Anatomy of a Great Email + New Emotional Social Marketing Tool

Powered by Greeting Flix Emotional Marketing Tool Created by a long time client of mine, Chris Lombardo has an extraordinary way for a company to weave their key  advertising messages into memorable user-generated content - amplified with the element of personal photos. and packaged in a client branded microsite (check out the Gerber link here) A branded "Powered by Greeting Flix" microsite site allows visitors to quickly create highly-entertaining branded videos featuring their personal photos, which can be shared with friends & family, forwarded, posted to blogs, and accessed at any time for repeated distribution. Videos can include printable coupons, links to specific web pages, and additional advertising (if desired) on the "recipient view" page. Many large companies are looking at this flavor of technology to drive some of their social marketing initiatives - let me know if you have an interest! See's Candies May 2009 Email Review Here is company that takes stock in using the best practices in email marketing to create comelling and user friendly email campaigns. Let's take a closer look.  A: Notice how See's has added the main call to action in the header of their email (What the sale message is and a link). This is great, since so many people triage their emails on a PDAS and html might not display correctly. Plus, they have added the "view the message as web ink" and reminded the recipient again to add the from address to the safe sender list. B. Great use of personalization within the body of the email. It works nicely. However, as you can see my name is in all CAPS. They should rework their data from proper case within name fields. Go here to learn how to do that. Key "call to action" is above the fold (top 1/3 of email). Make sure you let your recipients see your main call to action at the top of your email not at the bottom -- they may not reach it if that is the case. Improvement Suggestion:  So many email browsers block images by default. Why take a chance that the recipient has not enabled images.  See's has not taken advantage of this and should use alt tags and text so the person can understand what the image represents if they cannot see it. C. Have multiple areas where a recipient can click to an action. Use both graphic as well as text links. When you review your tracking results you wil then be able see whay links were most effective. Many email solutions like ExactTarget have an overlay feature that let's you preview the email and visually see what links were click most often and by whom. D. Normally, companies offer an email signup page and/or website registration form to capture consumers' opt-ins, which are the most valuable commodities in the digital world - an opportunity to build a two way dialogue with your customer!  Consider having a link to your customer's preferences. Give them choice! E. I love the way See's gives the recipient a chance to view the sample comunication before they opt for it! How do they want to receive communications i.e. multiple platforms (email, mobile, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) Provide the ability to change preferences, formats, languages, etc. Let them choose frequency of updates Asking them their preferences as it relates to the products or services you offer  Let them choose types of communications and adjust as you go, as opposed to unsubscribing from all Provide a sneak peak of any offered communications Tell them how data will be treated and information on other privacy issues Explain how to remove oneself with ease from any or all communications ************