View the whole email (complete with shimmer action) here

Here at Adcuda we’ve implemented the animated GIF throughout a few of our email campaigns, and while we can’t see any staggering statistics either way, as a user who’s received countless store emails, seeing some ‘pizazz’ in the design makes me pay more attention and keep it open long enough to read the entire message (and that could mean a world of difference for your click-throughs).

If you’re new to the animated GIF, you can check out one of my older posts about them, or you can check out this handy tutorial:

www.creativetechs.com

** Outlook users will only see the first frame of the animation, so be sure that can stand alone.

As much as I love Trader Joes the store, I hate hate hate Trader Joes the newsletter. Why? Well, first off:

Here is the link to the actual email

1) Make it Legible
I’m fairly new to the store (they just opened up in KC a few months ago), but every newsletter I’ve received so far has been a headache to read. As I’ve said before, I love the store, so I want to hear what they have to say. I expect that their newsletter will have tid-bits about how to use their products in new recipes, products on mark-down, etc. But when I open their email, it’s just teeny-tiny ‘print’ with crap covering half of it. That’s all fine and dandy if it’s just a background or supporting graphic, but this is their main event!

I’m not asking for live-text (as far as email marketing goes, we’ve been using image-only emails for quite some time with little backlash), but I am asking that you put yourself in the user’s shoes. “Hey, I want to read that Turkey Roasting Chart! What’s that say? 3 hours Unsalted? Oh, Unstuffed!” In the words of Steve Krug, don’t make me think. If you can’t read it in a split-second, neither can your customers.

2) Make it Clickable
Since I can’t read that Turkey Roasting Chart, I try and click on it to see if they have more information on their site about it. But it doesn’t click..nothing clicks!! What am I supposed to do with this?! The first link is over 650 pixels down, but my inbox is only 460 pixels tall. For most customers, that’s a deal-breaker. Make every single image clickable. You’re always trying to send people back to your site. No landing page? Make one. No excuses!

3) Size Matters
The rule of thumb with email marketing design is 600px by 400px. If you don’t have your main message and at least one click-through within that box, you’ve pretty much failed. Sorry, buddy. 600px wide covers most email provider’s windows, so use as much of that space as you can. Unfortunately, this Trader Joes email was only 580px wide, and 80px of that was just plain ole’ white padding on the left and right. They’ve lost out on 100px to make that image larger and more legible.

So now that I’ve ripped apart poor Joe, I offer up this quick summary. Care about the user-experience, because if they don’t care about you, then what have you got?

OPEN RATE = Percentage of recipients that opened the email (you know they’ve at least seen the message, although you won’t be able to tell if they ‘displayed images’.

CLICK-THROUGH RATE = Percentage of recipients that clicked a button in the email and were sent to your website (they’ve read through your email and were engaged enough to learn more. Now it’s up to your website analytics to know how far they went once they got there.)

HARD BOUNCE = The recipient’s email address failed. It either no longer exists or was typed wrong when they first signed up (if you have a website sign up, you can combat possible Hard Bounces by telling them they should look for a confirmation email – if they don’t receive it, they’ll know something went wrong).

SOFT BOUNCE = Recipient is ‘temporarily unavailable’. On vacation (automatic ‘out-of-office’ reply), or their mailbox is full. (Most Email Service Providers will have the email sit on their servers for a while and will resend it up to a few days, but no promises)

COMPLAINT = Recipient hits the ‘This is Spam’ button. It usually means they don’t remember you, so make sure your From address and Subject Line are clear. (Once they’ve hit complaint, you won’t be able to send them email anymore unless they sign up again.)

UNSUBSCRIBE = Clear and simple, this recipient decided they didn’t need to hear from you anymore and clicked the ‘Unsubscribe’ link in your email. (It happens so don’t feel bad, but if it happens enough, it’s probably time to look at your campaign with fresh eyes.)

. . . NOW FOR THE NUMBERS

Most companies that we serve fall into the Retail sector, so I’ll focus on those report numbers. These are the percentages you should aim for, but many factors can keep these numbers down:

Open rate: 27-28% (Have an enticing Subject Line that clearly explains what’s in the email)

Click-Through rate: 5-6% (Rule of thumb: have at least 10 ‘clickables’, or ways to move from the email to the website. These can come in the form of pictures, text, or buttons.)

Soft Bounce: 1-2%

Hard Bounce: 2-3%

Complaint: less than 1%

Unsubscribes: 0.4-1% (Since they signed up for your emails in the first place, they’ll probably stay on your list for a while.)

