Archive: June 2011
Beefing up your email link tracking
Get more mileage out of your URLs with Google Analytics
We email marketers love open rates and click-through rates. They tell us the quantity of attention we’ve won and show us opportunities to win more, whether we’re out to increase alumni engagement or to hawk Corvettes.
But what do your readers do beyond the click, when they leave your email campaign to visit your website?
Add web analytics software like Google Analytics to your email marketing campaigns, and you’ll be able to see what your email subscribers end up doing on your website. It’ll give you invaluable data about conversions and site traffic patterns, and it’ll help you plan even better marketing campaigns. I’ll walk you through it.
Getting started
If you don’t have an Analytics account, set one up here. Google’s installation guide explains how to place tracking code in the appropriate files on your site.
Why email + web analytics matters
With Google Analytics, your email campaigns and website exchange click-based crib
notes to score conversions, pageviews and other metrics. By adding specialized code to each URL — called “tagging” — you’ll have a system that not only shows which links generate the most traffic but also ranks the effectiveness of email marketing alongside paid search, print and more.
How to do it
To incorporate Analytics in your next email campaign, start by using Google’s URL Builder to turn your simple link into a tagged URL. Each Google parameter helps you categorize the source:
Set these parameters so they’ll make sense in your analytics report. And don’t feel like you have to fill in every blank; according to Google’s tagging tips, don’t bother unless you need to drill down to the nitty gritty.
Here’s an example from May’s Agency Insider, a newsletter series we send to creative firms who resell our email marketing service. In the bottom right section, you’ll see an image of a stupendously fancy chair. It’s linked to a blog post called “Building a slice and dice campaign.” Here’s how we defined the parameters for the fancy chair image:
- Campaign Source: Agency-Insider
- Campaign Medium: Emma-Email
- Campaign Content: SliceDice-Blog-Image
- Campaign Name: May-Edition
Here is the original URL: http://myemma.com/blog/2011/06/01/send-big-image
And here is the finished product: http://myemma.com/blog/2011/06/01/send-big-image/?utm_source=AgencyInsider&utm_medium=emmaemail&utm_content=SliceDice-Blog-image&utm_campaign=May-Edition
It’s a whopper, I know. Do this for each link that goes back to your site, and then add the tagged links to your Emma campaign just as you would any other link. Send a test to check that every link from your inbox lands in the right place. When everything is ready, set that heat-seeker loose on your audience.
Understanding the results
After Emma records the opens, clicks and other inbox activity, she’ll pass the baton to Google to follow the clicks to your site. Allow about 48 hours to get a clear picture of your results.
When the clicks roll to a stop in your Analytics account, you’ll have a full road report of what each visitor did and saw on your landing page. To find the report in Google Analytics, log in and select “Traffic Sources” in the dashboard. You can choose to “View Full Report” or just display the “Top Traffic Sources.”
Find the Campaign Source you tagged your links with in the URL Builder (in my earlier example, that’s “Agency-Insider”). Google ranks the popularity of your links and shows you the average number of pageviews, how long people spent on each page, the percentage of new visitors and the bounce rate.
Knowing what’s next
With Google Analytics riding shotgun on your Emma campaigns, you’ll have a heat map to guide your marketing plan. You’ll be able to learn what calls to action resonate most with each segment of your audience and how they arrive at the shopping cart. The various promotional channels that make up your marketing spend will be tuned to the same stat-o-matic Google frequency.
And along the way you’re bound to develop stickier content that keeps visitors on your site longer and engages them in your service. Here’s hoping there’s heavy traffic ahead. Jersey Turnpike or bust!
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Want to learn more about becoming an Emma agency? Inquire here.
Meet BookPage
How an Emma customer reaches readers everywhere
BookPage distributes a book review publication to more than 450,000 readers monthly through bookstores and libraries. The Nashville-based company also sends more than 270,000 emails per month. Keeping track of all of those emails — and the varying interests of their subscribers — is a challenging task, one that Associate Editor, Eliza Borné, has fine-tuned. Here, we’ll take a look at one of BookPage’s email campaigns and share how Eliza and her team have developed an email strategy that works for them and their growing list of subscribers.
Click to see the full campaign.
