Email Marketing Strategies

Cool Labor Day Email from Blinds.com

September 2, 2009 No comments »

I’m digging the email layout from Blinds.com! Clear promo, CTA on left fold, easy to remember discount code, clean design — Very Nice!

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

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

Quicken Loans – Part 2: Email Review

August 26, 2009 No comments »

Last week I looked at the sign-up process for Quicken Loans and noted mostly favorable elements with a few areas of improvement I’m sure their team is aware of.

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.

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Posted in Analysis of Live Emails, B2C, Design, Frequency

Quicken Loans – Part 1: Email Sign-Up

August 19, 2009 3 comments »

Taking a look at QuickenLoans.com I will be doing a two part series on their email opt-in process and a particular delivery.

To kick things off, let’s look at some elements of their online sign-up. There are a lot of email opportunities for Quicken Loans. For first time buyers in particular, a great deal of education is desired to help them guide through the process. Even for seasoned borrowers, there are opportunities for education, rate announcement, market news and more (not to mention cross-sell opportunities for other products in the Quicken family). As many home buyers are shopping around, email is critical to keep the brand top-of-mind and help nurture the sale.

When going to sign-up for their email list, a few good things were going on but there were also some areas of improvement:

1. Where to Sign Up? On the home page there was no clear option to sign-up. You have to click on About Us and then Email Alerts. This is a key area of improvement: make it easy to sign up! Steve Krug notes says this well in his book title: Don’t Make Me Think. It’s inevitable that there are some lost opportunities here.

2. Sign Up Page: (1st screen grab below). Some nice things here. First, it’s very user-friendly w/ email address and two preference options. The Rate Alert was a very cool feature! You can select your desired rate to receive notification when it is available. I was excited to see this in action. While there could have been a few more preference options or opportunities to collect data for further personalization, it was a decent sign-up page.

3. Thank You Page: (2nd screen grab below).

A. Starting off with the good: I like how they have 5 links for “Looking for info Right Now?” — Direct users to helpful information and keep them active on the site. Nice job.

B. One piece of copy though that threw me off: “…you’ll receive your requested emails as soon as we write them” – To me that sounds a bit lazy and uncertain. On the sign-up page I thought I was signing up for the monthly newsletter and rate alerts. So wouldn’t it be more relevant to say something like: “…you’ll receive your information packed newsletter each month and rate alerts as soon as they become available!”

C. Finally, there was no confirmation email — or welcome email. I’m not 100% sure I was added to the list, and I’m waiting for a welcome email! This welcome message is a great opportunity as open rates will be sky-high and you can kick the relationship off on a positive note.

Sign Up Page – Click to Enlarge

Thank You Page – Click to Enlarge

While they are off to a decent start, there are several areas of improvement that will quickly improve the QuickenLoans sign-up process. In Part 2 we’ll discuss the first email received.

Cheers,

Forest

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

3 comments »

Posted in Analysis of Live Emails, B2C, List Building/Opt-In, Welcome Emails

Casino Morongo – Mistakes with Email

August 11, 2009 No comments »

It seems as of late that several casinos are making some decent sized mistakes with their email initiatives. Don’t these companies have big marketing engines? It’s clear that the email department is not getting the attention it deserves.

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.