Best Practice B2C Email Marketing Subject Lines

We’ve been talking a lot recently about ways to improve the emails we do for our clients. In striving to create the best work we’re capable of, we’ve been doing a lot of research in all aspects of email marketing.

One of the most overlooked parts of the email is the subject line. It has to be compelling enough to get someone to read the email, succinct enough to display properly in the recipient’s email client, and worded in such a way as to communicate an offer or incentive without sounding overly cheesy.

Here are some of the best tips I found for writing Best Practice B2C Email Marketing Subject Lines.

Length

Direct Marketing News recommends keeping subject lines at 35 characters or less–subject lines that are much longer may be cut off in certain email clients on screens with smaller resolutions. Keeping a subject line short and to-the-point helps keep emails easily scannable.

(A quick check of my own email client shows that emails are cut off after about 50 characters–but I have a pretty high-res widescreen monitor). It’s important to aim for the lowest common denominator so as not to exclude anybody from your message.

WIIFM?

Gail Goodman at Entrepreneur.com advocates that marketers consider “WIIFM” (What’s In It For Me?) from the recipient’s point of view to ensure the subject lines of B2C emails are enticing enough to click. Is there a special offer or promotion that will peak a consumer’s interest? Think about how your audience will react to your subject line. You want to dangle the carrot without sounding spammy.

Don’t Repeat Yourself

This article suggests not repeating the sender name in the subject line–your reader has already seen it in the “From” field. With the limited amount of character space, it’s best to keep the subject line meaningful and direct without namedropping in the subject line.

Use Your Consumer Data for Good

DJ Waldo writes on the Email Experience Council’s blog about the power of personalization. He received a B2C email with his (previous) location in the subject line and felt inclined to open the email. Depending on the consumer data available, there’s a lot of personalization that can be done to increase open rates.

Make It Your Own

Through testing and tracking, you can test and optimize what works best for your clients’ recipient lists. Find out what calls to action work best. Are they coupons? Contests or promotions? New product announcements? It’ll vary from client to client. Use your best judgment and track the open rates and click-through rates so you can improve further in the future. Your clients will thank you.

Expanding basic web font stacks

For years now, typography on the web has been pretty simple – unless you could use images for text, or something like sIFR, you were stuck with a very basic font stack: typically Arial, Georgia, Times and Verdana being the most prevalent. Countless great designs have been made with those basic tools, but designers have wanted to broaden their typographic resources for quite some time.

Currently, it’s an exciting time for type on the web. Tools like sIFR are still around, there’s also JS based techniques like Cufon, as well as commercial solutions like Typekit, and even @font-face embedding for modern browsers. Each of these has their positives and negatives, but a simple compromise solution comes in the form of simply expanding the basic font stack.

This has been written about before, but it never seems to have gained traction in the design community. That’s a shame, because there are some great options available.

Quite simply, this is the idea that instead of just choosing fonts that have 100% compatibility (which limits you to the common choices), specifying fonts that are very common (I’ve chosen ~80% or higher, though it’s up to your discretion), and then using traditional fonts as backups if a user doesn’t have the font in question. This is incredibly easy to code, degrades very gracefully, and doesn’t require a download or installation of anything for the user.

You have to be willing to accept that less than 100% of people will see your design with perfect accuracy to the original, but the payoff is that for 8 out of 10 it will be more interesting and offer a richer typographic experience, whereas 2 out of 10 will simply see standard fonts.

There are good lists of fonts available here (Windows) and here (Mac). Keep in mind you can use these together, specifying first a Windows-prevalent font, then a Mac version, then the more standard type after that. One of the most exciting choices is Arial Narrow (~89% on both platforms) which finally gives you an option for condensed type in HTML text. I’m also interested to see Franklin Gothic Medium (a classic in the design world, 97% on Windows), and Palatino/Palatino Linotype (gorgeous serif face, 97% Windows, 80% Mac).

Custom Creative Combined with Email Marketing Best Practices

With more than 10 years of dedicated online marketing experience, DigitalDay has become one of the nation’s leading providers of Email Marketing Services. Through our relationship with Silverpop, we’ve easily delivered 10’s of millions of opt-in email messages on behalf of our clients — all designed to drive traffic back to their websites, promotions or microsites.

