Bronto Blog

Even though the AAA forecasts a small decline in the number of Americans traveling during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, they predict that nearly 4.54 million (11 percent) plan to travel by airplane. As an email marketer, the first thing that jumps out at me about that statistic is the 4.54 million number. That number translates to at least 4.54 million opportunities for airlines to email travelers.

4.54 million.

United was smart enough to capitalize on that opportunity. Last week, 7 days before my trip to Buffalo, NY, United sent me a friendly reminder email (above the fold portion below):

What I loved about the United email

1. Images Off: It rendered very nicely with images off (only lost the United logo).
2. HTML-Images-Text Ratio: United used images where appropriate, but really focused on the text.
3. Relevant Content: United led with my confirmation and mileage plus #s above the fold and included my detailed itinerary immediately below.
4. Upsell (Secondary Call-To-Action): Great, subtle use of the upsell. Well below the fold, but still gave subscribers the opportunity to learn more about travel options. I wonder how many conversions this drove.

What I liked about the United email

1. Subject Line: “Prepare for your upcoming United flight on Wed, Nov 26.” I liked that it was direct, clear, short, and to the point. They took advantage of subject line branding (United) and some personalization (Wed, Nov 26). However, I think they missed the opportunity to personalize a bit more. Why not include my destination (Buffalo) and my flight departure time?
2. Footer: Very clean. No need to have a forward-to-friend or any other call outs. Simple.

What I disliked about the United email

Believe it or not, I only disliked one aspect of this email: The from name. PreFlight Notification? Ahhhh. While not as bad as “donotreply,” why not just keep it simple? United? United Airlines? UAL even…

Overall, United Airlines nailed it. If they are smart, they’ll use the opportunity to remind me once or twice more (day before, day of).

4.54 million subscribers. Take advantage, United!

DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practice & Deliverability at Bronto

Moments after I booked my hotel from Hotels.com for the Email Insider Summit (plug) in Park City, Utah, I received an email from donotreply.

Had my purchase not been top of mind, I probably would have marked this email as spam. Who the heck is “donotreply?” Why not keep it simple and use the brand that I know - Hotels.com? It is too bad that Hotels.com ignored this simple step.

Also, the subject line read, “Hotel Booking Confirmation.” Again, considering I had just purchased, the subject was relevant to me. However, it seems like a missed opportunity to use the Hotels.com brand to personalize based on my destination, date of travel, etc.

The good news is that the Hotels.com did a great job on the copy of the email. It rendered nicely with images off and images on and provided detailed booking/receipt information.

After reading this email from Hotels.com, I did a quick search in my Gmail account for “donotreply.” To my dismay, I found another example of this terrible from name from Chipotle.

Additionally, a well-known brand - Vonage - used “donotreply@vonage.com” as their from address.

As many studies have shown, one of the two most important factors in the subscriber open decision is from name (subject line being the other). Why not spend the extra few seconds to ensure that your from name is not “donotreply?” Take the “extra” step and make the from name your company name or brand.

Think about it in terms of an old school letter. Imagine if you received a snail mail letter like the one below. Do you open it?

I often hear marketers talking about the silver bullet of email marketing, the next wizbang that lead to crazy high open rates and conversions. Let’s first make sure we have the basics down. It’s time to start tackling some of the easy stuff - the “low hanging fruit” as my old boss says.

DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices & Deliverability at Bronto

Earlier this month, I was doing my routine sweep of my Gmail Spam folder. I found a legitimate email that was incorrectly tagged as Spam. This post is not to criticize Gmail for the false negative. I understand that it happens every so often (rarely with Gmail). In fact, I think Gmail is one of the best web clients when it comes to identifying Spam.

However, when I opened the email, I noticed an alert I had never seen before.

After clicking on the blue “Learn more,” I was directed to a Gmail help page titled, “Messages asking for personal information.” Gmail provides a clear, concise explanation of what phishing and/or spoofing is, including a YouTube video on how to detect phishing. They introduce their new service, “designed to alert Gmail users to messages that appear to be phishing attacks.” Finally, the Gmail Team outlines several steps to protect users against “fraudsters.”

I’ve loved Gmail even since I received the “coveted” invite from a friend. That was back when Gmail was in Beta. Oh wait…they still are in Beta. Either way, it is great to see that Gmail is not only identifying (and filtering) messages they deem as spam, are also trying to prevent and educate their users on phishing emails. Well done, Google. Between this initiative and your Google Flu Trends, I’d say you are doing good work. Keep innovating.

