Marketing Sherpa recently commented on the apparent email marketing trend of testing shorter and shorter subject lines. Rather than pack as many offers and calls to action as possible in the subject line, the short subject may stand out visually and attract the coveted clicks.

The blog post includes a testimonial from Content Director, Anne Holland that shorter subject lines for one of the Marketing Sherpa newsletters “invariably got better open rates.”

One online retailer that I’ve observed often “goes short” is Urban Outfitters. Here’s a screenshot of the last few months’ of subject lines. Of course, if they are split testing subject lines, it may not be a perfect record of their campaign. But one subject line in particular may just be the world’s shortest subject line: A+

Assuming Urban Outfitters is doing rigorous testing, the trend I see in my inbox indicates it’s either working or test results haven’t been dismal enough to abandon the strategy, depending on how long the testing period is.

I’m not convinced the copy is the most compelling…”Naming Names” and “Turn It Up” don’t give me enough information about the email content to motivate me to click on the offer. I chuckled at the “Aloha, Mr. Hand” throwback, but wonder how many of Urban’s current target demographic could place the movie it’s from. However, the unconventional titles are consistent with Urban’s image. So long as the customer expects attractive offers after the click, this strategy could work well for U.O.

To truly get an A+, Urban Outfitters could work on their pre-header text and take advantage of marketing within it, rather than showing Gmail and other email users “Having trouble with the email below…” messsage every time.

Today is Earth Day, and for weeks online retailers have been jumping on the green wagon in their marketing efforts, taking advantage of their eco-friendly and sustainable products and projects.

More than ever, retailers are adopting a Wayne Gretzky “skate to where the puck is” marketing strategy. As consumers become more conscious of environmental issues, more and more marketing messages will contain green references and themes. Many feel that encouraging people to consume more in celebration of Earth Day is a bit ironic and counter-productive. But the shift towards eco-friendliness has encouraged many companies to source and sell green products in response to consumer demand. So getting the word out about the availability of green alternatives is especially fitting for this time of year.

The following is a sampling of Earth Day emails and on-site promotions from some of the top online retailers. You can read more about Earth Day email trends at RetailEmail.Blogspot.com, and more about holiday and event marketing from our Holiday Marketing Webinar.

EvoGear

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Bryan Eisenberg recently wrote a great post on email conversion that included some tips for avoiding spam filters from Yasifur Rahman.

I noticed that a Musician’s Friend email got trapped in my Spam box in Gmail, so I referred back to this post to see if I could diagnose how the email got flagged as spam. I found a few items that might have caused the delivery failure based on the article’s tips, plus a few other borderline-spammy red flags.

Diagnosing the Problem

Here is the Musician’s Friend email with images off (Firefox):

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One of my favorite blogs, RetailEmail.Blogspot.com, faithfully follows hundreds of email marketing campaigns to compile useful trend data and showcase the best (and worst) of email design and subject lines.

One of the most interesting tags to surf is the animation category. Here you’ll find a bunch of examples of how retailers are incorporating animated gifs into email messages. I’d like to share some of my favorites from this category:

1. Showing Items in Context

We learned from the recent webinar “Jon Stewart or Oprah: What’s Your Website’s Personality?” that certain personality types or buying modalities respond better to seeing items “in context” or how they will be used practically. This means clothing on humans or furniture in a room. On a product page, multiple product views give customers an idea of how products look from different angles.

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The common definition of email spam may be any piece of mail that isn’t opt-in or “solicited.” But the recent “Spam Complainers Survey” conducted by Q Interactive and Marketing Sherpa set out to see what email recipients consider spam, why they report spam and what they expect reporting spam accomplishes.

The findings should make any email marketer nervous:

• 56% feel email from known senders is spam if it’s “just not interesting to me”

• 50% believe “too frequent emails from companies I know” is spam
• 31% are irked by “emails that were once useful but are not relevant anymore”

Opt-in subscription is not enough.

Customer Perceptions on Reporting Spam

ISPs and hosted email services offer “report spam” tools to help customers reduce the unwanted inbox messages. Sometimes customers don’t recognize your sender name or forget they signed up to hear from you. But 48% reported they mark items as spam for reasons other than “did not sign up for email,” including:

• “The email was not of interest to me” - 41%

• “I receive too much email from the sender” - 25%
• “I receive too much email from all senders” - 20%

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We learned from our recent webinar Jon Stewart or Oprah: What’s Your Website’s Personality Type that different people experience and interact with your website in different ways depending on their dominant personality type.

These 4 buying modalities have been described as Competitive (fast and logical decision-making), Spontaneous (fast and emotional decisions), Methodical (slow and rational) and Humanistic (slow and emotional). (Read this summary if you’re not familiar with the 4 modalities.)

