No man is an iland

Be creative.

Be innovative.

Well, yes…we’d all love to be more creative and innovative.

It’s kind of tough though: you can’t just slip a card into the ideas ATM and pull out something clever and inspiring whenever you need it.

You can, however, look for such inspiration from seeing what other people do and do well, so you can draw out ideas and insights for your own efforts.

Which leads us nicely to this list of sites and tools that highlight exactly that: what other people do and do well with their emails.

Email campaign galleries and design showcases

Campaign Monitor Gallery
Campaign Monitor began their gallery of great email designs in 2005 and continue to add examples every few days. You can view designs by the number of columns (one to three) and purpose (announcement, newsletter or invitation).

BEN – Beautiful Email Newsletters
Dozens of screenshots of good-looking emails from around the world, searchable by category tag.

Email Institute
Extensive collection categorized by brand, industry and email type. Also lets you search the subject lines.

Beautiful Emails
A series of collections of real-world email designs, mostly with an emphasis on good, strong images.

Emma Design Showcase
Displays custom and template email designs produced for this ESP’s clients, together with an explanation of the thinking and goals behind each. Check other vendor sites to see if they display a portfolio of any design work they do.

New School Marketing
This Responsys blog has a strong design emphasis, with each post typically highlighting an example of eye-catching design.

Spam Meltdown
Though it’s not seen an update for a long while, this site has huge collections of email screenshots for individual themes, such as brands (e.g. 40+ Circuit City emails), design elements/colors (e.g. “rounded corners” or “orange”), industry type (e.g. “fashion emails”) etc.

Email Design Review
Many posts at this site tackle some aspect of email design and email marketing by reviewing a real-world email example.

Campaign databases

eDataSource
Searchable database of email and social media campaigns. Includes additional services, such as the ability to monitor the activity and emails of specific senders.

Emailium
Searchable database of email campaigns. Also supports the monitoring of specific companies, industries, subjects…

EmailSociety
A searchable real-time stream of email newsletters from top brands.

Emailtastic
Indexes campaigns from hundreds of sources and includes search and analysis tools.

Email archive
Multi-category images, plus offer descriptions and profile information.

Newsletter Monitor
Multi-language brand newsletter database with monitoring and analysis tools.

InboxVision
Global database with tracking and monitoring features.

Campaign reviews and case studies

Retail Email Blog
The mother of all mail monitoring sites, with a daily watch on trends in (retail) email design and tactics. Most posts feature a screenshot to illustrate the point made in the post, as well as an overview of current retail subject lines. Also includes the Design Hall of Fame.

Style Campaign
The Style Campaign blog often reviews examples of email design, with a core focus on the use of video, animation and images, as well as design for mobile email.

The Relevant Marketer
This blog by eDialog often includes screenshots of emails within themed reviews (e.g. “theme park emails”) or to discuss particular aspects of email marketing (e.g. “encouraging interaction”).

Notes from the Lab
This blog category is actually labelled “how others are doing it”, and includes reviews of email campaigns with screenshots.

Inbox Ideas
AWeber’s blog includes a case study category which presents lessons learnt and actual numbers taken from tests and campaigns done by their clients.

The Email Zoo
This multi-author blog presents the good, the bad and the ugly of individual email campaigns, with screenshots and often extensive commentary.

Big Fat Marketing Blog
Sherry Chiger’s regular columns on “emails we love” is a rich source of campaign reviews, mostly on specific emails, but also covering wider topics like “Christmas Emails”.

MarketingSherpa
A huge database of detailed email marketing case studies with results data and actionable conclusions.

Awards sites

MarketingSherpa email marketing awards
Campaign details and creative for 17 winning entries from 2011, judged primarily on the results they produced for the sender. Equivalent articles from previous years are also available at the site. Here’s 2010 and 2009, for example.

ClickZ Connected Marketing Awards
The awards contain a “best use of email marketing” category, but you’ll have to hunt down the actual emails elsewhere as they list the winners and why they won, but don’t present the winning creatives.