Has anyone seen this before? Please email examples to dj [at] bronto [dot] com.

DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices & Deliverability at Bronto

I was in the process of crafting a blog post on Bronto’s foray into social media. Joe Colopy, Bronto’s CEO, beat me to it. Below is a copy of Joe’s full post from The Joeism Blog.

DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices & Deliverability at Bronto

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Bronto tries to stay on the forefront of online marketing given our work with email marketing. Of course, social marketing and its related sites play well into that. We have a presence in a number of places and use each “property” for a slightly different purpose. Here’s a summary:

• Facebook. We recently soft launched a fan page on Facebook called Bronto Nation. The purpose of this page is to connect with anyone that has an interest in Bronto. It tends to be more brand focused and contains blog posts, photos, and videos. Go to Bronto on Facebook.
• Twitter. We’ve been on Twitter for a little while here but DJ Waldow, our Director of Best Practices and Deliverability, has recently stepped up our efforts in this area. The “tweets” center around email marketing best practices from Bronto and other leaders in the email marketing community. Kudos to DJ for already increasing our network by over 50% in less than a month. Also, special thanks to our product manager Adam Covati for getting us the bronto twitter name - it had been previously cybersquatted by someone else. Follow Bronto on Twitter.
• Flickr. At Bronto, we’ve had a very long tradition of documenting the travels of a small inflatable Brontos around the world. We also have a number of pictures from our various social and community events. All the pictures are interesting (if not bizarre in places) and well worth a good browsing. View Bronto photos on Flickr.
• YouTube. Last year, the account managers started an online video series called BrontoFire. BrontoFire is a 5-minute video magazine of sorts that looks at the good, bad, and ugly of various email marketing campaigns while passing on general best practices along the way. You can see these videos and other short clips of social antics around the office on YouTube. View videos on YouTube.
• LinkedIn. We created a group for current and past employees of Bronto on LinkedIn. It is called the Bronto Network. If you are current or past employee and haven’t already joined, I encourage you to do so. Once a Bronto, Always a Bronto! Connect with Bronto on LinkedIn.

As if that wasn’t enough, we have brontonation.com. Bronto Nation is the launching pad for these social marketing efforts. It’s still in its early stages so expect some interesting developments there. And, finally, there is the Bronto Blog covering email marketing best practices. We are currently revamping it and will have an exciting new version of it to show soon.

Have any suggestions on how we can improve our social marketing initiatives? Let me know.

If you’re a marketer, you’ve probably heard the common dating analogy about asking your prospects to marry you on the first date. While this is most commonly heard in B2B and markets with longer sales cycles, the basic principle holds true for consumer marketing. In the competitive world of email marketing and a tight economy, forging a long-term relationship with your subscribers is more crucial than ever.  Think of your welcome message as a first date — are you creating a good first impression that leaves them wanting more, or are you the blind date from hell?

Here are four tenets of a good welcome message, including great and not-so-great examples:

1. Tell Me About Yourself. Let your recipients know what they will receive from you, and how often.  Sherman’s Travel does it well, though they could use more links to get me clicking through to their site.  Which leads me to…

2. Pique My Interest. Provide links to get people clicking, shopping and engaging with your site immediately.  Williams-Sonoma does a great job of this; The Children’s Place does not.

3. Bring Flowers. Everyone likes to feel special, right? Gifts and incentives are a great way to engage your contacts and drive them back to your site. Gap.com offers $15 off your next purchase (plus the option to customize my offers to my interests), other sites offer free shipping, a whitepaper, or a small token gift.

4. Looks Are Important (harsh but true). As with any message, design with both images on and images off in mind.  This J.Crew welcome misses the mark completely with images off, not to mention the lack of info on what I will be receiving and when…and the fact that the From Name is a suspicious looking “ContactUs.”  With images on (see both part 1 and part 2 – talk about a waste of white space), they do include links to shop, but if I’m a first-time recipient, I’m not likely to enable images so these calls-to-action are lost.

For even more inspiration, check out our BrontoFire episode on Welcome Messages. Feel free to share your own good, bad and ugly first date experiences in the comment section below.

Julie Waite
Account Manager at Bronto