Email Marketing Strategies

In a previous post I gave compliments to the Blinds.com email team for their subject line and promotions. From what I’ve seen so far, they appear to have nice integration (of subject/preview/promo) and well executed segments.

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)

I recently joined the e-mail list for wrapables.com. Below is a screen grab of one of the first promotional emails I received this week.

A few quick comments on this delivery

Some Nice Elements

1.Pre-Header: They have a link to an online version of the message. Good move, and something that should be present in all emails.

2. Social Media Options: Simple and clean buttons in the header to connect with the company on Facebook and Twitter

3. Navigation: As I pointed out in a previous post, this not only give the user relevant options for connecting to your site, but it provides you the ability to create meaningful segments later based on their click engagement.

4. Pricing Layout: Instead of just showing the sale price, they also have the regular priced crossed out. Nice way to help visualize the savings.

Some Areas of Improvement

1. Text to Image Ratio: In this email, the ratio is to heavy on images.  This creates problems, as many email clients will block images by default. Even with Alt-Text, it can have a negative impact on the success of your email program. You can design an email that is more text driven while not hurting the aesthetic design intentions.

2. Subject Line: The subject line used in the email was 59 characters w/spaces. In general, this is a bit long. Of course you always want to test, and A/B subject line testing can help make nice improvements to your metrics. We see high engagement though with subject lines that are below 39 characters.

3. No Order Now Button: What I would like to see next to the price is an ‘Order Now’ button (or text link). While everyone hopefully clicks on the image or title to view the product, many won’t. Additionally, in some of our own tests, we’ve seen higher engagement with a clear button or text link for ordering.

While there is some more intricate improvements that can be made, tackling some low-hanging fruit here should improve the success of Wrapables’ email program.

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(Click on image to enlarge)