The send-off, at-a-glance
+ Sent on Feb 1 at 6:00 am to 25,598 people
+ Open rate: 53.1%
+ Click-through rate: 53.3%
+ 26 social shares
+ Created using a custom layout
BookPage sends their bi-monthly BookPageXTRA, like the one to the left, to more than 25,000 recipients. In the two years that Eliza has been managing XTRA, its open rate has been a steady 40-50% (or more), and it’s now benefiting from an increasing number of social shares on Twitter and Facebook. Maybe even more impressive than that, its list of subscribers has increased by 65%.
These striking results don’t happen over night, and Eliza says they’ve learned a few tricks along the way. Let’s take a closer look at their email strategy…
About their email strategy
In addition to BookPageXTRA, BookPage sends out a bi-monthly newsletter about books for kids and teens, a monthly newsletter to librarians and even a book review a day. They keep track of their subscribers and their preferences by posting a comprehensive signup form on their website. Subscribers select the types of newsletters they’d like to receive, and because the signup form is tied to the appropriate audience groups in Emma, the groups are automatically sorted in BookPage’s account. Just after subscribing, they receive an automatic welcome email. It’s an easy way for BookPage to thank new subscribers and to connect them to additional resources, including links to their YouTube page, blog and more.
Managing Editor Trisha Ping, Associate Editor Eliza Borné and Associate Publisher Julia Steele work on an edition of BookPageXTRA.
At BookPage, email marketing is collaborative. Employees from both the editorial and advertising side of their company come up with ideas — they spend a lot of time brainstorming and plan content in advance — and everyone helps to proof the emails.
Email is the quickest way for them to communicate with their readers, and they want to make sure their content is fresh. Eliza shares some of the ways they keep their readers engaged:
We keep readers excited with “best” lists — we’ve found that our audience responds most to any kind of “most-anticipated” or “top 10″ list. We hook them in the email by giving them the beginning of the list, then ask them to click through for the whole shebang. Click-throughs are important to us because we want our newsletters to introduce readers to BookPage.com and our blog, The Book Case. In the email above, we asked readers to click through to our blog and comment with book titles they’re anticipating but that didn’t make our list. In another XTRA, we crowd-sourced by asking readers for “best list” suggestions (the best of the best lists, if you will). We also include a book giveaway in every email. Our readers know there’s an incentive (free stuff!) in each newsletter.
This kind of content encourages participation and keeps readers coming back for more. Plus, it drives visitors to their website. For example, on June 7 when they sent a BookPageXTRA mailing, 75% of traffic to their site came from their enewsletter.
And they’ve got even more up their sleeves. They recently ran a promotion to get their Book of the Day audience up to 10,000 members. Talk about attractive incentives: they gave away a box of 10 books and a gift card to their 10,000th subscriber, and they encouraged current subscribers to share the promotion via email and social media. Random “sharers” were awarded with books, too. It was wildly popular, earning more than 400 new signups in ten days. And it was a great way to forge connections between their emails, social networks and blog. (Read more about the promotion here.)
Why we like it
An easy-to-spot signup form and segmented audience groups? Check. An auto-responder to welcome new subscribers? Check. Different content for different groups? A varied sending strategy (daily, bimonthly, monthly)? Check and check. A content strategy that takes into account reader participation and re-engagement? Ch– Well, you get the idea. BookPage is doing email marketing right, and it pays off in fantastic response rates, reader loyalty and new subscribers.
In short: Follow BookPage’s lead, and think strategically about your emails. Use brainstorming sessions to mine your team for ideas, think about sending frequency and differentiate your mailings by audience group. Find ways to connect your email strategy to other channels. Must you do it all? Certainly not. But do the things that make sense for your business, and realize that a smart strategy doesn’t just spring forth — it must be sustained.
We’d love to hear more about your organization’s email marketing strategy. Share your success story in the comments below, or tell us over on Twitter.
Raising a glass to the open source community in Portland
We co-hosted a happy hour with Mozilla last week. And hey, if you haven't heard, we're hiring.
Enjoying drinks at The Cleaners in Portland's Ace Hotel.
Psst, we’re hiring, and we want every cool, geeky person in Portland to know about it. We want to meet you. There’s so much talent in this city that it makes our collective heart flutter, and we’ve got some opportunities that are pretty exciting. Does talk of Python and Postgres rev up your engine? How about blending form and function to create a great UX experience?
