Best Emails of 2007
November 29, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Just took a look at the Marketing Sherpa Email Marketing Award Winners for this year. It always makes interesting reading and for anyone involved in email marketing, it’s essential and indeed, voyeuristic reading. Clever copy and easy to skim design always makes a good email. But smart planning of your email activity is also key.
Below is a summary of the most compelling category winners - I’ve put them down in the order that I think are best, not necessarily the order the judges went for:
Best Email For Marketing Purposes
- ISITE Insight - differentiated themselves by delivery (on a full moon!). It’s got short snippets on the right that share info at a glance. No more than 3 stories on the left, catchy headlines make me want to read more. Plus they introduce their team in a compelling way. I’ve been complaining about the busy-ness of the Brightspark newsletter for oh, a full year now! Seeing this email has inspired me to put a redesign of Walking The Talk top of the list for 2008. There. I’ve now committed.
- Ariad - take note financial people - bright and colourful design, content is real, my only complaint is that they over-use the arrows >>>
- Olympus - it scored with the judges because it’s well chunked for the preview panel, but it looks a little too much like a web page for my taste. I like the fact that a high proportion of the content is user generated.
- Zondervan - the bit I liked about this is the fact that clickthroughs are to text, audio and video - not just text!
Best Welcome Letter
I didn’t like the Motley Fool one at all. What do you think? Does it do it for you?
And because it’s coming up to Christmas, here’s a seasonal winner - Sprint Holiday Campaign
Other categories you can review on the Marketing Sherpa site are:
- Best Email Opt-In
- Best Promotional Blast
- Best Automated Series
- Best Triggered Personalised
- Best Postcard Style
- Best Dramatic Test
- Best Non-Email Opt-In
Changing The World (of Email)
November 29, 2007 at 9:14 am
The Email Standards Project launched yesterday with the goal of working with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email. The project was formed out of frustration with the inconsistent rendering of HTML emails in major email clients. Read more about it here.
I think it’s a great idea. It’s crazy the way things are currently. CSS has enabled web designers to do many wonderful and beautiful things, and we regularly enjoy the fruits of the meshing of creativity and responsive code on websites. Sadly, though, email design is being locked into the way things were back in 1999. The many email clients that are in use all render css in different ways, with the result that you cannot be sure how your beautiful design will look once it’s delivered. Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and even Apple .Mac kill css designs and make them look shocking. So, when we’re creating email templates, we’ve got to go back to inline styling for each and every element - ie. using tables and formatting each header, sub header, that you see. Apart from being tedious and time consuming, it’s also ugly code. And increasingly, it’s getting hard to find good non-css coders who are willing to work in tables again!
So what can we do to support the Email Standards Project? Well the ultimate goal is to work with the makers of the email clients and get them to adopt some core standards. If you know anyone who works for any of the big email client developers, then please tell them about the Email Standards Project - send them this link: http://www.email-standards.org.
Other Things On
November 27, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Ever since I took the corporate decision to shut up shop on Friday, 14 December, a mountain of work that needs to be done before Christmas has landed. That’s good because it means I will end 2007 on a high - with a sea of smiling happy client faces, delighted by their Christmas campaigns, the feeling that this year in some small way, I made a difference, and of course massive revenues.
Expect a Walkin’ The Talk email in the coming days, and keep your eye out for santy hats on the site. I believe in decorating!
How the Webbys is like the Eurovision
November 20, 2007 at 11:01 am
I never thought that anything I was associated with would be equated in any way with the Eurovision, but actually there is a similarity between the O2 Webbys4Ireland activity and the National Song Contest! Thanks to Conn Ó Muíneacháin of Edgecast Media for drawing the comparison, but I think he could be on to something here!
Back in the olden days of the 1980’s when all we had to look forward to was the returning emigrants filling our pubs at Christmas, with their tales of life overseas and the craic. Back when TV telethons were new and novel ideas. In those days, RTE used to host the National Song Contest, the purpose of which was to choose the entrant that would represent Ireland at the Eurovision. It was a big thing. People talked about it in dole queues around the country.
That’s what the O2 Webbys4Ireland is all about. To choose 20 entrants to represent Ireland at the Webbys - the definitive Web Awards. The site will be launching end of this week and you can nominate and vote for the ones you think should go forth to New York! Anyone voting will also be eligible for an invite to the O2 Webbys 4 Ireland send off party - taking place on 17 January. Yes, just when you’re getting back in shape after the Christmas, 2008 kicks off with the essential web party!
One thing that I can guarantee - there will be no naff bands at our party!
Those Nice Folks At O2
November 12, 2007 at 9:42 am
Are supporting Irish firms to enter the Webbys!
