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Archive for the ‘Dynamic Content’ Category

Blemishes from SkinStore.com

December 17th, 2009

Every now and then an email comes in with some blatant flaws. While not nearly as bad as the royal screw up from UC San Diego last April, SkinStore.com recently made the Red Flag Mistakes section of this blog.

The Problem: They had a technical error in their deployment where the titles of the their dynamic rules displayed in place of the actual content. Starting with the Subject Line: %%CONTENT1%% — which of course should have been calling whatever content they had in ‘content1′

The issue continued to the entire email with pretty much all dynamic sections (images, content etc) displaying the rule code.

On a good note, they had solid intentions of providing some personalized content via a dynamic approach. When executed properly, this can add significant value to your email efforts. Unfortunately there were some technical slip-ups here that resulted in poor presentation. Additionally, no follow up email was sent (at least I didn’t receive one). If the issue was detected, and corrected, re-sending with the functioning version could have helped a great deal.

We all make mistakes and have stories of technical frustrations. This email here may be a good opportunity for Skin Store to review their testing process, email platform, and deployment procedures in order to make improvements to their program.

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Posted in Analysis of Live Emails, B2C, Dynamic Content, Personalization, Red Flag Mistakes

Cool Seasonal Opt-In from Dell

December 7th, 2009

While shopping for some new computer equipment, I came across Dell’s “Days of Deals“ promotion. Basically, 8 days of special discounts, with new products being featured each day. Some cool items, but what impressed me more was the email sign-up process they had. Starting with a simple call out to be reminded of the new deals each day.

The next page had a great preference section that was obviously specific to this particular promotion. I was able to indicate if I wanted reminders for Laptops, Desktops, Monitors, etc. You’ll see in the screen grab below that they have large visuals for each of the options which is a nice touch. Not only is it more usable, but seeing the products makes a user more likely to want to receive updates on them — tech “eye candy” if you will.

They offer an opt-in check box to subscribe to additional offers and also allow you to subscribe to mobile reminders. On the confirmation page though, Dell had a really cool move of providing links to “Shop Now” for the categories I selected to receive updates on. Sounds like common sense, however many retailers take you to a general thank-you page and you have to navigate your way to certain products. Dell does a nice job here of making it easy for the user to get where they likely want to go and retain visitors while they are in the buying mindset.

Great opt-in process from Dell here. They stay consistent with their brand and usability of their site, offer a reason to opt-in to their list, provide user preference options so they can further segment and provide more sophisticated dynamic content, and they integrate the process with other site goals. One quick area of improvement would be on the first page where you click “Need a Reminder…” and then go to the opt-in page. I would recommend having a quick sign-up here (have a field to enter your email address) accompanied by a button reading: “Click to subscribe and select product preferences” — or something to that effect. By doing this they likely increase their opt-in conversion rate by acquiring more sign-ups from the main page and drawing additional attention to the fact that there is an email sign-up option.

The next post will focus on the reminder emails deployed during their campaign.

Cheers,

Forest

Questions or thoughts? Feel free to leave a comment below or shoot me an email.

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Posted in Analysis of Live Emails, B2C, Dynamic Content, List Building/Opt-In, Personalization, Promotions, Retail Email, Segmentation

Advanced Preferences from Southwest

November 9th, 2009

Being a frequent flier on Southwest Airlines, I naturally wanted to re-join their email list. I was a subscriber in the past but with new addresses I fell off the list at some point.

The big win for Southwest is with their focus on email preferences. As we’ve discussed many times before, allowing your subscribers to select from a range of email options will be a win-win for everyone. Bronto had a good rundown of Do’s and Don’ts in this post.

Southwest started getting it right by having a very simple email sign-up and then making additional preference options available later. In the confirmation email they had the following call-out that was right to the point with great architecture and design.

On the landing page they had detailed preference options as follows:

Several nice things going on here:

1. They start off by giving you a great reason to fill out your preferences — so you can help them send you more relevant offers. Relevancy is key and becoming increasingly important.

2. Rapid Rewards: By asking for this, they should have access to detailed data on past purchase behavior which can be gold for segmentation.

3. Trip Related Preferences: They ask for items such as home airport and favorite destination, along with types of trips such as last minute vacations, business travel etc. This will provide Southwest with great information to further segment and provide relevant content.

4. Activity Related Preferences: Finally, they ask about activities you enjoy while traveling. This potentially takes their email program into another category by being able to provide partner offers, destination activity recommendations, and engaging content. I’ve seen Hotels.com and a few other related sites to this pretty well.

This is a great example of a company going the extra step to not only provide an email preference center, but one that is fairly detailed. Keep in mind though that this model would not be realistic for some smaller companies. By collecting these preferences they have the ability to provide some extremely targeted and relevant blow-dart like communications, but it creates the need for a more robust technical infrastructure and time-consuming content development. If done right, it can be gold — but make sure your foundation is ready to execute before implementing a detailed preference center. When in doubt, start smaller and scale up accordingly.

It has been a few weeks and nothing extremely targeted has come my way, but I’m looking forward to seeing what Southwest puts out and am excited to see how well they execute here.

Thoughts or questions? Feel free to leave a comment below or shoot me an email.

Cheers,

Forest

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Posted in Analysis of Live Emails, B2B, B2C, Dynamic Content, Personalization, Segmentation

Personalization + Dynamic Content = Efficiency

October 8th, 2009

Note that the content of this post is working its way into a new case study, but here is an overview.

A client I work with manages hundreds of sites that collectively have thousands of service provider listings. Each service provider has a profile and we needed an efficient way to have them update their information, and notify them of their regional representative contact.

For this, we created a clean text-driven email with a bunch of personalization and some dynamic content. This allowed us to reach thousands of providers with the same email, and create an efficient system for getting updated information.

Below is a raw screen grab with filler content.

In the above example, there are several points of personalization and dynamic content:

1. First Name: Simple and easy

2. Organization Name: We of course want to personalize this with the name of their organization

3. Update Date: As a reminder, we included the date that they last updated their profile

4. Profile Link: This takes them to their specific profile

5. Info on Record: We have the Address, Phone and Email that is currently listed on their profile, plus a link to view the profile again to see the rest of the info

6. Edit Profile Link: To make changes, we have a link implemented that takes them directly to a page where they can submit updated information

7. Dynamic Content: We have a section for CSA contact information (their local representative) that we have dynamic rules set up for based on what product they fall under and their county. E.g. IF product=xyz and county=Los Angeles THEN CSA Contact = Jim Smith – jim@email.com

Below is the same screen grab with highlighted personalization elements.

A very simple email here creating a 1-to-1 communication and an efficient system. This email didn’t need flashy design, or excess copy — just personalized content and some top-level organization to make the process seamless. While the nature of this particular email is very specific, the concepts can apply to a broad range of initiatives. It’s very important to create a personalized experience with our subscribers, and with available technology email marketers should look at how they can better leverage their efforts.

Cheers,

Forest

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Posted in Analysis of Live Emails, B2B, Dynamic Content, Email Marketing Strategy, Personalization

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