Thanks to one of my favourite websites, The comping club, I’ve been able to seek out hundreds of online competitions ranging from movie ticket giveaway to trips to Europe and beyond. It is here I find myself fascinated by the myriad of competitions that are out there for the taking, and more so impressed at how well some companies come up with their marketing concepts.

After signing up to a competition by Queensland Holidays recently I was impressed to see a follow-up email communication regarding my competition entry, with the email subject line ‘Jordan… Win a Thank You Prize worth over $2,000!’. Needless to say I didn’t need a lot of encouragement to open this email as I had another chance to win another prize!

Queensland Holidays Thank you Email

What Queensland Holidays have done really well is identified the carrot that brought in the prospect and played the perfect card to encourage re engagement with a follow up competition that required the update of one’s profile. The user experience on the website was great to update my profile on, seamless and best of all didn’t ask any probing questions and left the choices of desired interests down to a interactive map of Queensland – brilliant!

Interactive Map to update preferences!

I’m certainly not going to stop entering competitions any time soon, and if companies like Queensland Holidays come up with great marketing concepts then I certainly won’t mind receiving emails from them in the future.

Regards,

Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

All the while we miss the elephant in the room – the one we’re trying to appeal to by leaving an impression and interacting with. We’ve become too afraid to offend and give the wrong impression to our audience that email campaigns have become stale and lifeless and instead come across as what they shouldn’t – a way to make a quick buck.

On average you’re likely to get up to 50 emails a day or more and of those at least half of these will be marketing campaigns. You may certainly think that your email has appeal and is well structured before sending but you are never to know truly how your email fares until you’ve sent it.

I have always found it’s the annoying TV commercials that stick with me and I never could understand why. The fact that I still remember them to this day is testament to prove they are memorable and do work.

What’s even great is when these TV commercials are catchy and appealing. Let’s go back to 1984 – a great year. Here’s a classic example of great marketing and a catchy marketing campaign that is both catchy, and appealing – just watching this makes me hungry:

McDonald’s 1984 TV Commercial

Now obviously a catchy jingle is one way to capture your audience, but how about without sound? Like many others, when creating emails I trawl through the typical stock libraries for the right image, but remembering the basics where a picture says a thousand words why do we see so many tanned, healthy smiling faces in emails rather than real images that stir emotion and a response? Now we’re not talking about anything crazy here like a dwarf wielding a giant spatula but instead, authentic and memorable imagery that reinforces your companies branding.

Here’s a great image by Pacific Airlines that makes you laugh and connect straight away with:

Funny images and jingles aside, what marketers need to remember is to be brave and honest. If you want to make sales, don’t be afraid to say so – in the right light it can just work! Spun in the right way a customer can purchase a product and know their money helps support the local community and/or charity.

Your may just find you get a ‘WTF?’ email from your VP when sending such a creative and cheeky campaign, but the results themselves will do the talking.

Regards,

Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

I come from marketing world where branding is key and that policy must be followed, right down the signature used on my email and the colour and pixel perfect spacing of my text. Perhaps these positions of power exempt them for such petty things but I do wonder why with the use of HTML rich emails that such big and important announcements are sent in plain unformatted text – it hurts my eyes!

While part of me wonders why something so important is sent as such a common and unrefined medium I do know for a fact that when I get an email from these people I still read them. Including myself, for the most part I think most of us read this to make sure we’re  still employed or just to confirm the rumours that indeed Joe Smith from level 8 has indeed left the company.

I’d like to conclude that the name of a company and individual implies power, respect and curiosity. I’m sure if the President had sent you an email in uppercase plain text then you’d certainly read it.

Take this as a lesson that even a simply (perhaps ugly) approach still works if what you represent what is true and means something to the reader.

Phenom Solutions offers freelance emails specialist services (even ‘boring’ text emails!) so please contact me today if you are interested in finding our more about me.

Regards,

Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

An email from Tourism Victoria arrived in my inbox and a pleasant emotion soon followed.

Here was an email that delivered great depth of well balanced colours, rich content and fantastic use of imagery that connected well with each article. I was actually longing to visit Melbourne which no doubt was one of the intended purposes!

Take a peek at the email below from Tourism Victoria and be the judge yourself:

You can also view the whole email here

I look forward to receiving more emails from these Tourism Victoria and hope this inspires marketing managers to think differently about their online communications.

Don’t let this email put you off, as you too can create email campaigns that have a clean simple approach which are both effective and memorable thanks to our team at Phenom Solutions, providers of catered email marketing solutions. Contact us today for more information!

