I was shocked considering the average age of AAA customers

[zihadhasan019]

First was the "Extreme Makeover: Email Design Competition" which pitted teams from ExactTarget, Mighty Interactive, and Smith-Harmon against each other to redesign emails for Pier 1 Imports, AAA, and Marketing Experiments. The redesigned emails were then tested against each other (and the original design) and evaluated based on several metrics appropriate for the campaign. The audience was also invited to vote via text for their favorite in each competition. Unfortunately, I don't have images of the competing emails to show you, so my notes wouldn't make much sense.


It was very cool, however, to see the different appr email lists australia oaches these teams took to each email, and hear their reasoning behind it. Mighty Interactive won the competition for the Pier 1 Imports email (ExactTarget was the audience pick). They stuck closest to the feel of the original Pier 1 design (which actually outperformed all of the re-designs!), which seems to indicate that Pier 1 customers are pretty set in their ways and reluctant to see content presented in a drastically different style.





ExactTarget won the competition for the AAA email (ET was also the audience pick) with an unorthodox, side-scrolling email.. I thought for sure the unusual navigation would cause confusion and poor results. Clearly I was wrong since they outperformed the control design by 26%! Smith-Harmon won the competition for the Marketing Experiments email (S-H was also the audience pick) with their clean, colorful newsletter design. Their design outperformed the control by 26% in click-through rate, and reduced unsubscribes by 15.