And here’s another thing that’s pretty exciting. Not only do we have oodles of opportunity for the right talent, but we have one of the best company cultures around. Inc. Magazine just named Emma as one of the top 50 small business workplaces. Now, that’s a huge honor in itself, but here’s the insider scoop on that accolade. It is a great place to work. Really and truly.
And our Portland office has its own unique culture. I adore the cohesive, interesting people I work with every day. How we can work together all day and still want to grab a beer after hours. I also love that we’re situated six blocks east of the river on Burnside. With three walls of floor-to-ceiling glass, I can see the Willamette River, the cars on the bridges, the ever-changing, epic Portland sky.
Recently, I teamed up with my partner-in-crime in the Portland office, Kevin McConnell (aka our director of engineering), to talk about the things that make Emma such a rewarding and fun place. And if this sounds like the right fit for you, check out our Portland job openings and apply.
Let’s dive in, Kevin. What’s to love about working at Emma?
I mostly enjoy being around a steady supply of chocolate-covered raisins in the snack cupboard. But apart from that, it’s awesome to be around smart, energetic people who are interested in finding creative ways to solve problems.
You do love chocolate-covered raisins. They are Kevin kryptonite.
Yes, I am powerless to resist them. Other good things about Emma … We are lucky to have the work environment that we do: a swanky office, nice equipment, free Wednesday lunches and transit passes.
I love that we work so hard but do it joyfully. And we have a helluva good time getting it done.
Yes, the fact that we have a successful product is a great thing. We have many happy customers with whom we have great relationships. As a nerd who likes to build things, it’s a great position to be in because you have an existing base to build on, and people who can give you feedback to steer you in interesting directions.
What’s the most exciting thing about the present job opportunities at Emma?
There’s a lot of development going on that suits different people. There’s front-end work for new features as well as interesting scaling and performance problems. There’s a lot of interest in smarter ways to streamline and automate our work, which is cool.
We are constantly looking for ways to get better at what we do. Whether that’s adopting a new process or trying new tools, everyone on the team has an equal voice.
Outside of chocolate-covered raisins, what are some things unique to the Portland office that you really appreciate?
Maybe this is a weird answer, but I like the relationship with the larger Nashville office. We are like a smaller, sleeker and perhaps more handsome version (shh, don’t tell them that) of that office, and it’s fun to be able to collaborate remotely with people one minute and then gather folks around a whiteboard the next minute. It’s great to watch projects and ideas bounce across the country.
It’s true. So much inspiration circulates between locations and teams. I would even argue that our dedicated beer fridge helps spark conversations and collaboration. Great ideas sprout up when we unwind together at the end of the day. Moving on, what’s your vote for the best Emma-sponsored Wednesday lunch ever?
It’s probably Savor Soup House. Tomato soup and vegan grilled cheese. Although the day you brought in the panini press and the myriad of fixings was pretty awesome.
What’s your stance on inner-office pranking?
I’m generally for it, except for that one time I came into work to find my desk covered in St Patty’s stuff. It was cool, but it took forever to hoover up the shamrock confetti.
"Finnish" work and celebrate.
I like the Finnish flags around the office. As in *finish.* Like we finished a project and it’s time to fly the flag.
Last question, Kevin. We’ve done some fun Emma socials in the past (bowling, movie night, marathon dinners at Pok Pok). What’s your pick for the next one?
How about fruit picking?
We could go to one of the beautiful farms on Sauvie Island to pick through the summer bounty and then have a “farm to table” potluck.
For the longest time after moving here, I thought it was Suave Island. I pictured a whole island sipping martinis and talking philosophy.
And there you have it. If you are particularly suave or have a predilection for chocolate-covered raisins, you know where to find us. We’ve got the need for great developer and UX talent, so inquire, okay? We’d love to meet you. And we’ll share the raisins.
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Read more from Kevin and our developers on Emma Tech, and more about Portland from Kris here.
Unopened emails “nudge” subscribers to action
It may come as a surprise that unopened emails can still be effective
An email can affect a recipient’s actions, even if the email goes unopened.
At first glance, that seems unlikely. Isn’t an unopened email akin to putting music on but not putting the headphones in your ears? Pretty much no benefit, right?
