extra points, paper culture.
single message, single call to action, mobile-friendly, graphically compelling.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
The future of email marketing and three ways it must evolve
Mark Munier's eConsultancy post is insightful and accurate. Read it here:
Email has been around for a while now, and it’s done us
all proud. The ubiquitous method of communication is so pervasive as a
communication method that not having one is even more unusual than not having a
telly (brave souls).
It’s difficult to talk about a new communication channel
without comparing it to email, and for email to remain relevant it needs to
evolve to give consumers what they now expect from digital communication
channels.
1. Become geographically and time aware
The trouble with email is that it is dumb to all the
technology that is available to it. As email marketers you are used to
understanding when, how, on what and where people are checking their emails –
but the clients themselves aren’t using this information to produce a richer
email consumption experience.
Even so, people are going to want to be able to check their
email and this tech nirvana would be brought to an abrupt end when all your
emails whizz past your eyes while you are trying to look hip.
BUT imagine a world where your email client knows where
you are (on the tube) and where you are going (downtown so you’ll be on the
tube for 20 minutes), so it navigates to emails which it knows will take you 20
minutes to digest – maybe the latest from the Financial Times?
Geographically aware email is not that far away. Apple’s
Passbook (Android options do exist) has been missed by so many bricks and
mortar retailers that it’s frankly scary.
Passbook allows you to tag your prospect or client so
that they receive notifications when they are near your store, so you
get more footfall to your store from people who have already engaged
with you online – something HMV would have crawled over broken CDs for.
An awesome fellow @pure360’er, Kav Webb, did
a blog on practically how you can do this.
2. Replace notifications
It is bizarre what you can do to trigger a tweet. There
are some great examples on iftt.com, but the trouble with Twitter is that you
easily miss tweets – especially if you follow more than a few hundred people.
To the contrary, email never goes away until you address
it, bar a few smart innovations from outlook.com, so as we
have more and more devices we need to keep track or we
will start to see more emails from our actual belongings.
Notifications on your smart phone are pretty intrusive –
the fact that the iPhone is advertised as having a ‘do not disturb’ button
gives an indication of the backlash against constant interruptions.
So expect to see emails from devices and applications a
lot more – an email from your boiler asking if you want to turn the
heating up as it’s getting a bit chilly outside, for instance – naturally
you’ll reply in human language if you want to.
3. No more annoying emails
You can’t get away with sending unsolicited emails
anymore. Back in the bad old days of email, marketing spam filters weren’t very
sophisticated and as long as you weren’t pushing Viagra marketers could email a
lot of people quite easily.
However, after the efforts of the larger ISPs, spam
filters are now very smart, meaning that you really shouldn’t receive any email
that you don’t want. This decline has predominately already happened but will
continue to get tighter as people become less satisfied with unwarranted
marketing messages.
The emails that annoy me are the “thanks” emails or “ok”,
these little digital fist bumps don’t belong on email – these belong on an
Instant Messaging platform.
Soon enough there will be a common protocol for IM so it
won’t matter what client or service you are using, you will simply be able to
chat with people who you want to.
misery.
winter escape email from greenbrier resort
message clarity: 1 (out of 5)
graphical inspiration: 3
offer clarity: 1
benefits: 2
mobile friendliness: 1
message clarity: 1 (out of 5)
graphical inspiration: 3
offer clarity: 1
benefits: 2
mobile friendliness: 1
Monday, January 28, 2013
great graphic, great copy
Carol's Daughter is impactful: direct, clear, colorful but brand consistent,
and it works perfectly on a mobile device.
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