Email Marketing Trends for 2012 from BlueHornet

Great infographic on 2012 email marketing trends. BlueHornet has a genius creative department.

Email Marketing Trends for 2012 from BlueHornet

Have you heard the one about the broken pencil?

There's no point to it. And that's how I feel about most subject lines. With so many emails in the inbox these days, this handful of words is your one three-second chance to get an open. The problem is the lack of creativity behind them. It's like they all mesh together leaving a tangled knot of discounts and two day sales (or my self-diagnosed dyslexia likes to act up right about the time I start sifting through my Gmail).  On the average, I probably receive 40 promotional messages a day and that's just in my personal email. Want to know which ones I open? Because it's not all of them. Nope. Not even close. I probably open a fifth of them. The rest get marked as read and fall to their demise in the 7300MB chasm of storage that is my inbox. Here are a few personal favorites that got me to click through:

Daily Candy
"The Weekend Guide" - sent every Thursday, contains five things I should see, read, do, buy, love, etc.

While the subject line isn't that enticing, I've come to learn that I always like at least one of the five things. Essentially, they're giving me relevant information and I'm engaging more because of this.

FredFlare.com
"30% Off! We heart Sylvia!"
"the dark side of Disney"
"i'm sorry, but... that's weird"

This company knows how to capture my attention. They continuously change it up and add elements of surprise when you least expect it. Last year they touted this strange fake love story, like an eCommerce soap opera. And every few days you'd get an email about a new character wearing a different product. It worked. I'll have to find an example of that

Terrain
"The Harvest Pantry"
"One-of-a-Kind Finds"
"Autumn Fireside"

I love these emails, always something to look at and very seasonal. Notice that they keep their subject lines short?

Jonathan Adler
"Acid Trip"
"Hello, Sailor"

More interesting creatives abound. I've learned to open these emails for the bright pops of color and unconventional layouts, but these subject lines certainly pique curiosity.

So what did you learn? Brand loyalty is priceless, you have about 50-60 characters (including spaces) to get your point across, and discounts and the word "free" still work, but you won't stand out in this crowd.

Self Titled

I recently saw an article on Mashable that gave praise to the digital resume, a graphical representation that's unique in style and far from boring. I was impressed. So I gave it a shot. And I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I made it all in Excel. I would have used Photoshop if I owned the software. But using Microsoft Office to create a thing of art? There's a challenge. The links won't work since this is a JPG, but the PDF has functioning social links.

If your site is down and you send out an email, does anyone see it?

The answer is yes, and shame on you. I'm most likely not going to go back and click again on the emails up for insult today because I don't plan on monitoring when the sites will be available, not to mention how buried those emails will be by the time I remember that there was a sale with a pretty hefty discount. There goes your revenue stream. Best part? It happened twice. I received an Ann Taylor email, clicked through to their "down for maintenance" website, then received an email from Loft, Ann's younger, more casual sister, clicked through (mostly out of curiosity) to their "sorry for the inconvenience, check back soon" website. At the very least, the websites had pretty splash pages instead of broken images or blank pages, but still a bad user experience.

Side note: The leak strategy topic has come up a lot lately around the water cooler, and now I'm skeptical that any mistakes are real, although I can't really see the added benefit of this type of mistake. Bad press is bad press. If I'm understanding the concept right, you want, at the bare minimum, a neutral mistake, one that doesn't reflect poorly on your brand, but gets people talking about you via all the major social channels. The goal there is to get a message to go viral and watch acquisition and engagement increase on your email program. Side-side note: Make sure you have a somewhat well-rounded email program in place for this. "Batch and blasts" only work in the short term, and all your effort will be for a spike that you can't repeat until next year -- read "these don't make an impact if you do them all the time."

Holiday Emails: Too Soon?

I'm not going to tell you when's the best time to start sending holiday messages, but I will share my experience with one of my more visited websites, Land of Nod. I receive their catalog now, too, which is somewhat bothersome to me because A) I never requested this, and B) it's a waste of paper. But just the same, I received my first holiday email of the 2011 season from LOD on 9/27 with the subject line "We're getting decked out." While this was a pretty email, well branded and with a nice layout, I couldn't help but question if it was a mistake. I mean, September? We have yet to do the Halloween costume bit and Turkey dance. And here they are, boldy expressing love for their new ornaments and tree skirts. If it was a leak strategy, they were missing the "shh, don't tell anyone, but we're doing X" part. It was strange and, frankly, felt out of place, especially here in California with the sun shining and remnants of summer still in the air.

So how soon is too soon? I'm expecting some early bird holiday messaging to start trickling in in the next week or so and definitely by the beginning of November. To get a jump on your competitor, you should be collecting data on when they started their holiday campaigns over the last few years and send yours a week sooner. Or maybe you don't beat them to the punch, but you recognize the need to stand out, so you change up the creative to be less traditional red and green and more like the above. A clever subject line wouldn't hurt either. Try not to do the over done "Twas the night before Christmas" rhyme. I can't begin to tell you how so fifteen years ago that is.

1-800-Unsubscribe!

Two days ago, I decided to go with 1-800-Contacts to order a year's supply worth of Acuvue Oasys contacts. I dropped almost $400 and had to jump through some hoops to get an account and get my presription from my eye doctor. To put it bluntly, I'm scared I'll be stuck with an iPad's worth of contacts and still be as blind as a bull in a china shop at twilight. (Thought I was going to say "bat," didn't you?) Then today, I get this little gem in my inbox:

Subject Line: 1-800 CONTACTS | We've got your contact lenses



This company is cluttering up my inbox, why again? Oh yeah, that's right, for no reason whatsoever. With a little research, I found that they are using Responsys for their email platform, which is a pretty big name in the industry. I'm 100% positive they have ways of excluding recently purchased subscribers. Sounds like user error to me. To add insult to injury, they don't have snippet text, a view online link, or a mobile link in the email and without a border of sorts, the email seems to just float haphazardly in space. Not impressed. Favorite line: "*This email is a 1-800 CONTACTS advertisment." Thanks for stating the obvious.

Don't be sheepish -- make good on your promise

In a recent quest for examples of email programs done right, I gave out my precious @ddress and signed up for a number of online marketing e-newsletters. To my surprise, more than half of these agencies failed to have even a Welcome Letter, let alone any kind of regular communication. And I'm not talking about the mom & pop shop at the end of the block. Local online marketing companies with killer websites complete with fancy graphics and flyouts, but I can't even get an email confirmation? What gives? Did you or did you not just ask me for my email address and invite me to be a part of your community? Or secret rhetorical question B, are you just asking me for my information because everyone else is doing it? If I learned anything from my awkward teenage years, it was to not be a sheep following the masses. Give your subscribers what you promised; don't stand them up like a bad date. Chances are these companies have blogs or twitter accounts buzzing with content (or at least ideas). Get busy, San Diego!