To help understand the full range of our email service offering, you can download the PDF DigitalDay Email Marketing Services Jan 2010 which includes:

 Custom Branded Design & Creative Services
 Powerful Delivery & Best-In-Class Technology
 Personalized Landing Pages & Microsites
 Customer Data & Web Analytics Integration
 Email Reporting and Marketing Analytics
 Survey Creation Tools
 Email List/Data Management
 Transactional Emails & Messaging

Duck Tape takes Flight Under a New Website

It’s been a busy week for press releases from our clients. Shurtech Brands, owners of Duck brands which includes Duck® Tape, announced the launch last week of another DigitalDay designed and developed website: DuckProducs.com.

The new Duck brands website, designed and developed by DigitalDay, went live Monday this week.

This new Duck site combined four previously separate properties into one stronger, content-rich and content managed, online marketing presence.

Like many companies, Duck brands developed separate websites over the years to support different marketing strategies. Not only did this cause maintenance headaches, it confused consumers and diluted the brand’s messaging.

The old Duck Tape website, developed when the brand was owned by Henkel Corporation.

DigitalDay’s strategy to develop a consolidated site under a fresh, modern, brand-appropriate umbrella will have many benefits:

• Engaged consumers will find richer content and return to the site more often
• Search ranking will increase, yielding more traffic
• Maintenance will be minimized

To help the client keep service costs down, DigitalDay implemented Sitecore’s Content Management System. This powerful tool will allow the client to make routine updates, product changes and review and approve consumer-generated content through an easy to understand interface.

So, without any further adieu, here’s the new release . . .

Duck brand Products Finds New Home on Web

-From duct tape to weatherstripping to moving and packaging, new site provides helpful tips and tricks to get it done-

AVON, Ohio (December 16, 2009) – Whether you’re a crafter interested in sharing some creative duct tape ideas, a DIYer looking for help with blocking out pesky drafts or a teen searching for unique ways to earn much-needed scholarship dollars, www.duckbrand.com – the new online home of Duck brand products – can help with these solutions, and more!

The site provides helpful tips and tricks for using various Duck brand products around the home, from Duck Tape® brand duct tape and weatherstripping to shelf liners, packaging tapes and more. In addition to accessing useful product solutions for both everyday and outlandish problems, visitors can submit their own ideas or comment on those submitted by others.

For Duck Tape enthusiasts, the new www.duckbrand.com is also home to the popular Duck Tape Club (offering fun and quirky uses for Duck Tape), the Stuck at Prom® Scholarship Contest (challenging high school students to wear duct tape to prom for a chance to win scholarship money) and Ducktivities (providing duct tape crafting how-tos and an option for crafters to upload their own creations).

Visitors are also encouraged to interact with the site through the Duck blog, which will provide seasonally relevant product information and other brand-related news; a discussion board for sharing experiences, new product ideas and craft inspirations; as well as social media integration with outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

For more information, please visit www.duckbrand.com.

A New Brand and Online Marketing Strategy for Backgroundchecks.com

Our client, Backgoundchecks.com, just published the following press release regarding the new website and logo we helped them develop. This project was more than just a branding and website redesign project. DigitalDay played a key role in the complete re-tooling and repositioning of the company’s marketing strategy.

DigitalDay provided the strategy, branding, design and front-end templates for Backgroundchecks.com's new consumer website which launched December1, 2009.

Working collaboratively with Backgroundchecks.com’s marketing and IT department, we developed a search-engine-rich market segmentation strategy, created the new brand identity, and designed an intuitive eCommerce interface.

After the strategy, information architecture and design work, our technical team rolled up their sleeves to deliver the complete front-end of the site in Microsoft’s ASP.NET MVC compliant templates. The client’s IT department then integrated the templates into their system.

Here’s the release . . .

BackgroundChecks.com Launches New Website, Products and Services for  Consumers

DALLAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Dallas-based Backgroundchecks.com, a leading online background screening provider for Fortune 500 companies and provider of the #1 criminal convictions database in the industry, launched a newly redesigned consumer website that includes new consumer products services, and a new logo.

The new site, which launched on Dec. 1, comes as part of a total brand revitalization designed to better serve consumers with background check needs. The new website includes an interactive learning center with in-depth FAQs for all products, a Crime 101 page, search tips and  instructions for those who need help with online purchasing.

“When the site was redesigned, its overarching goal was to make it as  helpful as possible,” said BackgroundChecks.com SVP of Marketing and  E-commerce, Laura Kendall. “The opt-in for money saving discounts and promotions, quick guest checkout, the learning center and its overall user-friendliness combine to create BackgroundChecks.com as the online destination for consumer background check needs.”