You may have a tendency to make most of your decisions a certain way - that’s just who you are. But different buying situations can throw you into a different mode. For example, a typically spontaneous person must take a slow and rational approach when evaluating software vendors for a major ecommerce project, even though he may download iTunes tracks on impulse several times over the same period.

Personality Types and Email Marketing

If you had an email account that was purely ecommerce offers (no messages from work, friends or Nigerian ambassadors), you would see the majority are vying for your attention like: SALE! UP TO 50% OFF! NEW STOCK! ONLINE ONLY! EXCLUSIVE! FREE SHIPPING!

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Kelly Mooney from Resource Interactive recently shared an email her friend received from apparel retailer Boden.

Soliciting customer reviews is a challenge because you want to tread carefully in asking for them. Including an incentive with your request is a good strategy, but some experts advise against offering discounts on future purchases. Jay Shaffer from Power Reviews recommends offering a chance to win something, rather than a $ or % discount which may serve as paid user reviews.

Boden uses this strategy in follow-up emails after a customer has made a purchase.

(click to enlarge image)

Here’s what I believe Boden does well:

• Good subject line. Review your Boden order and enter our prize draw. The subject line communicates exactly what is being asked for, with an incentive to encourage click through. Using the store name in the subject line indicates this is not a “thank-you-for-your-order-that-you-didn’t-make-please-enter-your-credit-card-information-again-to-avoid-deleting-your-account” spam scam.

• Opening the email copy with a “A big hearty thank you” sets a warm tone, and the choice of font sizes add character to the message.

• “Did you know that underneath my ginger head of hair lurks two unusually large ears, which are all the better for listening with?” This is a fantastic intro. The reader gets a humorous image of the writer of the email, while communicating that the sender of the email is personable and genuinely interested in customer feedback.

• “…starting with a chance to win $200 to spend at Boden…” That ain’t a bad prize at all. The link to the terms and conditions is also a good idea.

• “…it takes no time at all…” Reassuring the customer that this is not a labor-intensive task. We know that time is a huge deterrent for signing up for anything or contributing to anything.

• “…it will also help other lovely customers…” Appealing to the altruism of the customer is a good idea, and studies suggest customers love to help each other out.

• The personal signature is a nice touch. It’s coming from a real person, Boden founder Johnnie Boden.

• Images of purchased products and links to where to write a review is great usability and looks nice too.

Boden also solicits customer feedback from its website for a crack at a $500 spree.

Do we give you satisfaction?

We know the Rolling Stones couldn’t get any – but that’s probably because they weren’t shopping at Boden.

We’d really love to know what you think of our website. Please help us improve our service by taking this quick 10-minute survey.

And as a thank you we’ll enter you into a free prize draw to win $500 of Boden clothes.

Thanks very much for your time.

The page links through to a survey customers can do right on the website, using a tool from eCustomerOpinions. Again, Boden injects personality into its web copy, and adds the personal touch from the head of the company. Including the average length of time to complete the survey is another best-practice.

In fact, there’s a lot of light-hearted information about Johnnie Boden on the site. It’s nice to see a family business branded in such a friendly way. There is consistency between web copy and email communication. This warm and fuzzy email might appear less authentic if the website wasn’t the same way.

We touched upon leap year marketing last week, just one example of how you can work promotions around special days of the year. I found this great email example from Brookstone for Daylight Savings. Not only does Brookstone choose appropriate products to promote, the email acts as a public service announcement. Let’s take a closer look:

There’s a number of things Brookstone does very well:

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In January, Jason Billingsley and I presented a webinar on holiday and special event marketing for online retailers. We also have a number of blog posts related to the topic.

There truly is much opportunity to get creative with special event promotions. Today happens to be February 29, the only day that comes around only once in 4 years. It ain’t no Valentine’s Day, but many creative e-tailers are taking advantage of leap year with $29 deals, 29% off sales and other offers - some using jumping or frogs in imagery. (My favorite is the Container Store’s “Leap year happens every 4 years. Filing your taxes doesn’t. Get organized today!”)

A&E / History Channel

Aeropostale

Bluefly

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Gmail is a popular email service, and chances are your opt-in subscriber list has more than a handful of these accounts on it. Did you know that Gmail disables images in HTML emails by default, even if your customer has added you to his or her safe list? Email recipients have the option of turning images on in Gmail, but many won’t because they haven’t noticed you can, or are simply too lazy.

Likewise, many email designers and marketers could improve their emails so they render nicely even with images blocked, but they’re too lazy. Or they never noticed there was a problem.

Well now you have no excuse. This post will show you what typical emails look like in Gmail - the good, the bad and the ugly. Plus, 8 tips for optimizing emails when images are turned off.

1. Provide a link to a web-based version of your email near the top of your message.

This is the simplest way to salvage a skeleton email. Unfortunately, Delia’s has no link - the email recipient must find Gmail’s link in the green area to see the offer.

Make sure the link is easy to find. Comp-U-Plus does a nice job:

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