Does stock photography help…or hurt?
Posted by Dave McCue on March 14th, 2012
 What is your initial reaction to this stock photo? - I trust him, he’s confident - I don’t trust him, he’s arrogant - Someone should punch him Cast your vote |
The Stock Photography Conundrum
Almost anyone who works in design or marketing has faced the challenge of selecting effective stock photography to use as part of print or online materials. On occasion, it is possible to find the perfect image to complement your message, but all too often the result is a cliché or simply doesn’t add much value.
Something Different
For marketers who don’t have a tangible product, this can be a real challenge. How do you graphically represent “consulting services” without resorting to one of the usual “business people conducting business” images that are out there?
One strategy to avoid the same old is to be less literal with the images. Rather than showing pretend business people pretending to consult, look for an image that conveys the transfer of creativity, such as a paintbrush against a canvas. It’s difficult to make definitive statements around this topic because the audience of different verticals (or even different brands within the same vertical) can be very different in the way they interact with content, but it can be safely said that you’re missing an opportunity when the same stock image used to convey the value of your services is being used by another company offering the same services.
Adding Value to Emails
The limited real estate of an email message is no place for extraneous images. One of the most important benefits that images provide is a higher degree of scanability when it comes to email messages. Often, they can be used to separate unrelated elements of a message (product promotions, upcoming events, latest news) to make it clear to the reader/scanner that there is something else to see if they aren’t immediately drawn in by the first lines of text. Even in these instances where the images serve as a component of message layout, they should be carefully considered.
Ideas for Testing
Searching around the web can turn up various studies related to web users’ response to different types of images. As noted above, however, such findings are not necessarily relevant to your business or your audience. Instead, use these ideas to guide a test (or series of tests) on your emails, landing pages, etc. Do your emails drive more clicks with stock photography, custom graphics, or no graphics at all? What impact do different images have on your landing page, and are you seeing an effect on conversion rate? Lastly, ask colleagues or (preferably) people outside of your organization how they feel about the stock images you plan to use, and take their feedback to heart. You might find that “young-businessman.jpg” doesn’t just sound generic, but he rings hollow with message recipients as well.
- Category: Email Marketing Strategy | 1 comment
- Tags: Email Creative, Email testing, images in email
Super Lessons From the Big Game
Posted by Dave McCue on February 17th, 2012
Advertisers shell out big bucks and roll out their best commercials to reach millions of viewers during the Super Bowl. Whether or not you’ve got that type of advertising budget at your disposal, a lot can be learned from the spots that aired during this year’s big game.
Think multi-channel
Chrysler’s “Halftime in America” featuring Clint Eastwood caused a big stir among viewers, but why stop there? Shortly after the commercial aired, Chrysler deployed an email message with a link to view the commercial. Not only did this strategy help Chrysler get in front of potential non-football fans, it also provided the commercial in an easily share-able format, helping expand the potential reach of the campaign into the social media space.
Familiar, or stale?
Nobody was surprised to see the Budweiser clydesdales, the Coca-Cola polar bears or GoDaddy’s latest “web content unrated” teaser, but at what point does the familiar begin to become background noise? It’s an important point of discussion for email marketers as well. If response rates aren’t where you would like them to be, it could be a case of recipients tuning your messages out. Try something new to get their attention.
Listen to your audience
Doritos’ “Man’s Best Friend” and Chevy’s “Happy Grad” both received high marks in the various audience polls conducted after the game, and both were user-generated contest entries. Does the audience understand brands better than brands understand themselves? Not likely, but from an email standpoint your audience can offer valuable insight into what “works” and what doesn’t in relation to your communications. See what they have to say, you might be surprised.
- Category: Email Marketing Best Practices, Email Marketing Trends | No comments »
- Tags: Advertising, Social Media
Email Resolutions for the New Year
Posted by Dave McCue on February 6th, 2012
Are you sticking to your email marketing resolutions for 2012? Heading into a fresh new year is a good time to evaluate the wins and losses of the previous year and identify opportunities to improve. Here are a few things to think about as you look to optimize your 2012 program.
