Ice Cream Sundae: An Email Marketing Blog
August 31, 2009 @ 11:09pm
Updated — September 1, 2009 @ 6:29am
by Mason Razavi
On the surface it seems simple, doesn’t it? You throw together a few lines of copy, your company logo at the top, and oh, don’t forget that list of email addresses you bought from a guy in an alley. Slap on a button to “Buy Now!”, and, oh, that subject line….how about “SAVE 10% TODAY!!!!!!!”
Not so fast. A well-crafted email can be a sweet treat, no different than the most inviting of desserts: the ice cream sundae.
Let’s start with the copy. Rich, flavorful, melt-in-your-mouth copy is the foundation, like a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. You copy should be sweet, simple, and provide a scrumptious place for toppings to lay. Don’t go rocky road, or neopolitan, or Cherry Garcia. Instead go with vanilla bean – not bland vanilla, but delicious creamy vanilla with specks of the bean. In other words, be brief, get to the point, but give it just a touch of excitement, enticement, or pizzaz to spark the reader’s interest.
The hot fudge, yes, that is the call to action button. What do you want your readers to do? Buy something? Take a peek at your new video? Donate to charity? Make sure your call to action buttons appear at least twice in the email – probably once at the top and once at the bottom (for those who actually read the whole thing…chocolate sauce drizzles all the way to the bottom, you know). Sure, the ice cream is good, but it’s the chocolate sauce that calls people to action.
Next, the whipped cream and sprinkles that make up the HTML email template. Just as fluffy whipped cream and colorful sprinkles excite your eyeballs and make you jump for joy, so it shall be with with an irresistible, visually delectable email template. Your company logo embedded in the attractive header, the sidebar with quotes, links, and promos….whipped cream and sprinkles make it all the more fun.
The cherry on top? Of course, the subject line. Perhaps the most important part of your email, a poorly written or spammy subject line will get as many people interested in your email as there would be people lining up to grab a sundae with a moldy yet mysteriously half-eaten cherry on top. Don’t type in all caps, don’t put 135 exclamation points in there, and stay away from cliches like “buy now”, “X% Off”, “Refinance Today”, or any other trite, rotten cherries. Even if your sundae, er, email makes it past the recipient’s spam filter, chances are that they will never be read with such subject lines. A marachino cherry is not only eye-catching, it is a sweet way to start a sundae. Make sure your subject lines are equally appealing at under 60 characters (the less the merrier, for the most part), and give people a reason to open your email.
Put it all together and you’ll have a delicious treat that will get the attention of your audience.
I’ve combined my advice and my vice in an effort to educate you, may it serve you well.
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Twitter Goes Down; State of Humanity Threatened
August 6, 2009 @ 11:13am
by Mason Razavi
It was a dark morning. For starters, it was cloudy. That doesn’t happen in California. Ever.
Then the news hit: Twitter is down. Twitter. Is. Down.
Upon hearing this, I rushed to the street, to see hundreds or more people fleeing their homes, grabbing one another, shaking each other by the shoulders, asking how this could be possible.
I drove through Cupertino and Mountain View and discovered that buildings once occupied with quiet cubicles, bothersome copiers, and endless meetings on riveting topics such as enterprise-level IT security were now in ruins. Office chairs torn to shreds, shattered glass everywhere, and the lowercase letter ‘t’ that is emblematic of the Twitter brand sloppily tagged onto the walls of once towering buildings that were filled with Silicon Valley’s brightest.
All along I sensed that everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it finally did. News started spreading around town (without Twitter?!) that Facebook was also experiencing problems. Stunned, I stood in the middle of the seemingly war-torn street, my jaw agape, contemplating the meaning of the events that had transpired.
I had to make a split decision. Knowing that chaos would ensue, I packed some canned food, a bottle of penicillin, my BlackBerry, and some raw fish (Pompano, to be exact) I managed to steal from Marina Food in Cupertino, and fled town. I quickly realized that I was not alone; hundreds, no, thousands had setup camps outside of the bay area, in desolate areas such as…..whatever is east of the Bay Area.
As I prepared to plan out the rest of my life as a nomad, I got a text on my BlackBerry. “Hey, it’s Mark. Twitter’s back up, and Facebook seems to be working intermittently”.
Oh.
I dusted off my dockers shirt, did my best to straighten out the crease in my slacks, and started to make my way back to the office. I looked up and saw that the sun was starting to creep out from behind the clouds. That’s not even me using a clever literary device to imply hope and well-being, seriously, it just got sunnier, check the weather report. “Everything is going to be ok”, I thought, “everything is going to be ok”.
