Most recently, I booked a hotel room in Philadelphia through them for New Year’s Eve. The day I checked out, this email arrived in my inbox:

Triggered survey emails like this are a nice touchpoint that can help a brand learn more about its customers and create a better experience for them in the future.

The challenge, of course, is getting people to:

1. Actually take the survey; and
2. Provide useful information.

Sure, you can offer a reward to people for completing the survey (this takes care of #1), but you’re likely to get people flying through the survey just to get the reward (which causes a problem with #2). So how do you get quality survey data from a high proportion of your subscribers?

I think this email does a great job at achieving both aims. Here’s why:

It’s Timely

This email showed up while the stay was fresh in my mind – Orbitz sent it the day my reservation ended.

Had they waited (either intentionally or due to an inability to generate and send the email promptly), the experience I had at the hotel might have faded from memory – meaning I wouldn’t have felt comfortable sharing my thoughts about it, or simply wouldn’t have cared enough anymore to bother doing so.

It’s Easy To Use

This is a beautifully simple email. It tries to do one thing – get me to click to the survey form – and it focuses solely on that. Yes, there are some navigation links at the top but they don’t distract from the point of the email.

And Orbitz was smart about the call-to-action: they realized that I might try clicking any of three places to get to the survey form…

• “Take our hotel survey”
• “Click Here”
• The image of the survey link

… so every one of those is linked to the form. No chance for confusion there.

It Sells The Survey Effectively

Upon receiving emails like this, I typically have two questions:

• What’s in it for me if I fill this survey out? They’re not offering me any discounts…
• What do you do with this data? What’s the point?

Orbitz anticipates and answers those questions cleanly, right in the email body. They even remind me that I’ve probably used others’ feedback to make the best choices when booking my own stays (and they’re right, I do). The appeals to karma and reciprocity make it hard to not take a few minutes and share my thoughts on the hotel.

Other Quick Thoughts

There’s a lot I could say about this email, but the important thing is that it’s focused, relevant, timely and effective.

A few other things that came to mind:

• I like that they personalized the email body with the hotel name – good thinking, since I might have stayed at multiple places (perhaps not booked via Orbitz) during my “trip.”
• Human review of this message should have caught the broken HTML in the bold-text line of copy at the top.
• Interesting that they put information on how to add Orbitz to my address book in both the preheader and the footer – and I love the “learn how” link that accompanies it. (Here’s where it goes.)
• I’m not crazy about the subject line. Technically, I didn’t take a trip (I live outside of Philadelphia, and I did not book any airfare through Orbitz as part of this reservation). I also think that adding the hotel name might be helpful. I’d test the current subject line against variations like “Tell us about your stay, Justin!” and “How was Club Quarters at Philadelphia?” to try to increase response.
• I wonder what, if anything, Orbitz will do to personalize future emails to me based on my responses. Will they suggest similar hotels? Email me in 10-11 months to see if I want to stay there again for the next New Year’s?

All in all, this was a quality survey email and I’d love to see more like it.

- Justin Premick, Director of Education Marketing at AWeber

But what does this mean for juggernaut social gaming developers like Zynga (Mafia Wars, Farmville) and Playfish (Restaurant City, Pet Society) who’ve been relying on notifications to communicate with users? According to Jon Wirt, Marketing Product Manager at The Casual Collective, social games generated $835 million last year and will rely heavily on email marketing going forward.

Jon states, “Facebook has already begun prompting users to opt-in on application pages [see image below] and will continue to do so as the notifications are phased out. The big question from a CRM standpoint, however, is how good of a job will the current big name companies do at keeping their users engaged?”

Like any good email marketer Jon understands that, more and more, email deliverability relies on subscriber engagement. And if social gaming companies start including non-relevant messaging, try to promote offer games to heavily, or worst of all, start sending  *GASP* third-party offers, vital communication with their users may be toast.

- John Getze | @johngetze

1. Identical messages, sent days apart
2. Both hit my junk folder
3. Multiple use of the word “email blast”
4. Two separate opt-out mechanisms
5. I’ve never opted-in to receive email from Infogroup, formally infoUSA

Update: I received yet another identical email today (01/29/10). Geez.

- Scott Hardigree | Indiemark | @indiescott

In true Twitter-style here’s a few small nuggets, in 140 characters, that encapsulate many of the email deliverability challenges marketers will face in twentyten.

“Permission is not enough; list engagement list is the key to deliverability. ISPs have stated they’re measuring such things as viewing time.”

“Over-mailing = complaints = negative reputation at ISPs. Diversify less critical messages using Social Media. Save the good stuff for email.”

“Drop the noreply@. Gmail’s begun testing turning on images for senders who have received two replies from a user; other ISPs should follow.”

