Email Marketing Voodoo - MindComet
Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing. In many ways, they’re one in the same. Both need to…
a) inspire and become a means of communication between the brand and its audience
b) cross-promote the other
c) involve a certain level of testing
d) be precise, personal and avoid “marketing” speak
Posted by Bryan Quilty on May. 28, 2009
Skechers sent out an email over the weekend with two calls to action - dads and grads. I’ve seen emails in the past where the brand tries to squeeze multiple calls to action in the email and it becomes irrelevant and over saturated with information. Skechers email was clean, to the point and nicely done. Here’s why the two in one email worked.
• The call to action was clear in regards to who the email was intended for and it helped that it rhymed “Dads and Grads” making it easy to remember
• Skechers advertised their product in a fun way by categorizing types of dads and grads with different types of shoes such as pairing the ‘hard working dad’ with hiking boots and durable shoes
• Although the top half of the email was focused on dads and therefore mens shoes only, Skechers was able to incorporate female shoes once they got to the grad section hitting both primary target audiences
• Skechers was also able to provide a variety of different shoes depending on the lifestyle therefore being able to show the reader a wide selection of their products
Although the email was well executed the one thing I thought was missing was a promotion or incentive to buy. Such as buy a pair for your grad, get 1/2 off on dad. In today’s troubled economy, consumers are looking for deals. According to Media Post’s Center for Media Research 40% of consumers use coupons more now than a year ago so give them something that entices them to buy two pairs of shoes outside of free standard shipping.
Posted by MindComet on May. 26, 2009
I’ve been a fan of the Sklar Brothers ever since I saw their failed MTV sitcom “Apartment 2F”. You’ve probably seen them around on various TV shows, most noteably cameo appearances in Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Their comedic collaborations aren’t just limited to TV. They’re now the new spokesmen for Brooks Running.
I received this email from Brooks last week…
After seeing that familiar, seemingly tormented face, I couldn’t help myself but clickthrough. The landing page is an immersive flash site with the Sklar Bros. as the Underwood brothers Karl & Carl, also known as the “running superfans”. The site is chock-full of funny clips, lists, and a scrapbook that kept me on the site for a good 20-30 minutes.
The email was a perfect example of one thing I’ve noticed lacking in the email marketing world: INTRIGUE. I think it was even more effective since I was familiar with the spokesmen, but even with my familiarity this email looks nothing like what they’ve sent in the past. Their previous emails have been your standard BtoC marketing messages filled with shiny, attractive models sporting their gear:
And I can honestly say, I’ve never clicked on any previous email I’ve received from Brooks. I hope they continue to change their designs and messaging strategies. Maybe they’ll convert more subscribers like myself who really notice things out of the norm. This is a online promotion that I really hope takes off for Brooks and the Sklar Brothers.
Posted by Bryan Quilty on May. 19, 2009
Intrigue?!
And in a marketing email too.
Imagine that! 
Someone’s been reading best selling fiction and learned a thing or two about plot construction…
Every email tells a story, ya think!
…Posted by Mark McClure on 06/20/2009 08:58 PM
As you can probably tell, we’ve redesigned the blog! In keeping consistent with the designs of our executive blogs (Jennifer Carey, Jeremy Hilton), EMV has also gotten the make-over treatment. In addition to the new look & feel, we’ve also integrated some social media tools including a Twitter feed for the MindComet account and links to MindComet’s Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. Commenting on posts will be much easier, as it’s streamlined to the right of each post. Also, each post will be authored by either myself (Bryan Quilty) or Kelly Reaves and you’ll be able to tell which post was written by who. Over the span of the next couple of weeks, we’ll be adding the tags to previous posts for easy searching by subject.
So take a few minutes, snoop around and let us know what you think!
Posted by Bryan Quilty on May. 14, 2009
Good article and information and a very nice looking website.
Thank you
Posted by Rick Daley on 05/22/2009 10:54 PM
I really have to hand it to the marketing team or who ever develops Pizza Hut’s promotional emails. Yesterday, a colleague here at MindComet forwarded me an email from the international pizza chain. When I opened the email, I was thrilled, confused, shocked and awed by what I saw… a clock, counting down in real time.
My initial reaction was something to the effect of “how’d they manage to get Flash to render in my Gmail account!?“ Then I snapped back into reality and realized that was an impossibility. Only Apple Mail can render Flash, which I wasn’t using at the time. I had to know how they pulled this off… I went into Sherlock mode.
Upon investigating this—which consisted of re-formatting the source code—I concluded that they were simply using animated gifs in a very clever way.
The seconds gif counts down, with each frame lasting one second. The minutes gif also counted down, with one frame for each 60 seconds… You get the idea; although the hours and days images are just static images. If you refresh the email, the minutes and seconds numbers revert back to “59:59”. They address this inconsistency with fine print stating that the “clock does not reflect actual time”. So smart.
At any rate, this is an INCREDIBLY EFFECTIVE sales email… probably the best I’ve ever seen. The entire email is one big, giant call to action. See for yourself:
View the email hosted on their server to see the countdown clock in action.
UPDATE: The ‘day’ image has been switched from “10” to “9”. The image url may have something to do with it:
If you click on the link above, it defaults to “00”, but if you open the email or the web-hosted page today, it’ll read “09”. From the URL, it’s looking at the “Expirationdate” and counting down from 10 days compared to the date in the URL. If you change the 5.18.09 to 5.16.09, it’ll reflect the correct day! Tricky tricky!
Labels: animated gif, call to action, pizza hut
Posted by MindComet on May. 07, 2009
Wow! Great design, and I really like that time is running out idea. Thank you for sharing this Pizza Hut ad with us.
Posted by Restoration Media on 06/05/2009 11:40 AM
iOS Mail might be breaking your beautiful email layouts! http://t.co/EKrlE384 <- Find out how to defeat autolinking in iOS Mail.
Dec. 21, 2011 4:51 PM
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Nice blog, emailista! Thanks for reading!
Restoration, yes, there are HUGE differences between email and social media. I think might write a follow-up sometime this week focusing on just that. …
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Posted by Bryan Quilty on 06/08/2009 08:12 AM