No man is an iland

Here a little tongue-in-cheek quiz to brighten your day…

…and to see just how much you know about email marketing.

Are you email royalty or just an onlooker waving a damp flag?

Q1 What is permission?

A: Permission is when a subscriber asks to be added to an email list. Such permission can be withdrawn directly (unsubscribe, spam report) or indirectly (ignoring all messages) at any time, so senders need to continue delivering value to ensure this permission remains current.

B: A red-orange fruit that looks a little like a tomato.

C: I prefer to ask for forgiveness.

Q2 What role does copywriting play in email?

A: Copywriting is an undervalued skill in email marketing that is important for getting people to see, read and act on emails.

B: You cannot use copywrited images or text in your messages.

C: It’s critical. It takes a special talent to come up with 500 different ways to spell VIAGRA.

Q3 What is cross-channel integration?

A: Coordinating and combining the channels you use so as to optimize the desired results across the organization.

B: A website available in both English and French.

C: When you spam Twitter, too.

Q4 What is the Can-Spam Act?

A: It provides a legal framework for sending commercial email in the USA, but the requirements fall well short of what are considered industry best practices.

B: A European Union directive covering hygiene regulations for processed meat.

C: US legislation that makes it OK to send unsolicited commercial email.

Q5 What role do tables play in email design?

A: A lack of standards in how email clients and webmail systems handle CSS means most emails are structured using tables.

B: They allow us to place our laptops at a comfortable height for using Photoshop.

C: We don’t worry about design: every minute spent on it is one less minute spent harvesting email addresses.

Q6 What is CPA?

A: Cost per action. A list owner may, for example, accept a third-party ad in their newsletter on a CPA basis. Payment might be a fixed fee for a lead generated, a white paper download or a sale, or a percentage of the revenue generated through the ad for the advertiser.

B: A certified public accountant.

C: The main payment method for the 100 million double opt-in email addresses I rent out to offshore pharmacies.

Q7 What are the key elements of the latest amendment to the EU’s Privacy and Communications Directive?

A: The amendment requires that users give their consent before an organization can place and access cookies on the user’s equipment.

B: Cookies! (Yet more hygiene regulations from the EU. Do they only ever think about food?)

C: Tell me more about this “privacy” thing you speak of. I can’t say I’m familiar with the term.

Q8 How do you get more email delivered?

A: Ensure you maintain a good sender reputation, primarily by keeping your lists free of dead addresses and sending the kind of email that does not generate spam complaints.

B: Send it Express.

C: You should send as much email as you can to as many people as you can as often as you can. That way you maximize your chances of getting some delivered.

Q9 What is the best frequency to send email?

A: The optimal frequency depends on your email program and your audience. It’s possible to send both too little and too much email, and the “best” frequency varies between individuals and segments.

B: Didn’t realize you could transmit emails via radio: this is all about mobile email, right?

C: Again, you should send as much email as you can to as many people as you can as often as you can.

Q10 Does an unopened email have value?

A: Yes, it impacts on awareness and can trigger response in other channels (search, offline etc.)

B: Does a tree falling in the wood make any sound, if nobody is there to hear it?

C: Not when you’re selling Viagra Soft Tabs and generic Viagra pills from $1.55.

So how did you do?

If you answered mainly A:
Well done! You know your email marketing. Reward yourself by leaving work early (if a boss or colleague complains, refer them to this quiz).

If you answered mainly B:
You have a poor understanding of the issues and a tenuous grip on reality. A career in the media beckons. Alternatively, if you have a Twitter account, you can try rebranding yourself as a social media guru.

If you answered mainly C:
Are you by any chance the wife of the late Nigerian Minister of Finance who needs help to transfer some funds out of the country?

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• Channel: None, but there's more email humor here.

There are a lot of clever marketers out there.

And they know more best practices than you can shake a USB stick at.

And, unfortunately, a whole bunch of these clever marketers are trying to get people to pay more attention to them and less to you.

Which is why a common theme on this blog is lifting yourself above the morass to stand out – literally and figuratively – when a lot of others are also already doing the “right things”.

That’s where creativity comes in: ideas and images, copy and campaign concepts, subject lines and new designs that draw attention and drive response.

But there’s a problem with being creative: how exactly do you do “be creative”?

As a writer and marketer, creativity is a big deal for me, but I never consciously explored exactly where ideas come from for articles, phrases, subject lines, websites etc.

