Surprisingly, I see a lot of basic mistakes email marketing being made by very large casinos. With such large marketing budgets, I would expect more sophistication from their email programs.

After making my online reservation, I received the following confirmation email. (click image to enlarge)

It’s great that they are sending me a confirmation with some information in case I have questions, but where is the branding and other relevant content?

Key Items Missing:

1. Branding: All of us here at Email Aptitude are pretty big fans of having a higher text to image ratio, especially for transactional email triggers. But in this case there is zero branding. Mandalay Bay easily could have maintained a high text ratio (and all text for this main body copy) while still having a branded header and footer with additional call-outs.

2. Helpful Recommendations: Why not use this opportunity to let me know about exciting things to do at the hotel? They could have a graphic section showing events occurring during the dates of my visit; information about the the restaurants they have; games they offer; and other amenities I may be interested in. This can all be done in a very tasteful way that does not take away from the simplicity of the email.

3. Cross-Sell/Up-Sell: On my reservation confirmation email it would be a great opportunity to up-sell a different room or cross-sell some services like show tickets or a spa package. This too can be done very tactfully and presented in a way that truly benefits the customer.

With a little effort, Mandalay Bay could be doing much better with email. With some structured planning and testing, they could be crushing it. As of now though, they are leaving a lot of money on the table.

Click to learn more about our strategic email marketing services.

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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.

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.

After finally getting on board I eventually received the first newsletter piece. “Trader Joe’s roasting…a turkey”  — this subject line could use some improvement, but that is the least of their concerns.

Below is the turkey newsletter:

I think this needs a major overhaul. For starters:

1. Where is the useful navigation?

2. How about a link to the website (other than the PDF for the ‘Turkey Roasting Game Plan’)

3. Color: Outside of the turkey and corn, maybe something more than black and white.

4. Design: A design overhaul that is consistent with the TJ’s brand would help a great deal.

5. Architecture: Before overhauling design, develop a cohesive and usable architecture for the email. Here is an example of Blue Nile doing well with this.

6. How about bringing it full circle and having some local store mentions?

The list goes on…

While Trader Joe’s is a ‘down to earth’ brand, and probably promotes a minimalist approach with their email communications, there is no reason they can’t find equilibrium with email best-practices and simplistic presentation. I hold larger companies to a much higher standard when reviewing emails. With Trader Joe’s bringing in $7.2 billion in 2008 should be producing better work.

Don’t get me wrong — there is a place for ultra simple and pretty much designless emails. I’ve seen much higher engagement with a simple-text personal letter format — under the right conditions. Trader Joe’s may have been better off with that approach here: “Forest, with Thanksgiving right around the corner, we thought you would enjoy some tips for preparing your turkey….. ” etc.  But they chose a different approach and did not make the appropriate adjustments.

Thoughts or questions? Feel free to leave a comment below or shoot me an email.

Cheers,

Forest

I seem to get some email promotions for a $9.99 Initiation Fee + $29.99/month, and then different weeks I’ll get an email for a $0 Initiation Fee + $29.99/month. All with the same subject line: “Membership Special”

But it was a bit too late as I recently signed a longer term commitment with LA Fitness (the nicer of the gyms in my particular area). The problem with the LA Fitness email program is they don’t have one — at least they didn’t ask for my email at all during my registration process for my 3 year membership. Perhaps they are thinking that the sale is already closed. If so, their email department needs a wake-up call. There are many relevant email communications such as class update/schedules, fitness tips, up-sell/cross-sell opportunities, refer-a-friend promotions and more!

Before rushing to judgment though, I will investigate further to see if there is in fact a members email list (or any email list for that matter). It could have just been a slip-up not asking me to sign up.

Stay tuned…

Forest

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.

Cheers,

Forest

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

My experience with the Wynn Las Vegas email list has been even more frustrating. To establish some context; I love the Wynn. It’s probably my favorite hotel in Vegas and I have stayed there on numerous occasions. Every time I have had exceptional service and a fantastic trip. I’m definitely a promoter. On the gaming side, I’m a fairly serious poker player. I have played in the Wynn Poker Classic, a WSOP event and the like.

In summary: I like the Wynn, have been a loyal customer, and WANT TO BE ON THEIR EMAIL LIST. I’m an absolutely perfect subscriber.

The only problem is I can’t sign up for their list. I was on a transactional list many years ago when I stayed there for the first time, but that address is long gone.

Here are the steps I’ve taken to opt-in

1. Website: My first action is to just visit the Wynn site and expect to see a quick sign-up on the home page. Nothing.

2. Reply-To Address: A friend of mine is on their list and forwarded me an email (that actually had several flaws). I emailed them and requested to join the list, but received an auto-reply explaining the address was not functioning.

My Next Steps

1. Phone: I will try calling guest services to get on the list. I shouldn’t have to do this.

This quest should have never started (they should already have me in there), but should have definitely stopped at the first step. I expect to see an email sign-up when I visit the website; combined with a nice preference center, well planned welcome letter, and integration with other channels.

Questions or thoughts? Leave a comment or feel free to shoot me an email.

About a year ago I signed up for a 12 month membership to 24 Hour Fitness. I knew I would be traveling quite a bit, so I wanted to give the all-club access a shot. For the most part, my experience was a positive one, however during the course of the year I received practically no emails. If I recall correctly, there was one ‘membership kick-off’ email and that’s it.