LISTSERV Choice Awards
These awards are given for the best use of the same-named mailing list technology. Nearly all past winners come with an associated case study.

Internet Advertising Competition
There are two email categories in these awards that go back to 2003. Winner listings typically include a link to further details of the campaign in question.

The Trendies
Personal favorites in categories like “most original 12 days of Christmas email” from the Trendline Interactive folk.

…and finally

These resources focus on individual email designs or reviews of a particular sender’s tactics. For more general advice and inspiration, there are many other great industry resources that you’ll find listed here.

What sites do you turn to for design inspiration or tactical innovation?

Find related articles:

• Channel: Email design

The experts have apparently decided that content marketing is back for 2011: last year’s self-titled social media gurus are updating their bios as we speak.

The new (old) mantra is “quality content”. And everyone should be producing it: publishers, retailers, service companies…everyone.

But simply suggesting we distribute more quality content is like saying you should send more relevant emails. Great in theory, but…

Why does content have a new(ish) role to play in (email) marketing? Actually, what is “quality” content? And how the heck can you produce it cheaply and easily?

Let’s find out.

The “content is king” concept is as old as the first commercial website. But there are good reasons why email marketers – including retailers – should give their content strategy closer attention in 2011. In particular…

1. Content as social opportunity

We know more people than ever before are actively engaged in private and public networks and communities.

And we have a host of tools that make it easy for them to alert these networks and communities to our messages. Share this, like this, Tweet this, Digg this, forward this…shout it out from the top of the nearest tall building.

All of which is very exciting for marketers wanting to extend the reach and influence of their messages.

The irritating fly in the social soup is the need to give people something worth talking about.

Which is where quality content comes in.

We’re not all launching groundbreaking products or unique must-have offers every second day. Quality content is another way to feed your audience with shareworthy material that exploits this social marketing opportunity.

2. Content as differentiator

Google lists over 72 million results for the phrase “digital camera store”. My RSS feed draws content from almost 200 email marketing blogs.

As choice grows online, so it becomes harder for people to distinguish between sources of information, products or services.

Quality content is one additional way to stand out from the morass of sites and senders seeking to grab the attention of your audience.

3. Content as driver of loyalty and awareness

Messaging based on transactional information works, but has natural limitations. You’re not getting a 100% CTR on your promotional emails.

You can send me all the promotions you like, but if I’m not ready to buy right now,then…I’m not ready to buy right now. You’ll get your two seconds worth of awareness building (not to be underestimated), but that’s it.

Order confirmations, shipping notes, review requests, refill reminders, upsells etc. all touch the recipient positively, but are still limited by the confines of a transactional context.

Quality content adds a further dimension to messaging. It provides value without demanding much (or anything) in return. It gives people a reason to engage more with your emails, building more awareness and more loyalty.

So what is quality content?

All the above sounds jolly good. But most people skip to the next chapter in the online marketing book because they assume quality content…

• Involves considerable effort and expense to produce, and…
• Demands specialist skills, like classy writing or video production

It helps here to redefine what counts as quality content. It’s not (just) a 2000-word multi-author white paper or a $1 million viral ad.

Consider quality content simply as any element in the message that provides standout value to the recipient (aside from the inherent “value” of any offer).

I look for content that lifts itself from the competition by delivering more of the following:

• Usefulness and/or
• Entertainment and/or
• Emotional impact

A badly written 2-line customer product review that highlights an issue with one use of a product, but recommends an alternative…is quality content.

An email that makes you laugh (with the sender, not – hopefully – at them)…is quality content.

A carefully chosen image that touches the emotions of the viewer…is quality content.

Emotional impact is one aspect that’s often neglected. It can derive from the content itself (like that stunning photo), but also from the setting for that content: the style, design, personality of the content (e.g. offer, article) or content holder (e.g. email template).

You can enjoy a glass of red wine on a patch of grass at a freeway exit. Or you can enjoy the same glass of red wine as the sun dips below the palm trees on a Caribbean beach.

