Viewing all posts categorized as 'Industry Trends'

From a designer’s point of view, emails could be described in their broadest sense as a series of rectangles with content inside of them. Just think of your email template’s wireframe — it’s a series of black and white-filled rectangles, right? When you think of it, nearly everything designed for viewing on a screen follows the laws of the rectangles and color fills, but that’s not necessarily the way it has to be.

A recent design trend that I’ve been intrigued by is the use of textures, uneven edges and off-kilter layers to create a more organic feel to email campaigns.

American Eagle has really been at the cutting edge of this trend. Their campaigns use all three of these techniques, plus handwritten fonts and drop shadows (rather than frames), to make their imagery stand out in the inbox. The innovative use of curled photographs and plaster background textures add even more intrigue to the design. I love the way the background texture blends into the white naturally.

Going one step further, American Eagle’s sister brands are getting in on the fun as well. 77kids utilize a linen-style background rather than a plaster one, along with heavily distressed photo borders and paper clips. It’s a unified look for the master brand and the individual brand, and manages to look home-made yet modern. Read More »

Games of chance, and the allure of winning big, have captivated humans for as far back as anyone can remember. From the infamous, and often crooked shell game to making it big on Wheel of Fortune, people love to take risks with the hope of a big reward.

I have noticed a similar big payoff reward in email marketing involving mystery savings. The idea is simple. Offer your subscribers the chance to win big savings, cash, or prizes. All they need to do is click a link, go to a store with a code, or enter a code at checkout. The catch is that only a small percentage of the recipients will be a big winner.

Below are a few email creative examples utilizing this idea. There are a variety of ways that a campaign like this can be run. One way is to break up your subscriber list and send each segment a different offer. You could send 50% of your list the worst offer, 30% the second worst, 20% the next best, and 10% the best offer. The segmentation on this type of campaign is almost limitless. Have fun and take a chance on this type of email campaign! Let us know your thoughts and experiences with mystery savings emails.

I really enjoy checking my inbox during the month of March. Unlike other times of the year when everyone tends to focus on the same predictable “milestone” holidays — Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, etc. — March is the one time of the year when different brands choose to highlight various events in seemingly unpredictable way. You just never know which holidays (both official and non-official) are going to get picked up by each of your favorite brands.

I’m not sure if I can discern a pattern or explain why each brand chooses to align itself with a particular event, but I can certainly say that I enjoy being surprised by each brand’s choices. You just never know what you’re going to get, which is sort of refreshing given how predictable and cyclical the email business is.

Let’s have a look at some emails that hit my inbox in just the past few days:

Last week marked the beginning of the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, which has become an unofficial holiday of sorts for many sports fans in the U.S.. I was intrigued to see GNC, a nutritional supplement retailer, give “March Madness” the full-on holiday treatment in its email campaigns. But there they were, talking hoops with their customers like they were selling basketball sneakers rather than, say, protein shakes and iron pills.

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It is refreshing to see how many companies and email marketers have forgone their normal creative and rigorous mailing schedules to assist with earthquake relief in Haiti. Some organization simply added a link or image asking for help, while others dedicated entire emails and product lines to help Haitians in need. Over the past few weeks there have been a variety of help Haiti emails. Organizations such as Omaha Steaks, Coldwater Creek, Buy.com, Ralph Lauren, Sport Chalet, Overstock.com plus many more have shown their support.

Here are some creative and subject line examples:

Coldwater Creek
Subject Line: Join us in Haiti’s recovery effort.

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The numbers are in, and it seems that this year’s Cyber Monday frenzy consisted mostly of the same old song and dance that we’ve seen in the past. (This, of course, is in addition to the trends we commented on earlier regarding Black Friday email spikes) Based on the analysis of 170 clients across all industries between 2006 – 2009 for the time period of the Sunday before Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, email marketers sent Cyber Monday promotions (surprise!) earlier and more often than ever before.

Ok, so maybe the headlines are not such a shock to the system. But looking at the overall data in the context of Thanksgiving week and Black Friday, we do see some nuanced trends worth noting alongside the larger stories that we’re all familiar with by now. These trends include:

• Overall volume growth. There was a 28 percent increase in email volume from the Sunday before Thanksgiving through the end of Cyber Monday. This has been a consistent theme throughout past Cyber Mondays.
• Early-bird catches the worm. The lifts in volume on the days just before Cyber Monday were even higher than those before Black Friday, further solidifying the trend of earlier promotional mentions and previews of shopping specials before the actual promotions begin.
• Rise and shine. Similar to Black Friday, over 50 percent of emails were sent prior to 8am EST. In related news, how much longer can Folgers brand coffee rightfully claim to be “the best part of waking up?”

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The dust has settled from Black Friday, and the results are as interesting as you’d expect at this time of year. The big holiday push kicked into high gear over the course of last week, and all of the retail hoopla translated into more marketing mania than ever before.

Based on the analysis of 170 clients across all industries between 2006 – 2009, Experian CheetahMail has made the following determinations about the week of Black Friday:

• Email volumes increased by 24 percent for the week of Thanksgiving 2009  as compared to the same week in 2008.
• The trend of emailing more leading up to Black Friday continued in 2009 just as it had in 2008. However, the volume totals for several of these days — the Sunday, Monday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving, along with Thanksgiving Day — were much higher in 2009 than last year.
• 50 percent of emails were sent prior to 8 am each day. Of the dates examined during this time period, Black Friday had the most even distribution of send time between midnight and noon.
• Black Friday itself saw almost identical email volumes as last year, dropping roughly 1% from 2008.

Meanwhile at Experian Hitwise, our source for consumer and competitive insight, we’ve seen how specialty websites focusing solely on Black Friday sales have played a significant role in driving traffic to retail sites. Comparing the week before Thanksgiving in 2009 vs. 2008, Hitwise saw the following:

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The holidays are a time of goodwill, cheer, and full email inboxes. During this time of year, many email marketers struggle to find the correct balance between sending too many emails during the holidays (and therefore experiencing high unsubscribe and abuse complaints) and not sending enough emails (and seeing stagnant sales as a result). I recently saw a Zappos.com campaign that does a great job at helping to solve this issue – they notified their email subscribers about what they can expect to see in their inbox from Zappos.com this holiday season.

This fresh yet simple email explains when Zappos.com will begin their increased holiday email schedule. It also explains on which days the subscriber should expect to receive emails, and then reminds the subscriber to keep Zappos.com in mind for their gift purchasing needs.

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