The final portion of the revitalization comes in the form of a new company logo, designed to represent who BackgroundChecks.com brand and services.

Says Laura, “Our new logo represents all the data sources that we pull nationwide to compile the most comprehensive report in the market online. Moreover, it represents the ability for consumers to compile profiles on any individual they wish to monitor to protect themselves and their family.” 

“Big Cans, Big Prices” — Make the Package Hero in CPG Marketing Design

When designing a website, email, online promotion, banner ad or any consumer marketing communication online or off, I always want the consumer packaged (CPG) product to be as large as reasonably possible. This helps reinforce brand identity by building awareness of the packaging.

Typically, CPG products compete on shelf with direct competitors. As an online marketing agency, it’s our job to help our clients build package awareness to help a consumer immediately recognize the packaging as they walk down the aisle. We may not be able to save someone from a panic attack, but we can help the consumers find our client’s product.

Click to Play "Coffee, Coffee, Coffee" scene from Moscow on the Hudson.

Back when I worked for the advertising and sales promotion agency AROCOM Marketing Group, Chris Connors, the current CEO of Sherwin-Williams, was then but a lowly marketing communications manager in charge of, among other things, Sherwin-William’s Sunday supplements. His art direction credo was “I want to see Big Cans and Big Prices!”

Obviously, that stuck with me and I encourage all of the designers at DigitalDay to think that way too — or as much as reasonably possible. Here are some recent examples of some of our work where we do what we can to maintain the design and brand integrity while showcasing large packaging.

Reynolds Oven Bags launched last week to help support the holiday season with packaging as a strong element on the home page.

 

 

Baco Foil's home page tells a photo story that moves from targeted lifestyle, to appetitie appeal recipe to the package that makes it possible -- at least that's what we're trying to suggest.

 

Consumer products that are only sold online can also benefit from strong product packaging.

Schwan’s Food Ads Blanket the Web

To help Schwan’s Food Service support a massive online media buy, DigitalDay develop a series of animated banner ads and a promotion-focused landing page to pay off the creative.

Our goal was to develop creative that pops off the page, gets attention and prompts a click. While the complete results are not yet in, the program, which has been running for more than a month now, has been very successful for the client.

A Schwan's Banner Ad captured recently on Cleveland.com. The ads are running nationally under a large online media buy.

The promotion's landing page pays off the Banner Ad creative and reinforces the promotional message.

UNIQUE DigitalDay™ DESIGNED WEBSITE HELPS CONSUMERS CONSERVE MONEY, WILDLIFE

Florida Crystals teams up with Palm Beach Zoo to save endangered jaguars

West Palm Beach, Fla. – September 14, 2009 – In an effort to save one of our planet’s endangered big cats, the jaguar, Florida Crystals has launched a one-of-a-kind e-coupon program designed and developed by DigitalDay and in collaboration with the Palm Beach Zoo, whose jaguar breeding program is among the most successful in the nation.

“Initially, Florida Crystals came to us wanting to do an email campaign to drive traffic to their current brand site,” said Mark Vitullo, DigitalDay’s Marketing & Creative Partner.

“After an analysis of their business objectives and an understanding of their marketing strategy, we proposed a more robust online campaign that included an email acquisition program, a coupon micro-site and then a multi-part email program,” said Vitullo.

“Once we learned of Florida Crystal’s commitment to the environment and the Palm Beach Zoo, we concocted a unique application of our DigitalDay Coupon System whereby consumers make a choice of how much they wish to save or donate. “

“Good SEO results, coupon-site seeding and social networking tie-ins have added to the program’s success,” added Vitullo.

Jaguars are the western hemisphere’s largest and most powerful felines. Florida Crystals chose the Palm Beach Zoo, because it plays an incredible role in jaguar conservation through its participation in the Association of Zoos & Aquariums Species Survival Plan. Amazingly, twenty percent of the nation’s captive jaguars in the program can trace their bloodlines back to the Palm Beach Zoo’s jaguar family.

Designed and developed by DigitalDay, Florida Crystals "Save and Donate" coupon site is unique in the way it delivers online coupons to consumers.

For every coupon redeemed from www.FloridaCrystalsCoupon.com on any variety of Florida Crystals® Natural and Organic sugar, the company will donate an amount chosen by its customers to the Jaguar Conservation Fund at the Palm Beach Zoo. The new program offers the opportunity to directly benefit an endangered animal.

