Launching on August 31st, 2010 Emailblog.eu was meant to be ‘my own place online’ to write about stuff related to email. One year later and it’s time to celebrate!
One year on and a total of 132 posts have been published including this one: quite a lot! During this period I got in touch with many email geeks (and even met a few in person, which is great) and learned a lot from discussions we had and tips they shared. In this ever changing world life is never boring, so keeping up is important and I’m glad I have this blog to share my thoughts on subjects and show some nice designs in the Email Winners section.
I’d like to use this post to thank those who have contributed either directly or indirectly to Emailblog.eu: either by sharing posts, giving inspiration for posts, commenting, anything: you have helped grow this blog to where it’s at now, so thanks! There’s too many of you to name you all, but you know who you are
Lastly, the future of Emailblog.eu will include going back to the more structured three-post-a-week schedule, and very probably a site design change. Currently two designs are fighting for attention and one of them will win: the new design will then be launched.
Second lastly: Mark Brownlow of Email Marketing Reports suggested on Google+ that I post something about what’s hot in email marketing right now, and what I think should be hot in email marketing: that post is in the works and should follow later this week
Back from time off, the email winner series now includes the Piperlime email below. It features some cool photography wrapped in a nice email design as well as very clear CTAs: “Make them yours” and “Judge for yourself”. I’d reckon those are better than ‘buy now’ or ‘read more’ actually.
The above email includes quite some nice touches – they all sum up to make it an email winner.
The points:
Animated header, smack in the middle up top. Here it is:
Furthermore, the header includes site-navigation that takes you directly to the designated area, in this case highlighting the Piperlime blog.
Next to that, the footer is cool as well:
Not only are the social media links set up, but also a ‘shop on the go’ option referring to a dedicated mobile site, but also the ‘Preferences, please’ item on the right. It says to ‘Talk to us’ to let Piperlime know which emails you want to get so you’ll get all the good stuff. Nice addition and I prefer every single company sending out email campaigns to have a preferences center: after all, stuff you don’t want in your inbox isn’t worth much to you, is it?
All in all a deserved email design winner in this case.
Reading the content of email marketing communications can be a pain sometimes. This can be caused by several factors: font type and/or size, contrast with font color to background color or even italics.
It’s important to recognize that not everyone has great eyes or huge 30″ screens to view and read content with great ease. The example below shows that high to mid contrast works fine with basic content layout and should prove easy to read:
What isn’t considered by many is the trouble caused by using italics with some font types and sizes:
The larger green font in the above example is quite readable, but the small font in grey below that is more difficult to read: this has to do with the font size and type used. When using other colors than black and white for font vs background, enough contrast should be pursued to keep it easy to read. The white text in the blue bar below is a good example: had the blue bar been made a lighter blue or the white text a smaller size, readability would drop quite a bit.
In the next part of this post some real-life examples (both good and bad) will be used to illustrate the contrast/readability situation. As with everything in email marketing, testing is of the utmost importance: what if your email campaigns don’t convert well just because you chose a font which is too small, or have a message style that is not contrasting enough? That would be a waste of precious marketing money of course.
As such, an email marketing strategy should be part of your total marketing strategy, which in turn is part of your annual business strategy. If not, schedule a meeting now with all those involved to get that set up.
After that, don’t think that email marketing is (or should be) a small part of your total marketing strategy. Don’t forget that, compared to your Facebook page or the Twitter stream, you ‘own’ the inbox: everything inside an email is yours to fill, and unlike Facebook your competitors cannot advertise in your own email message. At least, I hope that’s not the case.
Email should be part of your company showcase communications: this is what we do, this is what we are good at, get with us and life will get better. Get that message across and your business will be booming for sure.
Don’t forget to think of email marketing as a launch platform for your social media marketing efforts too: it can start new social campaigns, bring your presence in social media platforms to the attention of subscribers and even more: help give them choices on where they want to connect.
That last bit is important simply because some people don’t love email that much. They either get too much email, too much of what they don’t want (even stuff they once subscribed for is seen as spam when they don’t want it) or it takes too much time to read and send the stuff they want.
