a celestial emporium of benevolent knowledge
Basically: first a letter, then email
Karen Gedney has some good tips on emailing CEOs (and other high-ranking officials within an organization) in C-Level Event Invitations: How It’s Done.
Probably her best advice, though, is that email should be a backup to your personalized letter or courier package. If email is all you send, you’re unlikely to get through.
So sayeth Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor has a nice writeup of some research into the current state of including video in email. Basically, the verdict is not good, which should come as a surprise to no one involved in email communications. Confirming a recent post from MailChimp, the CM people state that, for now, animated gifs are probably the only (more or less) reliable way to go.
As any email marketer knows, your call to action is a crucial element of your campaign. When tweaking your text can double your conversion rates, you can’t afford to ignore it. Even a 5% increase in conversion rates can translate into huge sales if you’re talking about thousands of customers.
So why PayPal, a company who you might think would know better, would use this confusing and non-clickthrough-inspiring call to action text is beyond me.