I hear ya! When you say that many small Irish firms may not have the spare cash to stump up the entry fee for the Webby Award, that got me thinking. I made contact with the right people at O2 and that broadband and mobile provider has very kindly agreed to pay for 20 Irish entries in the Webbys! They are very positive about their involvement seeing it as a way to show their support for the web industry. It’s also very much ‘on brand’ in my opinion. The Webbys is a well organised, transparent voting, global awards that rewards best-in-class websites, applications, and other online activity. It’s only right that O2 be associated with that.
Then you’ve got the eircom Golden Spiders. Local. Opaque voting. Accused of spamming (ie. breaking the law). Not known outside of Ireland. Doesn’t really manage to reward the real movers and shakers who are setting Ireland on the global map for web. Kind of fitting for eircom to be involved right?
Keep an eye on the Webbys4Ireland site - we’ll be updating that to make it more interactive and to encourage you to put forward names of those who should be entered on our behalf. We are planning to relaunch the site at Dublin’s Open Coffee taking place on Thursday, 22 November. The closing date for Webbys entries is 14 December. You can always enter yourself anyway - go now!
And thanks to the good people who organised the Dublin Mashup Camp who let me in to start spreading the news yesterday.
Adland Reaction
November 8, 2007 at 9:23 pm
I read this post with amusement, Ian Tait’s angsty post about the cover of the latest “Campaign” magazine in the UK. It seems that the ‘ad-men’ are switching on and moving over, and as Ian says “HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS PEOPLE, THE ‘PROPER’ INTERNET’S COMING, JUST AS SOON AS THAT GUY WHO MADE THE AWESOME TWIX AD IN 1986 CAN FIGURE OUT HOW TO LOG-ON TO ONE OF THOSE WORLD WIDE WEBS.”
Well if they’re still waiting over there in the UK, how much longer have we got to wait here?
This time last year I read with great enthusiasm in the IMJ (Dec 2006 issue) how all the adland chiefs were predicting that this would be the great year for digital….
Nothing has happened. I’ve not witnessed a rise in creative ideas coming at me from the advertising space. If you call the addition of a new category called FMCG in the shiny foil wrap spider awards a development, then that’s pretty sad. The only contender for the best interactive marketing campaign is Powerade’s Never Give Up. And that’s just because its shows early signs of joined up thinking.
When oh when is agency land going to wake up and contribute to what’s going on?
Webbys Closing Date Tomorrow!
November 1, 2007 at 12:35 pm
The early closing date for the Webby Awards is tomorrw - Friday 2 Nov.
Get your entries in now and enjoy a reduced entry fee. Normal fees are $275, enter now and save $50 - you pay $225.
Carefully select the category that best suits you. Think outside the box - look at the feature categories as well. Best copywriting. Best navigation. Best practices. These are all areas that we Irish can do very well in.
Then complete the entry process - select your category, enter your details, and pay the entry fee. What happens then? The people at the Webby Awards will check every entry to ensure all the details are correct. Then the shortlisted sites will be selected and the Webbys will be in touch with you to see what page you wish to direct the hordes of traffic to. I found it quite good last year when I was judging to be brought to a targeted landing page that set out what the site objectives were and spelled out the benefits. That way, my mind was set before I went on into the site. This works too for sites that are password protected, you can show screenshots or give out a special user name and password just for judging.
So get on to it! Enter now. Take a deep breath and GO ! ….
A Good News Story
November 1, 2007 at 9:57 am
With the tragedy of last week’s data loss still on my mind, it raised my spirits to read about the Children’s Development Bank in New Delhi, India. More than 1,000 street children have joined together to create a bank that helps them manage the small sums they earn each day.
This was spotted in Springwise - “Like any other bank, CDB pays interest on the deposits that New Delhi’s street children make. That interest can be a vital incentive to kids who might otherwise spend their daily earnings on cigarettes, sweets or other items—or worse, have their meager profits stolen. Money for the interest comes from the repayment of micro loans made to kids 15 years and older. But interest on income is only part of the picture. While adults stand by to help, CDB is managed by children, helping them gain valuable work skills.
Some might argue that children shouldn’t work at all. But CDB’s adult patrons at Butterflies Charity maintain that the economic circumstances in New Delhi and other parts of the world with large populations of street children provide no alternative. CDB gives these children better control over their lives and earnings.
And the idea seems to have legs. Besides India, banks have been organised in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. CDB also has some heavy-hitting international sponsors, including HSBC and Comic Relief. Proof that entrepreneurialism can bring positive change in even the most challenging circumstances?”
