Responsys New School Marketing Blog

Responsys Interact 2012: It's a Wrap!

2012-05-11T15:00:00Z

Last week, we welcomed over 1,000 attendees to Responsys Interact 2012 in San Francisco for an incredible three days packed with keynotes, breakout sessions, a private concert with Earth Wind and Fire, networking, training, parties and more. It's always great to see our customers and partners come together to be inspired by industry thought leaders and share in each other's successes. Here's a few highlights.

Doing well by doing good - charity:water Founder and CEO, Scott Harrison, candidly shared the story behind charity: water, an organization that brings clean, safe drinking water to millions of people in underserved nations. Scott also talked about how the organization is redefining the non-profit model with a unique online fundraising approach, largely powered by social media. After the keynote, our CEO Dan Springer pledged his birthday for clean water and announced that he'll match every donation. Attendees were also invited to experience first-hand what it feels like to carry 30 pounds of water via the charity:water Walk. To donate to Dan's birthday campaign visit: http://mycharitywater.org/danspringer

The Facebook marketing opportunity - Everyone was excited to hear from the head of Facebook Marketing Solutions, Grady Burnett, about how marketers are currently leveraging the site's network of nearly 850 million users. Grady shared some great insights around how Facebook will continue to innovate and serve as a relationship marketing channel for brands big and small.

Relationship retargeting = smarter marketing - Relationship retargeting is one of the innovations we're most excited about here at Responsys. Scott Jones, General Manager for Display at Responsys, presented last week with four customers who are running some great campaigns using Interact for Display -- Dollar Thrifty, StubHub, MetLife and L'Occitane. After launching the product last Fall, it's nice to share these customer successes with a wider audience. More in our press release.

The real value in social for marketers is the data - According to a recent study by Forrester, only 13% of interactive marketers are using social data to inform and optimize their interactive marketing campaigns. We hope to increase this percentage through the new offering we announced last week, Interact Social Data Cloud, which enables our users to leverage social profile and behavioral data to build and execute even more personalized campaigns. Stay tuned for some exciting partner and customer announcements in this area.

Love our customer speakers - We had over thirty customers speak at Interact this year! A million thanks to our wonderful customers including Scottrade, Orbtiz.com, Dollar Thrifty, philosophy, MetLife, charity: water, Verizon, Schwan's, StubHub, Freshpair, REI, Babycenter, Thomson Reuters and more for sharing their campaign successes and stories with attendees.

Work hard and play hard - To close out the first day of the conference, Grammy award-winning artist Earth Wind and Fire performed a private concert for all attendees. The dance floor was packed!

We're looking forward to Interact 2013 already..only 355 more days!

For more photos, check out our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/responsys

A Different Approach to the Win-back Email

2012-05-08T14:30:39Z

Mint.com, May 7, 2012, 8:04 AM

Subject Line: Listen to what our users say about Mint

Here's an interesting approach to a win-back campaign from Mint.com, a free service that offers help with personal finance and budget management. Rather than remind subscribers of what they can do on Mint.com, the email touts recent accolades and features user recommendations. The campaign also includes a call-out to their blog and Facebook page, a great way to increase cross-channel engagement with their subscribers. Added bonus -- it's HTML-friendy!

3 Reasons Why Relationship Marketers Need Display

2012-05-07T23:38:40Z

About a month ago, I had the pleasure of taking part in the 'Future of display advertising' panel at ad:tech Melbourne alongside Marc Barnett from ninemsn and Paul Fisher, CEO of IAB Australia. We came together to discuss the role of display as a marketing channel, its increasing value to marketers and what this resurgence means for today's cross channel marketing programs.

While we all know that display has an been an integral part of a marketers' tool kit for years, with the advent of new cookie tracking technology, its value to the relationship marketing mix is more significant than ever. Let me explain what this means for marketers by covering some of the points I raised on the panel.

1) There is no more 'batch and blast' with display

Display technology is now at a point where it is becoming so personalized that marketers can target consumers with far greater precision - similar to what happened to email over the past decade. Today marketers not only have more data available to them, but the granularity of the data has vastly improved. This provides new opportunities for marketers to increase their return on investment. However, if marketers are to see real returns from their display marketing, they need to combine this approach with email and other channels in an automated and orchestrated manner - signaling a well overdue end to the 'batch and blast' approach.

2) Knowledge is power

It's important to note that while return on display marketing is generally lower than email, it increases significantly when the two are combined. At Responsys we provide an environment where marketers are able to interpret the information they hold on their customers and orchestrate it into their cross-channel marketing strategies. Take Dollar Thrifty, for example. By serving well-timed and personalized display ads to customers who had received email offers, they realized over 22% revenue lift. The message is clear - for optimum success, marketers need to combine their email and display strategies. It's not rocket science, it's smarter marketing.