According to Dela Quist, the perception that only the opened emails affect purchasing behavior may be selling your subject lines and greater marketing efforts a bit short.
The simple effect of seeing your brand in the inbox reminds your subscribers of your existence, as well as your new product line, sale, or whatever else you mention in your subject line. That can influence people to visit your store, recommend you to a friend or even make a purchase, without ever opening your email. (Read the full article here.)
You can loosely measure this by comparing the direct success of the campaign to its indirect success. If you know the exact number of people who clicked through to make a purchase from the email, and yet you had a jump in purchases above that number, the nudge effect may have something to do with it.
Here are some recent examples from my inbox. Each of these campaigns went unopened, and yet the underlying message reached me.
1. Sender: Redbox
Subject line: New to Rent This Tuesday
Why it works: Even though I have a busy week coming up and I know that I won’t be renting a movie, it reminds me that a fast and affordable movie night is within walking distance. I can picture where my local redbox is located, and I think back to the last movie I rented. (It was Iron Man 2. I admittedly don’t rent a lot of movies.)
2. Sender: Vera Bradley
Subject line: Shop Summer Sale and ship for free (ends today!)
Why it works: I recently moved and have put a strict no-buying policy in place until I find a spot in my apartment for everything I already own. However, it has me dreaming of a new summery bag, and I make a mental note to check their site once the dust settles.
3. Sender: Amerigo (a local Italian restaurant)
Subject line: Join us on Memorial Day for a special offer!
Why it works: I see this one after Memorial Day, so I don’t bother opening it. But, just hearing the name Amerigo has me thinking of their tiramisu, which is bound to get me in there soon.
4. Sender: The Limited
Subject line: Save $15 Off Every $50! 4 Days Only!
Why it works: Due to my aforementioned no-shopping policy, I don’t open this one either. Before I remove temptation from my inbox, I can’t help but notice the math on that deal. 30% off is a nice deal, and I appreciate that they reward their email subscribers with a discount. Positive brand experience!
5. Sender: Amazon.com
Subject line: Amazon.com: Kindle with Special Offers from $114
Why it works: I’m already thinking of buying an e-reader, but I haven’t committed to one yet. Though I’m not quite ready to buy, I process the decreasing price of Amazon’s version. Due to the simple exposure of it, they’re my most top-of-mind vendor right now.
Pretty impressive how much I’m affected by these subject lines alone, right? Still, remember that the subject line’s purpose is to get your subscribers to open, not to do the email’s whole job. But, if you’re sending close to the deadline, on an unusual day, or just want to reach those non-opens for a change, try designing a subject line that stands on its own to remind your recipients why they buy from you.
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Want to read more strategy tips for reaching your audience? Consider segmenting based upon the customer lifestyle or split testing your emails.
Ever wonder what happens to your email after you hit send?
An easy explanation of the complex world of email delivery
Every day, Emma customers log in, create campaigns and send them to their audience. For most of you, that last sentence is not a summary of the process as much as it is the process, as far as you’re concerned. But, did you ever wonder what actually happened when you hit send?
Before I started my career in email delivery, I imagined sending emails looked like some sort of Rube Goldberg Machine: a bowling ball rolling down a track, opening a door that pushes a knife into a string, releasing a mouse that takes the cheese off of a scale, which then unweights and causes a small explosion — no, a huge explosion! — to propel said email to the other side of the Internet. In reality, it turns out it’s surprisingly similar to this model.
There are a ton of pieces to the email-delivery puzzle, and the first piece is you. It could technically be your content, but in chicken-or-the-egg situations, I lean towards the one with ambulatory ability. So, you create your campaign, save and proof it, but then what? Well, the short story is that Emma takes that content, wraps it in your stationery and then sends it to one of our “mailers” (technically an MTA). The mailer adds the email header information that identifies: the email’s sender (also known as the RSVP address), where the email is being sent from (our servers and IP addresses) and to whom it is being sent (your audience members).
If you’re a visual learner, there’s a nice infographic of the email delivery process by Focus.com here.