“This is a unique application of online couponing that could benefit any type of marketer who has a cause or charity they want to jointly support. It’s also been an interesting social experiment to see the choices consumers make in how much to save or donate. All of the results, of course, are proprietary” added Vitullo.

“This initiative highlights one of Florida Crystals’ on-going sustainable efforts,” said Luis Fernandez, Executive Vice President of Florida Crystals Corporation. “We’ve supported and worked with wildlife researchers on our Florida farms over the years. We are enthusiastic about now offering our customers the ability to join us in wildlife conservation.”

To learn more, visit www.FloridaCrystalsCoupon.com and www.Digital-Day.com

Florida Crystals is a leading domestic sugar producer and North America’s first fully integrated cane sugar company, guiding its sugar from the field to the table. Florida Crystals® is the first and only certified organic sugar 100 percent made in the USA, grown and harvested in Florida. Because of Florida Crystals’ earth-friendly farming practices and clean, renewable energy production, Florida Crystals® Organic and Natural sugars are the first sugar products CarbonFree® certified by Carbonfund.org, signifying each has a neutral carbon footprint. For more information, visit www.floridacrystals.com & www.floridacrystalscoupon.com.

DigitalDay is a full-service, online marketing agency based in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, between Akron and Cleveland. Since 1997, DigitalDay has provided online marketing counsel, strategy, website design and program implementation to a variety of marketers through the United States. DigitalDay’s Online Coupon System, Email Marketing Programs, Banner Advertising and SEO experience are just a few of the tactics consumer companies large and small have relied on to help drive their online strategies.

The Palm Beach Zoo is a non-profit zoological organization located in Dreher Park in West Palm Beach, housing more than 1,700 animals within 23 acres of lush, tropical habitat. Its mission is to protect wildlife and wildlife habitat, and to inspire others to value and conserve the natural world. The zoo currently sponsors many conservation projects in numerous regions of the world focusing on animals that are represented in the zoo’s population.

Office Chatter: Design Patterns

Eric sent the following internal DigitalDay note out the other day, and it’s worth sharing:

Subject: Design Patterns

One thing we all deal with in every site we do are interface elements (like tabs, modal pop ups, etc).

Sometimes we pull from experience or other sites we’ve seen (which is great), but we’re also guilty of doing stuff because “it’s cool” or we just saw it on a site, or someone just made an extension so it’s easy in jQuery, or just because a client did the same. Adam and I were talking awhile back about trying to have a more structured approach to this; choosing things that best serve the content and the user for each case.

Helpfully, some clever and generous people have created huge libraries of these elements. This first in particular is great because it lists when you would want to use a certain technique vs. some other technique. There’s rationale, pros and cons, etc.

http://quince.infragistics.com/UX-Design-Patterns.aspx

Also some good stuff here – http://www.welie.com/patterns/

And here – http://designingwebinterfaces.com/explore

So, whether we’re planning interface elements in IA, in design or in programming we can use links like these (and I’m sure there are others) to build things with a purpose and choose the right tool for the job. They can also serve as some fuel to help counter a client who insists on something we know isn’t the best way.

-Eric

TAAN Copenhagen Meeting, Part 1 in Pictures

The Transworld Advertising Agency Association (TAAN) Global Meeting kicked off in Copenhagen this Thursday with more than 45 agency owners representing 35 ad agencies from four continents.

A short stroll from the Phoenix Hotel, Nyhavn is where the locals, tourists and TAAN members gather for their daily food and beverage.

TAAN Members duck outside for a little fresh air and a smoke during the welcome reception Thursday night at Vin Baren, Copenhagen.

Prospective members from Italy, Franceco and Roberto Miscioscia, spend time with France's Bruno du Teilleul of Mr. Joe.

Sean Duffy presents -- more caption to come

Johnathan Salem Baskin, author of "Branding Only works on Cattle"

Michel Devos, Vandekerckhove & Devos -- Belgium, and Bruno du Teilleul, Mr. Joe - Paris, browse the short-listed TAAN Titan Award entries.

The first of two full days of meetings in the Hotel Phoenix during the TAAN Global Meeting in Copenhagen.

TAAN President Peter Gerritsen cuts a special discount deal for TAAN Members with Tomas Speight of Masterfile, the largest independent stock photo house.

Twelve U.S. agencies are represent the American side of TAAN during the Global Meeting in Copenhagen.