Archive for the ‘B2B’ Category

Site Opt-In Form from New York Life

May 18th, 2009

While signing up for some insurance newsletter the other day, I noticed a clean opt-in form from New York Life.

Here, we see several good things going:

1. The subscription form is in a nicely contained box.

2. They ask for your name and email, and then give a preference option for HTML or text

3. They offer 3 reasons for why you should subscribe! This is a nice touch many companies don’t bother with. It’s good to focus on what’s in it for the user.

Email Opt-In

Three items to make it better:

1. The title ‘What’s New Email’ is somewhat difficult to read. I would make this really stand out. I would also have more direct copy here, such as: “Sign up of for our Newsletter” or “Exclusive Email News”  — something to that effect.

2. It’s nice to have the bullets for ‘why subscribe’ — but I would also have a link for ‘view a past newsletter’ — so the individual subscribing can get a hint of exactly what they will be signing up for.

3. The thank you page after clicking ’subscribe’ was ok, but it would could have been better with additional options (after I already opted-in) for my newsletters. In a previous post we discussed email preference centers, and how they are great for the subscriber AND the marketer. I’m sure New York Life has some form of this, but it wasn’t easily available during the sign-up process.

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Quick Tip: Link to a Web Version

May 15th, 2009

Your subscribers may have trouble reading your carefully crafted email. With blocked image issues, emails rendering differently in various clients, and a list of other potential problems, it’s handy to provide an online hosted version of your email. This link and line of copy should go in the pre-header.  All legitimate email platforms will have the ability to quickly and easily do this.

A few ideas for copy:

Click Here if you are having trouble viewing this email

To view an online version of this email, Click Here

Can’t see our email? Click Here to view it online

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Quick Tip: Send an Internal Test…

May 8th, 2009

… Not Just to Yourself

This should go without saying, but before you send that award winning email to your list of 100,000 subscribers, send a final test to an internal group. Get some others from around the office to agree to review, and don’t just send to yourself. When you are actively involved in a campaign it can get mushy. It can help to have a fresh set of eyes to notice extremely simple mistakes.

This may sound elementary, but you would be blown away by some of the simple and careless mistakes huge companies have made with their emails.

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Other posts you might find of interest:

Best Day to Send Email

Introduction to Email Segmentation

Email List Building Mistakes

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Email Personalizaiton from Wells Fargo

May 7th, 2009

With great email marketing tools at our fingertips, it only makes sense to send personalized emails to our subscribers. At the end of the day, if we can get closer to creating the impression of a 1to1 communication with our subscribers we have made big leaps from many of the email campaigns out there.

Wells Fargo’s business banking has done a nice job with email personalization. Many email marketers simply insert a subscriber’s name and think they have accomplished personalization greatness. While this can of course be of benefit, there are additional pieces of data we can use to create a better experience for our valued subscribers. Remember though, it depends on your business, customers, and must make sense for your products and email strategy.

Looking at the email below from Wells Fargo, we see 4 points of personalization:

1. Total Points: Here they are dynamically inserting the reward points that this subscriber has earned. What a nice reminder!

2. Account Number: They also have the last 4 digits of the account number in reference.

3. Name: Being a b2b email, they opted to insert the business name in the Dear, field. This makes sense in this context.

4.Dynamic Rewards Suggestions: The last orange box in the main copy reads: “At ____ points you can select from…” Here, Wells Fargo is inserting a ‘next level’ point value, and using dynamic content to provide recommendations for rewards. Depending on the ‘point level’ a subscriber is at, different images and reward copy will be populated here.

A very simple design with effective email personalization. Sometimes it doesn’t take much at all to transform a generic blast email to a highly personalized communication.

- Forest Bronzan

Wells Fargo Personalized B2B Email

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