About Elliot Ross

Elliot Ross is a Senior Creative Designer and Creative Strategist at e-Dialog London. You can find him on Twitter at @iamelliot Follow @iamelliot

Retargetting via Email: John Lewis Example

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Elliot Ross

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Behavioural retargetting is a technology that’s recently been popularised on the web – it’s the process of targeting users via banner ad networks after they’ve visited a brand’s site, with an aim to get them to return and convert.

This triggered campaign from UK retailer John Lewis uses this methodology in email. I received the email a few hours after browsing the John Lewis site for iPad accessories, reminding me to go back to the site and providing more reasons to shop with them.

As with the retargetting ads online, it’s easy to go overboard with this kind of thing, so it’s important to pay attention to the tone of voice of the message. John Lewis do a good job here, gently reminding the user why they’re receiving the email but not being too pushy.

Email Inspiration: Waitrose Animated Call to Action

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Elliot Ross

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This fun Easter campaign from UK supermarket Waitrose uses animation to draw attention to the call to action – a cute easter chick comes over and pecks the CTA button.

Here’s the animation:

The rest of the design features a strong hierarchy, and whilst there is a lot of content, it’s easy to scan and read the content.

Email Inspiration: Media Temple newsletter

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Elliot Ross

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This campaign from awesome hosting company Media Temple shows that you can include multiple messages in a campaign without bloating the content. I especially like how the 4-line introduction is easy to read, and includes the same links as the articles below. It functions in a similar way to an extended preheader – and if reading those 4 lines is enough for the user to click through to the site, then they can.

Co Branded Email – Giraffe Case Study

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Elliot Ross

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Cross-promo campaigns are often a challenge for email marketers to get right – when a campaign is sent to a brand’s list talking about a deal or collaboration with another brand. Commercially they often make sense – and when featuring a complimentary brand, can offer good value to the user. However, it’s quite easy to make these look like spam, especially if it’s unclear that the user is receiving the email about Brand B because they’re on Brand A’s list.

This campaign from UK restaurant chain Giraffe is a good example of a cross-promo campaign done well. There’s a few reasons why it works:

The creative clearly shows why I’m receiving this – I’m on Giraffe’s list and their brand is still there in the campaign.
Go Ape is complimentary to the Giraffe brand – it’s something that also appeals to their demographic and the offer is a good fit.
There’s a nice synergy between two animal/nature based brands that is used to good effect in the copy.

Additionally this is a good example of using email and social media together – sending a campaign to launch a competition on Twitter and Facebook.

Pinning to Pinterest from Email: Toys R Us Case Study

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Elliot Ross

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Social network-of-the-moment Pinterest* allows users to collect photos and images from websites into curated ‘boards’. Whilst it’s been around for a year or so, it’s usage from the start of 2012 has really taken off – especially amongst the typical demographics that frequently shop online – and therefore it’s worth having a look at how email marketers can leverage Pinterest to support their email campaigns.

Here’s two immediate ways you can start to integrate Pinterest with your emails:

“Follow us on Pinterest” links

These are very easy to add – and if your brand already has a presence on Pinterest then you can add these links to email campaigns easily. It’s simply a link to your brand’s Pinterest page, or if you require, you can also link to a specific board.

Pinning to Pinterest from Email

This recent campaign from Toys R Us allows the user to post a product shot to Pinterest straight from the email creative:

The code that allows this to happen is straightforward, and similar to the code used in “share with your network” links:

<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=[1]&amp;media=[2]&amp;description=[3]">Pin this on Pinterest</a>

* Snippet thanks to E-Mail Marketing Tipps

Using the snippet above, marketers can specify:

the “pinned from” url, that Pinterest will link back to (for example the product page on the brand’s site).
the URL of the shared image (so it doesn’t have to be the exact image in the email)
a suggested description of the pinned image (for example a product name)

Once the ‘Pin it’ button in the email is clicked, the user has the option to post the product onto a Pinterest board, and has the option to share that post on Facebook and Twitter. Other users can then repin the image onto their own Pinterest boards.

Of course this is still new functionality, and the social site as a whole is still growing and evolving, so it will be interesting to see how marketers can use this to their advantage and add innovation to their campaigns. If you use Pinterest in your email campaigns it’d be great to hear about it in the comments!

* For more background on Pinterest, take a look through this great slideshare deck by Michael Litman

The Ultimate Guide To Pinterest