The force was a little too strong with this one (groan).

May 7, 2014May 7, 2014 Kristin1 Comment

So, as much as I loved the “May the fourth be with you” email I received from ThinkGeek – they sent another one the next day that kind of surprised me. To piggyback on the popularity of 5/4, they went with…. Revenge of the Fifth.

Okay, that’s pretty good. I think I had seen it around the internet before. Fair enough. Milk that sale for all it’s worth – you have the PERFECT audience for it, really. But the subject line I received was just….I can’t even….no.

Subject Line: Meesa called Jar-Jar Binks. Meesa wish you a groov 5th-a.

First off – I don’t know any respectable Star Wars fan (or, human) who liked Jar-Jar Binks. Why would they pick the least likeable character in Star Wars history (and possibly of all time*) to quote??

Then there’s the typo – a “groov” 5th-a? (I’m not even going to snark about that. We’ve all been there.)

But the thing that really bugged me about it was that (WARNING! NERD ALERT! And spoiler alert, I guess, if you haven’t seen this movie that came out in 2005) Jar-Jar Binks only had one line in Revenge of the Sith. Because no one liked him and Star Wars fans REALLY didn’t want to watch him in movies. If you’re going to do a promotion based off of a pun from a movie title, maybe pick a quote from a character that was actually significant in the movie, okay? This is bad. I’m sure many of their subscribers thought the same.

The rest of the email was good and featured some fun products that most Star Wars fans would enjoy – if they didn’t immediately delete the email to make that subject line go away.

(I normally put the subject line right before a screenshot, but I just can’t even look at it again. Sorry.)

Update: BREAKING NEWS!

I just heard from someone at ThinkGeek responsible for this email, and it turns out it was part of an A/B test. The other subject line tested was “Come to the dark side.” (Solid and safe!). ThinkGeek knew that everyone hates Jar-Jar Binks (Of course they did. Sorry I doubted you, TG!). But guess what!? The Jar-Jar Binks subject line had a 10.5% higher open rate, 16.5% higher CTR, and a 5.5% higher CTO!

I think that’s a lesson for all of us. Sometimes we can get emotionally attached to our content and have pretty strong opinions (see above) about certain subject lines. It’s important to take risks and always test, and ThinkGeek did a great job with it!

*Just kidding. Everyone knows it’s Carrie Bradshaw.

Countdown to Mother’s day: Weird messaging

May 6, 2014May 6, 2014 Kristin2 Comments

I’ve received about 70 emails specifically about Mother’s day (in this account) since April 7 (maybe more, I dunno. They all blur together.). Some of the emails have been helpful, some have been overkill, and some have been flat-out weird. Here are the weirdest.

Proflowers

I realize that Mother’s day is a pretty big deal for flower companies. Flowers are probably the easiest/most obvious Mother’s day gift there is. And flowers can get pricey, so it totally makes sense that frequent discounts are a great way to market them. That doesn’t make it okay for them to violate CAN-SPAM. But even before the broken unsubscribe link incident, some of their Mother’s day messaging was already on my list for this post.

First, they’ve been playing around with different from names/icons in from names. Okay, fine. But as someone who hasn’t purchased from you yet, this can be confusing. Why are you calling me a VIP? What, exactly, makes ME a “great customer”? If I’m a great customer (me, someone who doesn’t order flowers from you and instead writes cranky blog posts), I’m a little concerned about the stability of your business.

Here are some of their recent subject lines from the last few weeks:

4/24: LAST CHANCE! Prices go up for Mother’s Day Tomorrow – Get The Best Deal on Mom’s Bouquet: Save up to 44%
4/26: Thanks for being a great customer. Here’s up to 52% off Mother’s Day bouquets
4/28: 57% off. ProFlowers tested, Mother’s Day approved
4/29: ✿ Stunning bouquets for Mom, from $19.99!
4/30: You only have ➊ week left to Avoid Rush Delivery Rates. Don’t wait!
5/1: URGENT: Last Chance for a $19.99 Special for Mother’s Day!
5/2: Get 61% off this Mother’s Day Email Exclusive. Through This Weekend Only!
5/2: Oops! We fixed our links. Please accept an Extra 25% off for any inconvenience!
(That one may have been a direct result of an interaction I had with them on Twitter….)
5/3: Don’t Forget Mom! Save 54% and Avoid Rush Delivery Rates
5/4: Only 3 Days Left to Avoid Rush Delivery Rates and Save 52%
5/5: Use Your $20 Mother’s Day Credit…

I wonder if their copywriter’s mother ever read him/her “The Boy who Cried Wolf.”