When it comes to not thinking too big, don’t forget that email can be as complex as you want it to be. Dozens of campaigns, message types and target groups can fill up your day just like that. Don’t get lost in the woods while forgetting the basics. Focus on what your marketing team can handle: there are already enough channels, so spend time and effort wisely.
Getting back to the not loving email bit: It could be that some people love to hear from you, but not just via email. Not to worry: you (should) have several other channels lined up to communicate with them. Be sure that you know what your subscribers like so you will know which channel to use: after all, email marketing is fun, but not the holy grail.
After the huge success of the previous post (see here if you haven’t seen it yet), here’s the second installment of email clients as cars. There were some clients (mostly less well known) that were left out, so this is where they get their comparison.
7. Lotus Notes
Yes, it’s here: the one client you wanted compared to a car. Someone suggested a horse carriage as Outlook 2007/2010 was compared to a Ford Model T, but it still has to be a car. Ok, so what car is used by a small but persistent percentage of the community, but is a drag to use or develop stuff for?
It’s the Reliant Robin, the three-wheeler! Even the Model T had four…
Be sure to watch this video of Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson ‘driving’ one.. sort of.
8. Outlook 2003
Outlook 2003 is one of my all time favourite email clients, I must confess. Simple, fast, easy to make some nice email designs for and never lets you down. The car?
A Honda Civic Type R!
9. Mozilla Thunderbird
For those of you who don’t know, Thunderbird is the Firefox of email clients, coming out of the Mozilla stable. Quite feature rich, open source and a pleasure to use. For power users there are lots of addons to tailor it to specific wants and needs. The car:
A tuned Volkswagen Golf:
10. Eudora
Eudora is, like Outlook 2003, an email client from yesteryear: these days it is being offered as open source and looks quite pretty.
Being a bit more obscure than a Volkswagen Golf, I opted for a Lancia Delta:
11. Entourage (Outlook for Mac)
Ahh Entourage. The deal between Microsoft and Apple to deliver an email client. See a bit of history here. What happens when a couple of manufacturers join up and make a fun little product? The Toyota Aygo! (Teaming up with Citroën (C1) and Peugeot (107))
12. Aol Webmail
AOL Webmail is used by many (USA) people these days, but some people don’t really take the people with an aol.com address seriously. Here you go:
A Pontiac Aztek!
13. Android
Android, Google’s mobile platform, has a client of its own. Simple, lightweight, effective and focussed on using GMail (allowing however Hotmail, Yahoo and other email accounts). Because of its simpleness many people adapt to using it fast. A Ford Fiesta!
14. Windows Mail (TECFKNAOutlookExpress)
Yes, The Email Client Formerly Known As Outlook Express still exists. It’s called Windows Mail these days, and sees much less use than its grandpa. No thanks to not being included in Windows 7, too. Being Outlook’s little brother does put less of a burden on an email client though: not much pressure to perform. A Smart Roadster!
So there you have it. 14 email clients compared to cars. If you have your own ideas which car an email client, let us know in the comments or on the social networks!
In case you haven’t noticed, the webmail war seems to be on. Via various strategies the big guys (mainly Microsoft and Google) are battling it out right now for your online webmail choice of GMail vs Hotmail. Be it advertisements, new features or boasting figures: the war is on. This post is meant as an insight webmail update to the current state of online email providers.
Promos
First of all, why would there be a webmail ‘war’? Is it even appropriate to call it that? Let’s have a look at official (and not so official) advertisement videos by both companies recently.
Here’s Googles promotional campaign of GMail called ‘Email Intervention”. The tagline: ‘save your friends from outdated email’. The video:
The above video was posted 22nd of July. Remember that date. Now it could be just me, but this seems a straight stab at webmail providers lagging behind, mostly AOL and Yahoo but also Microsoft. GMail has been bouncing around various features maturing in GMail Labs, including stuff like YouTube preview & play within an email, many interface spice ups and Smart labels. However, Microsoft now supports HTML5 video as well as having no trouble doing much of the regular html and css stuff (like css classes, which GMail still lacks).
