The Immersive Marketing Experience

A short story about creative marketing strategy, refreshing data capture techniques, and email optimization…

The smell of churros and kettle corn wafted through the air to meet me as I stepped out of my car and onto the gravel-covered pavement. I looked across the parking lot through the dust wavering in the summer heat; a fleet of vehicles was parked in an orderly formation, their metallic green, blue, and silver hues gleaming in the sun. It was 12pm on the fourth Saturday in June, and the ID10T festival (part alternative rock concert, part ComicCon) was about to start. I had no idea that I was going to be won over by an impeccable marketing strategy that day, but Toyota was ready to make an impression. Right off the bat, a cheerful sales associate personally welcomed me over to a small tented area which hosted several iPad stations. I was invited to take a quick survey in exchange for a sponsored shuttle ride to the festival entrance and a special ticket that would allow me to beat the crowd.

A Toyota sponsored ‘line jump’.

The survey was absolutely painless (I finished in under a minute). From what I can recall, the main fields were super simple:

• Age
• Email Address
• Mailing Address (though zip code was the only requirement)
• Currently own or lease a car? (own/lease/not applicable)
• Have you leased/owned a Toyota? (yes/no)

I found myself growing increasingly curious as I watched a brand new C-HR pull forward. I eagerly slid into the back seat, overcome with gratitude for the cool air blasting through the AC. As the car hugged the gritty curves heading toward the Shoreline Amphitheatre, I had just enough time to study the sporty interior, review a laminated specs sheet, and engage in some casual car-talk with the Toyota representative in the driver’s seat; the milage per gallon is decent in case you’re wondering.

On the main ComicCon grounds — amidst the comic book kiosks, the tented gaming arena, and a stage featuring geek-spangled discussions from beloved panelists — there stood a compact Toyota-sponsored tent. For the price of one short survey (similar to the one mentioned earlier) guests could escape the sun to partake in several entertaining activities that thoughtfully blended in with the theme and tone of the surrounding festival:

• Creating A “Potion” - Basically this meant exchanging lighthearted banter with steampunk bartenders, who were serving up free customized shots of liquid nitrogen-infused iced teas.
• Becoming A Comic Book Hero - In front studio-grade lighting, users struck poses as a photobooth assistant counted down four times to take four pictures. Within a minute a graphic art filter was digitally applied and a personalized action strip was printed out.
• Making A GIF - Upon entering a darkened booth whose insides were reminiscent of a scene from Tron; i.e. all mirrors and neon blue lights. Users had roughly 20 seconds to dance it out in front of a camera positioned to record from an open hatchback of a C-HR which encapsulated the entire booth from the front. After exiting the booth, the front seat of the C-HR hosted users as they used an iPad to watch their GIFs and email it to themselves.

Creative data capture strategy? ✓

Smooth product placement? ✓

Fun (branded) moments that are easily shareable on social media? ✓

The quiet genius of Toyota at ID10T was that it positioned relatively inexpensive, audience-specific entertainment and services to collect vital marketing information, all the while orchestrating a memorable brand experience and presenting a new product! Survey data collection and email capture felt inconspicuous — iPad stations were set up in such a way that it supported the natural flow of foot traffic; people could feel engaged while they waited in organically occurring lines and the survey itself was easy to read and answer. I was even more impressed to find that Toyota did not spam me with emails the day after the event (as we’ve all been conditioned to fear and expect from having grown up in the era of the ‘promotional email blast’). An email from the brand arrived the following Friday morning with a highly personalized subject line and a neatly manicured preheader:

The email while vibrant, was also unfortunately quite crowded:

Improvements for consideration:

• The ‘crossover to the new revolution..’ section should be 1) more central and 2) the most prominent and largest content block in the email since it contains the most vital call-to-action. The whole purpose of this email is to drive visitors to the the landing page showcasing the C-HR, is it not?
• A link to Facebook is unnecessarily featured twice! Keep social widgets organized in such a way that they’re playful and prominent but come in second to the invitation to visit your company’s website. Facebook is simply a free push-channel for ads while your website (rightfully) costs your company a lot of time and cash to design, monitor, optimize, and maintain — not to mention a great website experience is a direct factor in closing sales and making a profit — so, does it really deserve to share visual space with any social media channel?
• Too many different color palettes throughout the multiple content blocks is making this email look even busier than it already is. Ideally the style of the email should match the design elements that were prominently used at the festival. You worked so hard to create a memorable visual experience for the audience at ID10T, why abandon it now when you can use it to personalize the campaign further?

