We’re talking over-crowded email inboxes here.
Were your email appeals ever ‘sexy’?!
I thought not.
But there’s an important point made in this article from Synchronicity Marketing, titled: Bringing Sexy Back to Email: 3 More Ways to Stand Out in a Crowded Inbox. The competition in the inbox is getting tougher and tougher. Your email appeal is competing with some pretty flashy content from other marketers.
Claims the article: “Today, three exciting innovations are bringing video, audio, animation and dynamically-updated content to email and the inbox has never looked hotter!”
It goes on to describe how new open standard HTML used in the most prevalent email receiving environments has opened the door to video displayed directly in the body of an email. Ditto for animations.
In addition, email tools now permit dynamically customized content to be served in the email, based upon factors like current time, location or other business rules defined by the marketer.
Commercial marketers are diving in … possibly making your email appeals look pretty pedestrian. Links to examples of all of the above are provided in the article.
This is not Email 101 stuff, but for you experienced big-time users of email fundraising, it’s probably time to take a look.
Tom
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With the possible exception of #3, I really have to wonder about how much these actually work. For myself personally, I find that the more complex an email is (even before I click the button to “allow” images), the more likely I am to just hit the delete button. And I’m even more patient than others. For me, the best you can do is a few concise lines of text, and maybe one image and a link. Anything beyond that makes me think…why is this all crammed into this email? Why can’t I just click through to a site? Not to mention…50% of email browsers accepting video is not enough for me to move in that direction (yet). I’m not comfortable with frustrating 50% of those receiving my video emails.
Of course, I don’t want to be someone that’s incapable of moving with the times, but…speaking of the times – didn’t I just read an article the other day about how movement to simpler emails is preferred for direct marketing? Maybe I can’t keep up with best practice anymore.
I agree with the conclusion though, it’s time for everyone to start taking a look at these, because it won’t be long until they’re the norm. I’m just not sure if we’re there *yet.*
I don’t know… guess I’m an old curmudgeon, but that doesn’t interest me in the least as a reader.
I rarely take the time to watch a video (when I could read the information much faster). Animation would have to be pretty compelling to catch my interest.
I’m thinking if we provide meaningful content, people will read.
Or if we add all those bells and whistles, we’d best be sure that they’re dressing something good up, not putting lipstick on a pig.
Call me the devil’s advocate (curmudgeonly advocating) – maybe this is where a high-impact info-graphic or relevant [& simple] animation might serve a given development message well.
I’m inclined to agree with Mary & Matt …to an extent.
Especially given the number of mobile email users out there. Mobile Email don’t even play this sort of content w/ in message. Video frames within messages usually link out to YouTube or sender-specific hosted page for the videos anyway.
I like the idea of lite animations perhaps on testimonial sort of appeals or renewals – but videos?? eh. I’m already wringing my hands with current open rates on our messages – I don’t need to compound my headache with a frustration statistic to which Matt refers.
My humble opinion? The best fundraising comes from long-term relationship building – not gimmicks.