In honor of National Arbor Day, we decided to send an email campaign to the stylish Emma community highlighting all the trees they’ve helped us plant through our 5 Trees program. (We plant five trees for every new customer who chooses Emma as their email marketing service.)
Since the program began back in December 2007, we’ve planted more than 28,000 trees. And we decided to feature thank-you notes from 5 of those trees. Here’s an example:

Water Ash
deciduous, produces medicinal bark, really into early-80s Bowie
“Hello, everybody, it’s me, Ash. I just wanted to say thanks. By helping trees, you’re supporting our efforts with photosynthesis, converting harmful carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen. But did you know that you’re also supporting our efforts with photosynthesizers, converting lifeless keyboard melodies into catchy jazz flute renditions of bossa nova riffs? It’s just nice to know you’re making a difference.”
See how pine, hackberry, apple and cypress trees say thanks, too. The full campaign is online here.
Oh, and Happy Arbor Day!
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Posted in All things email marketing, Social responsibility, Stuff that's stylish | 1 Comment »
April 9th, 2009 by Suzanne Norman
Last week, we asked our community of Twitter followers to tell us the ways they saw companies using email to play their April Fools jokes. It’s always refreshing to see companies injecting personality into their marketing campaigns, and this year’s f-f-f-foolin’* was no exception. Here are two we heard about from our Twitter friends:
Scentiments

(click the icon for a close-up)
With this email campaign, the online perfume retailer launched, ahem, Scratch and Sniff technology. When you click through to the landing page, you get the promo code for the discount - GOTCHA09. Even if the technology was fake, at least the discount wasn’t a joke.
Thanks to @PrecociousJewel for the tip!
Whole Foods

(click the icon for a close-up)
Whole Foods took a more subtle approach in their weekly “Whole Deal” newsletter, featuring one banner ad for “Organic Air” as their Sure Deal of the week alongside regular products and promotions - the “deal” being paying $6.99 for .02 ounces of air. The landing page adds a few more jokes to the mix, including a picture of local penguins lining up for their new Antarctica store.
Kudos to @StephanieKern for letting us know about this one.
And of course, there were a few other popular ones - Gmail’s a perennial favorite (thanks, @NDPtweets), and the Guardian fooled a few folks into thinking they were going to be publishing all their news in Twitter format going forward (thanks, @moragbrand). I completely fell for Under Consideration’s fake rebranding of Verizon and felt equally as stupid as I did disappointed when I figured out it wasn’t real.
What about you? Did you get a particularly clever or convincing April Fools campaign? How do you and your team find ways to add a little personality to your campaigns during the other 364 days of the year?
*Come on. A blog post without a gratuitous Def Leppard reference isn’t really a blog post at all, is it?
Technorati Tags: email marketing, april fools, myemma.com, scentiments.com, whole foods
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Posted in All things email marketing, Stuff that's stylish | 2 Comments »
April 3rd, 2009 by Patrick Copeland
Thinking about one of our recent posts, Smarter email marketing in a recession, it’s a good time to consider how you can get even more personal and timely with your email communication. And what better way to do this than to give your contacts the option of what content they receive and how frequently they receive it.