3) Finding the cash cow

While the environment today is challenging, marketers should not use this as an excuse to rest on their laurels. If marketers want to get ahead in this challenging consumer environment, they need to innovate and focus on orchestrating coordinated campaigns. They need to turn this 'challenge' into an 'opportunity' by leveraging technology and automation. If they do, it will free them up to develop new strategic programs that will drive their business success.

To Step Up Their Email Program, JC Penney Moves Sideways

2012-05-02T13:36:10Z

JC Penney, February 19, 2012, 6:56 PM

Subject Line: Hello, Sunshine!

Has anyone else noticed what JC Penney emails are looking like lately? The iconic department store chain has been stepping up their email creative over the last year, experimenting with different layouts, playing with animation and dramatically decreasing the length of their subject lines. There are a few things that could be improved to bring their creative closer to best practices, but what I'm really interested in is their increasingly more frequent use of the horizontal email layout.

The horizontal layout opens up a lot of interesting possibilities for email creative. JC Penney has launched at least three and all leave room for improvement. For example, it looks like the standard navigation from their previous emails was used, but employed in this format it comes to an abrupt end halfway through the image. Still, I appreciate that JC Penney is willing to experiment with their creative, and I'm interested in seeing how these campaigns perform next to the traditional vertical-scrolling email.

charity: water - Inspiring a Grassroots Movement Through Digital Marketing

2012-04-30T15:00:00Z

This post is part of a blog series leading up to Responsys Interact 2012 about how our customers are re-writing the rules of marketing.

charity: water is using transparency, digital experiences and long-term customer engagement to redefine the non-profit model from the ground up. Its mission is to help bring clean drinking water to the nearly 800 million people currently living without life's most basic need, and it's using great marketing to make that happen. I spoke with Paull Young, Director of Digital about how charity: water is creating long term donor relationships through highly personalized and integrated marketing.

Q: charity: water has raised millions of dollars, along with awareness, to help create access to clean, safe drinking water in impoverished nations. How has your marketing made this mission accessible to people around the world?

A: At the core of our marketing we're trying to build a really strong brand that people can connect with and look up to like they do with Nike or Apple, for example. The non-profit sector doesn't typically put a lot of stock in branding, while for us, it's really at the core of who we are.

The power of the brand comes alive for charity: water in two ways - gorgeous design and storytelling. These elements are part of everything we do, from our website and video assets to how we approach every campaign. And our brand story has a few key elements that resonate with people: the 100% model and helping people see the impact of their donation by using GPS to mark every water project on Google Maps.

At charity: water most of our marketing is focused on encouraging people to fundraise and we've had a huge amount of success using digital tools to spark a grassroots movement for clean water. In two years, we've raised 14 million dollars through our fundraising platform mycharitywater.org from 14 thousand campaigners. One of the great ways people are getting involved is by giving up a birthday and asking for donations to charity: water instead of gifts mycharitywater.org/birthdays. The power of digital has enabled us to create a word of mouth movement of people fundraising for the clean water crisis by taking our story, making it their story, and spreading it to the world.

With all of our marketing, we want to build a deeper relationship with our supporters over a long period of time. Part of doing this is by delivering an amazing donor experience to them. In the non-profit world, typically you donate to a charity, get a tax receipt and then get asked for more money. This is not a great donor experience. At charity: water, we're focused on driving an amazing experience and we do that by tying every dollar donated through mycharitywater.org and from all of our major donors to an actual water project. For any amount of money donated on mycharitywater.org, each donor gets photos, info and GPS coordinates for the well being built with their donation. That personalized experience drives a great donor relationship.

In other words, storytelling and brand inspires a movement, the movement spreads the word, and for all the donors who get involved, we deliver a great experience and hopefully they connect with charity: water for life.

Q: Being a nonprofit, you probably work within a small marketing staff and budget. How have you maximized your resources to be successful? Do you have any advice for other nonprofits working within these parameters?

A: charity: water has never done direct mail or bought ads, which is very rare for a nonprofit in America. We have a small marketing staff, which is very focused on creative, digital, donor relations and corporate partnerships.

My advice for nonprofits would be to focus on the donor experience first. I'd recommend investing time, money and effort in telling stories that inspire supporters and then deliver a really great experience so that people receive value from giving.

Q: Can you talk about the different marketing channels that charity: water uses - has one channel been particularly successful for you in terms of driving donations? Or do you believe it's all the channels working together?

