From: Me
Subject Line: Live from the Airport: EEC Email Evolution Conference Highlights
Date: Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Congratulations to the EEC team for putting together a fantastic event; the Email Evolution Conference was evolutionary. My five favorite moments:

(1) The inspiring and entertaining kick-off keynote, which included video, audience surveys and Craig Spiezle (Microsoft's Director of Security) in a USPS uniform.
(2) The illuminating discussion about how to set up a successful internal service bureau with Lauren Skena (National Geographic), Tim Norris (Gannett), Brian Schonherz (Conde Nast) and Christina Nicholson (Williams-Sonoma).
(3) The thought-provoking (and entertaining) conversation around subscriber list health between Bob Frady (Live Nation) and Clint Kaiser (Epsilon).
(4) The forward-looking perspectives on the future of the industry from Eric Kirby (Merkle), Loren McDonald (Silverpop) and Anthony Ginn (eHarmony).
(5) David Daniels' (Jupiter Research) introduction of the word "blastards," used to refer to out-of-control batch-and-blasters.

Posted by lfharmon at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

From: FreePeople.com
Subject Line: Short Pants Romance
Date: Friday, February 1, 2008

Email + Social Networking = so hot right now! Yet despite all the talk, I haven't seen many retailers integrate email messaging with MySpace sites. Enter the notably-early-adapting Free People! (They've been blogging and RSSing forever.) Check out the hotlink to add them as a MySpace friend at the upper-right of this email. Kudos to Free People for sticking their toe into the Email + Social Networking pool! Although I'm not sure I'd recommend becoming an early adapter on the "Short Pants" trend. With construction boots? Yikes! Not hot.

Posted by lfharmon at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From: Williams-Sonoma
Subject Line: Welcome to Our New Williams-Sonoma Site
Date: Monday, January 28, 2008

For those of you who haven't seen the newly-relaunched williams-sonoma.com, it is gorgeous! Very fresh. Check it out >

Posted by lfharmon at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From: Me
Subject Line: Smith-Harmon and REI are 2008 EEC Performance Award Finalists!
Date: Thursday, January 24, 2008

I am proud to announce that Smith-Harmon and REI are 2008 EEC Performance Award finalists! See the details on the EEC website >

The Email Experience Council created the Email Performance Award to recognize an individual or company that has created a campaign that demonstrates the full power of email marketing. Chosen by the members of the eec, the winning campaign will provide further evidence of email marketing’s unsurpassed return on investment and provide inspiration to others seeking to elevate the performance of their own programs. Entries will be evaluated for their marketing strategy, creative components and—most importantly—results. Learn more >

Members of the eec can vote for the winner from among the Email Performance Award finalists. Just log into your eec account and follow the instructions. Voting concludes at the end of day on Monday, Jan. 28. Vote now >

About our entry:
Working with our team, REI - the outdoors apparel and gear retailer - redesigned its July 7 “Summer Shoes Gearmail” email, implementing a range of best practices to optimize for viewing in preview panes, to improve readability, and to make calls-to-action more prominent. For the redesigned email, the unique click-through rate rose 22%, unique traffic to target specialty shop rose 90%, and revenue per email rose 11%. Because of the strength of the results of this creative test, REI moved forward with an entire suite of redesigned, maximized email creative templates in time for the critical fourth-quarter period.
For details, view our nomination form >

And check out the creative:
Summary of Redesigned Creative Innovations >
Legacy Creative >
Legacy Creative in Preview Pane >
Redesigned Creative >
Redesigned Creative in Preview Pane >

Posted by lfharmon at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From: Me
Subject Line: MAKE IT POP! Launches on the EEC Blog
Date: Thursday, October 25, 2007

I am proud to announce that I have joined the Email Experience Council blog as a contributor with "MAKE IT POP!", a weekly post dedicated to reviewing the good, the bad and the ugly in email creative.

The EEC blog is a forum for the email marketing industry's leading voices, where you'll find the opinions and thought-leadership that are driving the next evolution of email. Visit blog.emailexperience.org to check out "MAKE IT POP!", plus tons of other posts by smart folks including Bill McCloskey, Chad White, Stephanie Miller and more.

Posted by lfharmon at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)