“Let the customer drive. From the onset and through Preference Centers let them dictate how much and what sort of email they want to receive.”

“Stop marketing, at least occasionally. Actual content is likely to score better as ISPs look at engagement and complaints when filtering.”

“Test, test, test. Day of the week, time of day, and level of personalization and segmentation will all improve engagement and pay dividends.”

“Authentication will continue to be a major factor. Senders who have not adopted DKIM as their auth method of choice should do so this year.”

“Just like DKIM, domain-level reputation is on the rise. For portability’s sake, make the From: and Friendly From as consistent as possible.”

“Even though engagement, DKIM, and domain-rep may be on the rise they’re not the only factors. IP-based reputation still matters — a lot.”

“ESPs can do many things but your content and frequency aren’t among them. What/when/how you mail is largely dependent on your deliverability.”

- Scott Hardigree | Indiemark | @indiescott

Ring ring. “Hello Quiznos? This is 1999 calling, we’d like to get our design back. Oh, and if you’re not too busy with all the aluminum brushing take two minutes to read up on  in-line styles, it’ll clear your nasty little text-wrap issue right up.”


When you click on the image to see the full-size version, you’ll see what I mean by relevance. Here’s what I like:

• About three years ago, I bought my parents a Weight Watchers cookbook. The first paragraph reminds me of that purchase and links me to additional cookbooks. Nice little tug there.
• Relevance in terms of timing: New Year’s Resolutions are played up in the headline. Good call there.
• I really like the use of “Featured Recipes” as a portion of the message. Solid visuals compliment the cookbook theme. Because after all, if it looks delicious and you know it’s from a diet cookbook, you might even buy the book to cook the meal. Right?
• It’s cut off in the above screen grab, but below the Featured Recipes section is a “More Weight Watchers Books” section. Good call with a big of a secondary offer module there.
• The fact that everything is linkable makes this message easily clicked through to the desired pages. Nicely done.

There is one thing I don’t like about this message:

• “Dear Amazon.com Customer.” It’s a bit surprising to find that since Amazon knows I bought the Weight Watchers cookbook that they couldn’t go for a Dear “First Name” at the least here. It’s a dehumanizing facet right before a VERY humanizing facet. Like I said, a little surprising. Almost like it was forgotten while they were building dynamic elements in the coding of the message.

All in all, I think given the time of year and the solid reminder of a previous purchase, this is a well-done email from Amazon.

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About the Author: Scott Cohen is the Marketing Copywriter for Western Governors University. He also writes on email marketing, fatherhood, sports, and politics on ScottWritesEverything.com and contributes to the Email Zoo Blog.

• Acxiom
• Alterian
• BlueHornet
• ClickSquared
• Datran Media
• e-Dialog
• Emailvision
• Epsilon
• ExactTarget
• Experian Marketing Services
• Lyris
• Responsys
• Silverpop
• Yesmail
• Zeta Interactive

When Forrester surveyed 218 clients of the vendors in this wave on how the current economic situation is altering their email programs, very few marketers cited budget cuts. Instead, clients are more demanding of their email service providers because marketers are increasing the relevance of their programs. Email marketing frequency is growing and marketers look to ESPs to offset staffing losses, according to Forrester. The full report included vendor and executive surveys as well as executive interviews.

The report found among the leaders best aligned for large enterprise deployments, Responsys was noted for its comprehensive offerings and functionality, as well as its client satisfaction with its innovation.

ExactTarget was noted for its ability to cater to any market segment. Forrester referenced the company’s “highly usable self-service application and growing services organization that offers the ability for its personnel to be deployed at the client location. With high satisfaction scores and online community, ExactTarget can successfully meet marketers’ complex business needs.”

Another vendors singled out in the report was e-Dialog for its comprehensive application functionality, the ability to quickly segment and query large amounts of data and automate the testing process. Acxiom was acknowledged for quick integration with mobile and social functionality to meet the growing needs of the email marketer. Acxiom is well equipped to manage large global enterprises particularly in a full-service manner.

Yesmail’s variety of self-service and collaborative self-service was called out for its ability to serve a vast selection of market segments. Forrester cited the vendor’s robust tool for managing all aspects of email campaign deployment, including visual tools, a marketing calendar, and OLAP analytics for campaign analysis.

Experian Marketing Services’ platform was credited for excellent production services capabilities as well as a comprehensive self-service application (Experian CheetahMail) that caters to the 40% of its clients that work with the vendor in that fashion. It earned a perfect customer satisfaction score and has a long history of complex data integrations as well as a global footprint.