A: Social media is huge for us - in fact, charity: water is the first nonprofit to have one million followers on Twitter. We don't use social media or email to ask for money, instead we work to inspire and drive action through our content pieces. This year, we're expanding our email strategy to drastically increase the amount touch points we have with our donors during the 18 months it takes to build the water project they've funded. I want to use email to provide more recognition, information and education during this time period. My hope is that email will help us to create deeply personal communications with each donor, creating long term donor relationships.

Q: Why are you excited about using Responsys? What do you think the opportunity is for charity: water in using the Interact Suite?

A: Our vision is that every supporter of charity: water has an individual relationship with our brand. We want to give each supporter a personalized and integrated experience across our website, email and social channels. I want every donor to receive personalized information and see their personal impact to solving the world's water crisis. For example, if a donor is with us for ten years and actively fundraising, sharing, giving, buying from our store etc., I want that individual to see the overall impact of each of those initiatives.

By working with Responsys, we'll provide our supporters with an integrated experience so that what's in their email inbox mirrors the experience they have on our website - and both will be individualized and personalized.

Q: One of the themes at Interact this year is about how marketers are 're-writing the rules' and continuing to innovate - is there anything or anyone in the industry who you think is particularly innovative?

A: We're much more like a digital start-up than a non profit, so we like to watch innovative start-ups like Twitter, Square, foursquare, Toms Shoes, LinkedIn and Warby Parker. In our industry, I think donorschoose.org do excellent work and Invisible Children/KONY12 had amazing impact. What's interesting about these companies is how they're disrupting an industry, doing things differently and improving things for people. For example, Square is making it easier for individuals to pay, foursquare is helping people to unlock information about a city in real-time and LinkedIn is changing how professionals connect. Similarly, charity: water is reinventing charity to provide a different experience for donors.

Q: What are you looking forward to at Interact this year?

A: I'm looking forward to networking with Responsys clients, understanding what they're doing, what they're excited about and how they're using the Interact Suite. And as always, I'm interested to see how people respond to Scott Harrison's story and our overall mission.

Want to do well by doing good? charity: water is hiring an Email Marketing Manager. For more info, go to: http://www.charitywater.org/about/jobs.php#email_marketing_manager

How Scottrade Leverages Marketing Automation to Onboard New Customers

2012-04-27T15:00:00Z

This post is part of a blog series leading up to Responsys Interact 2012 about how our customers are re-writing the rules of marketing.

The day of manual standalone campaigns is over. Today, marketing is about a series of personalized, integrated touch points, each triggered based on rich data, testing and automation. Scottrade, Inc., a leading investing services firm, has moved beyond campaigns into multi-step, multi-wave interactions that drive new levels of customer engagement and customer growth. I spoke with April Mullen, Branding and Marketing Communications Analyst - Email Management, about how Scottrade has taken its email program to a whole new level.

Q: Scottrade has made some significant strides with its new client onboarding program - what has helped you make this a success?

A: Scottrade seeks to engage and educate new clients about our tools and services, so getting a strong client onboarding program in place has been an important part of the new client lifecycle. We've worked with Responsys to turn what was a very manual new client email stream into an automated series of seven messages that educate our new clients and highlight all we have to offer.

In recent months, we've taken a completely new approach to our email creative, ensuring better branding for Scottrade and putting it into a modular template format that matches our other emails. Having modular email templates, designed by Responsys, has helped us get to market much faster with our email campaigns - it's no longer a daunting task to re-design and code each campaign. The new format has been successful. Since we transitioned the onboarding program in the fall of 2011 from the old creative to the new creative, our clicks have increased 10% and unsubscribes have decreased by 75%.

Q: How does your email program integrate with the other channels to engage new customers?

A: Within the first thirty days, a new Scottrade client will receive a number of different touches, including a call and direct mail piece, in addition to the welcome email series. All communication is integrated and focused on educating the new client and urging them to go online, visit or call their local branch office to learn about the stock trading tools and investment education that Scottrade has to offer. Given Scottrade is targeted at self-directed investors, this initial engagement is important to empower our clients with the education to help them make investment decisions on their own. New clients are also encouraged to connect in our Scottrade community and other social channels including the Scottrade Facebook, Twitter and YouTube sites.

Q: Do you think there are any unique challenges or opportunities as a digital marketer working in the financial services industry?

A: It's an exciting time to be a digital marketer in the financial services industry, particularly in the self-directed space. More people are choosing to take control and manage their financial investments on their own without the cost of an advisor, and many are doing that at Scottrade. Most of what we execute from a marketing standpoint at Scottrade is aimed at educating our clients. We're always thinking of how we can help our clients achieve their financial goals by giving them confidence in how to do it on their own through investment education and the stock trading tools we provide. As we've grown, we also have become much more integrated with our messaging and campaigns than ever before to create a consistent experience for our clients. Working with other areas of the marketing department and other areas of the company to pull off integrated initiatives is very exciting. I truly value my experiences at Scottrade and I feel like I am part of something big when it comes to how we've evolved our marketing sophistication.

