ad Age report, the marketing behind Axe’s product lines produces a placebo effect among its male users, making them feel more attractive and more confident, which in turn leads female observers to note their confidence and rate them as more attractive than their competing non-Axe suitors. To put it succinctly, Axe Body Spray works — not because it smells great to women, but because men believe it does. 

Regardless of how you feel about their products or message, you’ve got to hand it to their marketing team. While their TV spots are probably their most memorable, the brand does an excellent job of extending that identity across print, the web, although to a lesser extent, email. 

As Stephen Colbert pointed out on Monday, if spraying Axe on something makes it more attractive, why can’t we just spray some Axe on the economy and forget this bailout business?

An interesting story trickled out in today’s New York Times about AT&T using less-than-responsible mobile messaging tactics in a recent American Idol campaign.

AT&T sent the promotional message to a “significant number” of its subscribers but did not seem to apply traditional opt-in practices to this campaign. Apparently, their standards of what constitutes spam is different from what email marketers consider it to be, with their corporate spokesman going so far as to assert that “it couldn’t be more open and transparent.”

Mr. Siegel said the message went to subscribers who had voted for “Idol” singers in the past, and other “heavy texters.” He said the message could not be classified as spam because it was free and because it allowed people to decline future missives.

First of all, what exactly is a “heavy texter?” That sounds like some sort of text messaging addict who needs a 12-step treatment program. And second, how can you blindly justify sending these people communications as if they’d opted-in?

While I’m not a compliance expert, I would guess that AT&T could have saved themselves a boatload of trouble by sending the message only to previous Idol texters, and then phrasing their message as a request to opt-in more than a straight advertisement. If I was running the show over there, my 160 characters would have gone something like this: “American Idol is back! Calling all past Idol voters: visit us online at (web address) to find out more. Would you like to receive future messages from us? Opt-in at (short code) or ignore this message to be removed.” 

That would have been rather easy, no?

Do you ever wish your marketing emails drove more of your total website traffic? If so, I have great news on how you can finally achieve this goal: start working for a dating website.

Here’s a statistical anomaly that will make your head spin: websites in the “Lifestyle” category receive twice as much web traffic from email as “Entertainment” or “Travel” industries. I discovered this while poking around in the Hitwise application to see which industries rely most heavily on email to drive traffic to their websites. Apparently, the “Lifestyle” industry is head and shoulders above the rest (see the pink line, below) when it comes to email driving traffic (probably due to high clickthrough performance). And not just by a little bit, either.

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