But that’s just a small piece of the mystery. Let’s dig in …
So you’ve got a message that’s ready to be sent, and it’s up to the mailer (MTA) to make sure it goes to the right place. First, the MTA establishes a connection to the MX record, found in the DNS for the domain to which you’re sending. (For example, you might be sending to domains like gmail.com, hotmail.com or companyname.com.) A domain’s DNS is a one-stop location that other machines use to communicate with the domain’s various servers, and the MX record is there to process any incoming mail.
If the connection is unsuccessful, there may be a permanent issue (like the domain not existing) or a temporary one (bad connection, Internet connection issues) that may be resolved when Emma reattempts delivery. (Emma typically makes up to four delivery attempts, if the first connection is unsuccessful.)
If the connection is successful, it’s time to send that email. This is done using a process called SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Traditional SMTP transactions have these main parts:
- HELO or EHLO (an extended SMTP command) identifies the sending server and the receiving server.
- MAIL FROM identifies the email’s sender (your RSVP address).
- RCPT TO identifies the email address you’re trying to reach. There’s one of these for every address you send to.
- DATA is where you transfer the actual information — HTML, text, images — you’re trying to convey via email.
Usually, this entire transaction goes by pretty quickly (in a matter of seconds or minutes), but there are some reasons why it may be slowed. Some servers take longer than others to respond to the different parts of SMTP, usually by design to allow time to check the information being passed their way, and that can result in a timeout on the connection (and eventually a soft bounce, though that is rare). When they do occur, the Emma delivery team has the ability to alter our expectations for connections to that domain so that we wait the appropriate amount of time for responses. Of course, there are other common issues like unknown users, full mailboxes and potential authorization failures when SPF or Sender ID records are present but are improperly configured or invalid (speaking of which, now might be a good time to have your IT folks update your SPF record). Once the SMTP transaction is complete, and the message has either been accepted or denied, your email is ready to be delivered to the recipient the next time they access their email from a computer, phone, tablet, etc.
What you can do
Now, just because an email is successfully delivered doesn’t guarantee it ends up in the recipient’s inbox. To ensure the email lands in the inbox, you should follow these best practices:
- Ask your recipients to add your RSVP address to their address book or trusted sender list.
- Have your IT folks update your organization’s Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record.
- Avoid words and phrases that can be caught in spam filters.
- Don’t let formatting changes outshine your campaign content.
There you have it: the wandering path of an email. It seems complicated, I know, but the powerful machines that handle email delivery are notoriously good at completing all of the necessary steps. Still, it’s certainly not cheating to have a little guidance, and Emma’s here to help you create and send solid campaigns and to offer explanations when delivery issues arise.
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Want to read more about email delivery? Check out Mary’s post about list hygiene or Claire’s post about the differences between permissions and opt-ins.
Sending email campaigns just got easier
Check out the simplified send process in Emma Preview
We’ve reduced the amount of time — and cursor-clicking! — it takes to send an Emma email. So, sound the bullhorn. Ring the bells. Blow the vuvuzela. Or, just take a closer look at our new one-page sending process:
- Manage all delivery settings — like from name and address, delivery style, scheduled sending time and more — on one page. (Goodbye, three-screen process.)
- Change delivery settings at any time without hitting the back button. (Adios, extra clicking.)
- Confirm delivery settings at-a-glance in the Mailing summary sidebar. (Hello, all settings on the final send screen.)
Up with ease. Down with clicking.
We’re offering this new sending process in our beta environment, Emma Preview, so that you can give it a try before it’s released in your real Emma account. Go ahead: log in and tell us what you think. And check out our Help Guide for step-by-step instructions if you get stuck.
And with the feedback you’ve given us along the way, we’re unveiling some more campaign enhancements in the weeks ahead, including an über-fancy image editor. We promise it’s vuvuzela-worthy.
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Not an Emma customer? Open an account in June & get a sweet deal. Find out more here.
Ellie’s Run for Africa ’11
Emma runs with Ellie to help put students in school
Made of shipping containers, New Dawn High School spells hope to 160 students.
At Emma, we eat and breathe email, but it’s also important to us to give back and donate to causes we’re passionate about. We support several ongoing causes — like DonorsChoose and Kiva — and we’re always on the lookout for new ones. For the last few years, we’ve also supported Ellie’s Run for Africa, a 5K fundraiser here in Nashville.
