The Lyris GEMS of 2004 (cont.)

6. United Parcel Service (UPS)

A new email service offers a major value-add to busy small business owners

This year, the folks in brown made a direct appeal to busy small business owners when they rolled out Quantum View Notify, a “visibility service” that gives entrepreneurs the ability to do automated shipping notification on par with the likes of Amazon and Wal-Mart. Instead of having to track individual packages, busy business owners can receive email notifications from UPS on only the things they care about the most—deliveries and delays—while the owner’s customers receive automatic emails on when their packages are expected to arrive. Owners appreciate not having to hunt down status information, and customers are far less likely to call in asking for shipping status-checks.

Website: United Parcel Service

7. Okemo Mountain Resort

An honest approach appeals to recipients’ real interests

Of course, many ski resorts offer “snow reports” via email, but most of these messages tend to consist of less-than-objective descriptions of the dazzlingly great conditions that seem somehow to persist all throughout the season. Okemo Mountain Resort, on the other hand, shows it’s on dawn patrol by letting their users customize reports to the specific amount of snowfall the resort receives. The resort understands that while Johnny Snowboarder might want to be alerted every time it snows at Okemo, Suzi Skier may only want to hear about it when they get half a foot or more. By sending accurate reports on resort conditions, Okemo demonstrates that it’s in touch with the needs of serious skiers and riders, and recipients appreciate not having to read about dust-on-crust conditions that would be hyped in emails from a less considerate resort.

Website: Okemo Mountain Resort

8. The StylePhile Newsletter

Highly perishable fashion scoops find a perfect home in email

If only all email newsletters could get it so right. The compulsively readable StylePhile (an offshoot of Variety.com) is a weekly compilation of “fab finds and hip new lines” derived from the publication’s blog. Featuring funny, slang-bedecked copy, the publication appeals to readers’ razor sharp appetite for up-to-the-minute styles and down-to-earth deals. Store openings, product launches, sales, and trunk shows comprise the majority of the stories, while other tidbits highlight the “product pick of the day,” or newly released glitterati know-how, like the Preston Bailey book on fantasy weddings.

What makes StylePhile a “GEM” is the pitch-perfect marriage of content and medium. StylePhile offers time sensitive information that wouldn’t really work in an offline format like a magazine, while the push of an email dispatch lends greater immediacy than mere web site updates. Finally, by assuming its readers are canny, StylePhile writers avoid the lowest-common-denominator tone of so many e-newsletters and offer up truly worthwhile, genuinely entertaining material.

Website: StylePhile Newsletter

9. Team Mosaic

An impeccably targeted email campaign outshines traditional methods

In a recent episode of Donald Trump’s “ultimate job interview,” The Apprentice, contestants went pale as they learned they’d have just one day to transform an empty storefront into a bridal shop and hold a four-hour sale on wedding gowns. To promote the sale, one team handed out pink promotional flyers at Grand Central Station, while the other contacted the sales staff of TheKnot.com. There, Team Mosiac spent about $1,000 to send a promotional email to the 23,000 New York-area “Knotties” who had agreed to receive occasional offers from third-party vendors.

Arriving at the makeshift bridal shop the following day, Mosaic discovered a line of over 40 women stretching down the block. They sold 27 wedding gowns in four hours, generating a profit of $12,800, while rival Team Apex sold only two dresses for a profit of $1,000. Mosaic’s savvy approach was a great reminder that email is perfectly suited to local-level and event promotion, particularly when targeting data like ZIP code and wedding dates can be used to zero in on the market’s sweet spot.

Website: Team Mosaic 10. Epicurious

Cream-of-the-crop content and a savory freebie bring an old house list up to date

Few sites offer content as useful and desirable as that of Epicurious.com. The casual reader is able to search a massive database of recipes from top-shelf publications such as Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines, while registered users get perks like an online recipe box that stores their favorite dishes indefinitely—all absolutely free.

When the site launched many years ago, new registrants were asked for just a few choice tidbits of information, but having established itself as a top-shelf content provider, Epicurious apparently decided that it was entitled to know a bit more about its users.

Registrants received a one-time email letting them know they’d need to update their user profile in order to retain access to advanced features, complete with a link to a new, more elaborate registration form. Tastefully, most of the fields were left optional, but many longtime fans of the site were reportedly happy to fork over all of the requested data. To encourage participation, Epicurious offered a free report on its top 20 recipes to all those who updated their information.

Kudos to Epicurious for keeping the process easy-as-pie for list members, and coming up with a valuable giveaway to sweeten the pot.

Website: Epicurious

And that’s it! The Great Email Marketing Strategies of 2004. We hope you enjoyed them, and if you’d like to point out any that we didn’t mention here, please drop us a line at editor@lyris.com

Contact us at editor@lyris.com to share your ideas. We may include it in the next issue of Making Mail Work!

Shannon Coulter is a Marketing Manager at Lyris Technologies.