But there is a better method to track the competition.  The Retail Email Blog has a “search by retailer” function on the left navigation that allows you view the emails of most major retailers.

You may also want to take a look at their 2008 Design Hall of Fame.

Download Email Campaign Planning Revealed.pdf

In 2007, Marketing Sherpa published a study with the following results:
69% of at-work users view emails in preview panes
26.6% of online consumers view emails in preview panes and 59% block images.

One year later, we can only presume that the percentage is significantly higher for online consumers as preview panes are now available in virtually every major email application.

The following examples are of what appears on a 15” monitor with the preview pane set to occupy 50% of the available screen area (a default setting for most applications). I’ll begin by showing poor uses and end by showing designs that do a great job of getting critical information in the top.

This design from SimplyWeddingStuff is the most common mistake. The logo header consumes the entire preview pane. The 5% offer is actually located at the bottom of the email.

The letters I receive from Christopher Kimball and America’s Test Kitchen are engaging and very well done. But the design is lazy because the extra line spaces could easily be eliminated to allow for the first paragraph of this text email to entice me into reading.

The practice of placing the site’s top navigation at the head of the email is in most cases, unnecessary and counter-productive. The graphic that states the offer and links to the landing page is the single most important element. If your testing proves that your home page banner and navigation at the top are a winner. I suggest compressing the graphic vertically to allow room for the offer. The ability to see even 3/4 of the graphic would be a dramatic improvement.

The redesign of the Amazon web site included a shift from rather large area of top navigation to one that is simple and compressed. In this case, the top navigation is not a problem. My only comment is that the headline could be more compelling by stating the savings one can get by clicking the email.

Here is an example of an email design from Tiger Direct that makes perfect use of the preview pane. It shouts the offer with enthusiasm and allows comprehension in an instant.

Are you making great use of the preview pane?

1. Offers must reflect a genuine value to your customers. 90% of your effort should go into the development of a rich variety offers with the goal of getting your recipients to look forward to receiving the next offer. Compelling offers is the name of the game. When your merchants ask you to try to move an item that is a poor seller or excess inventory, you can anticipate poor results and a surge in opt-outs. Great copy and graphics can never make up for a less-than-compelling offer.
2. Your offer must be instantly recognized. Clever and cute muddles the message. Clearly stating the offer in the fewest words possible within the preview pane is a must. Get down to business as quick as possible. Your “Presidents Day” or “4th of July” theme is of very little value and can hurt if it dilutes your offer message. Dramatic colors almost always work better than soft, muted colors.
3. The timeliness of your offers is the key to improving results. That’s why triggered emails work so well. Offers that address post-purchase, abandoned carts, wish lists, time spent on-site and other key performance indicators are well worth the effort. Fine-tuning the launch dates for seasonal product offers will result in improved gains.
4. The depth of products in the offer has a direct correlation to the number of orders and order value. Try to expand your offer to cover as many products as possible to obtain maximum revenue. Build item counts into your email results summaries– it will help you build more accurate forecasting.
5. The urgency of quick expiration dates increases response. Themes that stress 24 hour, 48 hour or lunchtime windows are some of the most lucrative offers available. Follow-up emails that announce the final days of a promotion with a longer time window are well worth the effort. The measurement and evaluation of lag patterns is a key performance indicator.

The question of how often to mail the email list has been a hotly debated topic in every eCommerce business I have been associated with. Conventional wisdom is that you should deliver as often as you can. I tend to agree. My experience has been that the ceiling is more frequent than you can imagine. I have mailed up to three times a week. That’s 156 times a year.

But how you determine that maximum frequency rate? Here are the considerations I have frequently debated.

1. Opt-out Rates– If the opt-outs exceed opt-ins, you are obviously in trouble (duh). But you can’t necessarily link opt-outs to frequency. You’ll need to conduct a population test to determine where the trouble lies. Segment your mailings to 2 or 3 frequency rates and test. It takes time for fatigue to set in, you may need up to six months to test.
2. Response Degradation– You will most certainly reduce your response rates as you increase the frequency. However, in most cases, frequency will override response unless your degradation is precipitous. If you have enough history you can compare like offers by season. But again, you may need a population test.
3. Value Proposition– I have saved this for last because we tend not give it enough weight. We know that providing lightweight content and repeating the same offer will not be successful regardless of frequency. But as you increase frequency, the value proposition becomes more difficult to achieve if you haven’t increased your resource allocation. It seems that everyone is in the business of providing advice and information today and that only magnifies the challenge. Value comes from expert campaign planning, talented content developers and great execution. I have found that a prolific diversity of offers is the secret to campaign planning in the retail space. I will follow up with an article on campaign planning in the near future.

