MindComet

Birthday Email Communications

Considering all the spam that arrives in our inboxes today, birthday emails are almost as good as getting an unexpected letter in the mail from a friend or family member.  Although most birthday emails I have seen are tied to some sort of sales offer, they act as a great added touch point between the brand and the customer outside of their regular communications.  Additionally birthday email messages:

• Become anticipated once you see one brand’s birthday message land in your inbox
• Can be used as a marketing/sales tool - $10 off product/service, just for you on your birthday….
• Leverage personalization at its best
• Show a good likelihood that they are going to get opened especially if the subject line contains “Happy Birthday”
• Allows brands to measure a subscriber’s response in regards to relevant and personalized messages vs mass communication
• Allows brands to show their customers that they care, one of the reasons they ask for your birthday upon sign up or on your preferences page

My two favorite birthday emails based on my preferences and the brands I subscribe to are Cold Stone Creamery and Origins.  Cold Stone Creamery gives their customers a free “Love It Creation” aka medium sized cup - come on now, who doesn’t love ice cream while Origins is giving me $10 off my next purchase.  As a repeat customer, I’ll be sure to use it.

Don’t you just want to sign up for your favorite brands email communications now to see what they send you on your birthday?!

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Posted by MindComet on Sep. 09, 2008

Day Two - Email Marketing Summit

Although we are in Miami, the heat isn’t on…Yesterday we attended an all day email certification course put on by Marketing Experiments which was great and so was the temperature of the room.  Today, its like Im back in the office and its 67 degrees.  I guess going from 400 people yesterday to over 800 today, they felt the need to accommodate or perhaps the fact that it’s in the 80’s and only February.  Coming from Orlando, we didnt think the temp. would change as much as it has.  Don’t get me wrong, I love 80 degree whether but the Summit isn’t being held out on the beach but I’m going to leave that in my feedback that next year it should .  Anyway, just so I don’t confuse you and make you think we changed our blog from an email marketing blog to a weather blog we’ll get on to the good stuff.

Today was the official start to MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Summit which started off with a Research Keynote from Stefan Tornquist, the Research Director of MarketingSherpa.  Stefan provided the group with key takeaways on some tactics to follow this year as it relates to email marketing.  One that I found was interesting was shortening the subject line.  I completely agree that the subject line should try to stay under the 45 character limit which has been the previous standard however getting shorter than that, gets tough.  However, I do agree that subject lines need to be short so it will only encourage our team to work harder at keeping the sub. lines short and to the point. 

Later in the day I sat in on a thirty minute session put on by Cori Mozilo, the Interactive Marketing Manager of Cold Stone Creamery.  We didn’t get any ice cream however she did enlighten the group on how she uses a different vendor for each of her interactive needs.  Her internal team only consists of three resources so it makes sense in her case.  The main takeaway I received from Cori was that regardless of your situation or how big your team is, if you have the right experts, internal or external you can execute campaigns to be over the top successful.

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 25, 2008