• Size of typeface is uncomfortably small; plan better use of template space so that content blocks contain eye-friendly font sizes.
• The copy among the first three content blocks was a bit repetitive; it might have been more effective to diversify the language and tell a more complete and compelling story.
• The do not reply section makes me sad — it’s a rather large amount of space devoted to a message that translates into “hey by the way, this is an advertising email and we don’t actually expect/want a human connection.” Instead, try to point people directly to where they can reach a brand representative.
• The order of the standard links in the footer should be optimized to read:

The frequently asked questions and contact us sections should be inviting and therefore placed first, while the dreaded unsubscribe should be last (as in the last thing you want to happen..ever).

• The somewhat generic ‘looking for a car, truck, or SUV’ content block actually weakens and detracts from Toyota’s initial goal to show off the new C-HR. After investing all that time and effort to establish a connection between the C-HR and the event attendees, it makes little sense for the brand to clutter an email and distract users.

A few missed opportunities:

• It would have been amazing if the email had featured a professional video recapping notable moments from the event itself (i.e. from the shuttles, the booth, and the festival itself).
• The brand could have personalized the email even further by inviting users to visit their local dealership for a test-drive, by using the zip code information captured in the surveys from the festival.
• Making the email interactive; perhaps by including a playful flow chart quiz matching participants to the Toyota vehicle that would best suit them.

The advantage of meeting one’s audience in the flesh:

Toyota has honed in on active, outgoing and adventurous individuals as the ideal segment for the 2018 C-HR; a solid bet since the vehicle adapts so well from sleek city driving to hitting the open road. In a bold move the brand made an effort to actively meet their target audience — lively festival attendees, eclectic music lovers, and the young-at heart — to gauge the overall response and create a first impression.

• That landing page though! Following the first call-to-action, I arrived instantly to an elegant product feature. Unlike the email I received from Toyota, the landing page is clean, concise and effective at-a-glance. The copy in the landing page continues to celebrate a playfully rebellious spirit (i.e. “color outside the lines”) and interlaces with the overall tone that brand wants to set for this product.

• Surrounding the main content block are two other spotlights: ‘turn it up, take to the road’ and ‘make beats with Toyota’. The brand does a decent job in positioning relatable content, and engaging with the music enthusiast that lives inside us all:

A demonstrative template (provided by sendwithus) implementing our major content recommendations:

Using sendwithus, Toyota could split-test anything — from visual content and copy, to template structure and UX design — without compromising broader communications. Our platform allows marketers to run A/B testing on sharply defined segments, so that insights can be found with minimal risk for disruption and churn. Our in-app editor allows non-technical team members to confidently make changes to copy and images without touching source code, and our Litmus integration conveniently enables anyone to cross-check that emails are loading pixel-perfect across various email providers and devices. Metrics for each and every “send” are also available in-app, and best of all, our template management system enables marketing teams to smoothly manage whole libraries of templates, multiple versions of each email, and campaign histories.

Not only does sendwithus provide support for major design and research initiatives, our Connect feature optimizes how businesses send email campaigns in general. If marketers at Toyota planned to set up personalized nurture sequences, they could do so easily and accurately with the use SQL queries. Campaign sends would run on real-time data accessed directly in the database thereby refining the workflows of both their data and marketing teams. With a few quick modifications to data variables, customers who have clicked through the initial Toyota email could be sent a different drip campaign than the customers who merely opened it.

After witnessing all the effort invested in Toyota’s event marketing (i.e. the shuttles, surveys, booths, tents, activities, and personnel), I expected a bit more production value to be present in the follow-up email. While nurture is a concerted effort across channels, email is the most direct line of communication with customers and leads significantly in ROI. Building more exciting brand experiences into emails themselves will inspire long-term engagement and bigger sales. The last email I received from Toyota felt compulsory, instead, I want Toyota to take me places.

Helping businesses create meaningful email experiences is “our thing”. To learn more about how sendwithus can help you mobilize your audience visit sendwithus.com