In some previous posts I discussed some nice things that Blue Nile is doing with their email program. In particular; I have seen great use of blocked images, and nice design architecture.

To compare a bit with some of their industry competitors, I wanted to add myself to the Shane Co. email list. Living in San Francisco for several years, I heard radio ad after radio ad from. “We’re your friend in the diamond business” — I will never forget the consistency in tone from Tom Shane, and how much frequency they had on the major radio stations.

At any rate… I went to shaneco.com and… no email sign-up. I searched around for several minutes with no luck. An image at the end of this post shows the home page above the fold (where I would want to see a simple: “Sign up for exclusive offers”). I went to several other pages with no luck.

Now in this case, I’m not just an email marketer doing research; I’m a primary persona: mid to late 20s male in a serious relationship and in the early research phases of engagement rings.

With the engagement ring product line in particular, the email channel is a great fit for a jeweler like Shane Co. Let’s examine:

1. It can be a long sales cycle: Customers of course will differ, from the spontaneous to methodical, but with a high ticket (and very personal purchase) like an engagement ring, it’s reasonable to expect a prospective customer taking a longer time to make a decision. Email can help that relationship by providing educational pieces, shopping tips, and other general guidance during the cycle. With email we can create the impression of a one-to-one communication to enhance the subscriber experience.

2. Keeping the brand top of mind: With purchases likes these, it’s natural to ‘shop around’. While a prospective is out at other jewelry stores (and on other sites), it sure would be great to send some reminders of your value, and check-ins so they don’t forget about you. These check-ins can also be good for the customer that is not shopping around much but who is just taking his (or her) sweet little time to decide when and what they want to do. Helping them get into the moment can be quite rewarding for you.

3. You can see how they engage: Utilizing just some of the simple elements of email marketing technology, you can gain valuable information about how your new subscriber engages with your communications. On a basic level we will know if they open and click through. We can also monitor which links they click on and set up corresponding content to be sent based on those links. We can take it a step further and see if the subscriber hits certain goal landing pages after they click through from our email. Now where we just started with a name and email address, we may potentially discover that our subscriber opens 70%  of our emails, and spends a lot of time on the site learning about ’round shaped diamonds’ — the retargeting options here are exciting.

Frustrated with my discovery, I decided to ‘chat live’ with a sales representative. The response after asking if they had a newsletter I could sign up for was: “oh, no — we don’t really send email blasts”  — I didn’t go any further, but was thinking: “Well it’s good that you’re not sending ‘blasts’ because you should be sending highly targeted and personalized emails — but WHY are you not sending anything?”  — if someone from the marketing department at Shane Co. would be so kind to explain their reasoning, I’m all ears.

- Forest Bronzan