In this first example, I honestly don’t have any super fix that will solve this problem, because I have no idea why this happened in the first place. I received this email, and usually when there are images my email provider (in this case Gmail) will ask if I want to display them. This time, though it didn’t ask. Gmail didn’t acknowledge that there were supposed to be images, so the only possible way to see them was to click ‘View in your web browser’. There were no alt tags either, or at least they didn’t display the way they normally would if there were un-displayed images, another email no-no.

The only suggestion I have is to TEST, TEST, TEST. All email service providers offer the option to view your email in multiple providers (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook), so you can pick out the problems and fix them before you send it.

In the second example, I just want to suggest to everyone sending emails that if your ‘From’ address is your name, which it should be (in this case French Connection US), then don’t bother writing it in your Subject Line, too. You’ll be wasting valuable characters (50 characters is a good number to stay below), and reiterating for no reason.

If it’s not a stark white page that says “Bye”, it has too many questions and clicks to actually follow through with your unsubscribe. So what is the perfect amount? How do you ‘break up’ with your unsubscribes?

Have a page (with the familiar navigation and layout of your website) with a nice note that says something along the lines of “We’re sorry to see you go”, and don’t make them click one more time to finally unsubscribe (that means do it automatically!). Give them the option to re-subscribe to the list, so if they accidentally clicked the Unsubscribe link in the email, they’ll be able to still receive your amazing newsletters.

It’s as simple as that. No need for insults or an obnoxious amount of clicks (although if you would like to know why they unsubscribed, you can offer a optional question/answer section). It’s best to let your customer part with a smile and say ‘We’re still friends’, instead of having them bad-mouth your company all over town. After all, we’re not in Junior High anymore.

Unfortunately, the house is probably fine, but some third thing I hadn’t thought of came up: it was all an elaborate (kind of) scam. Luckily, I’m real smart and sniffed it out within the first sentence, somewhere in the red area:

“Hello ,
Thanks for you response,I am the owner of the property you interested on,a missionary with the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church in West Africa…”

I was sad, even though I knew it was too good to be true, I felt like you do when you fool yourself into believing your Powerball ticket is, “really going to hit this time,” and then, you know.

Anyway, of course the email ended up asking for a bunch of my information, and even better, the sender’s name is apparently, “Am Nice,” so clearly, this is someone with a psychology degree… but I was about to find that beyond that, this evil genius was also well-versed in the dark arts of email marketing. *cue: buh-buh-BUH!*

I did a quick search of the phone number, which, yes, goes somewhere in Pankshin, Africa (that was as far as I felt like researching), where I assume I was to pay my first month’s rent. Google showed me a blog covering this Craigslist scam with a copy of the email they had received, and lo and behold, there were slight variations – this person is A/B testing their emails, I thought… and then I told everyone in the office, then I thought, what a good blog idea… and then, erm, now.

First variant:
My email: The sender’s name is the aforementioned Am Nice. I laughed at first wondering if they really thought that would work, but then I was like, oh, maybe this person had hippie parents, I mean, I went to school with a guy whose last name was Nice. For a moment, I felt bad for Am Nice, the barely literate home renter.

Email B: The signee’s name is Howard Bradshaw. I feel like, already, this one surely has the edge out of the gate.

Second Variant:
My email:
“Hello ,
Thanks for you response,I am the owner of the property you interested on,a missionary with the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church in West Africa.I am presently serving as Camp Director with the United Methodist Church in West Africa, Nigeria.”

Email B:
“Hello , Thanks for you response,I am the owner of the property you interested on,a missionary with the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church International, I am presently serving as Camp Director with the United Methodist Church in West Africa, Nigeria.”

Interesting. Perhaps the “International” would have allayed my fears for a split second longer? I mean, you can’t flat-out say that you’re part of an African church off the top – the “missionary” bit hardly covers it, does it? At this point already I wish I could see this guy’s (or girl’s) analytics.

Third Variant:
My email:
“Note:  We Intend selling the property before my wife reason to it that we should not sell it any longer,that the best way is to rent for future purpose,so if in case you drive by and see a sign board with a number on it,please disregard it,be cos we have ask them to get the sign of our property that we are not selling any longer,that it’s for rent now by us…”

Email B: Wisely, this version left out the whole, “Hey, it might look like the place is for sale, but that’s jokes,” note.