Q: One of the themes at Interact this year is about how marketers are 're-writing the rules' and continuing to innovate - is there anything or anyone in the industry who you think is particularly innovative?

A: The financial services industry tends to be slightly conservative when it comes to digital marketing innovation. Many of my colleagues are thought leaders and are not bound by what is typical in our industry. It's a given that we always keep an eye on what the competition is doing, but watching other industries is very valuable. I personally like to follow the airline and retail industries to watch for emerging technologies in digital marketing that can be applied to Scottrade's programs. I think Southwest Airlines is doing a great job with their cross-channel marketing - they've developed very consistent and integrated branding across mobile, social and email. They have built an ecosystem that really shows that they know their customers.

Q: What are you looking forward to at Interact this year?

A: I look forward to hearing success stories from other clients, networking and speaking with other innovative marketers. Last year, I got a lot out of Interact and brought back some great ideas to my team. It's always a very motivating and inspiring experience to be among like-minded people at Interact!

How Schwan's is Using Email and Mobile to Drive Customer Engagement

2012-04-25T15:00:00Z

This post is part of a blog series leading up to Responsys Interact 2012 about how our customers are re-writing the rules of marketing.

Schwan's Home Service, America's largest home food delivery service of high quality frozen foods, has been working with Responsys to evolve its digital marketing from basic transactional emails to an integrated cross-channel program. I spoke with Erica Webb-Belzer, Director of Marketing Communications, about how her team at Schwan's is using targeted emails and mobile SMS messaging to build customer loyalty and engagement.

Q: You've had some very impressive results in tying increased revenue to email campaigns - what in your opinion has been the most successful campaign or strategy?

A: Our digital marketing success is in large part due to the automation that we've put in place with Interact Program. It has allowed us to be more sophisticated in targeting customers and driving sales. The Responsys software has enabled us to strategically automate and target communications about shopping cart abandonment, customer preferences, delivery reminders and special offers. Having email campaigns automated and integrated has enabled my small team to produce some great results.

Q: How has your digital marketing strategy evolved, have you seen a major shift in spend from offline to online?

A: Schwan's Home Service is a 60 year old company, but it's only been in the last several years that digital marketing has become a greater focus. With a dedicated team now in place, we're shifting our marketing strategy from acquisition to retention and moving customers from offline to online channels. In 2009, our email program was minimal - we were only running two campaigns and the emails were very text heavy. We've since created HTML emails that are branded, established a preference center and launched SMS alerts. And there's a lot more in store for 2012!

Q: Consumers are increasingly using smartphones and tablets and I would imagine Schwan's customers are no different. How is mobile part of your digital marketing strategy?

A: On the mobile side, we've been very successful in using SMS to alert our customers 30 minutes prior to the Route Sales Representative stopping by with their frozen food delivery. Schwan's Home Service has approximately 6,000 drivers across the US who are delivering frozen food, so it's been great for our customers and drivers to know when a delivery is coming and ensure that the recipient will be home or allow them time to prepare their order for next time. The other feature we're putting in place this month is the ability for customers to text their email address to our SMS short code. This gives customers another avenue in which to opt-in to our email communications and provides them with early access to our special offers and discounts. In turn, it helps us drive more customers to our online channels. This is all executed with Interact Program, allowing us to coordinate the opt-in and subsequent SMS messaging alongside our email campaigns.

We're also working with Responsys Strategic and Creative Services to ensure that our emails are mobile and tablet friendly. And we're using Return Path to do a lot of testing so that we can be sure our emails look good on mobile devices and in all ISP's.

Q: How are you using offline marketing to drive online engagement and retention?

A: We are integrating our website, Schwans.com, into all printed materials and really focusing on driving customers to enriched content like recipes, videos and preparation instructions. For example, our summer promotion will focus on ribs and other great grilling meats, so there will be call outs throughout our Ordering Guide and Everyday Cravings Catalogs encouraging readers to visit Schwans.com for grilling tips. Many of our offers and promotions also drive people to our social media sites including Twitter and Facebook. In the future, we will promote our SMS short code in more places, getting more customers opted-in and engaged on mobile. Finally, training of our Route Sales Representatives to encourage online engagement is critical to the success of our business as well.

Q: One of the themes at Interact this year is about how marketers are 're-writing the rules' and continuing to innovate - is there anything or anyone in the industry who you think is particularly innovative?

