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Honeydew Has a Major Opt-In Mistake

October 10th, 2010

It’s never fun to add to our Red Flag Mistakes section, but sometimes we need to learn from others.

At time of writing, when you go to the Honeydew Intimates website http://www.honeydewintimates.com/index.html and opt-in to their newsletter at the bottom of the page, it takes you to a ‘you’ve been unsubscribed’ confirmation!

So while the fight for new subscribers is intense these days, they are pushing people away. With the nature of their products, there is so much that can be done with strategic email! I hope they correct this so they can start building a list of loyal subscribers.

Posted in Analysis of Live Emails, B2C, Red Flag Mistakes, Retail Email | No Comments »

Awesome Dynamic Trigger from Verizon

July 25th, 2010

After switching over to the Droid Incredible with Verizon, I was pleasantly surprised by an email welcoming me to my new device (and new service provider).

In the first email, Verizon utilizes some great personalization and dynamic content. In the screen grab below, notice the following:

1. Image of My Phone: This is great and helps integrate the content of the message.

2. Useful Tools: To help me get started with my new phone, they offer quick links to move my contacts, set up email, create shortcuts, and more. Very useful.

3. Focused Content: Everything here is focused on helping me better leverage my new purchase and is specific to my actual device.

When we talk about providing targeted, timely, and relevant content to subscribers, this is a great example and a fantastic use of the email channel. This email from Verizon should help to create a lot of ideas of how you can create a better customer experience.

Posted in Analysis of Live Emails, B2C, Design, Dynamic Content, Email Marketing Strategy, Personalization | No Comments »

Blemishes from SkinStore.com

December 17th, 2009

Every now and then an email comes in with some blatant flaws. While not nearly as bad as the royal screw up from UC San Diego last April, SkinStore.com recently made the Red Flag Mistakes section of this blog.

The Problem: They had a technical error in their deployment where the titles of the their dynamic rules displayed in place of the actual content. Starting with the Subject Line: %%CONTENT1%% — which of course should have been calling whatever content they had in ‘content1′

The issue continued to the entire email with pretty much all dynamic sections (images, content etc) displaying the rule code.

On a good note, they had solid intentions of providing some personalized content via a dynamic approach. When executed properly, this can add significant value to your email efforts. Unfortunately there were some technical slip-ups here that resulted in poor presentation. Additionally, no follow up email was sent (at least I didn’t receive one). If the issue was detected, and corrected, re-sending with the functioning version could have helped a great deal.

We all make mistakes and have stories of technical frustrations. This email here may be a good opportunity for Skin Store to review their testing process, email platform, and deployment procedures in order to make improvements to their program.

Posted in Analysis of Live Emails, B2C, Dynamic Content, Personalization, Red Flag Mistakes | No Comments »

Dell Days of Deals Email

December 11th, 2009

In my previous post I discussed Dell’s email sign-up process for their “Days of Deals” holiday promotion; a very clean and simple approach to opt-ins that had some nice touches.

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

Posted in Analysis of Live Emails, B2C, Design, Retail Email | No Comments »

Cool Seasonal Opt-In from Dell

December 7th, 2009

While shopping for some new computer equipment, I came across Dell’s “Days of Deals“ promotion. Basically, 8 days of special discounts, with new products being featured each day. Some cool items, but what impressed me more was the email sign-up process they had. Starting with a simple call out to be reminded of the new deals each day.

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.