It’s hard to take any of these extremely urgent subject lines seriously, especially since they’ve already shown a pattern of offering increasingly better discounts. The $20 credit seems like the best deal so far. They have a minimum purchase price of $29.99 (so that $19.99 special from 4/29? It’s an upselling trick to get you to add on chocolates and a colorful vase), but if the $20 credit counts toward that, it might actually be worth ordering some flowers. Maybe I will. (Does that mean their emails worked, or does it mean I’m just curious to see what kind of messaging they’ll send next year since they’d have some info about me and who I might send flowers? I’ll just say it’s the latter.).

Walgreens

I hope you’re not buying anything more than a card as a Mother’s day gift from Walgreen’s, but if you are, they have some interesting suggestions. The subject line is probably something most people can relate to – Hey, I ❤ Mom too! Maybe this email will have something relevant to that.

Let me just stress that while I did my weird campy spliced screenshot method, this is the full email. I didn’t accidentally forget to take a screenshot of the copy explaining that fragrances might be a good gift idea for Mom. I didn’t cut out any kind of sub-head that might have said, “Okay, now we’re moving on to feature other products we also sell. Don’t buy Rogaine for your mom for Mother’s day.” Nope, the full email is right here for your viewing pleasure.

Subject line: We ♥ Mom! 15% OFF ALL Fragrances + Other Deals | 20% OFF Contacts

But seriously – don’t buy your mom Rogaine for Mother’s day.

Of course an #emailnerd might actually also be a Star Wars nerd

May 4, 2014 Kristin2 Comments

A long time ago (well, a few years), in a galaxy (state) far, far, away (Indiana. And Texas)…

I was really into Star Wars growing up. I have an older brother, who is also really into Star Wars (and his 9-year-old daughter, my niece, has loved Star Wars since she was an infant). I was in junior high when they released the special edition movies, and I watched them… a lot. And I watched our VHS of the originals… a lot. Years later, when the new ones came out, I went to Celebration III. And I camped out all night in the rain to ensure that I got in to see George Lucas speak on a panel.

These days, I appreciate Star Wars like any other normal modern nerd (or human. Please.). I’m not going to go around saying, “May the fourth be with you!” today, but I was excited to see that a few brands sent emails about it.

First up – Pottery Barn Kids. They sent this email on April 30, and I had honestly forgotten about “May the Fourth be with you.” I just opened the email and thought it was nice, and it made me feel nostalgic. But what I really loved about it was that it was almost totally gender neutral. It just showed a very nicely designed bedroom for the Star Wars-obsessed child. (It had a kid wearing a Star Wars backpack at the bottom, and the kid looked like a boy, but it was from the back, so definitely subtle in terms of “This is only for boys.”) I’m VERY against assigning genders to toys when it’s really not necessary, and I know there are plenty of little girls who like Star Wars.

This room looks adorable and cozy and I kind of want it. I love that it fits the Star Wars theme without having obnoxious branding and logos everywhere. I also love that in my commentary for this email, I’m thinking about the products featured more than the email design. Well done, Pottery Barn Kids!

Subject line: Just for your Jedi! 20% off our Star Wars Collection – 5 days only

* The “Find a Store” button didn’t really wrap to a second line like that – I had to resize it in my browser to get that whole section in one screenshot, and since this email was coded properly (YAY!), the text adjusted to the screen size.

Next up is a brand that would obviously market anything Star Wars related – ThinkGeek. They have a ton of Star Wars products, and they used this opportunity to show them off. And they did it beautifully. I love that they were able to use more Star Wars references than other brands might because – well, this audience would get it.

They even featured some user content at the bottom – they have an “Action Shot Winner” which shows an adorable baby reading a Star Wars book cuddled up with a Chewbacca toy. Under that, they have a user-submitted haiku about Star Wars.

Subject line: Use the 4th, Humanoid

Last up, we have Best Buy, who honestly kind of phoned it in compared to these other two. Best Buy sends a daily deals email that I usually just archive without even opening it, because it’s exactly the same every day, and it’s boring. But like Obi-Wan Kenobi, the subject line (at least, the first part of it) gave me hope.

Subject Line: May the Fourth Be With You: Save On Select Star Wars Movies, Digital Cameras, Air Conditioner and Digital Photo Frame, Today Only

That was pretty much it for the Star Wars content in this email. The rest of it was their normal content. It’s pretty much the same format as this – image on the left, price, short description, ‘Get the deal’ button on the right. And while I normally wouldn’t write about these daily emails at all since they’re so unremarkable, I will say this: changing up a subject line even a little bit, to make it very timely and call out something universally loved like Star Wars can be really effective. I think it’s reasonable for Best Buy to assume that many of their subscribers might be interested in buying Star Wars dvds (but maybe not ThinkGeek – I bet they can safely assume that their subscribers already have them). I think that can be a lesson for marketers trying to spice up a daily email.

