By Susan Breslow Sardone
Countless marriages have collapsed as a result of partners' incompatibility. And the scourge of you-said-one-thing-but-I-heard-another is another relationship killer. Alas, such failure to communicate is as common in the email world as it is in the marital realm. But thanks to the efforts of one outside party, at least email marketers and their customers can find a harmonious solution.
H2F Media has figured out how to talk the talk in a way that enables users to receive intelligible emails regardless of email client, browser, operating system, and/or bandwidth. Its Digital Wildfire product, designed to incorporate rich media into email, allows marketers to target messages that adjust to the user.
It seems fitting that H2F Media's greatest success to date has been for a client based in the bosom of quickie but oftimes enduring marriages, Las Vegas. On behalf of The Venetian hotel, H2F repurposed in-house video content, edited it down to a 30-second spot, encoded it for online delivery, and emailed it to 50,000 previous visitors and others who expressed interest in the property.
The objective of this November 2001 email campaign was to restore occupancy rates to pre-September 11 levels. Out of 50,000 emails sent, H2F recorded 15,000 unique opens which directly led to 2,500 bookings for 8,000 hotel nights. This highly effective campaign - which cost the Venetian $15,000 for full creative development, delivery, and reporting - yielded a half-million dollars in revenue, well beyond the typical Vegas bettor's ROI.
"One of the inhibitors to the growth of rich media, which dramatically increases response and conversion rates," says Neil Marshall, H2F's vice president of business development, "is that a certain percentage of the audience has traditionally received lousy experiences. Digital Wildfire allows a marketer to deploy rich media now, without waiting for the audience's computing technology to be 100 percent ready for it." Using this product, customers "can reach 80 percent of their audience with rich media or better, and the remaining 20 percent will still see a marketing message."
H2F accomplishes this with its Smart Delivery Package, an intelligent 4-8k email that contains up to 7 layers of content. The appropriate layer automatically displays, based on the recipient's computing environment. In descending order of sophistication, the layers are:
1. Full-motion video inside the email client (compatible with the most advanced programs, including Outlook and Outlook Express);
2. Video preview mode, a static HTML image with an enticement to click to see the video (for Windows users whose security settings don't allow for auto-launch of content);
3. Flash layer (for Macintosh owners and Windows users with out-of-date Windows Media Players);
4. Browser version of full-motion video (for users who cannot play video content within their email client);
5. Static HTML layer (for users without a Windows Media Player or Flash plug-in);
6. Text only;
7. AOL text only.
Based on the package's success with The Venetian and numerous B2B customers, it's clear H2F has found an amicable way to keep marketers and their email service providers out of divorce court.
Copyright © 2001 Susan Breslow Sardone