Viewing all posts categorized as 'Creative Standouts'

Many of us remember Mad Libs. But how many of us knew that Mad Libs style registration processes can increase form completions?

For those not familiar, Mad Libs are books that have a short story on each page, but with many of the key words replaced with blanks. Beneath each blank is a category, such as noun, verb, place or name. One player asks the other players, in turn, to contribute a random word as specified by each blank, but without revealing the context for that word. Finally, the completed story is read aloud. The result is usually silly and somewhat nonsensical but altogether fun.

A recent article by Luke Wroblewski of Yahoo! Inc. shows how using Mad Libs pays off when designing registration forms. Looking at one registration form before and after switching to a Mad Libs format, the results show that switching to a Mad Libs style form increased form completions by 25-40%. Wroblewski points out that two versions of this form are being used at Vast.com and Kelley Blue Book.

Who knew that forms could be so much fun?

To the chagrin of Dallas Cowboys fans everywhere, the Minnesota Vikings recently advanced in the NFL playoffs. A friend of mine is a diehard Vikings fan and received the email below just as the game ended. (For the record, I verified that my friend is not a bandwagon jumper or Favre follower – but is a 100% certified and valid Vikings fan.)

NFL shop.com did a great job with not only the creative, but the subject line, the time they sent the email, and the segmentation. As far as I can tell only those with a preference set as being a Viking fan received this email.

The subject line was: Your Minnesota Vikings Just Won – Order Now & Get Free Shipping Over $75

There comes a time in most email marketers’ lives when the email address he or she sends from needs to be changed. This change might be warranted because of an IP update, a change to a new email marketing service provider, a hosting update, aesthetic concerns or other reasons.

When a change like this must be made, what should be done? Two of the most critical goals are:

• Do your best to ensure that deliverability does not suffer when you begin sending from the new email address.
• Make sure subscribers recognize that the new ‘from’ address is you and do not hit the spam or unsubscribe button in error.

After a thorough whitelisting process, what’s next? Do you alert your subscribers about the new email address, if so how?

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We have all experienced those times when you go on vacation only to return to an inbox that resembles a wasteland of outdated offers, now-irrelevant messages, and other cyber waste.

DailyCandy has a pretty cool feature to help avoid this mess altogether. They offer a feature where subscribers can pause their email subscriptions for a given duration of time. This is kind of like putting your postal mail delivery on hold while you are on vacation or suspending newspaper delivery (for those who still get a newspaper delivered!). Of course, this technology lends itself better to those senders who email daily, just like the USPS or newspaper companies.

This feature looks to be a win-win because:

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It seems like every holiday season we see companies explore new and creative ways to make their email campaigns stand out from the competition.

This year is proving to be no different. Recently Neiman Marcus Group has made its presence known in inboxes around the world by using large animated GIFs to capture user attention and generate response.

While this marks a new development for Neiman, who have traditionally featured static imagery in their emails, animated GIFs themselves have been around pretty much since the creation of World Wide Web.

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I have been a fan of Southwest Airlines for years. They seem to truly want to please their customers and are always making changes to the way they work to make processes better. Some recent changes that they have made for the better include assigning a boarding range instead of everyone in the boarding group crowding together, taking credit cards for in-flight services, accepting online check-in 24 hours prior to your flight, allowing some pets in the cabin and now improving the post-purchase phase of their email program.

One pet peeve I have had with Southwest in the past is that once I purchased a ticket for a flight online I would get an email confirmation at the point of purchase, but nothing else. My confirmation would then get buried deep in my email inbox. When the time came for my flight and I needed my confirmation number, I would have to go “deep inbox fishing” to find it. This confirmation could be buried under thousands of emails. Now Southwest has changed this process for the better.

Here’s a closer look at what Southwest is doing now:

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Less than 4 days after our Creative Director, Steve Sharp, explained how to design emails to be width-compliant on this very site, something very strange began happening to my email inbox. Every so often I would open my new messages, just minding my own business, when the strangest, most eerie feeling would come over me. I felt as if I was moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. Seeing the contents of my inbox, I realized what had happened. I had just crossed over into…the Twilight Zone.

What could cause such an unusual feeling? Why, it’s the latest Abercrombie and Fitch emails of course!

Yes, just days after Steve explained the rules of keeping email width limited to the tidy confines of the preview pane, Abercrombie went ahead and broke the rules, sending some of the widest side-scrolling emails I have ever seen. And I for one, think that this is a really clever idea because of the smart way in which it was executed.

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