Much to my delight, the email explained that Urban Outfitters was promoting an exclusive partnership with The Impossible Project, a group dedicated to preserving the legacy of Polaroid film. Best of all, the email explained that the two entities’ interests would culminate in a series of limited in-store sales of the last remaining Polaroid cameras and film, rescued from the last Polaroid factory in the Netherlands. What a coup! Best of all, I learned that the somewhat secret sale was taking place the following day, just across the Charles River in nearby Cambridge.

And thus my fate had been decided: I would use the information gleaned from this informative in-store promotion email, venture towards Harvard Square during my lunch break, and return only after acquiring my very own special edition Polaroid camera and film.

But why describe a memorable experience in simple words when a set of photos could explain it even better? Let’s see how it all went down!

Approaching Harvard Square from JFK Street. Who knew Harvard had a proprietary mail carrier service? Their logo looks suspiciously like the old CheetahMail logo. I wonder if they do email too…hmmm….

What could possibly motivate someone to leave an air-conditioned room for the sweltering streets of Harvard Square on the most disgustingly humid day of the year? In-store promotional email, of course!

Aha! The store has been easily located thanks to the original email, which clearly listed the store locations, hours of sale, and exact addresses.

Getting closer…I can feel it. (If this event had taken place during the popular 1980′s computer game “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” at this point a man in a trenchcoat would have appeared, announced himself to be a V.I.L.E. Henchman, and told me that I was on the right track)

Jackpot! After a bit of searching, I discovered a stack of untouched Polaroid boxes behind the checkout in the home furnishings section. Amazingly, most of the customers ahead of me in line were families stocking up on dorm room decorations – not über-geeks like me searching for obscure film technology. Then, just before I got to the front of the line, a man two spots ahead of me bought ten packs of film right on the spot with a big grin on his face. Ten! I guess the secret is out! A few other photo enthusiasts in line were also clearly waiting to get their hands on one of their own, indicating to me that this experiment had clearly gone viral.

Home sweet home and mission accomplished! I now have my very own limited edition Polaroid camera. Long live analog technology! (And the digital technology that tells us where and when to buy it!)

Bazaarvoice is a partner of ours and has helped a number of our clients combine the power of user-generated content with email marketing. As I told a number of colleagues at the event, the real beauty of combining email marketing with ratings and reviews is that the numbers speak for themselves – according to a recent article by Mary Wagner of Internet Retailer, fifty-three percent of shoppers “prefer to see recommendations based on top ratings by other consumers” compared to only twenty percent who prefer to see best sellers. Likewise, Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester Research recently stated that “two in five online shoppers are partial to retail sites that offer customer ratings and reviews,” and that “tactics like adding a link to write a customer review in the order confirmation email are the new standard.”

A few high-level takeaways I gathered from the event include:

• Product review submission/confirmation emails perform exceptionally well across the board, especially when it comes to open and clickthrough rates.
• User-generated content (UGC) not only drives sales, but also functions as a product development and inventory tool for some of today’s biggest brands, including Dell and Sephora.
• While it is difficult to predict which content will become truly “viral,” marketers can help guarantee ROI by ensuring that viral campaigns are initially distributed to a large enough group of people. That way, even if the campaign is only forwarded at a 50% rate of decay, the campaign reaches close to double the size of the initial recipients — half of which were essentially sent for free.

And if you’re looking for some cool examples of our clients putting word-of-mouth marketing to good use, I’d highly recommend having a look at these links:

• Zales Love Stories – a slick micro-site dedicated to user-generated engagement and jewelry gift stories, with links to purchase online.
• Aveda Top Rated Winter Essentials – an elegant email promotion featuring top-rated products from Winter 2008 with actual reviews from real customers.
• Urban Outfitters 5-Star Reviewers – a slick email campaign highlighting the reviewers themselves (lifestyle branding using social media) in addition to their reviewed items.

With all of this being said, why wouldn’t a marketer want to elevate the customer voice and include top rated picks or UGC in their email programs?

Scrolling through my inbox, the main image of the Urban Outfitter “Where to?” campaign grabbed my attention above all the others. For those of us on the East Coast, it’s been a long winter. Nevertheless, spring is in the air, and Urban Outfitter’s image of the ocean popped out at me. The creative inspired me to open the email and daydream a little about being on a beach where I could forget about the economy and relax.

The “Where to?” campaign is a great example of using attractive photography and creative marketing to engage your subscribers to open your emails.

Because I took the time to look at the picture, I saw that Urban was advertising friends’ top picks for the season based on their travel plans. Their approach of using friends’ favorite items was a clever take on viral marketing, used in this instance to market a number of different products. Even if the recipient does not have any trips planned, the items fit different personalities as much as they fit the destinations selected.

The marketing effort is also well supported. The email links to landing pages from which you can toggle between the picks as well as the product detail and purchase pages.

I wondered if the “friends” were really subscribers or if this was just a marketing effort, so I continued to look for this campaign elsewhere on the web. I was happy to discover that Urban had included the campaign on their Facebook group page and on Twitter.

I don’t know if these “friends” are actual fans of Urban or if this is just a fun idea. I’d also love to see them go even further and open this up to their fan base to use their picks. Either way, it works!