(Now I’m off to get a mani-pedi, because I look like a scruffy-looking nerf-herder.)

For Mother’s day, I got you an unsubscribe link from Proflowers emails

May 3, 2014 Kristin3 Comments

Yesterday morning while I was in the waiting room for an eye exam, my best friend texted me:

Uh oh. I had a ton of emails from Proflowers in my “to write about” label in my Gmail account, because they had been pretty persistent with their Mother’s Day emails. They’ve been trying a bunch of weird tactics with icons in their from name and going pretty over the top with their urgency messaging. So I was already planning a post about them for next week when I do my Mother’s day roundups.

But a CAN-SPAM violation? Now THAT gives me a sense of urgency.

I checked the link from my phone to be sure, and there it wasn’t. I could SUBSCRIBE to their emails, but the only thing remotely resembling an unsub was a preference center. I clicked on that, and the link didn’t work.

(I was planning on putting a screenshot of their footer here, but the font was such a light shade of grey that it’s almost impossible to read. But that could be due to me testing out a new contacts prescription).

So like any modern email subscriber activist (Is that a thing? Can we make that a thing? Hashtag #emaillorax), I took to Twitter to see what’s up. Mind you, I never asked to unsubscribe.

This isn’t my first online run-in with this company. A few years ago, my boyfriend (now husband!) sweetly ordered me flowers for Valentine’s day to be sent to my office. He gchatted me around 5 PM and asked if I got them. They never came. So, trying to be a good boyfriend, he just went to a local florist and got me other flowers. There were a few missed deliveries over the next few days. I was mad at Proflowers for making him worry about it (and for me not getting flowers at work on Valentine’s day), so I wrote a post on my blog at the time, and eventually people from their customer service team contacted me, gave him a refund and sent me free flowers in March. (Which was awkward when my coworkers asked about them. “Oh, they’re for Valentine’s day! I just got them!”). So, yes, they screw up sometimes, but they do try to make it right.

Yesterday afternoon, hours after all the twitter action, I got this email:

They didn’t exactly acknowledge that it was the unsubscribe link that was broken (but for all I know, there were others), but they at least had in fact fixed the preference center link. And they had an opportunity to have another touchpoint with their subscribers. Not that they’ve been remotely conservative in that department – I’ve gotten nearly daily emails from them in the last few weeks, and they’re all pretty “urgent.” They keep saying that it’s the last chance to get a certain discount, and then sending a better discount 2 days later. I’ll look at all of them after Mother’s day and see when the best discount actually happened.

Once I got to the preference center, it was actually pretty nice – it lets you opt-down for email frequency, and you can check if you want promotions for holidays (which is what I’ve been getting). It even allows you to select to receive reminders based on previous purchases, which seems like a great idea for birthdays and anniversaries.

So, Proflowers – we’re okay now. But I’ll be watching you.

7 Things I learned while trying to go through 200+ marketing emails in an hour

May 2, 2014May 1, 2014 Kristin1 Comment

I don’t think I really knew what I was getting into when I subscribed to all these emails. (And I’ve only scratched the surface. I still feel like I need to find more emails to read. Always.) I went on vacation for 4 days, which turned into 5 days due to a flight cancellation. I didn’t bring a computer. I just let my emails pile up in my promotions tab. They’d be there when I got back.

I knew they were just going to keep piling up every day I didn’t clear them out (which might be why I have more than 5,000 unread emails in my promotions tab in my personal email account), so last night I took an hour and plowed through them. I’m finally getting the hang of Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts, which helped immensely. I wouldn’t let myself leave my home office until I had categorized and archived everything and written one post. I mentally dangled the reward of watching the new Glee when I was done in front of my face (but alas, my husband got home and started playing video games while I was working on it, so I had to go read the sequel to The Devil Wears Prada instead. I’m okay with that). Anyway. I got through all the emails, and had a few takeaways:

1.They all start to look the same after a while. It took a lot to grab my attention.

2. I didn’t do much scrolling below the fold. The rumors are true – brands only have a second or two to capture peoples’ attention. I was actually legitimately interested in looking at every single one of these emails (which is probably not normal for the average consumer), and even I couldn’t devote THAT much time to each one – especially the ones that were the same every day.

3. Emails with good subject lines and preheaders were more likely to get noticed/categorized/labeled for a future blog post (regardless of whether the rest of the email was good).