I will leave you with a tip for those of you who concerned that frequency is degrading your response. Right above the opt-out link in your emails, provide an option to decrease the frequency of mailings by 50%. You will decrease opt-outs by up to 30%.

I know that this is not intentional, I suspect that it arises from a lack of discipline during testing procedures. If you’ve seen a sharp decrease in your opt-outs, I can guarantee that it is from a glitch in your opt-out system and not a result of your wonderful offers and outstanding creative.

If you want to assure that a prospect or customer will despise your brand, a dead opt-out is a very efficient method to get this accomplished.

If you read my previous post on the Invisible Visitor, I maintained that that the route to understanding our customers is engagement. Once they become visible, you are then positioned to make strategic decisions that result in major marketing breakthroughs. So the question is not “if” you should engage but rather “how”.

I struggle to understand why some businesses come to fear their customers. Any business with even the best service standards faces an onslaught of touches with customers who have problems. This constant exposure to negatives is the only reason I can come up with for this fear. Yet these same businesses understand that turning a negative into a positive is one of the best ways to to create a loyal customer. The dedication to pursue this strategy is no easy task and requires a major commitment. Maybe this fear is just a manifestation of the weariness that comes from accommodating customers with what may seem to be unrealistic expectations.

Here’s my list of engagement tactics ranked by the quality of actionable information:

1. Requests for email input on your home page and other locations in your site
2. Blog within your domain
3. Reviews
4. Online chat
5. Search and response to blogs and portals outside your domain
6. Post-transaction online surveys
7. Post-product delivery email and package insert surveys
8. General surveys to email customer base with and without incentives

Note that tactics that are “open invitations” receive the highest quality rating. General surveys are preferred by most businesses because it makes it simple to quantify data, but they are of questionable value because they do not capture fresh information. Also, users want to be in control and do not prefer to respond to your controlled format.

I have received the best quality information with the open invitation to email. Junonia.com does a wonderful job of this by posting an invitation to email the president right on the home page. This results in a large quantity of responses and it requires a lot of effort on her part to respond in a timely manner. There is also a good deal of effort that goes into distributing it throughout the organization. But the quality of this information is invaluable and because it gets you closer to understanding your customers than any other method.

The solution to building forums that work is to define the proper set of expectations that narrow the focus to product and refer users with transaction problems to customer service where issues may be resolved in a more timely manner. For instance if you build a blog, you’re much better off inviting users to engage in the product development process.

Does your experience differ from my assertion?

With this in mind, it’s no wonder that successful email and banner advertising is facing diminishing returns. We have taken this viable form of advertising and ruined it for all. The cacophony of obnoxious screaming has caused users to completely ignore these forms of advertising. The only reason they still survive is because these programs are so cheap that substantial returns on investment are still possible. It won’t last long.

This brings me to the title of this article: Small Acts of Kindness. Here in Minnesota, we have recently have been deluged with rain (as well as the entire Midwest). My neighbor Brad has a sump pump in his house with a drainpipe mounted a few feet above ground that was eroding the ground underneath. The pumped water was flowing right back into the foundation. I took two minutes to go into my garage, grab some PVC pipe and mount it to move the flow of water away from the house. Two days later, Brad came bearing gifts. The generosity they extended (bottle of premium gin, case of premium beer and a great bottle of wine) was worth about $80. It was a very nice gesture for my two minutes of action.

I’ll leave you with a tactic that is a small act of kindness. The next time you plan to give away a widget for a purchase of $150 or more in an email campaign, do something different. Just give it way with no strings attached. Include it as a package insert and say “thank you for being our customer”. This may not give you extra revenue tomorrow, but it may give you 10 times the revenue over the coming months.

There is also another twist on this topic on Seth Godin’s Blog where he asks “If you didn’t want anything in return, nothing at all, what’s the most generous thing you could do for your best customer, your best friend, your most important prospect?”.