Mint marketing gets it right

Mint.com's fathers day campaign is an effective combination of Twitter, E-mail and their web-site.

A few weeks ago, the Personal Financial Management ("PFM") web-site, Mint, asked people (via Twitter) to send in the best and worst financial advice they'd ever received from their father (as part of a fathers day theme). You could then watch customers replying on Twitter.

This morning, I received this e-mail from them (I hope Mint will not object to my reproducing it - if they do, please let me know):

I apologise for the fact that it is not very legible.

There is nothing complicated in it. However,

• it provides an opportunity for contextual links back into parts of the site ("3 principles of personal finance" and "check your credit score")
• it has a real sense of community ownership - this is the content that we helped create, Mint listened to us and did something about / with what we said, Mint is in tune with our lives (in a very personal family values oriented manner). It does not matter if it is somewhat manufactured in between the Twitter feedback and the e-mail - the people who took part will still recognise their participation, no matter how tenuous.
• it has a slight but very clever viral element ("forward this e-mail to your dad") to help spread Min't promotion reach across the generational divide. There is a mor generic "forward this to a friend" link at the top, butI think that the more personal "forward this e-mail to your dad" will achieve more resonance given the topic of the e-mail and the fact that they sent it two days before fathers day.

I think that this is an all-round well executed campaign, combining context, community, viral elements and strong clear calls to action.