The context changes the perceived quality of the content.

Once you get away from the idea of Pulitzer prize-winning articles and viral video hits as “quality content”, a whole host of possibilities arises for just what you can do with your messages.

Here’s a quote from reader Adrian Kaule, who sends out an email newsletter promoting upcoming events at a Danish nightclub:

“I thought of what my recipients could want more.

- top 10 club hits with links to youtube
- articles about fancy clothing to put on next time you go out
- hot pictures from the weekend
- drink and cocktail recipes

…all this has given me an open rate of around 30-45% every week for a year, and click % is usually around 20-50%”

No time and no money = no content?

Now that we’re not trying to win journalism prizes, we also realize that content creation need not be difficult or expensive either.

Take our digital camera store as an example.

1. We could ask customers to submit photos, digital photography tips, product reviews, website reviews, software reviews etc. and use these as content. We might offer incentives – like coupons or gift certificates – to encourage submissions.

2. We could reach out to the numerous non-commercial digital photography sites and licence their content. Some may even offer that content for free in return for exposure.

3. We could tap into the experience of the customer service department to quickly come up with dozens of camera Q&As of relevance to customers and prospects.

4. We could simply link to a pdf of the user handbook for new camera purchases (minimal effort, but great content)

…and that’s just a few ideas to get started with.

Consider a B2B newsletter…this article has 10 tips to keep the content flowing and 21 actual content ideas to save yourself some thinking time. And this one has another 14 content ideas.

Five content rules

Before you head off for a bit of a brainstorm, here are five rules that I keep in mind when producing content for use online:

1. Pick the low-hanging fruit

If you’ve not thought much about content before, start small. See what you already have lying around the office or website that might find use in your newsletters.

2. Shareability

Make it easy for people to share that content. Use “share this with your network” services (like the Tweetmeme graphic you can see at the top of this post) or links, coupled with an appropriate call to action. Many ESPs now have tools that incorporate such links into outgoing emails automatically.

3. Longevity

Look for content that stays relevant through time. Advice on taking good photos in poor light has a longer life expectancy than event listings. Both make good content, but one needs constant updating to have long-term value, the other doesn’t.

4. Repurpose and reuse

Organizations produce a lot of content. How much of that could you make marketing use of? Can you turn product research into an article, an ad shoot into a behind-the-scenes photo album, your bookmark list into a “link of the week” series?

How much existing “marketing” content can you use again or elsewhere? Can you turn a series of Tweets into a blog article. Can you turn a blog article into email content? Can you turn a forum debate into a website article?

Can you update and reissue content from earlier? Nobody on your email list today remembers the article you sent out in 2002 to your first 37 subscribers.

5. Relevance to business goals

Finally, don’t produce content for content’s sake. Always (obviously) bear in mind how that content contributes to your business success.

Do you have any advice for (or examples of) great content creation for email marketers?

Find related articles:

• Channel: Email newsletters, Email marketing tactics

It’s the time of year when any self-respecting blogger reveals the “most popular posts” from last year.

The common assumption is that articles viewed most often provide the most value to readers.

You can apply the same logic to emails that generate the most opens.

So the top 10 list – based on pageview counts – highlights “the most valuable” content for those that might have missed it.

But…

Once again, the seductive pull of simplicity and a number that’s easily pulled out of a reporting system lures us into false conclusions.

We know that dozens of factors can affect open rates, other than the inherent value of the offer or content presented. The same issue affects many other measures of “popularity”, including pageviews.

Take the top 10 posts at this blog for 2010: the list is terrible in terms of accurately informing readers about those articles that offer them the very best value.

Take a look:

10. Email marketing statistics: where to find them

9. What happens when you add a “tweet this” link to your emails?

8. You should marry me…now! What to tweak and test in your call to action

7. Four odd email ideas that (maybe) make sense

6. Shopping cart abandonment emails: issues and resources

5. Top email marketing info sources: 2010 edition

4. Famous Inboxes: Kermit the Frog

3. Famous Inboxes: Julius Caesar

2. Famous Inboxes: Satan

1. Famous Inboxes: James Bond

Of these ten “most popular” posts, only three are “undeniably” there solely on merit, value or usefulness.

