Happy Friday!

This week, Monica Angell from Responsys and I spoke about email marketing to a group of wine club managers in the Napa Valley. It was super-fun and super-educational. In case you're interested, the presentation resources can be found at http://www.maplevine.com/emailrockstar.

Also, if you know someone who'd benefit from reading this email, forward it on! The fun of web marketing is for everyone.

Fuzzy Friday Linking,
helenjane@maplevine.com

Skyy Vodka brand thinks virally

The Skyy Vodka-owned brand whose name I am afraid to type because of spam filters, launched the Drink Pink website with an eye toward spreading virally.

From iMediaConnection, "Within one month of the redesigned website launch, the [site] brands received enough traffic to garner 774 double opt-in subscribers. The first message, Welcome to the Drink Pink Weekly, had an open rate of 47.97 percent, with a clickthrough rate of 52.04 percent. The high clickthrough rate can be attributed to consumers' strong interest in participating in the sweepstakes. In 18 weeks, sweepstake's participation grew more than 200 percent." 

"The campaign kept women coming back with the lure of the recipe contest, eventually creating a database of more than 2,300 subscribers. The ... site sent more than 30,000 individual messages, with an average open rate of 42.93 percent. By asking consumers to develop a recipe, offline, SKYY pushed consumers to engage with the brand. By closely defining its direct campaign objective -- to build an evangelical consumer email list -- SKYY met its larger goal of increasing brand awareness."

http://tinyurl.com/3dbf9u

Web Redesigns + Email Redesigns = TLA

Planning a redesign?
Don't forget the look and feel of your humble email.

"We found that 32% of emails and Web sites were totally in sync, 46% were partially in sync and 22% were not really in sync.

While some of those partially in sync could easily be brought more in line with the branding and design of their corresponding Web site, some of those differences are simply an outgrowth of the fact that emails are narrower than most Web sites."

http://blogs.mediapost.com/email_insider/?p=523

Eleven Other Search Engines

"The web is actually loaded with unusual types of search engines, and if you get a feel for what some of the offbeat ones do, you can often save a lot of time getting to the search results you really want."

http://tinyurl.com/2vw2vf

It's cute, but what does it *do*?

Fascinating article from Joseph Carrabis, CRO from NextStage, outlining how to put our evolutionary instincts to use for markting gains.

"In evolutionary settings, if Og sees me staring at some tree or continually checking a rock, he'll go investigate because he knows I'll keep looking to make sure my precious things (usually food in these cases) are safe.

The big learning from this is a simple one: people will look where other people are looking because they're wired to. This is part of our evolutionary heritage, and it isn’t going away any time too soon, so make use of it in your marketing website designs"

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/17031.asp

A Compelling Pitch For My Attention

"You have no idea who I am, I haven't taken the time to get to know you, and now I'm going to pitch you my client's product. Now, please write about it!" Sadly, this has been the spirit of a growing number of emails landing in my inbox.

Max Kalehoff's article about thoughtless marketers strikes home with me. He has a professional blog, http://blogs.mediapost.com/spin/?cat=7, a personal blog, http://www.attentionmax.com/, and an issue with product review pitches.

The rest of his rant -- and some helpful tips for avoiding this pitfall can be found here: http://blogs.mediapost.com/spin/?p=1151