Nice Animated Gif | Is It Fall Already??

Neiman Marcus recently sent an email with:
(1) a super early mention of Fall 2010 - we are only just into Spring... Be Prepared For Christmas Emails in August this year.
(2) a very nicely done animated.gif. 

The subject line for this email was: TREND REPORT: The Preview of Fall

Here is the animated.gif:

* The animation only runs once in most browsers. Please refresh the page to see it more than once or open the image in a new browser window*

Animated GIF Done Well

Here is a great example from Bumble and Bumble on using an animated GIF.  Nice job with the images and the Spring message!

Here is the entire email creative.
The Subject Line is: April frizz? Fret not (+ free shipping on ANY order starts now)

Emails and Thoughts From The Past Week : All Posters.com, Banana Republic, Rachel Ray, plus more - September 1st to September 7th, 2009

Below are some NOTEWORTHY EMAILS from my inbox this past week. Enjoy!

All Posters.com has a busy, but captivating creative. I especially like the Fun Facts. This is a great way to entice a subscriber to click. They might learn something and purchase something. Win-Win!

All Posters also uses a cool animated gif.

Here is an interesting email I saw from Banana Republic. I am sure this will drive store traffic.

I am curious to know how they generated the unique bar codes. I assume they are unique. But they could have only sent a few select winners a unique code and everyone else is the same code.

The next two emails are good examples of featuring one product for the entire email. Cooking.com and Williams-Sonoma both did this this week. This strategy is useful if you need to move a certain product, would like to announce a new product, or would like to change up your creative to stand out a bit.

Roadrunner Sports does something different by running a letter in their email. This looks kind of cheesey with with Extra! Extra! tab, but I think this is the point. I like it!

Emails and Thoughts From The Past Week - August 11th to 17th, 2009

Below are some NOTEWORTHY EMAILS from my inbox this past week. Enjoy!

- Gap does something unique and cool with an animated gif. In this email they use an animated .gif to promote their Social Media sites. This draws the eye to the changing text. Nice job! - The winner of the first Christmas Email of the year that graced my inbox is from... Walter Drake. Only four months to Santa! - This is a cute email from Armstrong Garden Centers. They are offering 20% off of every product that is yellow. This type of sale is not only interesting but it is FUN. - The warehouse store, Sam's Club, does a classy job with this email. They are informing their subscribers about their green initiatives in a frank, non-sales format.

The subject line is also clever and fun:
Simple steps to saving green with Sam's Club


- The last topic for this week is taking a clever or interesting email creative and having a related and similar themed landing page. All too often we see cases where there is an engaging creative but an irrelevant or disappointing landing page. This is NOT the case in the three examples below. These examples come to us from Ralph Lauren, Bluefly, and Victoria's Secret.

The Ralph Lauren creative is engaging, artistic, and promises the viewer that in three simple steps he or she will be able to create an article of clothing unique to them. The subscriber can select a color, choose a monogram or pony, and make it their own. Hopefully the landing page will deliver all of this...

...and it does! The landing page takes us to an easy to use, step-by-step, page that allows us to create our own garment.


The second example is from Bluefly. The Bluefly hook is less obvious in the creative but is promoted in the Subject Line. The Subject Line for the email below is New Fall Coats! Check Out The Latest Celeb Obsessions!

The engaging aspect of this is the question what does a Celeb Obsession have to do with coats? This is screaming open the email and find out! The link about celebrities is in the bottom right corner.

The landing page for the link is the Bluefly blog, Fly Paper. Before I selecting this link I did not know 1- that celebrities wear Bluefly gear 2- That Bluefly has a blog that appeals to their core clients.

Bluefly did a great job not only promoting their products but also promoting their blog. 2 for 1. Nice!

The last example of a clever email having a relevant landing page comes to us from Victoria's Secret. In a recent email from them, there was a banner below the main image. The part of the banner that caught my attention was the text "Check out the 24 new schools that made the cut for 2009." This piqued my interest to see if my school made the list and what other schools are on it.

The landing page reinforced the message located in the banner and also listed the schools (including the new ones designated by an *) that are included in the Collegiate Collection. This is especially relevant now that school is in session or starting soon.

That's it for this week! Se sure to check back for next weeks week in review. Also, later this week I will be posting 2009 back-to-school creative examples. Be sure to keep a lookout for those.

Feel free to send my any questions, comments, or creative exmaples that you have found.

Little Wonders Can Lead to Big Success- Part 2

A 'little wonder' is a seemingly insignificant action or event that eventually has a large impact on your long-term situation. In the second installment of this two-part series, Jordan Lane looks at some email little wonders — simple ways to improve your email programs — and the key benefits from each of them.

Like diligently saving pocket change, there are some easy additions you can make to your email campaigns that can bring large rewards in the long run. Yesterday we looked at two tips for improving your email header text. Today we'll look a third piece of your email header, as well as some straightforward technologies that can bring long-term success.

Ask to add the 'from' address to the safe sender list

Email marketers live and die by their deliverability rates. Often times, getting one's emails into the subscriber’s inbox consistently is a victory in and of itself. Once an email has been delivered successfully, it is important to do what one can to ensure that future emails will also be delivered. By respectfully asking subscribers to add your sender address to their address book (white listing), marketers not only improve deliverability rates but also help ensure that future deliverability rates stay high. In many cases subscribers will gladly white list an address. Like the hosted version and mobile device link, it is a good idea to place the from address white listing request in the header of an emails. It might be beneficial to test the placement of the white listing request, hosted and mobile version links in the header. Does placing the links on one line or multiple lines produce better results? I'd recommend testing this out. Marketers may also want to consider also placing this reminder in the footer as well as the header of the email.


Link to social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Digg, and Twitter

Social networking sites are all the rage these days. What started out primarily as a place to keep in contact with friends and family has now become an important opportunity to reach customers and potential customers, maintain a positive reputation, and to create an interactive and powerful online presence. Allowing subscribers to post content from your email campaigns on their social networking sites (or to post information on your social networking site!) can result in huge benefits for email campaigns.

Consider this: the life of a single email does not usually last longer than a couple weeks. Usually this is true because when an email has been sent but not opened, a subscriber is less and less likely to open it as time passes. However, when that same stagnant email is placed on a social networking site it can take on a viral life of its own. Once good content gets legs it can travel far and wide. So get Tweeting, Facebooking, Digging and MySpacing!

Using animated GIF images in mailings

An animated GIF file is a graphic image that moves. This could be a flashing or spinning icon, or letters that magically get larger, for example. Technically, an animated GIF is a single file that is created to display various images in a specific order. Animated GIFs are most frequently used in web ad banners, but there has also been a recent surge in the use of animated GIFs in email. One interesting use, beyond flashing letters or moving icons, is creating what looks like a video embedded in the email content. These “videos” present a visually unique and impressive message, and when used effectively, create visually engaging emails that deliver a “wow” factor that stagnant images cannot. To really catch the attention of email openers, be sure to place the most interesting animated GIFs above-the-fold.

------------------

So there you have them — our email little wonders! With the proper use, tracking, testing and reporting, you will eventually reap the fruits of your labor. And remember, little things can make a big difference!