Last year I received a birthday email from Pizza Express that really impressed me for a number of reasons; capturing birthday details and actually acting on them, special birthday offer, trackable code and personalisation. You can check out my previous blog here, but this year the pizza giant has gone one better with their birthday email, which my colleague James received earlier this month.
Clever use of images off
We all want our emails to look as good as possible when someone opens them but this shouldn’t be at the expense of a messy looking email before images are switched on or you run the risk of not enticing the open at all. This is a great example from Pizza Express. The email renders perfectly in the inbox – even creating a perfect image of champagne flute. You can also see what the email is about at this stage too from the text ‘Enjoy a free bottle of Prosecco’, again really important for encouraging the all important open.
Using simple animation to create something different
As I mentioned previously in this blog, last year Pizza Express got it spot on with personalisation, a trackable code and the birthday offer itself. They’ve done the same again in this email but this time with they’ve used what we think is Echograph in order to make the Prosecco fizz and the candle flame move. It’s such a subtle touch but really makes all the difference especially when you view the moving image within the email.
Back in August Pure360 (Kav specifically) blogged about Echograph being a fantastic new tool for email marketers but, as yet, we’ve hardly seen any emails maximising this tool. Echograph is an easy and intuitive way to bring a static image to life so it’s a great tool for email marketers to utilise in order to infiltrate busy inboxes.
Obviously creating an Echograph for every email campaign may be a bit too time consuming and if you used it in all your email campaigns then the novelty value would be lost, so if you’re going to start using Echograph then I would suggest using it sparingly. Like Pizza Express think about using it only for automated emails rather than reactive emails or, as the festive season fast approaches, why not try it for your main festive season communication if you have one?
How Pizza Express stand out in a busy inbox…
- Sending a targeted birthday communication
- Enticing a booking by using a special birthday offer
- Using a trackable code
- Designing an email which renders perfectly even with images off
- Using Echograph to bring their email to life
It's me - Dan Sodergren - talking about marketing... 