Take The Onion, for example. Not only do they allow folks to sign up for their emails, but they’re giving them the option of how frequently they’d like to receive emails and in what format: text, video or both. By allowing new subscribers to choose what they receive and when they receive it, The Onion ensures that their messages are exactly what subscribers have asked for.
Now it’s time for you to think about what content you’re sending and its frequency. Try asking if folks signing up would like to receive emails weekly, monthly or quarterly. And ask what type of information they would like to learn more about. Is it your monthly sale items, seasonal promotions or a weekly update from the company sports team (Go Cougars!)?
You can even add surveys into your mix to gauge your current subscribers’ preferences about your emails. By allowing the recipient to choose, you will soon be reaching them on the most personal level: their own terms.
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Posted in All things email marketing, Surveys | No Comments »
February 3rd, 2009 by Suzanne Norman
When we released surveys to the Emma community last month, we couldn’t help but send a Emma-powered survey to our customers, too. And, in the spirit of learning how surveys and email marketing campaigns work best together, I used the survey’s email invitation to test which link was more clickable: an invitation to take a brief survey or a more specific offer to take a 5-minute survey.
I did some hypothesizing (thanks, 7th grade science teacher!) that the ‘5-minute’ language would be more effective. After all, five minutes means five minutes, whereas ‘brief’ may just be marketing-speak for ‘the longest survey of your life, sucker.’ When you’re asking for someone’s time, there’s little question that it’s good to be as specific as possible.
The question was: does being more specific in the invitation really make a difference in how people engage with your survey?
Here’s what we found. While the difference wasn’t outrageous, the five-minute invitation gave us better click-through rates and survey participation rates. Between the ‘brief’ campaign and the ‘five-minute’ campaign, we saw:
* An 8% increase in click-through rates in the email campaign
* A 9% increase in people who started the survey once arriving on the page
* An 11% increase in people who completed the 18-question survey
And yes, there’s more. In the email campaign, there were two places folks could click through - the top mention, which is where we tested the different language, and the bottom mention, which stayed the same between the two campaigns. What’s interesting? The 8% increase showed up *exclusively* in the difference between the top-mention clicks. The clicks on the bottom-mention were statistically identical between the two versions.
Based on that fun little tidbit, I’ve been doing some rather unscientific speculating (sorry, 7th grade science teacher) that the boost in engagement doesn’t come just from a subscriber *understanding* it’s a five-minute survey and appreciating the specificity. Perhaps it’s connected to the physical act of seeing (and then clicking) the language that’s setting the expectation. If that weren’t the case, I’d have expected a little more variation in clicks in the lower mention.
The moral of the story: While setting an expectation with a specific time isn’t the silver bullet to boosting your survey participation numbers, the people who appreciate the specificity will be increasing likely to visit, start and complete your survey.
Are you using email marketing to promote your surveys and online forms? If so, tell us what’s working for you.
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Posted in All things email marketing, Stuff that's stylish | 3 Comments »
January 28th, 2009 by Brooks Alford
In an economic downturn, we know how appealing it sounds to send as many emails as possible to everybody on your mailing list. After all, email marketing is champ when it comes to making the most of your marketing dollars, returning $45 on average per dollar you invest.
But like that half-eaten eclair in the break room, you’ve got to resist temptation. When you email too frequently with generic information, your readers might start to ignore your emails, opt out of them, mark you as spam, or (worst of all) completely dump you as a sender. It doesn’t mean you can’t send when you have something to say. It just means you want to be smart about how you’re sending. Here are three quick tips for staving off email fatigue:
* Target your email campaigns! - With email segmentation, you can make sure that your message is getting in the right hands. Rather than sending another promotion to everybody about the newest Snuggie, send it to the people who are mostly likely to take action. Perhaps that’s people who’ve bought a similar product, clicked but *didn’t* buy in your last promotion, or people whose survey results showed that they really love the idea of a blanket with sleeves. Either way, email segmentation allows you to send fewer, more targeted messages.
* Ask how often they want to receive it - Email frequency doesn’t have to be a mystery. When new subscribers sign up for your email campaigns, it’s easy to find out just how often they want to receive information from you. Give them the option to subscribe to a higher frequency than you would normally send—it might surprise you how many people actually want to receive extra content from you. Just be sure to honor their request.
* Give ‘em what they really want - There’s no point in sending a message if you’ve got nothing to say. When people fill out your email signup form, they’re expecting a benefit for joining your list. After all, email marketing is a relationship. Reward the time and information your subscribers are giving you with a special coupon, product preview, whitepaper or VIP information.
Are you trying any of these? Has the downturn impacted your email strategy or email marketing budget? Did you actually buy a Snuggie? Leave us a comment and let us know.
Technorati Tags: email marketing, myemma.com, recession, snuggie
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Posted in All things email marketing | 4 Comments »
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