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

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

This doesn’t mean there is not a place for discounts — of course there is. Just don’t make it bland. 5% off doesn’t cut it. Make it exclusive for your email list and they will feel more rewarded.

The email below from Lucky Brand is a few weeks old, but it is a nice example of an attention-grabbing discount. It also gives you the option to print and bring in to the store, or use online. I would use a different promo-code though as 9SEPFRND is not the easiest to remember — could be much worse with a completely random string of letters and numbers, but could be improved to something like LUCKY30.

Cheers,

Forest  |  Follow Me on Twitter

I think the timing is good as well. This email arrived on Tuesday morning, which gives me some time to review and act before the rushed weekend of holiday travel. I would expect a follow-up email; either a trigger if  I don’t click-through, or an “In case you missed our Labor Day Sale…” type message.

Great (and improved) email execution from Blinds.com! One thing I’m curious about though is their overall content approach. On first glance, it appears that the vast majority of their emails are either seasonal-based promotions or special discounts either store-wide or brand-specific. What about educational content, design tips, product features and the like? Often times more sales come from a non-sales approach. If I get engaged, get some ideas, and start reviewing my windows more, I may be much more likely to purchase than if I get a nice promo but don’t know what I need or that there could be something I want. Blinds.com sells products that are perfect for more juicy content that can better leverage the email channel.

At any rate; nice work on the email below.

Cheers,

Forest

This week I want to quickly focus on the newsletter I recently received.

Some Great Things Going On

1. Content: I love it — it’s of course relevant and useful, but also well laid out and not too overbearing. If I’m signing up for a newsletter from a mortgage company during my research phase, I want juicy content that can aid in my education and decision making. Quicken Loans does this very well here.

2. Hyperlinks: Great use of hyperlinks within the text body which appear to be inspired by Eisenberg Brothers persuasion architecture best-practices. 

3. Basics: They have navigation in the header and footer, pre-header call-outs (not in screen grab below), great text to image ratio, and several other basic best practices are being executed quite well.

4. Email Information: They have a cool Email Center at the bottom of the email that provides links to change preferences, FTAF, subscribe, and connect with them on their social media profiles. One item I would add here is a link to update my preferences.

Screen Grabs (Click Image to Enlarge)

Quick Areas of Improvement

1. Header: Below the main branding header there is quite a bit of white space around the phone number. White space is of course fine (and can be beneficial) but something appears off here. It could very well be how it renders for me (Outlook 2007)

2. Frequency: I may be on the wrong list, but for content like this (educating new home buyers — information about refinancing and the like) I’m wanting to see several each month while I’m in learning more to make a decision. This could be solved with some nice re-targeting campaigns based on my email engagement, or simply having more content for an additional newsletter.

3. CTA: As mentioned above, they have great use of hyperlinks within the email body to get subscribers on the site and engaged. What’s missing for me though in this newsletter is a focused area for connecting back to a sales rep. Yes, they have the phone number in the header, but a lot more can be done to get interested readers on the phone and closer to conversion. In my own testing, what has worked well is a dedicated area for contact info call-outs. (Often at the top right of the template). — This would of course require some template architecture adjustments, but well worth the test.

Below is a screen grab of what this might look like. Note: this is a quickly assembled wire-frame with no design and is meant only as a very general example. (click to enlarge)

There is more that can be discussed on this newsletter in areas such as dynamic content and segmentation, but I’ll wrap it up here. At some point I’d like to review the Rate Alert email from Quicken Loans. As with any company, there is always room for improvement – But overall some nice work coming out of the email department at QL. They have a good foundation with a lot of opportunity to take their email channel much further.

Cheers,

Forest

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

Changing gears and looking at a smaller (compared to Vegas) casino, I joined the mailing list for Inland Empire based Morongo Casino and Resort. I believe it’s one of the largest in the area and I do see quite a lot of local advertising.

The recent email I received has some clear areas of improvement

1. It’s one big image: We’ve discussed this several times before, but pay attention to your text to image ratio and don’t create a single image for your entire email.

2. I’m not in this segment: Why am I getting a ’seniors special’ promotion? This is because they are either sending a big shot-gun email and not implementing a rifle or blowdart approach, or they don’t have that data available for me. If we give them the benefit of the doubt and go with the latter, then it can be a good idea to send an email to subscribers that you don’t have a lot of data for and invite them to complete their profile (I’ll do a post soon just on this topic).

3. Design: It’s simply not A-grade work, or even B-grade work for that matter.

4. Navigation: It needs to be at the top. We’ve discussed the benefits of having navigation in your email in previous posts. They did have a navigation bar at the bottom (screen grab below) but that doesn’t do much good for subscribers that don’t scroll below the fold.

This email doesn’t need any more analysis as items mentioned above need to be flushed out first. Casino Morongo, along with many other casinos and card rooms, have a great opportunity to create meaningful segments and leverage the email channel to increase their customer relationship and engagement. I’m on a search now for some casinos that are implement solid email strategies.

Cheers,

Forest

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

One area often overlooked is having a breakdown of your subscriber’s email domains. Knowing this information can be quite helpful when developing your creative. If you find a large portion on one domain, it may justify segmenting them and developing a separate creative optimized specifically for that domain.

Some email platforms will give you a quick graphic breakdown. If not, you can always do a sort in Excel and manually determine your ratios.

Below are breakdowns from 3 different clients I work with

Here we see some differing stats. In the 1st and 3rd example, Yahoo represents 5.6% at max, while the 2nd client has over 25% of subscribers with Yahoo addresses. We can also see that in the 3rd example at least 22% is represented by education or government addresses.

Looking at these three, I was surprised at the low amount of gmail addresses. We see 9.3% in the 2nd example, but none in the 1st and 3rd!

Takeaways

1. Every list will be different and it’s helpful to know how YOUR list breaks down

2. Knowing this breakdown will aid in testing your email creative on different domains. You should be testing on more than your breakdown, but this can provide priority.

3. If you find a large portion on one domain (25%+), it may justify putting resources into segmenting those users and providing creative optimized specifically for that domain. If you’re list is very small, this will be overkill.

4. Also consider segmenting by domain and testing deliverability. (Note – some email platforms will do this automatically).

Cheers,

Forest

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

The focus of this post though is on a pre-trip email from Wynn’s Encore. A friend of mine will be visiting the new resort next week (I’m jealous I couldn’t make this trip!) A week before the arrival date he received an email from the concierge which got us talking about Wynn’s email strategy here.

Subject: During Your Upcoming Stay at Encore at Wynn Las Vegas.

Body of Email (Click to Enlarge)

Landing Page (Click to Enlarge)

Anyone who spots the first problem of why a user has to click through to see any content gets points.

Comments & Suggestions

1. Approach: I love it! For a resort like the Wynn/Encore, there should absolutely be a high level of personalized email communication that is consistent with the level of service they provide. They are on the right track here, but still several steps away from a solid strategy (some steps being beyond the scope of this post).

2. Improved Approach: What I would do here though is have the focuses of this email separated into two campaigns. On one end they are offering a personalized welcome message. This is great and absolutely needed. Make it personal and have it directly from the concierge. On the other end they are offering recommendations and using the email channel as a cross-sell opportunity. This is also fantastic and justified for its own send. Provide some timely recommendations for shows, dinner specials, new casino games etc. (Of course even better if they integrate data from previous customer behavior to make it more of a rifle/blow-dart approach). But at the very least, do let me know about other ways I can enjoy my stay — and provide direct links to make reservations etc.

3. Email Body: Now why would Encore not just have the main content in the body of the email? Here they have an image of an envelope to click through to a landing page with the actual content. Some might argue that since this is going to registered hotel guests, the click-through-rate should be off the charts. Yes – this is very true, however it will not be a 100% CTR. They could be attempting to build excitement and value once you do actually click — but I think much more can be accomplished with a well structured main email.

…This email got me very excited about all the opportunities a resort like the Wynn has with the email channel. They are on the right track with this transactional approach, but still miles away from a top-notch program. I do hope they put in the time to make improvements to their strategy and execution as I know it will pay big dividends.

- Forest Bronzan

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

I just received a newsletter from eHarmony.com and wanted to quickly point out a nice approach they have with their layout. Notice in the screen grab below that on the left fold (what I see in my preview pane) they have imagery, article title, and an article preview. This gives me all the information I need to decide if I want to read further. It is also aesthetically sound. Some email marketers complain about having to sacrifice design elements to optimize for performance. eHarmony provides a nice example of a simple structure that accomplishes both goals.

In another post this week I will point out how they are dropping the ball with their segmentation…

Screen grab of eHarmony email in an Outlook preview window (click to enlarge)

Victoria’s Secret unfortunately falls into this category, and this recent email I received is no exception. But I will pause on being redundant with those blunders and would like to point out a few elements that are going well for Victoria’s Secret.

Nice Elements from the Email Screen Grab Below

1. Overall Design: I like it. It’s clean, light, fairly minimalist without sacrificing anything with their brand image.

2. Navigation: Major points here. In a previous post I briefly discussed the benefits of having navigation in your emails. Better usability, more click throughs, and the ability to segment based on engagement are three key points.

3. Design Positioning: Notice that the main promo copy is oriented to the left. This is important for subscribers that are reading their emails in preview windows, where a lot is cut off on the right side. You want to make sure you get the key information to them while they quickly scanning. Hopefully you get an open or quick click, and not a quick-delete. Many make the mistake of putting the flashy imagery on the left where the message isn’t visible. [Note: of course put an email testing plan in place so you can see what works better for you. There may be some cases where the comments above don't perform as well. But more often than not...]

- Forest Bronzan