“Most email marketers don’t get email-social integration, and most of them approach it backwards. You’ll see little blue Twitter birds and Facebook icons in email templates but this is the extent of their insertion of “real-time” content. It then becomes a send and hope moment as marketers pray recipients will re-post their commercial email offers onto their own Facebook and Twitter pages.

But some companies are beginning to look at new ways of integration that are bringing user generated content right into the emails in real time. One such brands is Bonobos, a company with a strong social presence that takes fan interaction and branding seriously. Leading the charge is Grace Low, Retention Marketing Manager for Bonobos, who is working with Moveable Ink to create innovative and fresh emails that are first to market with.”

Full article at Econsultancy.

The travel site tells a cancer survivor’s almost unbearably poignant story — via Adweek.

Artie explains that he always dreamed of Jill finding a husband—a dream that was shattered when Jill’s girlfriend, Nikki Weiss, asked him for his daughter’s hand in marriage. In plaintive voiceover, Artie speaks of his own personal journey toward understanding and accepting Jill for who she is. Artie freely admits the entire relationship hung in the balance, that he was choosing whether he would have any connection with his daughter. Eventually, Artie comes around—and the spot shows him flying west from Georgia to California to attend Jill and Nikki’s wedding. – Adweek

Head over to Adweek for write-up on this emotional spot.