A: The airline industry, from an alerts and SMS messaging standpoint, is always innovating. I admire what Southwest Airlines has done with its 'Click N Save' program, getting consumers at the right time to opt-in their email address, using their mobile phone. We have such a unique business model, so we don't have many direct competitors, but I do tend to watch General Mills since they are another Minneapolis-based food retailer. I love what they've done with the Betty Crocker email creative. Also, I'm watching the mobile and tablet industry closely, as we expect our customers to increasingly use these devices and who knows - maybe one day they will entirely replace the PC! We are also watching the use of Instagram. Photo sharing is becoming increasingly popular and brands like Red Bull and Pepsi are making great inroads with this app.

Q: What are you looking forward to at Interact this year?

A: I'm excited to learn from and share ideas with like-minded people who understand the industry. We're in such a unique niche of an industry so it will be wonderful to have all these experts together in one place! I have several senior colleagues coming to Interact with me, so I'm looking forward to them experiencing the energy and excitement around email, SMS and digital marketing. What they take away from a high level will help us propel our program to the next level in the coming years.

Why Display Retargeting is a No Brainer for Relationship Marketers

2012-04-23T15:41:21Z

This post is part of a blog series leading up to Responsys Interact 2012 about how our customers are re-writing the rules of marketing.

Until now, display advertising has been a high cost, low return game: marketing to many to reach a few. Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group has been working with Responsys to turn that paradigm on its head by using Responsys Interact for Display to retarget individuals and add a new channel to its relationship marketing mix. I spoke with Sandy Martin, Director of eMarketing, about how Dollar Thrifty is using a variety of channels to reach customers at the right time and place.

Q: You're in an industry where consumers are extremely driven by price and are presented with lots of options. How has this impacted your digital marketing strategy?

A: Because travel is a commodity, we're very value conscious and strive to be the low cost provider. As a result, most traditional marketing like print and TV is way too costly for us. But more importantly, we want to be top of mind when consumers are researching travel or ready to make a reservation - and the majority of the time, this happens online. With all of our online marketing, the primary focus is to be relevant to consumers. That means showing consumers the right Dollar Thrifty message at the right time and place. One of the ways we've been able to do this, while increasing the number of customer touch points, is through display retargeting.

Q: Dollar Thrifty has had some great results using Responsys Interact for Display. How have you implemented this and do you have any advice for marketers looking to test out display?

A: A traditional display ad campaign targets hundreds of thousands of people online and the number of those who convert is often relatively small. Display retargeting is a new way to leverage display ads in a very targeted manner and frankly, it's inexpensive and easy to implement.

We've used Responsys' display retargeting solution to move existing customers through the lifecycle - whether it's to show up for a rental car reservation or opt-in to receive special offers or promotions from Dollar Thrifty. Once someone has given us the permission to talk to them and they're already aware of our brand, display retargeting provides another touch point, moving them toward a purchase.

We've had some great initial results. We did a test on our confirmation emails and the group of people who received the confirmation email AND saw display ads about our early check-in product were 22% more likely to show up at the Dollar Thrifty counter and get the car they had reserved online.

I would urge other marketers to test display retargeting. I've found it to be effective and very easily integrated into the overall marketing mix, especially if you're using the Responsys Interact Suite. It just takes dropping a pixel into a batch of emails and doing the creative for display banners. If there's an offer or campaign where you'd like a bit more traction from your customers, display retargeting is worth testing and having in your interactive marketing toolkit.

Q: What are you doing with the other channels, such as mobile and social?

A: We have a mobile site where people can make a car reservation and explore our city guides, which include maps and tips on what to see, where to eat etc. We are also planning a mobile app, which will enable a more personalized experience for users on the go. We want our customers to have a variety of ways to access and interact with Dollar Thrifty, so we're excited to be offering a number of mobile options. We also have active communities on Facebook and Twitter. We of course leverage our email campaigns to encourage customers to find Dollar Thrifty on their phone and social networks.

Q: One of the themes at Interact this year is about how marketers are 're-writing the rules' and continuing to innovate - is there anything or anyone in the industry who you think is particularly innovative?

A: I'm always watching marketers across a variety of industries to try and determine what bits and pieces of their strategy could work for Dollar Thrifty. We don't have the same budgets as everyone else, so I like to think about how we can do something innovative and do it the 'Dollar Thrifty' way. In this industry it's crucial to be bold and test new things, and I admire companies who do just that.

Q: What are you looking forward to at Interact this year?

A: I really like the strategy sessions with Heather Blank and I'm looking forward to learning what other companies are doing with their interactive marketing campaigns. Also, it will be great to network with some really bright people in the marketing industry!

Shrinking Subject Lines?