My colleagues know very well my soft spot for the run. Its primary focus is to raise money for education in some of the most impoverished areas of Nairobi, Kenya. Ellie started the 5K with her family in 2004 out of a passion for helping kids on the other side of the world. Oh, and she was only eleven years old at the time.
My involvement with the 5K fundraiser began four years ago, and since then, I’ve had the opportunity to serve as co-chair of the annual event as well as travel with Ellie and the ERFA team to visit the schools we support, including New Dawn High School in the village of Haruma. Having seen firsthand how our Nashville community serves students and communities in Kenya, I am continually inspired to continue my work with Ellie’s Run each year, and I’m so proud that Emma has been involved for the last three years.
Ellie recently stopped by Emma’s Nashville office with some African stew (her mom’s recipe!) and shared her story. We heard about individual students and the power of education in developing communities. For a teenager in the slums of Haruma or Kibera, the chance for an education is a chance out of poverty. Education is not free in Kenya, and the opportunity is only available to those with funds — that’s where Ellie’s Run for Africa helps. Through ERFA, Nashvillians have the chance to walk or jog in honor of the students and schools we’re financially supporting in Africa.
Pamela (left) came in first in her age division! We decided to celebrate with a stop in the photo booth.
In addition to sponsoring the event as a company, a group of us Emma staffers joined Ellie on May 21st to run and volunteer for the 7th annual event. It was a huge success, with over 400 runners and $49,000 raised! Students like Francis Ikoha, Lucy Kamwende Kamau and Enock Wanami Simiyu will continue to be supported through education, a hot meal and a supportive environment. What a perfect way to kick off summer.
Want to see other ways that Emma gives back? Click here.
5 questions with Suzanne Ryan
Suzanne takes off her many AimCoR group "hats" to try out new styles with her daughter, Heather, at Disney World.
Can you start off by telling me about your role at AimCoR group? From my experience working with you, it seems like you wear several hats there.
I’m kind of like the “girl Friday” from one of my favorite movies with Rosalind Russell and Carey Grant, His Girl Friday. My primary focus is marketing. We’re a very small company, with 40 BGAs around the country, but there are only four of us in our corporate office — we all do a lot of different things. My title is Marketing Director, but then I also do a lot with member services, getting them up and running. I help plan a lot of the events, too. We have three events throughout the country each year.
What is one of the most interesting things you see evolving in the insurance and financial industry? Are there any trends you’re seeing this year?
I think the number one thing we’re seeing has to do with recent legislation passed in December, which began on January 1, 2011 and ends on December 31, 2012, and deals with changes in estate taxes. There’s a lot of changes in opportunities within that two-year window for estate planning. We are helping to provide advanced marketing solutions to the agents and the financial planners for when they go out to their customers and try to get them to take advantage of this short window of time.
The second biggest thing we’re seeing is the tremendous amount of change within the life insurance industry. There has been so much competition among providers with what they offer due to the medical and technical advances. People are living longer. The recent census shows that women are living into their mid-eighties and men into their lower-eighties, so that really affects the type of risk class a person can fall into. And with all of the advances in health care, it’s making it easier for people to qualify for a better risk class. You can’t just buy a life insurance policy from twenty years ago and be set. People should be constantly evaluating either on a yearly or bi-yearly basis their financial needs, especially their insurance needs. I think that’s the key point in what I’m trying to say: Life evolves, and insurance has to keep up.
How do you use Emma to communicate those needs and trends in the industry?
We’ve got close to 40 or 50 members with accounts set up in Emma. What we do on a monthly basis for each member is set up a four-part communication series (with one campaign each week).
We’ve got two Carrier Connections each month, where we highlight what’s going on with our core carriers. The first Carrier Connection goes out the first week of every month, and we highlight six of our core carriers there along with a feature on our monthly agent webinar. The second week we send out the Underwriting Connection, where we highlight underwriting trends. On the third week, we’re back to Carrier Connections, and we use this campaign to highlight the other half of our core carriers. And then the last week is the Sales Connection. That’s where we feature new sales and marketing techniques and the new ideas we have.
These mailings that we set up for members are just a starting point for them. They go in to edit and customize the campaign, then send them out to their agents. Ideally, we should be reaching close to 50,000 people a week through this monthly series.