So I sat down today and wrote out, based entirely on personal experience, those tips, tactics and actions that have helped me “be creative”.

Perhaps they resonate with you, too?

I very much hope you’ll reveal your own ideas or instructive resources in the comments, so we can crack this problem together. What helps you or your team be creative and so be competitive?

1. Let yourself be inspired

It’s hard to do something genuinely new, but intelligent adaptation or combination of existing ideas is creative in its own right. Harry Potter draws on a range of existing concepts, but nobody would deny that it’s a creative masterpiece.

I collated inspiring resources for email designs and tactics here, and for subject lines here.

2. Astonishingly, what they say about practice appears to be true

The more you create, the better you become at it.

3. Don’t be intimidated into creative inaction by the amazing skills of others

The Internet is terribly good at reminding us – daily – how our meagre offerings compare pitifully to those of the best bloggers, designers, marketers etc..

We can’t all be Vincent van Gogh. But we don’t have to be to do our job well.

Besides, Van Gogh may have been good at painting sunflowers, but could he sell them using 50 characters or less?

4. Use dead time to let your mind wander

Most of my posts are sketched out on the S45 train between Hernals and Heiligenstadt (the route to and from my youngest’s school).

Use “lost” time in planes, trains and coffee queues to work on new ideas. Creativity is hard to turn on, mind, so don’t get frustrated when it doesn’t happen. Otherwise you’ll be very frustrated.

5. Play to your creative strengths

I have the visual design skills of a lobotomized jelly fish. So I stopped worrying about the creative skills I can never have and focused instead on what I can do: text.

If you need creative gaps filled, get others to do so.

6. Unless there is some other pressing task, let the brain run free when it’s being creative

Those golden moments don’t turn up so often, so don’t stop them until you have to. Our tendency to leave the here and now, lose focus and let the mind wander is often a bad thing when you’re trying to get things done. But it serves us well when it comes to creative thinking.

7. Bounce ideas and concepts off people who know nothing about the subject

Just talking about it helps you clarify the value of the ideas.

8. Bounce ideas and concepts off people who do know what they’re talking about

But filter their opinions for:

1. Those who are positive because they’re trying to be nice
2. Those who are negative because they don’t like to see others come up with good ideas

9. Open up

Read a lot. Watch a lot. Experience a lot. Participate a lot.

Some of my blog posts started life as comments to something someone else wrote.

But get out of your comfort zone, too. Read what you normally read, read what your audience normally reads and read some things that neither you nor your audience read. I’m a technophobe, which is why I use a smartphone.

10. Beware the pull of mediocrity

A lot of mediocre work comes through the safety of numbers. Do what other people do and it’s hard to be criticized. And if it proves a mistake, at least there are lots of others in the same boat.

Fight that reasoning if you can.

11. Don’t be disheartened if you get it wrong (unless you regularly get it wrong, in which case you might want to change jobs)

Failure is a great teacher.

Besides, it’s hard to know what will work and what won’t, otherwise we’d all have come up with viral marketing campaigns that got a trillion hits on YouTube.

Some of my “best” creative efforts bombed, and vice versa. There are no guarantees, although if you can work the words Facebook, Bieber, integration, multichannel and Harry Potter into an article title, you have a good chance.

12. Listen to your audience

Absorb their comments, responses and creations. Let them inspire you.

13. Never rest on your creative laurels

When you build a positive image or reputation for yourself or whatever you represent, people tend to cut you some slack and put a positive slant on what you come up with next.

But goodwill doesn’t last forever. It needs constant recharging with creative success. Always look to improve.

14. Write or record it

Creative thoughts strike at unexpected moments. Write them down before they’re lost forever. I carry a pen and paper at all times (others prefer an appropriate mobile device) to take notes when one of the ideas sleeting randomly through the air hits my brain.

I just carry a sheaf of paper or a notebook with perforated sheets. Then I only remove the sheets with notes, leaving the rest behind. That way there’s always paper to hand: notebooks are easily removed from a pocket and not returned.

Use paper that’s as big as practical. When your notes reach the bottom of a page you hit a psychological stop point. Big sheets leave room for more ideas.

Use your camera phone to take photos of ads, text, scenes etc. that “gave you an idea”.

Keep a file permanently open on the PC/laptop for noting ideas, concepts or text that pop up during other tasks. There are specific web and desktop applications that can manage the notetaking task (like Evernote), but I’m still happy with a simple text file.

OK, how about you?

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• Channel: None: just a friendly update

It’s not an email.

