We were flattered to see that FOLDRite, a service that lets designers easily allow for folds in their print work, chose our brochure as last week’s Fold of the Week. Evidently, our brochure features an “iron cross with cool reveal,” which is neat, although we didn’t realize that our brochure folding technique may also double as a gymnastics routine.
Anyway, thanks to the folks at FOLDRite for featuring us. You can see other folds of the week, and read about folding technique and strategy to your heart’s content, at FoldFactory.com.
VideoLink is a stylish video production company headquartered near Boston. And, as an Emma customer, they understand that a stylish email stands out in the inbox. But in a recent campaign they added video, and it stood out in the response data as well.
They set up the campaign to promote their new (and, may we add, fabulous) website. But before hitting send, they were true to their name. They made a short video, added a screen shot to their email and linked it to a video landing page they made through a service called Flimp On-Demand.
“We worried that a text-only email would be overlooked,” said VideoLink Sales Manager Marty DeLoreto. “So by adding the video player to the email we hoped it would attract more attention and hopefully more click throughs.”
Plenty of folks clicked through, all right. Their click-through rate was a fantastic 26.2 percent. And while Emma was tracking all the email response data, Flimp was tracking the data for the video page. Of people who started the video, 64.5 percent watched the entire thing. And 127 people clicked a link to visit the website.
While video in email may not be for everyone, it’s certainly worth trying. Consider these statistics from Forrester Research:
Still, there’s no perfect way to embed video to play within an email (yet). But what VideoLink did is fairly common and effective: use screen shots and text links to send people to a landing page that hosts the video. Emma customers can also host videos in their document library and link to ‘em, too.
And the video doesn’t have to be fancy to be effective, either. VideoLink’s video lasted only 49 seconds and it was fairly simple, with CEO Gina Chudnow describing the new website’s features.
“We also had more personal comments back to the CEO praising her performance and congratulating her on the launch,” Marty added. “That kind of communication would rarely happen with a text-only email.”
Marty plans to use email and video together in the quarterly newsletter, featuring other high-level employees. How about you? What kinds of things are you doing (or want to do) with video and email? Do let us know, won’t you? We’d love to hear about it.
The folks at Nashville independent radio station Lightning 100 showcased 32 of Music City’s artists on the verge of making it big, and at the same time they highlighted their own indie brand in a success story we just had to share.
The idea was to get 32 great Nashville-area bands, play their songs on the radio and have their friends and fans register and vote for them on Lightning 100′s website. The promotion was called “Music City Mayhem,” which happily coincided with the NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournaments.
By using Emma’s signup screens for registering voters and Emma’s surveys for counting the votes, Lightning 100 added more than 5,000 email addresses to its database while providing a ton of exposure to the 32 artists who participated, said Brian Waters, the New Media Content Coordinator for Lightning 100 (also known as WRLT-FM, if you happen to work
Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you’re a bit of an email marketer. Probably a stylish one, at that. So, to reward you for your email savvy (and your blog subscribing prowess), I thought you might be interested in MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Email Marketing Awards competition.
Dig through your archived campaigns to grab your best examples – perhaps you had a record number of sign-ups for a promotional campaign, or an engaging newsletter that boosted web traffic. Whatever the email, this is your opportunity to receive those accolades of praise you’ve deserved all along.
Click here for the entry form and information, and good luck!
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