Why?

The top four posts are popular because they were also of interest to people outside email marketing. They tapped into a much larger potential audience.

So they are not necessarily the most popular for the actual intended readership (people in email marketing).

The “info sources” post is the only 2010 post with its own link in the blog menu. Here, popularity reflects the intensity of promotion, not just content value.

The cart abandonment and email statistics articles both rank well at Google for related keywords. So popularity is often driven by SEO success, not just content value.

(The email statistics post just points people to the correct section of the main site. So it’s popular, but has no inherent value at all!)

That leaves three posts that likely win through their actual inherent value.

So our “pageviews = popularity = value” approach totally shortchanges the reader, if we want to give them the most value we can.

And there are many more factors perverting the usefulness of popularity as a measure of value.

Consider, for example, that none of the Top 10 posts came out later than September. The same post published in January has a better chance of picking up pageviews across the year than one published on December 31st.

All of this isn’t an intellectual exercise. It’s proof that we help neither our readers nor ourselves when we use measures of value or success without sufficient thought or analysis.

Bloggers use pageviews because the number is an obvious and convenient one. Emailers use open rates and clicks for the same reason.

So what do you do when trying to evaluate the value of some content?

I take a five-step approach:

1. Ask what we really want to achieve?

Popularity (however measured) is rarely the true goal of any online venture. At the very least, it’s popularity among a certain audience that counts. And unless you’re simply out for an ego boost, your real goals are sales revenue, ad revenue, leads, donations, etc…

2. Pick out the numbers that best reflect those goals?

In my case, I evaluate the value of a post or blog based on a mix of numbers, including pageviews (ad revenue), share statistics, incoming links, blog subscription numbers, number of comments and more.

Check out the Top 10 post list based on the number of Tweets each article got:

10. Don’t ask “Is email dead?” – ask this instead

9. Holiday email marketing 2010: top resources

8. Video in Gmail: design tests and implications for email marketing

7. How many email marketers do you need to change a light bulb?

6. 7 mistakes to avoid at the email and social front line

5. You should marry me…now! What to tweak and test in your call to action

4. The social inbox of the future: implications for email marketers

3. False idols: four beliefs that can hurt your email marketing

2. Top email marketing info sources: 2010 edition

1. If Santa was an email marketer…

To the naked eye, this top 10 list offers far more value to the intended audience. And features only two posts from the original list based on pageviews alone.

Note that two humorous posts score well here, too. But this time they’re far more “relevant”.

Of course, sharing as a measure of popularity isn’t faultless, either. Which is why a mix of metrics is inevitable and critical to gauge value when there is no obvious, single number that accurately measures it.

For example, Twitter grew strongly through 2010, so later posts had a bigger audience in possession of that particular sharing tool. In this list, only 2 posts were published before September.

3. Analyze those numbers…

Well, of course.

But analyze with an understanding of what influences them and how they relate to each other and the goals.

4. Incorporate more qualitative measures in the analysis

Numbers are important, but qualitative feedback comes from sources such as the actual content of comments, Tweets, emails, other references on the Web, etc.

5. Direct change through intelligent extrapolation

In my case, I won’t turn this into a humor site, despite the popularity of humorous posts. But I will do the occasional humorous post that’s on-topic.

Humor is a useful distraction now and then, but loses its value if overdone at the expense of information that truly helps marketers do their jobs better (which is the actual goal of the blog). Its also hard to do often.

All of this is easy to say, of course, and hard to do. Especially when you’re not just publishing a simple blog or sending a monthly newsletter.

But the winners in 2011 are not those with the data or the resources (though both help), but those prepared to develop, apply and/or buy the analytical skills needed to make sense of the hugely dynamic online environment we all work in.

Good luck and have a great year!

Find related articles:

• Channel: Email marketing analysis