No, it’s a multidimensional social construct meshing design elements in an optimized synergistic whole that inspires a slew of emotional and physical responses.

Actually, maybe it is just an email.

We have analysed the poor thing to death.

There are reams of wonderful advice out there on each component of that email, from sending times to subject lines…from CSS to CTR to CTA to CPR (no, wait, email is not dead).

And sometimes this intense focus, aimed primarily at optimizing the next message, leads us to forget to take a step back. So we can check the forest is doing as well as the individual trees.

Here are three examples that show how too much focus can leave money on the proverbial table (or desktop):

1. Value or value-for-money?

Good email marketers latch on to the idea of delivering value to subscribers. That focus is good and right, but only if you understand the meaning of value to your audience.

For many marketers, delivering value means delivering value-for-money. Which is OK(ish), but leads to two problems.

First, it can encourage retailers to assume email is only for delivering discounts, coupons and special offers.

Which can be fine, where that fits the business model, but can change how subscribers perceive your business and how much they are prepared to pay in future. Why buy at full price when you can wait a few days for the inevitable coupon?

It’s ground we’ve covered before.

Second, delivering value-for-money can be misconstrued as giving a fair return on the value invested by the subscriber.

Since subscribing costs nothing, some marketers assume they can get away with sending banal, valueless content or offers: nothing for nothing is a fair exchange.

Subscribers typically don’t pay cash to get your emails. But they do pay to get your emails.

The loan of their email address is a payment.

And any attention they give your messages is a payment in time. Precious time for the harassed office worker, stressed parent or teenager desperate to get back to Facebook.

So a successful email marketer has a solid understanding of what constitutes real value to their audience (or audience segments).

This might well be coupons and discounts.

But it may also be the “latest” products (at full price).

It may be helpful information.

It may be the sense of community or belonging to a group of likeminded individuals.

For your loyalists, it may be inside information on the brand or organization.

It may simply be the value of email as a reminder that you exist, so they don’t forget to make their once-a-year purchase with you and not the competition.

When was the last time you thought about the meaning of value?

2. Design for images off (and on?)

There are many examples of words leading us astray (like open rates not telling you who opened your email), and another is the concept of designing for images off.

A lot of email software and webmail services block images from displaying. So it makes sense to ensure your email “works” in such a display environment.

So what’s misleading about that concept?

The problem arises when you focus, literally, on designing for images off. The “images-off” doctrine is so prevalent that some design as if images are blocked and not in case images are blocked.

There is a subtle difference.

Designing for blocked images keeps use of images to a minimum. Taken to its extreme, we end up with plain text emails: all function and no form.

Designing in case of blocked images exploits the full potential of images, but also ensures that the key impact or message remains should those images not display. For example through styled text headlines, appropriate use of alt attributes, preheader text etc.

The difference is important, because images have the power to influence, impress, and grab attention. They are particularly useful for special occasion messages, fashion and lifestyle retailers and similar.

Oh, and image blocking is on the wane. The latest iteration of the Yahoo! Mail interface, for example, apparently no longer blocks images by default. Another reason to rethink email design for images on.

3. Response is about the past and present

A lot of email marketing (and email marketing advice) focuses on the next message.

What can we change in the subject, offer, content, layout, send time, distribution list etc. to lift response to our next email?

These changes aim to alter the behavior of the recipient. To make them click this time. To make them pay attention this time.

But we forget that the recipient is not viewing each new message with a fresh, open mind.

The previous emails have trained the recipient in terms of expectations and response. Any changes to the next email have to work in their own right and also overcome the inertia built up by all the previous ones.

If your previous emails were pretty boring, you’ve trained people to gloss over them. Your next email may be perfect. But it won’t get a perfect response.

I’ve heard of many examples where a complete design and content revamp has barely moved the needle…initially.…it can take time for people to rediscover your emails (and some never will).

Ryan Deutsch wrote recently:

“I would argue that brands have one to three emails to set a tone of value with their subscribers. Once that sense is lost, so is engagement, and getting it back is nearly impossible.”

This concept is important when you come to evaluate the results of any changes.

Fundamental changes to the value you offer and the email’s design might need longer than one email to reveal their true impact. And the greatest improvement may come from new subscribers unblemished by your previous mailing history.

All this analysis is further complicated by the impact of the novelty factor and all the other influences on response outside the actual email itself.

[This works in reverse, too. People with a long history of highly valuable email content can score super open rates regardless of what they put in the next subject line.]

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