Obviously, you spend a lot of time in Emma. What is the one Emma feature you or your clients couldn’t live without?
The very best part of Emma is the audience component and the audience maintenance. I think it’s one of the best in the industry. We really take advantage of the ability to easily group our members, and we’ve started experimenting with audience searches. The signup forms are also very powerful so that you can have links on your website for new additions.
I noticed that you all are located in Maple Grove, Minnesota, which by name is very similar to Walnut Grove (also in Minnesota), the former stomping grounds of Laura Ingalls-Wilder. Do folks ever show up there looking to re-live the prairie days?
That’s actually south of where we are, so we’ve yet to see anybody get lost and end up here. Maple Grove is a nice, family-oriented suburb of Minneapolis. We are big fans of Laura and Little House of Prairie, though.
Design showcase: Social justice and community progress
A quick look at some of our efforts towards diversity, equality and forward-thinking design
The Emma staff on Stand Against Racism day, wearing orange to show support for the YWCA and promote awareness of the event.
Another special event for us at Emma happened today: our second annual potluck for Juneteenth, one of my personal favorite holidays. Its inspiring story commemorates the end of slavery, honors African American history and achievement and celebrates freedom, community and diversity.
It was in that spirit, then, that staffers contributed dishes from their own personal backgrounds and cultures for today’s potluck. It was an incredible spread, and I was reminded of how lucky I am to be surrounded by such hard-working, forward-thinking people.
Emma's kitchen table today, for our second annual Juneteenth potluck.
By doing our part to visually tell these clients’ brand stories, we hope to help them advertise their events, raise more funds and drive their volunteer efforts. It’s wonderfully rewarding to work with these customers, hear their success stories and watch their readership grow, and we’re proud to have a small part in those stories by crafting their custom designs.
And with that, let’s take a look at some designs for three hardworking nonprofits that are making strides towards social justice and progress.
Customer: Students of the World
Designer: Jessica Peoples
Design Level: Concierge Design
Since it was founded at Duke University in 1999, Students of the World has collaborated with college students to create documentary media, and then use those materials to gain support for nonprofits all over the world. When Katie Sobering requested stationery for SOW, the organization was already in the process of re-branding and re-working its web presence to expand its global reach.
Katie noted that it was very important to keep the stationery simple and professional, but somehow visually communicate the essence of the brand without any “fancy frills or clutter.” The color scheme was set to charcoal, turquoise, beige and white, so Jessica stuck to those exclusively and used just a bit of antiqued texturing to add some visual interest to an otherwise very simple, clean design. She also created a custom graphic for the “send this email to a friend” link, which echoes the logo design and replaces the default version of the link included in Emma emails.
Customer: The Contributor
Designer: Elizabeth Williams
Design Level: Concierge Design
Last year, the Emma design team came out of thinkTank, a local design conference, inspired and touched by story of speaker Tasha French. Since founding The Contributor in 2007, Tasha and her team have turned their nonprofit passion project into the biggest street newspaper in North America.
The organization’s website incorporates some beautiful and powerful photographic images, many of them taken by Tasha herself, and she definitely wanted to include an image of Contributor vendors in the stationery. Elizabeth made sure to highlight the photograph by surrounding it with a distressed circular border in the same color as the tagline’s focal words. That border is also part of a larger plan to juxtapose the old and the new: on one hand, she gave prominence to the classic Contributor logo, of course, and added a faded graphic of an antique typewriter to the footer; on the other, the tagline and footer text are both in a clean, modern, sans serif font and the vendor photograph is in crisp, full color.
And, of course, tying it all back to the actual Contributor product, Elizabeth used paper textures and subtle shadowing to lend an aesthetic of real newsprint to the design. Tasha was thrilled with the outcome and has since been using the stationery for reader surveys, important news, and a fundraising push for spring/summer 2011.
Customer: Oregon Commission for Women
Designer: Jessica Peoples
Design Level: Concierge Design
The Oregon Commission for Women began less formally and under a different name in the 1960s, but in 1983, it became official on a legislative scale as an agency to promote women’s equality, education and empowerment. Jenny Greenleaf requested the custom stationery for the OCW with an open mind about much of the design direction, but she did note a preference of plumb, sage and khaki for the color scheme.