What about some cross-selling, new classes, membership expiration promos? Being that I was on board for at least 12 months, this was a fantastic opportunity for them to set up some snazzy life-cycle messaging and retention campaigns.

Below are a few areas of low-hanging fruit that 24h could have implemented

Geo-Segmentation: Let me know when new classes are available at my primary location. Also let me know when new facilities are open. This is important to increase the use of my membership and keep the brand top-of-mind. Better yet, set up an email preference center so I can select what I want to receive.

Promotional: Why not set up a sequenced campaign with special promotions to cross sell products, up-sell packages, and offers to refer my friends and family to the gym?

Retention: The biggest blunder was the missing membership renewal emails. I found out my membership was up when I went in one day and they told me it had expired 3 days earlier. Here was the perfect opportunity to plan a scheduled sequence of emails to ensure I renew my membership. They could have started 2 months back with reminders that my expiration was coming up, followed with invites to meet with a sales person or promotions to extend my membership online. They could have done some testing, sweetened the offer, and secured me for a longer period at a lower cost it took to initially acquire me. Once my membership did expire, they could have implemented some tactful win-back emails.

It’s still not too late, as I have not had time to make a decision on a competing gym. Perhaps I accidentally fell off the their list or was placed in the wrong segment. But this is a very costly error for 24h that potentially costs millions a year in lost opportunity. I would make it top priority to audit your program, review your key email marketing metrics, and establish a strategy that aligns with your customers, products & services.

- Cheers

Forest Bronzan  -  Follow Me On Twitter!

5 Common Mistakes with Email List Building

1. Don’t keep the sign-up process fast and simple: This is a big one. If you make the sign-up process complex, you will not get many sign-ups. It’s that simple. Below are some previous posts on email sign-up forms and process.

Good simple form from Express

Nice simple opt-in from New York Life

Flawed sign-up process from SCORE

2. Don’t send a welcome email message: Another huge mistake. When people sign up for your list they are expecting an email welcoming them. This will be one of the highest open rates you will see. Use this opportunity to kick off the relationship on a good note. Below are some previous posts on the topic of welcome messages.

Pro Flowers welcome letter review

Good things from Olive Garden’s welcome email

Sephora screws up their welcome letter

3. Purchase lists: It’s just not a good idea. Unsolicited messages have the highest spam complaint rates and have the opportunity to deteriorate your sending reputation. Focus on building your email lists naturally and you will have much better results from the email channel.

4. Automatically add forward to a friend folks: This is not true permission. But do include an easy way to join your mailing list in the forwarded versions of the email.

5. Don’t offer website sign-up: Sounds elementary, but some big players drop the ball here and don’t leverage their site traffic to build their email list. Here is a post about jewelry retailer Shane Co making this same mistake.

In a future post we’ll provide some more best practices for email list building.

- Forest Bronzan

Follow me on Twitter

Step 1. On their home page, there is a link in the upper left for ‘Get eNewsletters’ – Points for having this above the fold, but negative points for not having the option to fill in my address right there and submit. Every additional page I have to go to is another opportunity for me to leave and not complete the process. Get my most basic info (email address) right away while I’m interested and then ask for more information.

Step 2. After clicking that link I get to a page with a few options. First they give the option to view a sample of their newsletter. Major points here – it’s a good idea to give a preview of what a subscriber is going to receive. Set expectations from the beginning and you’ll start the relationship on a good note. Major points were also deducted on this page, as it asked me again to follow a link to sign up. I already said I wanted to sign up on the home page, why must I go to a 3rd page just to enter my email address? This is a major flaw. If they must go to this 2nd page, put the actual opt-in field here, in addition to the ‘preview’ link.

Step 3. Finally on the 3rd page they ask for my email address.

Step 4. On the 4th page (yes, 4 clicks and counting to sign up for the newsletter) They are asking for a lot more information, but it’s unclear if I have been signed up already. I thought that’s what I did on the previous page. But with no welcome email, I continue on. On this page they ask me to confirm my email, plus make First Name, Last Name, City, State and Zip required fields. Additionally, they have a security check for input of text from an image. For the contact info, that’s great that they are collecting it as it will be useful for segmentation and personalization later, but why make it required? It’s a nice to have, not a must have. For the email confirmation, why not have that on the previous page, or just have a double opt-in (where I must confirm by clicking a link in an email)? They do give me newsletter options, so are on the right track of an email preference center, but are way off on so many other elements.

Step 5. Finally on the 5th page I get a confirmation and the shortly after I receive a welcome email.

This 5 page process could have been reduced to 2 or 3 pages. On the home page they could have had a quick opt-in field and then taken me to a 2nd page to put in more personalization info (after I was already in the system and about to receive a confirmed or double opt-in email).

If they didn’t want to mess with the home page, they could have left the link as it was there, and then on the 2nd page had the opt-in form with a preview image on that page of their newsletter. On a 3rd page they could offer more personalization options.

I’d be very curious what their sign-up conversion rate is, from start to finish. While they are making efforts to implement some sound best practices for list acquisition, SCORE is dropping the ball with some red flag mistakes.

Screen Grabs from the process (click image to enlarge):

Home Page

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4