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Blemishes from SkinStore.com

December 17th, 2009

Every now and then an email comes in with some blatant flaws. While not nearly as bad as the royal screw up from UC San Diego last April, SkinStore.com recently made the Red Flag Mistakes section of this blog.

The Problem: They had a technical error in their deployment where the titles of the their dynamic rules displayed in place of the actual content. Starting with the Subject Line: %%CONTENT1%% — which of course should have been calling whatever content they had in ‘content1′

The issue continued to the entire email with pretty much all dynamic sections (images, content etc) displaying the rule code.

On a good note, they had solid intentions of providing some personalized content via a dynamic approach. When executed properly, this can add significant value to your email efforts. Unfortunately there were some technical slip-ups here that resulted in poor presentation. Additionally, no follow up email was sent (at least I didn’t receive one). If the issue was detected, and corrected, re-sending with the functioning version could have helped a great deal.

We all make mistakes and have stories of technical frustrations. This email here may be a good opportunity for Skin Store to review their testing process, email platform, and deployment procedures in order to make improvements to their program.

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Posted in Analysis of Live Emails, B2C, Dynamic Content, Personalization, Red Flag Mistakes

Dell Days of Deals Email

December 11th, 2009

In my previous post I discussed Dell’s email sign-up process for their “Days of Deals” holiday promotion; a very clean and simple approach to opt-ins that had some nice touches.

I started receiving the “Days of Deals” promotional reminders, mostly with a positive opinion. Below is a screen grab.

A few notes:

1. Design: I love the branding consistency. The simplicity of this design also works for them. There is nothing that is too busy, call outs are clear, and it is aesthetically pleasing.

2. Small Touches: Notice in the upper right they have a ‘Send to a Friend’ and ‘Click to Chat’ link. Both simple – but nice additions. The send to a friend is standard, but many retailers don’t utilize the ‘Click to Chat’ within email.

3. Deals: My first reaction was “where are today’s deals?” It would have been nice to include the actual products in the email — as I did select preferences for certain product categories. Implementing some dynamic content, they could have easily served me personalized product reminders. Hopefully they are implementing some testing here and I just fell into this particular group with the single call out. While Dell of course wants subscribers to get back to the site via the “check out today’s savings” button, they are likely missing out on some opportunity with dynamic content showcasing products within the email.

Questions or thoughts? Feel free to leave a comment below or shoot me an email.

Cheers,

Forest

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Posted in Analysis of Live Emails, B2C, Design, Retail Email

Cool Seasonal Opt-In from Dell

December 7th, 2009

While shopping for some new computer equipment, I came across Dell’s “Days of Deals“ promotion. Basically, 8 days of special discounts, with new products being featured each day. Some cool items, but what impressed me more was the email sign-up process they had. Starting with a simple call out to be reminded of the new deals each day.

The next page had a great preference section that was obviously specific to this particular promotion. I was able to indicate if I wanted reminders for Laptops, Desktops, Monitors, etc. You’ll see in the screen grab below that they have large visuals for each of the options which is a nice touch. Not only is it more usable, but seeing the products makes a user more likely to want to receive updates on them — tech “eye candy” if you will.

They offer an opt-in check box to subscribe to additional offers and also allow you to subscribe to mobile reminders. On the confirmation page though, Dell had a really cool move of providing links to “Shop Now” for the categories I selected to receive updates on. Sounds like common sense, however many retailers take you to a general thank-you page and you have to navigate your way to certain products. Dell does a nice job here of making it easy for the user to get where they likely want to go and retain visitors while they are in the buying mindset.

Great opt-in process from Dell here. They stay consistent with their brand and usability of their site, offer a reason to opt-in to their list, provide user preference options so they can further segment and provide more sophisticated dynamic content, and they integrate the process with other site goals. One quick area of improvement would be on the first page where you click “Need a Reminder…” and then go to the opt-in page. I would recommend having a quick sign-up here (have a field to enter your email address) accompanied by a button reading: “Click to subscribe and select product preferences” — or something to that effect. By doing this they likely increase their opt-in conversion rate by acquiring more sign-ups from the main page and drawing additional attention to the fact that there is an email sign-up option.

The next post will focus on the reminder emails deployed during their campaign.

Cheers,

Forest

Questions or thoughts? Feel free to leave a comment below or shoot me an email.

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Posted in Analysis of Live Emails, B2C, Dynamic Content, List Building/Opt-In, Personalization, Promotions, Retail Email, Segmentation

Lazy Email Execution from Trader Joes

November 18th, 2009

In a post from last month, we discussed the Trader Joe’s email opt-in process via their in-store signage. The healthy food store was promoting their email newsletter on location, but did not make it easy to sign up.

After finally getting on board I eventually received the first newsletter piece. “Trader Joe’s roasting…a turkey” — this subject line could use some improvement, but that is the least of their concerns.

Below is the turkey newsletter:

I think this needs a major overhaul. For starters:

1. Where is the useful navigation?

2. How about a link to the website (other than the PDF for the ‘Turkey Roasting Game Plan’)

3. Color: Outside of the turkey and corn, maybe something more than black and white.

4. Design: A design overhaul that is consistent with the TJ’s brand would help a great deal.

5. Architecture: Before overhauling design, develop a cohesive and usable architecture for the email. Here is an example of Blue Nile doing well with this.

6. How about bringing it full circle and having some local store mentions?

The list goes on…

While Trader Joe’s is a ‘down to earth’ brand, and probably promotes a minimalist approach with their email communications, there is no reason they can’t find equilibrium with email best-practices and simplistic presentation. I hold larger companies to a much higher standard when reviewing emails. With Trader Joe’s bringing in $7.2 billion in 2008 should be producing better work.

Don’t get me wrong — there is a place for ultra simple and pretty much designless emails. I’ve seen much higher engagement with a simple-text personal letter format — under the right conditions. Trader Joe’s may have been better off with that approach here: “Forest, with Thanksgiving right around the corner, we thought you would enjoy some tips for preparing your turkey….. ” etc. But they chose a different approach and did not make the appropriate adjustments.

Thoughts or questions? Feel free to leave a comment below or shoot me an email.

Cheers,

Forest

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Posted in Analysis of Live Emails, B2C, Design, Red Flag Mistakes

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