2012-04-19T03:55:30Z

Though the email industry has long since set the best practice for subject line length somewhere between 35 and 70 characters, today's Twitter-ized world shows a landscape shifting toward shorter subject lines. In fact, a recent Informz study found that subject lines with just 10 characters or fewer resulted in the highest open rates.

A scroll through my inbox validates that this shift is well underway. I suspect that the past success of short subject lines has been due largely to their novelty: when sifting through an inbox full of 45-character subject lines, the occasional 12-character quip stands out. However, if the current trend of short subject lines continues, it could be the longer line that pulls the eye.

This is a trend that we'll continue to watch, but it's most important to keep in mind that, regardless of the length, the copy should be compelling. Even short subject line needs to tell enough of a story to entice the click.

Here are a few that do the trick:

UrbanOutfitters.com's "Flat-Out Awesome" (March 25)
Piperlime's "What's your sandal obsession?" (April 14)
Thrillist's "SF: The Future Is Almost Here" (April 17)

Bazaarvoice Social Summit 2012 Review

2012-04-18T17:40:20Z

Last week I attended the Bazaarvoice Social Summit in Austin, Texas. It was a good conference focused on the power of user generated content to help sell and influence purchases. Here's a few key stats that demonstrate just how powerful this can be: there's a 100% uplift for ecommerce sales among those who look at reviews versus those who do not and newsletter sign ups increase 62% among those who read reviews. There is no doubt that reading opinions of others with similar experiences can help influence positive behavior.

Bazaarvoice also announced a new display program, Bazaarvoice: Media, that leverages the power of user generated content powered by Bazaarvoice. You can now take the content that you know about your reviewers' interests, demographics, and sentiment to provide banner creative that is targeted to the website's audience. This is an excellent opportunity for display advertisers to add more relevance to their campaigns. This is also a great compliment (and something that excites me as a marketer) to the Responsys display offering in the sense that brands can target specific customers with relevant, sentiment based content. The display channel now has similar targeting and messaging capabilities as email, enabling brands to build better relationships with their customers.

To the right is an example diagram of how Bazaarvoice is helping to provide more relevance utilizing the customer profile, interests, and sentiment data. To learn more, visit the Bazaarvoice site.

The was quite a lot of talk around proving ROI and measuring ROI for social, a hot topic for sure. The Social ROI breakout was great. The main focus was measuring social's efforts across ALL your efforts. This type of thinking is spot on, as social is not always the last click within a buying process, but it definitely helps influence purchases as customers move down the funnel. This is how companies are measuring uplift as a result of user generated content (100% increase in conversions for those looking at reviews vs. those that did not).

I think the best presentation from the event came from John Gerzema. His presentation on Consumer Centricity: Building Around the New Consumer provided great insight to see how a multitude of small to large business across all kinds of industries are taking advantage of the new consumer. Instead of focusing on theories and high level content, he shared insights into how these companies were using his key objectives to Consumer Centricity: proof by example. One of the most memorable examples was how the Sweden Government is using Twitter to be more local and authentic. They actually hand over their Twitter account to one Swedish citizen per week to give perspective on what life is really like in Sweden. Each person gets full access to the account to post updates, pictures, etc. The government believes that allowing citizens to make updates will show the true values and beliefs of the Swedish people. Here is a story on Mashable for more detail.

To sum things up, the conference was about the increase in user generated content and how we as marketers have a big opportunity to leverage this data to create a better experience for our customers.

Did you attend the event? What were your thoughts? Let me know in the comments.

Hotmail Replaces Copyright, Trademark and Registration Characters with Images

2012-04-17T16:48:13Z

You may have noticed that Hotmail is rolling out a new 'feature' or behavior on its platform. When our email coding team initially saw it we thought it was a bug on a single computer, since only one of our coders saw it, but the next morning we all saw it, and assume it has been rolled out to many more servers at this point.

The new behavior on the Hotmail platform is that registration, copyright, and trademark characters are being replaced with images, regardless of using the html entity name or html entity number to encode the character. It happens in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE. The images used are GIFs with a dark gray text with white edging on them, so they really only display well in one scenario: on a white background. It doesn't look good even when it's on the correct background color, given the fact that the color and size of the images are immutable and larger than the font-size in most pre-header and footer text.

The suggested workaround at the current time is to slice images for each of those characters. Now that IE6 is no longer a concern, I would suggest slicing PNGs so that they have a higher factor of re-usability across a number of different backgrounds, but of course, anytime your font color changes, you will need to slice a new image.

