Archive: April 2008
What candidates are on your From Name list?
Back in August, I spent a quick thirty minutes surrendering my email address to a handful of presidential hopefuls. I wasn’t picking sides, mind you – just hoping to learn something about email’s place in our political process.
Today’s observation happens to focus on Barack Obama‘s email strategy with From Names. Over the last eight months, his emails have appeared in my inbox with several different names in the From Line. Here are seven unique ones worth mentioning and some quick notes on why Obama’s marketing team chose to use ‘em instead of the standard ‘Barack Obama.’
Sen. Ted Kennedy - An endorsement from a member of one of the most prominent political families of all time.
Michelle Obama - A personal message from a family member.
John Kerry – An endorsement from a Senator and well known presidential candidate of recent years.
Jennifer Buck Wallace, Tennessee State Coordinator – A quick primer on early voting in *my* state.
Bob Tuke - A locally known name for folks in Tennessee (Former Chairman of my state’s Democratic Party) with a message that encouraged voting in the Tennessee primary.
David Plouffe, Campaign Manager – An insider’s message about the campaign.
Chelsea Kammerer, Ohio Field Director – A message about Obama’s status in a key primary state.
Even though many of these names are brands in their own right, there may be an application for your own From Name strategy. Take a few minutes to make sure yours is making the strongest connection possible with your audience. Would changing the From Name better suit the message or grab the attention of the particular audience you’re aiming to reach? For example, your emails to stockholders might come from the CEO while your newsletter sticks with the standard company name in the From line.
Of course, on the other hand, there’s a real benefit to keeping a consistent From Name,* and it’s possible that some readers overlooked emails from the Obama campaign because they lacked instant name recognition. Why not divide up your audience and do a little experimenting? Put your trusty default to the challenge by mixing it up. If you do, please let us know how it goes…
*In case you’re curious, the *From Email* was pretty consistent throughout the eight months. A few messages were from state-specific email addresses like tennessee@barackobama.com, for example. Our recommendation for you, though, is to stick with one address, since your audience may already have it stored in their address books.
A tale of two APBs, part deux*
A couple of weeks ago, we sent an Emma APB to our customers letting them know about a new feature in their account that gives them more control over their monthly email sending plans. Just for fun, we sent two version of that campaign – one with a screenshot showing the new feature in action and one without it. At the bottom of each version, we let everybody know there were two versions of the campaign, adding a link to a blog post that featured both side by side.
We were curious to see what impact a screenshot had on people’s involvement with the campaign, and most of us figured that the campaign with the screenshot would boast higher clickthrough rates than its image-less counterpart. After all, a lot of email marketing research and best practices will tell you that images help to grab your readers’ attention and draw ‘em into what you have to say.
To our surprise, though, the overall campaign results for open rates and clickthrough rates were statistically identical between the two versions, almost to the decimal point. At a glance, it looked like our campaign would have been just as well off without that beautiful screenshot. But we also took an in-depth look at the link-by-link breakdown, and that’s where we learned something interesting about what people responded to.
There were two places in the campaign where you could click to log into your account to see the changes in action – one near the top and another in the very last sentence. In the version without the screenshot, the clicks were divided fairly equally between the two, with 55% of clickers opting for the top mention and the remaining 45% preferring the bottom mention.
With a screenshot, though, those numbers changed dramatically. In that case, 80% of people who logged in did so through the top link while 20% used the lower option. It’s not that the screenshot had no effect it all. It’s that it galvanized people to click sooner, having already seen the feature, rather than bother to read through the whole campaign to understand how that feature might work. It didn’t help us get *more* clicks, really, but it did help us encourage people to click sooner.
It’s so important to read all the best practices out there – to see what other organizations have found to be effective for their email campaigns and to learn what your fellow email marketers are talking about. But if you want to answer those burning questions like when to send your campaign, or how many images to use in it, or how long that subject line should be, why not just try two options and see how it goes? If our tale of two APBs has a moral, it’s that the best research you read may be your own.
[tags]email marketing, a/b test, a/b split, myemma.com, emma apb[/tags]
*This is all the French I know.
Another month, another forest.
The world is getting a little leafier, thanks to the new customers who’ve joined Emma since December of 2007. Over the past four months, we’ve planted 6,130 trees – one for each new client who has chosen Emma to power their (paper-free) email newsletters – in the states of Oregon, Georgia, California and Tennessee.
Our partner in all this planting, Plant-It 2020, has suggested that we devote a portion of each month’s trees to an equatorial region that they expertly select. Why? Trees planted there grow more quickly, what with all the sunshine and moisture, and as a result produce more greenhouse-gas-fighting goodness. Where the other half goes, as always, is up to you.
Where should July's trees be planted?
- Ohio (34%, 12 Votes)
- New York (29%, 10 Votes)
- Oregon (20%, 7 Votes)
- Rhode Island (17%, 6 Votes)
Total Voters: 35
Oh, and the 1,790 trees that our March customers helped us plant will be finding a home in Tennessee soon. Thanks for voting!
[tags]tree planting, environment, email newsletters, myemma.com, plant-it 2020[/tags]
If I use the phrase ‘animated GIF,’ will you keep reading?
Or will you assume that this is actually a blog post from 1996 that was somehow mistakenly sent to the future? As great as the mid-90s were, you can’t think about web development in that era without also reminiscing about frames, guestbooks and, yes, animated gifs. Lots and lots of animated gifs.
Those of us in the email marketing industry appreciate mid-90s web development techniques, since a lot of what was in vogue then is really what’s best suited for email now. We still, ahem, know how to use tables. We still code our styles inline. We wouldn’t think of using rollovers. Thanks to Outlook 2007, we don’t even get to use background images. Oh, and adding Flash will get our content blocked and our messages filtered, so if we want animation in an email, it’s gotta happen with the animated gif.
But much like those of the 90s, a lot of the animated gifs I see in email today don’t seem to do much to enhance the content of the email itself. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to see this great-looking email from the retailer Lands’ End. They used an animated GIF to show off their new bathing suit top, which can be cinched up or tugged down, depending on whether you’re in a cinching or tugging mood.
Cinched:
Tugged:
Using an animated GIF here was intentional – it actually helped to actually illustrate how the product worked, with each frame alternating between the two adjustable options. I think it’s a great example of intentional email design, a principle to which animated gifs are not immune. If you’re thinking of using animated GIFs in your next campaign, here are a few ideas and suggestions:
1. Keep your animation simple. If you can say the same thing in 4 frames that you can in 8, opt for the shorter sequence.
2. Make sure your animation reinforces a major point of your campaign. If it’s just for show, it’s, well, just for show.
3. Consider combining animated GIFs with Flash. If you’ve got a compelling Flash presentation on your website, put together a simpler version as an animated GIF. Include the GIF in your email, but link it to the fancy Flash page.
4. Try a simple test. If you’re not sure whether animation will help you make your point, try sending an animated version to half your audience, and send a regular image to the other half.
5. Watch your file size. We recommend keeping your entire email’s size to under 40K, so it’s easily managed by servers and inboxes. Plan your animated gif accordingly, and opt for simpler colors and graphics in your frames to keep the gif’s file size in check.
[tags]email design, lands end, email best practices, animated gifs[/tags]
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