Also, Microsoft knows how to strike back. Here’s a video called ‘Gmail man’ promoting Microsoft’s Office 365 (not Hotmail, mind you) while mocking GMail’s ad system based on email content. It was shown to the attendees at Microsoft’s annual Global Exchange sales conference earlier this month, notes CNet. Date of posting on YouTube: 28th of July, just 6 days after the Email Intervention campaign start:
Now to get back to the question: why do I feel like a webmail war going on? First of all, the numbers speak, for the bigger part in favor of Google (so far). If you have over a billion users like Google, chances are they will want to use your webmail service like all the other products they are already using like Search, Maps, etc. Secondly, if you buy an Android powered phone, you will eventually have to have a GMail/Google account: bam, new email address. And there are over half a million Android devices activated every day!
Social baby!
Furthermore, lets talk social networks. Everyone’s got to have one or you’ll be the laughing stock of the golf club during the next champagne breakfast. So both Google and Microsoft have one. Google since the 28th of June, and Microsoft’s network… hasn’t launched yet. They couldn’t help but leak something two weeks after the Google+ launch though: see the info on Tulalip here on TechCrunch.
What do social networks have to do with webmail? Simple: without webmail (and email in general) those networks would lose tons of traffic. People are drawn in because of notification emails about updates, friend requests and event alerts. Without those, what would be the point of ‘going’ to a social network if you don’t know what (if anything) is happening? Facebook.com is currently one of the biggest email sending domains worldwide with billions of emails being sent each month!
Numbers
Traffic is money in the online world, it’s that simple. Lose 10% of your traffic, lose 10% of your revenue. But the big guys want a piece of the traffic pie too: their webmail services can boost ad clicks and other ‘promotions’ too. Let’s put numbers to that traffic. At the request of Mark Brownlow, Mailchimp’s Ben Chestnut recently posted emails sent to subscriber numbers for Hotmail, GMail and other webmail services on their blog. These are the main figures from July 2011:
month
aol.com
comcast.net
gmail.com
hotmail.com
yahoo.com
July 2011
59,124,900
20,966,657
249,286,991
250,853,114
238,816,082
What do these numbers tell us? Just like Ben notes, it is that GMail has been playing catch up to Hotmail. Don’t forget that Hotmail has nearly twice the amount of total accounts as GMail, but still just only bigger than GMail in terms of ‘active’ addresses. On the usefulness of the data:
I have no idea if the stats are representative of the rest of the industry, to be honest. Stats are usually very suspicious to me, unless there’s an extremely large sample size. In this case, it was several billion outgoing email addresses we tabulated, so I think there’s something useful in there somewhere.
As long as we can’t get any bigger sample size, we are fine with 2 billion sent per month.
Winning, how? And who?
The war is on for dominance on quite some platforms right now, and the stakes are high. The winner will either get a very big slice of the pie, or even put competitors out of business. On the technology front, Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail (which is the official name) seems to be winning with the recent HTML5 video support addition and beefed up security features. However, Google isn’t sitting idly playing with Google+. It knows that even though it’s not making a lot of money off GMail (a guesstimate) it’s still a prime service with which a company can win over users. Win the users and win them for more services than just webmail. That’s where the money is (search, ads) so Google will want more people there. In the above numbers from MailChimp they seem to be winning in the active GMail accounts department, and that’s an important factor in my book.
Power to the people
Also, the users (you!) and hopefully marketers will win too: with the recent progress in webmail technology we finally get to have cool stuff in our inboxes, like playing YouTube videos right away without having to leave the inbox, or searching from within an email. Keep those nifty features coming guys!
Did I mention that both companies have browsers too, called Internet Explorer and Chrome? That’s for a future post…
Launching on August 31st, 2010 Emailblog.eu was meant to be ‘my own place online’ to write about stuff related to email. One year later and it’s time to celebrate!