For this design, Jessica and Jenny discussed the organization’s mission, branding and various stationery ideas. From there, Jessica used the title (“She Flies with Her Own Wings”) as inspiration for the flowing nature of this design. Jenny loved the final look and has been brainstorming all kinds of uses for her new stationery. We’re so proud of her efforts to dive right in, and can’t wait to see how her email campaigns enhance the organization’s overall marketing strategy.
How does your office promote community and social justice? Let us know about your company’s initiatives – big or small – to celebrate diversity, commemorate history and push for social progress. If you’re interested in starting your own event for Stand Against Racism, you can find out more online or at your local YWCA.
Until next time … love, hugs and working together,
The Emma Design Team
Adventures in email marketing
Four ideas for expanding your email horizons this summer
If the arrival of summer has you hankering to explore and be daring, why not start with your own email marketing efforts? We’ve pulled together a few of our favorite ideas into something of a field guide to email adventure. Some are side routes to explore, others are full-on, pack-a-lot-of-granola expeditions. Either way, you’ll find all kinds of ways to expand your email horizons.
Oh, and for the record: This article is best enjoyed staring off purposefully into the distance as gentle mountain breezes rustle your hair. If gentle mountain breezes are unavailable, have Bruce over in accounts payable wave a stack of invoices in your face.
Launch a welcome note.
Someone says hi to you. How lovely. Now wait three weeks and say hi back.
Wait, that’s no good.
But you’re committing the email equivalent of that faux pas if you’re not greeting new subscribers with a welcome message. It’s a great way to build on someone’s initial interest, right when they’re interested. An Experian study shows welcome autoresponders boast a 14% click-through rate compared to the 4% industry average. Best of all, it happens automatically with Emma’s trigger email feature.
If you’ve never set up a triggered welcome email, why not make it your summer goal to launch one? Craft new content with new subscribers in mind, or just add a special greeting to the top of your latest newsletter.
+ Get inspired with profiles of three customers’ successful welcome emails.
+ Setting up welcome triggers is as easy as sending a campaign. Watch how.
Explore surveys.
There’s a wide world of customer insight out there, and you’ve got an easy way to uncover it with Emma’s survey feature. Surveys are free in your Emma account, which is nice, and their results show you priceless feedback to improve pretty much anything, including events, products, customer satisfaction and your latest email newsletter.
Of course, the real adventure begins when you learn what your customers think. Or when you decide to steal the Declaration of Independence. (Use of Nicolas Cage voice is optional there.)
+ Need more convincing? Here are more ways surveys will change your business.
+ For inspiration, see twelve ideas for surveys you can send this week.
+ Not sure how to create a survey? Consider this PDF your downloadable sherpa.
Discover your inactive members.
Legendary outdoorsman Teddy Roosevelt spoke of three uncharted frontiers: our galaxy, the ocean depths and your email database.
Which is our historically dubious way of suggesting it’s time to discover who’s not looking at your emails. Inactive subscribers are an important segment with all kinds of opportunity. Craft a special offer for them, and they’ll remember why they first signed up for your list. Send your next campaign with a daring subject line, and get their attention again. Or dare to remove them altogether, and you may save money.
+ Get more ideas for delving into the details of audience management.
+ Find your inactive members with a quick search — watch our how-to video.
Dare to redesign your newsletter.
Your industry, your goals and your customers’ needs have evolved over the last few years. Has your email newsletter kept up? If not, it may be time to embark on a redesign.
A redesigned newsletter engages readers who may have become accustomed to the same look week after week. But more importantly, the process of thinking through your new design helps you consider what your readers want and improves the overall strategy of your content. In other words, your email won’t just look better; it’ll also be better.
Keep it simple by changing your font selections or image styles. Choose a new layout or work with one of our designers for a fresh template. Or reinvent it from the ground up. Just don’t go all Gaga on us and insist your email be paraded around in a egg pod. It’s an open rate, people, not a hatch rate.
+ Check out the before-and-after from one customer’s stellar redesign.
+ See how these customers turned Emma layouts into stylish campaigns.
+ Request custom email design from our fantastic team of graphic designers.
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Are you plotting any email adventures of your own this summer? What’s the boldest thing you’ve done in an email campaign?
Emma is a member of the Email Sender & Provider Coalition and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group.
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