Summary:
I’m willing to bet that this criminal mastermind’s B email is beating the crap out of A, but I’ll likely never know. Maybe after I post this I’ll email good ol’ Am Nice back and see if they’ll let me know how it’s going. Hmmm, I’ll have to look close at Mail Chimp’s Monkey Awards program, I may have a partnership in my future…

*ahem* Also, the moral of this story is that’s it’s smart to A/B test your email marketing campaigns, heck, maybe add a C in there if your list is large enough. Just imagine how sad our buddy would have been had he only used his clearly inferior A up there. Only the largest derelicts looking for rental property would have even attempted to follow through – imagine the headaches in trying to walk someone like that through the process of wiring money to you.

So here is the super simple way to to fix it: for every image tag, add style=”display:block;”. For example

*img src=”photo.jpg” style=”display:block;”*

Done! This post may seem a little behind the times, as the change was made two months ago, but I am still receiving emails from big name companies that haven’t adopted the simple change, yet, so the threat that your images will render with big white lines through them is still very real. Beware!

There are tons of categories incentives can fall through. Here are some types – hopefully from this list you can choose what may be a best fit for your company and consumers.

Material incentives: tangible rewards often monetary — wages, fringe benefits, patronage

Solidary incentives: intangible rewards from the act of association — sociability, status, identification

Purposive incentives: intangible rewards related to the goals of the organization — e.g., working on an election of a supported candidate

Bonuses -One of the most popular sales incentives is cash, and a great way to offer it is through incentive-based raffles. Use a chart to identify defined goals, and each time an employee achieves one of the goals she is given a raffle ticket. Hence, the more goals an employee reaches the more raffle tickets she receives and the better the chances are she will win.

Gifts – Offer the winning staff member a gift from your store’s merchandise, which could be a new flat-screen television or an all-expenses-paid vacation. They key is to ensure that your staff members all continually want to make a sale.

Promotions -When a position becomes available you can hold a sales incentive competition to award it to the highest seller. In this case, it’s best to run the competition for several months so you see who can sustain a high level of performance and deserves a position of more responsibility. Typically, these competitions are limited to a small group of employees.

It is important to understand how much incentives can affect your company – both positively and negatively. With this economy it might be tough to gain positive influence to your company by using incentives, so it is best to start mildly with an incentive to see how much influence it may gain. Keep reports of your progress.

When you want to attract new customers creating a mailing list is a nice option to promote your incentives. A newsletter is a wonderful incentive that allows your company to show off honesty, credibility and trust. These newsletters should mostly contain sales and coupons. Give people a reason to sign up – for some valuable information. Also, be sure to keep your content fresh, The biggest reason that people unsubscribe to newsletters is that they don’t feel the information is relevant to them any longer. A handy tip to get more exposure: keep your incentives personal. Keep track of your specific customers. If you have a large amount of customers who go in your store and only purchase outdoor items, offer an incentive that goes out to them only. Identify your target markets and keep them organized within your newsletter/email campaigns. Make them personal.

A free download is another great incentive to include on your web site, email marketing or newsletter. A free download means instant gratification and is perceived as a ‘must-have’ item. Make it valuable to your customers. Pay attention to your graphics as well. I personally like buttons that look ‘click-able’ or ‘touchable’ make sure you choose a nice graphic that has a nice ‘call to action’ mood to it. See don’t you just want to click it?

Kudos answers.com & rockstar affiliates

As long as your numbers prove your design works (with either purely images or live text, also), then there’s no problem. This example, sent by Urban Outfitters yesterday, shows the email marketing trend that many large brands are going with. Without the alt tags (which just say a quick message about what the image is, if not displayed), the email would just be one big white box. A company like U.O. can certainly use their audience to their own advantage when sending emails: they are generally young and probably tech savvy, or at least understand that if you want to see the pretty pictures, you have to take that extra step to ‘Display Images’. It’s a gamble, but it looks like U.O., along with so many other companies, are willing to take it.

So once you get past the ‘Display Images’ issue, what should your all-graphics email look like? It should be worth the extra click, and I feel that Urban Outfitters accomplished that with this email. Their marketing is usually edgy, integrating popular art trends, and with this email they’ve decided to show that using a beautiful color scheme with bold letters is all it takes. Of course the words ‘Free Shipping’ are always a good attraction, but the graphic was only as busy as it needed to be, and as a customer I appreciated that.

The moral of the story: don’t over-stimulate your audience with tons of pictures. The message should be clear, and the graphics should only be used to add to it, not distract.