4. Emails targeted to men are VERY different from emails targeted to women. Nordstrom Rack, Bonobos, and Jack Spade all have clean, simple, classy emails that don’t give me a headache from too much text and overwhelming messaging. While some emails geared toward women were nicely designed (I’m looking at you, Piperlime and Kate Spade Saturday), the vast majority of them were horrifyingly busy, cluttered, and not very original. But that’s another post.

5. A lot of brands are really banking on Mother’s day. Like, sending emails about it every day. At two weeks out.

6. Some brands just flat-out aren’t even trying with email. They’re probably just making a PDF of their print ads and image-mapping them and throwing them into their ESP. I’m going to do a post about those soon so I can unsubscribe ASAP.

7. Even though it was annoying/overwhelming digging through all those emails, I still enjoyed it. Email’s so great. #nerdalert

Thumbs up Thursday: Behind the scenes collaborations

May 1, 2014May 1, 2014 KristinLeave a comment

I love it when brands send emails with interesting content. In an inbox full of mystery sales, stupid gifs, and unnecessary holiday emails about non-holidays, it’s nice to see something that just wants to tell me an interesting story rather than sell me something. It makes me feel more connected to a brand. I’ve gotten a few emails recently that profiled how a product is made or the designer who made it, and I think they’re great.

This email from J. Crew shows how their Point Sur denim is made. I personally have never really been interested in buying jeans that were already destroyed, especially when they cost more than perfectly intact jeans, but I guess I’m a little old-fashioned (she says as she’s wrapped in an afghan that she crocheted, and drinking herbal tea. Whatever, it’s freezing.).

While I’m not particularly interested in distressed jeans, I love sewing and clothing construction, so I enjoyed seeing the process for how these jeans were made (just in case I ever decide I like the style and want to try it myself!). It also showed how these jeans are special and that each pair is unique, which probably helps justify their $238 price tag. When you click through to the site there’s a nice slideshow detailing how the jeans are made.

From: J. Crew
Subject line: Made in LA

Nice, right?

Another email that recently gave a little more than a sales pitch was from Mark & Graham, which sells a lot of monogrammed products (jewelry, bags, etc). This email featured jewelry designer Shelly Harper and some of her work. It gives their products a nice level of personalization (see what I did there? They sell MONOGRAMMED stuff!), and the jewelry they featured is delicate and nice.

From: Mark & Graham
Subject Line: Meet the designer, Shelly Harper

It’s alright, ’cause I’m (referencing) Saved by the Bell

April 30, 2014 KristinLeave a comment

I’m still digging through and categorizing emails, but I just came across this one from last week.

It’s obviously incredible.

Subject line: Screeeech: it’s sneaker time!

I don’t even really wear sneakers (or anything remotely athletic, really, unless you count the yoga pants I’m wearing right now that have never been to a yoga class), but this email makes me want to go outside and ride a bike. Or do a sport (if I only knew how to sport…). I’m not even 100% sure that I get the “Screech” reference/ play on words (they’re talking about the sound sneakers make while engaging in physical activity in a sporting facility, no?).

But the important thing is, they referenced the universal ’90s nostalgia jackpot: Saved by the Bell. Their target audience is definitely people in the age group that would appreciate it. And it’s kind of subtle. People probably don’t necessarily remember Screech’s last name from the show (it’s Powers), but it’ll sound familiar enough that they’ll google it. At least, I did.

Back to digging through emails.

Have a $5 snack on the way to a Banana Republic Factory Store while I dig through all these emails

April 28, 2014 KristinLeave a comment

I just got back from a short (but lovely and very much needed) trip to Indianapolis to visit a friend, and my Promotions tab has about 200 marketing emails to go through and categorize for blog posts. Meanwhile, I already had a bunch of them I had been meaning to write about. Soooo…I’m going to try to get to as many as I can the next few weeks before I go on vacation again in two weeks. (I feel like I should clarify that last year I took about 5 days off total, and I worked through most of them. I have a team now, so I have to make up for a lot of lost beach time.)

Anyway.

Here’s an email I got from Banana Republic Factory Store a few weeks ago. I don’t think they even have any of those stores near me (which is a crying shame, because I would shop there all the time). They’ve sent a few emails like this recently, and they start out normal enough:

Subject: 50% off your purchase starts today!