The folks over at Email On Acid have come up with a solution that is CSS based. It works, but I would like to caution that it replaces the characters in question with (C), (R), and (tm) in ~~both~~ Hotmail and Outlook (at least in 2007, and likely 2010 as well), and Yahoo!, depending on how you write the CSS. If your client is particular about how things look in Outlook, you may not want to go that route.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have any comments or extra information about this behavior!

Update: If you are able to segment your email list for just your Hotmail user base to replace the characters in question, I would suggest going that route instead of switching all your characters to images. This prevents having to replace all those special characters with images, and also prevents the Email on Acid solution from affecting all Outlook users, although it will still affect Hotmail users using Outlook. If using character replacement, keep in mind that in some places spacing may be so tight that replacing a character with the equivalent text representation inside of parenthesis will break an email layout. Also, please note that there are other characters this is happening with, as folks at Email Design Review posted about yesterday.

Further Update: The Email on Acid solution does indeed work in Outlook and Yahoo! (I've updated my initial post with strike throughs). In my initial testing it turns out I had removed the Hotmail specific styles, and the aforementioned email clients picked up on the text replacing styles and executed them. I still recommend segmentation replacement and/or using images instead, though, for the following reasons.
1) some places do not have the space for replacing one character with three characters
2) If Hotmail rolls out another change to it's styles/class names at some point, we'll all be left scrambling to fix the current hack. I wouldn't say that is a huge concern, but I also would not have thought a character-for-image-replacement like this would be made, either.

Who's doing Pinterestingly Well in Email?

2012-04-16T15:23:35Z

Over the past several months companies have begun to incorporate Pinterest into their marketing efforts. We've seen brand curated pin boards, Pin it buttons popping up on brand sites, the occasional "Follow us on Pinterest" in the community bar of emails, and, in some cases, incorporation into other social channels. These are excellent ways to build up a presence and following on Pinterest. However, I've been impressed by the companies who've taken it to the next level by designing innovative and bold emails to drive engagement on Pinterest. A truly great example of cross-channel marketing! For example:

Luxeyard utilized email to promote their "Pin it & Win it" contest, which gave followers the opportunity to both win a prize and become a featured trendsetter to the LuxeYard community. LuxeYard successfully:

engages their email subscribers to interact on Pinterest
guides customers to name pin boards that are trackable for the marketing team
encourages continued participation by recognizing their social influencers

Horchow has also taken an innovative approach by developing a Pinterest exclusive promotion and featuring it within their email campaigns. Horchow successfully:

drives customers to the Horchow pin boards to discover the items that have been referred by featured bloggers, designers, & stylists
explains Pinterest for new users

Zulily's recent email is another great example of incorporating some best practices for Pinterest in email. Zulily successfully:

asks customers to "Follow us on Pinterest"
tells customers about their pin boards
provides relevant content for their audience to Pin
creates incentive to engage on Pinterest ($15 credit)

Do you have more great examples of Pinterest in email? Tell us about them!

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Responsive Emails Explained

2012-04-12T18:01:13Z

You may have heard the term "responsive email" floating about recently, and for a good reason - people are increasingly using phones and tablets to check email. Most emails are designed for the desktop computer, and even on the smaller side, those designs tend to be more than 600 pixels wide. When the email renders on a phone, it is generally scaled down to at least half of it's original size, if not more. It can be hard to see the details in images, the text is small, and there's a good chance that text resizing has broken the email format. This is where responsive email steps in, allowing the sender to simplify the message and make it easier to see on a small screen.

On a mobile screen, the fold line is drastically higher than it is on a desktop. Responsive emails can hide non-essential parts of a message that a mobile user doesn't need to see to get the point of a message (fig 1). It can also rearrange the message; instead of having a sidebar next to the hero, the sidebar can move below the hero (fig 2). The exact opposite of that is also possible: it can take message elements that are stacked in the desktop version and flow them to be side by side (fig 3). It can resize and recolor text (fig 4), hide non-essential portions of an email (images, text fragments, and whole table structures), change the background image, change the background color, and even change the formatting of a message (fig 5), which is different than moving elements between rows.

However, there are some limitations with responsive emails:

Responsive emails only work in the iPhone native mail app and the Android native mail app.

In a mobile browser (i.e. not in the mail app), the email will appear as it does on a desktop browser, because the majority of email clients strip out the styling, or because the styles were hidden from the client.

In proprietary email apps (Gmail app, Y! app, etc), the responsive email renders as it would in the desktop browser - which is to say, the 'regular' email design.

If styling is not properly hidden from the Yahoo! Mail platform, these emails will work in ALL Yahoo! Mail, even when you would prefer to be showing your regular email (desktop), as opposed to your mobile email.