Epsilon’s DREAM messaging platform was noted for its comprehensive offering all of the necessary functionality to manage and execute mailings. According to the Forrester report, 70% of Epsilon’s clients engage with them in a full or collaborative service manner. Overall, 60% of their clients are full-service, and most are satisfied with the overall account service.

Download Full Report (PDF)

In my original post (Dylan’s Candy Bar: Semi-sweet Email Marketing) I discussed the hits and misses of Dylan’s email marketing efforts. Now that the first of their regular communications has been received, it’s apparent that their biggest and most basic challenges are in creating emails that are intuitive, skim-able, and most importantly actionable.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of the brand. I only criticize because I care.

Subject Line

The Subject Line reads:
Personalize-able treats, 20% off beauty and Free Delivery. Could it get any sweeter?

• It’s long (84 characters with spaces). But it is in-line with the content of the message.
• Greater attention should be paid to formatting to improve readability.
• The use of question marks is often practiced by spammers and/or overly aggressive marketers to encourage opens. As a practice, I’m not opposed to using questions in a subject line (I’ve done it myself) but it if you’re going to risk the dreaded spam folder it should have the propensity to improve results and at least relate neatly to the offer.
• The email also did not take advantage of pre-header text to further the message in the subject line. The subject line in conjunction with the pre-header text read “Personalize-able treats, 20% off beauty and Free Delivery. Could it get any sweeter? Having trouble viewing this email? Click here”

I would like to have seen something with a holiday fare and time-sensitivity, considering that the personalized treat is a Chocolate  Gingerbread Man and the Free Shipping promo expires in three days of mailing.

Subject Line Recommendation:
Personalize-able Holiday Treats, 20% Off Beauty Products, + Free Delivery!

Subject Line Recommendation (with Pre-header Text):
Personalize-able Holiday Treats, 20% Off Beauty Products, + Free Delivery! Order before Dec. 7th and save on these sweet deals and more!

With Images Blocked

It’s encouraging to see Dylan’s using Alt text in their images to help make sense of the offers while the images are blocked. Nevertheless it would be best to greatly improved mix of images and text.

A good text to image ratio in email newsletter marketing is easily accomplished and will help the subscriber to not only skim the offers but also improve usability. In the Free Shipping offer, for example, they could have used both text and images to convey the offer and allow the subscriber to copy/paste the promo code.

Note that they did include the promo code text below the graphic offer, but the readability of the text is poor (due to basic formatting) and gives the feeling that it is detached from the graphic above. Again, if they were to have combined the text and graphics they could have drawn greater attention to the offer and reduced the length of the email.

With Images Viewed

Speaking of size, this could easily be the longest HTML email I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t need to be. Nay, it shouldn’t be. But if the intent is to beat the current Guinness World Record for email length, I strongly recommend the use of internal links (anchor tags) at the top of the creative to outline their many offers.

As you can see their use of imagery in the three primary offerings is inconsistent, which lends them more to banners then offers.

On a Positive Note

I’m happy to see Dylan’s integrating their Twitter and Facebook pages in their email. Perhaps they could use those channels to drive newsletter subscriptions and fans much like how Outback Steakhouse, who grew their list by 125,000 between Nov. 16 and 24 by offering a free Bloomin’ Onion to the first 500,000 people who became its fans on Facebook.

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I cannot think of email marketing as its own entity–but rather as part of the entire customer experience.

Email can’t be put in a vacuum.

The idea of the vacuum, or silo thinking, with any marketing medium is very dangerous. And of course, naturally, it’s easy to separate each medium into silos:

• On TV and radio, I’ll deliver this message. This will handled by my ad agency.
• In direct mail, I’ll deliver that message. This will also be handled by my ad agency.
• In email, I’ll deliver this other message. This will be handled by me and my ESP.
• For search, we’ll go this route. This will be handled by our SEO team.
• On the phone, we’ll give our customers yet another message. This will be handled by sales.

The danger lies in thinking each medium is separate–that the right hand doesn’t have to know what the left hand is doing. And that’s all wrong.

To the customer, it’s all part of the experience.

Imagine yourself as the customer. How do you expect your experience to go? How would you feel if each method of contact with you was different from the next? So much so that it created confusion, a cognitive dissonance, enough of a disconnect that you’re left scratching your hand, wondering why you’re getting an email from your sales rep a day after speaking with them on the phone about the same topic?

It’s not so good, is it?

Questions to ask if you’re a marketer:

If you can, and time allows (and it rarely does), construct a diagram of how each medium hits your prospective customers. Map it by days or even hours if you can. Then throw it out and start asking questions.

• If I were the customer, how would I want to be communicated with?
• What do I want to use email for? For transactions only? For nurturing a relationship? For contests and fun asides?
• What do I want to use TV/radio and direct mail for?
• What kind of presence do I want to have using social media? Do I want to be reactive or out there in the populace becoming (as Chris Brogan says) “One of Us”?