Better User Experience
Taking steps to increase the scannability of messages can drastically improve the experience for recipients and increase engagement. When testing, adopt the mindset of a typical recipient who is short on time and, in many cases, multi-tasking. How much of an impact do your messages have “at a glance?” Don’t assume recipients who open your messages are reading every word—make it easy for recipients to find the most important content.
Effective Welcome Messages
New subscriber welcome messages are known to receive some of the highest engagement metrics of any type of campaign, but since these messages are typically automated they are often set up initially and then forgotten about, even as changes to the email program are implemented. If it’s been awhile, go back and review your welcome message to make sure proper expectations are still being set for new subscribers as far as the type of messages they should expect and the frequency at which to expect them.
Try New Things
Don’t be afraid to try something new, even if only to a test sample of recipients. Maybe that’s a new template design, sending at a different time of the day, including social media sharing tools in messages, animated graphics, etc. Not everything you try is going to work, but it’s worth the effort to see how your audience responds to variations on your typical communications. On a related note, let us know if you like the new Digital Spin News design!
As always, don’t hesitate to contact SubscriberMail for any of your strategic email marketing needs. Have a terrific 2012!
- Category: Email Marketing Best Practices, Email Marketing Strategy | No comments »
- Tags: email marketing creative, Email welcome messages
Email File Size Restriction in Gmail
Posted by John Reynolds on January 23rd, 2012
Reaching your Gmail subscriber’s inbox is critical. Even more important is that your message renders the way you want it to. All of it! If your HTML is more than 102 kilobytes, your email may be cut off by Gmail in mid-sentence. As an email marketer you may focus on the top half of your message, but at the bottom of your message are the tracking image used to record Opens/Renders and the unsubscribe link you need to be CAN-SPAM compliant.
Gmail will automatically clip a message if the total size exceeds 102 kilobytes. Users will see a [Message Clipped] View Entire Message link in order to download the rest of your message (see screenshot below). In Gmail’s smart phone and tablet apps, the same rules generally apply.
To fix this situation, keep your HTML code short by removing extra returns, comments and unnecessary attributes and styles. Applications like Outlook and Apple Mail will show you the size of your message if you’re looking for ways to test. You can also check your file size from an original HTML text file.
Aside from the HTML code, it is also recommended that you save your images in an optimized format. Recipients should not have to wait for the images to render on their desktop or smart phone.
Continue to test how your messages render. It is critical that your message renders properly in Gmail to avoid losing the unsubscribe link, tracking image for Opens/Renders , and any content that is displayed after 102 kilobytes.
- Category: Email Marketing Best Practices, SubscriberMail Tips | 1 comment
- Tags: Email testing, Gmail
Incorporating PURLs in Your Email Marketing
Posted by Nic Winters on January 16th, 2012
If you have taken the step of including personalization in your email campaigns (even if this is limited to including the recipient’s first name, their sales rep, etc.), your goal was likely to make your emails take on a more personal tone. An additional step that may be the right fit for your email marketing strategy is personalizing the landing pages you link to within your emails.
These personalized pages could be limited to a handful of different versions of your landing page that include slightly different offers or a page that utilizes merge tokens to pull the recipient’s email address or other information into form fields.
When you go to incorporate these personalized URLs (PURLs) into your emails, you can achieve this goal using the same approach used to insert recipient first names and/or other data fields into your emails. With the personalization tokens provided within your SubscriberMail account for each data field you can personalize the URL for a hyperlink as well (inserting the token at the point within the URL where differentiation occurs to make the content of a particular data field related to the PURL pull into the link).
Contact the SubscriberMail Client Support team at support@subscribermail.com for more information regarding how you can incorporate PURLs in your email messages.
- Category: Email Marketing Strategy | No comments »
- Tags: Email Marketing Best Practices, Email Marketing Strategy, Email personalization