In the desktop version of a responsive email, you cannot have a text, hidden, mobile-only message and expect it to show up only on mobiles (although you could do this with images). The desktop message will hide in a lot of places, but there are some places it won't, and there's no way to tell what platform someone will be using to check email.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have any questions or would like any clarifications!

Responsys Interact 2012 - last chance to save!

2012-04-02T21:55:18Z

Join us at this year's Responsys Interact event taking place in San Francisco May 1 - 3, and hear from the marketers that are rewriting the rules. Register today and save $100!

Attendees will learn firsthand about the insights and trends shaping the future of digital marketing from the industry's most well-respected thought leaders and practitioners, including Scott Harrison, Founder and CEO of charity: water, Matt Walsh, Executive Experience Director and Vice President at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Roy Williams, Author of The Wizard of Ads and Shar VanBoskirk, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. Dan Springer, Chairman and CEO of Responsys, and Scott Olrich, Chief Marketing and Sales Officer of Responsys, will also be presenting keynotes.

"It's no secret that building valuable customer relationships is a top priority for interactive marketers," said Scott Olrich, Chief Marketing and Sales Officer of Responsys. "However, to be successful in today's crowded and competitive digital landscape, marketers must constantly re-evaluate their approach based on emerging technologies and changing consumer behaviors. At Responsys Interact 2012, we'll be providing marketers with fresh content and tools to take advantage of the increasingly digital customer lifecycle."

In more than thirty breakout sessions, some of the world's most innovative marketers from leading brands such as Epson, philosophy, Schwan's Home Service, Quicken Loans, Freshpair.com, Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, REI, Scottrade and Schneider Electric, will showcase winning email and cross-channel marketing campaigns.

Responsys Interact is the event of the year for interactive marketers, don't miss out! Register today.

How to Evaluate and Choose the Right Web Analytics Tool

2012-04-02T17:01:48Z

If you're not using a web analytics tool to inform and improve your digital marketing efforts, it's time to start. Information gathered through web analytics tools help marketers increase and retain website visitors, maximize revenues from advertising and eCommerce, improve click-through on email campaigns, increase search engine ranking, and measure attribution of user activities to conversions. What are you waiting for?

The simplest form of web analytics is for monitoring website traffic to discover where visitors came from, what they did on the site, etc. More sophisticated web analytics tools can also calculate ROI based on campaign goals, provide more detailed information about users and their past behavior, and even monitor related user activities on social media sites that impact conversions.

Web analytics tools with varying capabilities are available at prices ranging from free to tens of thousands of dollars. All of these tools provide web-based applications to analyze and gain insight into user behavior across different channels, including web properties, advertising, email, social and mobile. Choosing a web analytics tool depends on a marketer's specific requirements, level of sophistication and budget. The tool must provide the appropriate abstractions to categorize and present the important information (and hide unnecessary details) in an intuitive, user-friendly and flexible manner.

The most widely used web analytics tools include Google Analytics, Adobe/Omniture Site Catalyst, IBM/Coremetrics and WebTrends. A comprehensive evaluation of these tools is available at http://web-analytics-review.toptenreviews.com, and below are the main categories used in this evaluation.

Features - Each web analytics program offers a variety of features to help you understand your website visitors better. This section offers a top level view of several features that will be useful in measuring your website traffic.

Traffic - Web analytics keep track of a large variety of very detailed information regarding who visits a website, what each visitor does on the site (what they click on, pages they view, etc.), and at what point they exit the website.

Referrals - According to the Web Analytics Association, a referrer is "the page URL that originally generated the request for the current page view or object." Essentially, this is where your guest came from immediately before arriving on your website.

Report Stat Intervals - Web traffic and other statistics are only useful if they are measurable, and that implies setting applicable date ranges. Whether you need yearly or monthly reports, or details down to the day or hour; it's important that your analytics provider is versatile with reporting dates and the accompanying stats.

Events - According to the Web Analytics Association, an event is "any logged or recorded action that has a specific date and time assigned to it by either the browser or server."

Visitor Details - Web analytics programs keep track of each visitor to your site. This information can be used to identify target audiences, develop campaigns, or learn what might work better to increase conversions. Detailed geographic information about where the visitor is accessing the website from is also available in most cases.

File Exporting - After you compile stacks of data, what do you do with it? Most web analytics programs offer a variety exporting options to meet your specific needs.

Tech Support/Help - Web analytics solutions can be very complex. Choosing which one to use on your site is only the first of many steps, so look for a solution that offers product support for a period of time following the initial purchase.

Acquiring the right web analytics tool will have a huge impact on the success of a company's digital marketing initiatives. By considering the above categories and carefully evaluating various web analytics tools, a marketer can obtain a user-friendly and affordable tool that provides comprehensive insight into user behavior across a number of digital marketing channels.