Questions to ask your client if you’re an ESP or other agency:

Speaking from a client perspective, I know it’s easy for you to do your one thing well, whether it be email marketing or TV advertising or what have you. And honestly, you’re likely to get many clients who will only bring precisely what they need from you in terms of your offerings.

Don’t fall into that trap. Ask the right questions.

• What is your typical customer lifecycle?
• Would you like to improve it?
• How would you like to improve it?
• How do you communicate with your customers now?
• How do you anticipate email (or your respective medium) falling into your communication with our help?
• What other mediums are you using?
• How do you anticipate the work we do together affecting those media and your ultimate communication plan?

The bottom line is you need to make sure you’re not perpetuating with your clients the silo way of thinking. Trust me, your clients will appreciate that you care about their bottom line, not just your product. Remember that scene in “Miracle on 34th Street” where Santa sends the worried parents over to another store where it was cheaper? And how it ultimately boosted the bottom line of the Macys?

Don’t be afraid to take those steps. Don’t be afraid to fire a client if you think–nay you KNOW they’re going in the wrong direction.

To both marketers and their agencies:

Create the experience your customers want. It’ll go a long way towards your bottom line.

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This post’s main ideas and content originally appeared on ScottWritesEverything.com on October 21, 2009.

About the Author: Scott Cohen is the Marketing Copywriter for Western Governors University. He also writes on email marketing, fatherhood, sports, and politics on ScottWritesEverything.com and contributes to the Email Zoo Blog.

Provide value for your customers/voters (not yourself–at least obviously)

The biggest problem politicians and email marketers both run into is the issue of being self-serving in their messaging. Email done right is not an ad, it’s a relationship builder. Relationships aren’t one-sided. Neither is politics.

Think of politics and email like a savings account–you pay into the account (building credibility and establishing a brand), then you take out payments when it’s the right time to do so (either getting a vote or getting a sale).

How do you build the relationship? By providing value. You provide value by learning about your customers and giving them the information they need to make an informed decision. Enable them to make the decision as quickly or as slowly as they need. Be persuasive, but don’t sell an empty cart of goods. Consumers will see straight through it.

What this means in email (which politicians use) is connections to:

• Third-party reviews/Testimonials/Endorsements
• Whitepapers
• Demos
• Microsites with further information
• Free trials

These are just some of many ideas for getting your message out there without forcing it down people’s throats. That leads me to my next “rule.”

Respect your customers

I know I’m not alone here. You must respect your customers. After all, voting and email subscriptions are opt-in. Respect means proper segmentation of your message. For example, if some of your subscribers want information about jeans and some want information on lingerie, definitely don’t send both sets information about housewares. That’s just not right.

That goes for politicians, too. If your supporters want information about education plan, send them information about that, not your entire platform. There is already a semblance of interest; don’t turn them off.

Respect also means remembering that people have busy lives. That means get to the point and have something important to say; a problem to solve, etc. Kara Trivunovic wrote in her Email Insiders Blog Post:

There is always family. As much as I would love to believe that recipients are sitting with bated breath awaiting the next email from one of my clients, let’s face it–that just ain’t happening. You are competing with email from other marketers in the inbox, as well as newsletters from the local Gymnastics Center, electronic statements from the bank and the occasional request from Mom to help her figure out how to download photos off her newfangled digital camera. Just be sure to keep in mind that you aren’t necessarily competing with your biggest competitor in the inbox. Rather, you may be in competition with Aunt Tilley–so you better have something important to say.

An aside – The White House Email Debate

As many of you email marketers may remember, and as DJ Waldow wrote about on the Email Zoo Blog, the White House clearly forgot about respecting the subscriber. The message sent was pages long when no one has time for that–kind of like the 1100 pages in length that is the current healthcare bill. It was sent to people who clearly didn’t ask for it. And it wasn’t a good vehicle to deliver the value the customer was looking for.

Remember, it’s about relationships.

Relationships are about trust. Trust is built over time–and destroyed in an instant. Think about how quickly Howard Dean’s presidential campaign was destroyed over his scream in New Hampshire in 2004. That’s how quickly email reputations can be destroyed as well.

What is it Ogilvy says?

“The consumer isn’t a moron; she’s your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.”

That’s a good quote to remember.

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This post’s main ideas and content originally appeared on ScottWritesEverything.com on August 24, 2009.

About the Author: Scott Cohen is the Marketing Copywriter for Western Governors University. He also writes on email marketing, fatherhood, sports, and politics on ScottWritesEverything.com and contributes to the Email Zoo Blog.