Regards,

Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

A common occurrence, I delete these type of emails without thinking but today decide to have a quick peek and see just WHO this email is from, which leads me into this week’s email spotlight by a company called MMGN, a website for computer and console gaming fans.

Leaving the fact that I have no idea how I got this email, the MMGN email is a well thought out and structured email that caters for a diverse audience with a healthy balance of text, images and divided sections that upon first glance seem interesting to read.  That said however, I found myself skimming over the whole opening paragraph which was full of links to other MMGN sites. It’s a great initiative to encourage more traffic on the website, but at the cost of losing an audience dedicating an area above the fold I have to question the thoughts behind this.

MMGN should receive due credit for its use of shorter articles that follow immediate after the opening paragraph, with short and punchy descriptions with the right image accompanying to match. For an email I never wanted to receive I even found myself clicking through and taking a look (given my paranoid online behaviour, this is saying something!). These short articles were re-enforced with popular forum posts by game immediately below, which again encouraged a follow through to MMGN’s website and to join their online community.

After clicking on the articles and landing on the MMGN website I came to the conclusion immediately: “ It’s just another game website and I’ve never been here in my life”.  The above merits were good enough to get me to MMGN’s website, but I still felt angry that I had received an email not knowing why I received it.  Absolutely no where did the email mention how I came to get on this database and had no easy way to opt out without having to sign in and update my profile.

I’m at some point MMGN had collected my email address somewhere, but I’d really like know this when I receive emails from them, especially if I didn’t even sign up! MMGN do their emails well, but I’d really like to take privacy more serious and consider those unfortunate who may never have been on your website like I was and remind them where they came from and an easy solution to opt out.

You can check out the online version of this campaign here.

I’d love an explanation MMGN, from one gamer to another!

Regards,

Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

Email review of Entertainments latest Facebook viral campaign

Last week I received a well timed email from Entertainment, notifying me on the launch of its social media channel on Facebook. Obviously no pioneers to this area, I couldn’t help but feel I’d seen this approach too many times before and felt  I was being led down a path of uncertainty or confidence in ‘following someone’ I knew little about.

The Entertainment brand is a well thought of and established company offering discounted rates ranging from restaurants, accommodation and entertainment. Being a member of this newsletter assumes this much, however when it came the promotion of ‘following us on Facebook’ I was left with more questions than curiosity to sign up to anything.

A brief list of features and benefits was given on why one should follow Entertainment, but this didn’t offer any insight or evidence of why someone ought to be following them. Not being a strong social media person myself had to wonder about people like my parents who don’t care for the whole Facebook deal at all. What I would have liked to have seen is more interactivity between Entertainment and the customer, and really point out the value of jumping onto Facebook and getting involved in a relationship of mutual gain.

Not to add insult to Entertainment, but on closer inspection I also noticed that badly formatted HTML resulted in this email being display incorrectly in my web browser (Chrome) which was quite evident as an easy fix. It seems insufficient testing was done somewhere as this is not something you want to see in all places except in the online version. Entertainment did however make good use of ALT tags and ensured a healthy balance of text vs. Images and overall provided a clean and well structured email.

To sum up, I value Entertainment as brand and enjoy receiving their communications, however thought that this email was somewhat off the mark and executed with less thought and creativity than the email really deserved.

You may view an example of this email here

Regards,

Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

Making use of well structured cross-browser friendly code but not shying away from the use of graphics has resulted in this gem of an email. Our team look forwards to seeing more from Beer TV in future.

Check out the campaign on our website for yourself here

Regards,

Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

Phenom Solutions offers both strategic and consulting services, so if you have grand ideas but can’t put the puzzle together then don’t hesitate to contact our team and set in motion your next great viral campaign!

I look forward to seeing many more great email campaigns on the horizon in 2011.

Regards,

Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

While I’m no advocate against the Christmas season it’s important to think carefully about how your viral campaign can be perceived by your audience and whether it serve as helping or hindering your efforts. As a business, you shouldn’t see the Christmas period as a cash cow to exploit with huge discounts and crazy clearances but instead a focus on your customer and your brand.

Remember the basics

• Stay true to your brand identity
• Remind your customers of your key values
• Show gratitude for your customers loyalty
• Reward your customers loyalty without going over the top
• Informative and engaging copy, such as upcoming 2011 products or services

It doesn’t take fireworks and back flips to stand out of the pack so don’t try and branch out and be something you’re not if it goes against your brand identity. The Christmas period should be a little fun, so stay true to what you know with a little Christmas spirit and warm wishes and you’ll be surprised how much success you’ll get verse a loud popping jack in the box email.

Regards,

Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

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Hope you like it!

Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions