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

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.

In case you didn’t have time to read through white-papers, here is a quick last-minute tip for e-commerce sites for the 2009 Holiday Season.

Shipping Deadline Emails: Let your subscribers know when they need to order by and when time is running out!

1. Send an early announcement (November) that includes your company’s shipping deadline schedule in order to receive products by December 25th.

2. Incorporate a small note (or cool looking button) in all regular emails. E.g. “View Our Holiday Shipping Guide”

3. Set up a series of reminders to go out 2-3 days before each deadline. Examples: “3 Days left for Domestic Shipping by Christmas”  “Only 2 Days Left for UPS Next Day Shipping by the 25th”  Etc.

I love how they are trying to encourage opt-in at the store locations with this signage. They also give a sneak peak at content to expect (New Items, Grand Openings, Recipes), which is a good move.

Below are a few suggested improvements

1. Drop Box: Why not have a drop box attached so people can leave their business card or have a pen and paper to leave their email address? Yes, this would create more work for someone to manually enter info, and there could be some errors in transcription, but you could still send a confirmation email requiring action to subscribe. By just having the signage you are relying on people to actually go to the site and sign up.

2. Sign-up at Checkout: Better yet, why not have store personnel ask if you would like to join the email list while you are paying for your groceries? The technology is there to integrate, and a patron could have a nice welcome email by the time they get home!

3. Incentive: Recipes and new items are cool, but offering something nice to encourage people to sign up is a good idea. List building is difficult business and many are reluctant to join new lists. But if I get 15% off my next grocery purchase, entered in a chance to win a big prize, or a plethora of other ideas, I’m much more interested to get on board.

4. Follow Through: When going to the site, it wasn’t super easy to find the sign-up. On the flash site I couldn’t find it on first run-through, and on the HTML site I believe it was only apparent as a text link in their main copy. If you are not going to get the sign-up at the actual store (highly recommended) then make sure it’s quick and easy to do so on the site. — that should go without saying…

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

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

This morning I received the 4th of July Promo email. Consistent on some good elements, but a few things were missing for me.

Good Elements

1. Clear Subject Line: 4th Of July Savings : Get 10% off all Blinds.com Brand Products To the point and specific. I know what to expect when I open (and expectations have been established for my savings).

2. Consistency: The email is specifically about the promotion, a continuation of the subject, and focused on the event (in this case; July 4th)

3. Landing Page: Highly targeted landing page specifically for this email promo. This is a big win. If I had a dollar for every email I’ve seen that links to a not-so-well targeted landing page…

Improvements

1. Design: The majority of this email is a big image. Not good at all when images are blocked. Even with some nice things they have (some plain text in case images are blocked) there are still much better ways to balance it.

2. Architecture: The layout of this email does not help the problems with the images. Such a big piece of real estate is taken up by the flag (problem 1) but it’s also in the left portion and takes up the majority of my preview window (see screen grab). If you must have a big image, at least have your primary copy to the left so I can see it. Had I not liked reviewing emails from Blinds.com this would have been an instant delete. I also feel there is much to be improved with the layout and presentation of key buttons (Shop Now, Save 10% Today, Offer expires..).

I like what Blinds.com has been doing with the email channel and think that they are a cut above many email marketing programs. But this particular email was sub-par for me.

Screen Grab of Left Half of Image (click to enlarge)

Screen Grab of Expanded Email Image (click to enlarge)

They did it again in an email I received recently and it’s clear that Williams Sonoma understands the importance of adjusting email creative for inevitable blocked images.

Below are three screen grabs

1. Williams Sonoma w/ Images Blocked

2. Williams Sonoma w/ Images Enabled

3. Sephora w/ Images Blocked (previous post on this email)

These screen grabs show quite clearly the difference between a good understanding of blocked images, and little effort at all.

(Click on an image to enlarge it)

Now Williams Sonoma WITH Images…

And the drastically contrasting Sephora without Images…

Major points to Williams Sonoma for putting careful planning into their email design. They will reap the rewards with subscribers actually being able to see their email content.

Questions or thoughts? Leave a comment or feel free to shoot me an email.

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