But then the bottom section has this little module on the left:

Soooo…. they want customers to buy a snack or drink somewhere – anywhere – else, and then come in and get an extra $5 off their purchase? This is so crazy it just might work. Or, maybe it’s just a little bit crazy. I can’t get past the logistics of this. They’re basically encouraging customers to bring food and drinks inside the store, which I’m sure their associates just love. Are there limitations on what counts as a snack? Could I get a value meal at a fast food place, bring it into the store, and then get a discount? Can I “expense” my breakfast but shop later in the afternoon? So many questions.

I’m curious about how this campaign went. I know some BR Factory stores are in large outdoor outlet malls that have food options, so it actually may have been brilliant.

Attack of the 1160 pixel women

April 22, 2014 Kristin1 Comment

It’s really interesting to see so many different emails from so many different brands all at once. A lot of brands are on the same wavelength, sending similar emails at the same time. The holidays and other occasions are all pretty obvious, sure. But I was not prepared for what happened in my inbox on April 16 and 17.

I was bombarded with emails that featured huge images of models. Like, taller than twice the width of the emails. I had to scroll. And several brands sent them. I don’t hate them. After all, these brands are selling clothes, and showing bigger images of them seems like a logical way to go about it. I just hadn’t seen (or noticed) a lot of emails like this before, and it was a surprise to see them all at once.

Banana Republic:

dELiA*s:

Banana Republic (Again):

I really liked this email. It showcased the products really nicely and didn’t have a lot of text.

Anthropologie:

J.Crew:

Anthropologie (again!):

So, what do you think? Trend or coincidence?

A madness to my method

April 20, 2014 Kristin2 Comments

Whenever I’m in a meeting discussing email send times, someone asks me when I usually look at marketing emails. I’ll tell them on Saturday mornings, especially if I just got paid (and just paid all my bills), when I’m thinking about shopping and want to see what’s on sale. But that’s me as a consumer with obsessive Gmail labels who subscribes to a lot of emails across several email accounts. I’ve got my filters on lockdown to a point where marketing emails don’t even go to my phone (except tests of the ones that I’m sending, so I can do QA on them). There are a lot of brands whose emails I open and love, but they will never get a conversion from me because I’m not a guy or don’t own a home or don’t have a kid. I just like their emails. There are also a few brands who don’t really even need to send me emails because I’ll go to their site a few times a week anyway. But I still get and sometimes even open their emails. I’m not exactly the “every(wo)man” when it comes to email. Far from it. “But I’m not the typical email consumer,” I stress when anyone asks, “I send emails for a living.”

Last week, I taught two sessions of a Gmail organization class at my office for some entry-level co-workers. My company uses corporate Gmail. My presentation showed how and why to use labels and filters, and the difference between Primary inbox and Tabs, why you would use one or the other, and how to set them up. People seemed pretty into it. But at the end of the second class, someone raised her hand and asked, “So, does Yahoo have anything similar to this? I use it for my personal and junk mail.” My reply was that I hadn’t used Yahoo since 1997, so I had no idea. Then a few others chimed in saying that they used their Hotmail or AOL account for their “junk” mail, and had a Gmail account for their personal mail. I asked if they ever check their junk mail accounts, and some of them did, but rarely. They used them when they had to give out an email address but didn’t really want to. It kind of surprised me that any of them even had anything other than Gmail – they would have been young teenagers when Gmail started, so Gmail’s been around for most of their email-having lives. (But at the same time, I was fascinated and wanted to do an impromptu focus group about their email behavior, but it was 6:00 and time for everyone to go home.)

I’ve had a lot of email accounts over the years (AOL, Juno, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, and few work Outlook and -ugh- LotusNotes). I don’t want to maintain any more inboxes than I have to. My three main ones, all Gmail – Work, Personal, Blog – are plenty, even with my crazy label/filter systems.

But the blog account is getting out of hand. I’m getting about 60 emails a day, and don’t always have time to go through them, and they’ve been piling up all week. I created a ton of labels for very specific things, but it seems like each time I get a new kind of email, I end up creating a label in case I get other emails like it and want to do a post about it. The problem with this system is that I have so many labels, it’s hard to keep track of them, and there are a lot of emails that need a LOT of labels. Then there’s the filter problem – I can’t exactly filter for “Bad design,” “Weird pre-header text,” “Cart abandonment issues,” and “WTFromname.” The screenshot on the right was taken over a week ago, and I’ve added more labels since then. So I have to actually open adn read every email, THEN label and filter it, then remember that it exists, then actually write about it.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that this project was a bigger undertaking than I thought it would be, especially on top of my day job and the gorgeous weather we’ve been having that makes me want to be as far away from a computer as possible. So, I haven’t been writing the 3-4 posts a week that I had initially envisioned. But I will. Probably. Once I get this inbox under control and dig through all these emails.