Email Aptitude » Retail Email

HP President’s Day Email

admin — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 22:38:00 +0000

President’s Day brought us many promotions from retailers, and heavy email to follow. With so much email clutter that week (and weekend) it was important to cut through with a solid offer and even better email design & architecture.

HP had a fairly straight forward effort with a simple time-sensitive resend/reminder. A few comments:

Offer: Up to 50% off is enticing, especially for higher priced computer gear.

Overall Design: Fairly clean with clear focus on the offer.

Architecture: In this email, they didn’t feature any products, so HP had fewer click-through opportunities. With that, I would have expected this design effort to have a more prominent entry point. The ‘Shop HP Now’ is nice, but the focus on the promotion overpowers it a bit. I didn’t see any tests on this from them, but they very well could have been testing various elements.

Navigation: They provide additional entry points, which is great.

The Resend: With the screen grab on the right, we see their ‘last chance’ resend. While the design is consistent, there are a few improvements I would have liked to see: First, ‘Hurry Ends Soon’ is a nice addition but more time-sensitive copy could help. e.g. 24 hours left, last day, etc. I would have made this a bit more prominent as well. Additionally, I would have added an additional click-through element. The Shop HP Now button at bottom is nice, but having a clear entry point near the time-sensitive copy can help.

Fun Email Design from TigerDirect.com

admin — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:27:18 +0000

Capturing inbox attention can be difficult. We monitor hundreds of emails a month and enjoy seeing what various marketers are doing with design and architecture. In other posts, we will discuss why it is important to not put all of your focus on aesthetics, but to focus on strategic architecture. With that said, at times there are some cool design elements that come through.

While the following example from TigerDirect.com is missing some basic elements, it definitely stood out from the crowd!

Nice, clean design in a theme that is familiar to most (and especially their customers) – a smart phone. One very nice note is the focus on the core message: 24 Hour End of Month Clearance. They have this above the fold, prominent, and aesthetically pleasing.

The screen grab below shows the email viewed in a preview window via Outlook 2007 (on a 15″ laptop”)

Here we see the nice focus where there is no doubt what the email promotion is. Nice design work from TigerDirect.com and we’ll look forward to seeing more.

Dell Wins with Design and Layout

Forest Bronzan — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 01:21:35 +0000

Many email marketers struggle with the balance between nice design and a well performing email. Often time the design department wins, to the deficit of the overall effectiveness of the campaign. In an upcoming post we’ll focus on the benefits of having clean architecture and how design minimalism can go a long way.

Here, Dell.com has done a great job of providing an aesthetically pleasing email that is also very integrated and usable.

Click image to view larger version.

Some cool things going on here:

1. It appears they are testing the use of employee product comments. On first glance I thought this was an actual customer review, but it’s a nice touch adjusting the product description to be a quote from a Dell employee.

2. Dell continues to have pretty clean architecture. Here they have nice use of white-space, straight-forward ‘Buy Now’ buttons, and a well contained layout.

3. Nice use of color! Dell does a great job of integrating red here. The solid background accompanied by the buttons, product titles, and monitor backgrounds help to integrate this message very nicely.

Take note that a little can go a long way. As always, we hope everyone is testing extensively though to see what works best with your subscribers.

Skate Warehouse Focuses on a Simple Email Layout

Forest Bronzan — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 01:05:42 +0000

While many email marketers put too much focus on heavy design vs. usable architecture, online retailer Skate Warehouse switched gears a bit with a very simple approach to one of their holiday emails. There were some nice elements here, and several in need of improvement.

What We Like:

1. Simplicity of the Product Layout: It’s not convoluted with unnecessary design elements and each product is focused.

2. Multiple Products: Instead of just providing 3 featured products, they give 12 options. Since their layout is very clean, they can get away with more product.

3. Use of Gift Cards: Nice touch with having three images of a gift cards. On one end, it provides a great alternative if you’re not ‘in the know’ of their products, but it’s a nice simple touch to make it look like an actual gift card. (We are not sure if they actual mail a physical card or provide a gift code)

4. MSRP Price: They include the suggested retail price along with their price, which helps to drive value.

Areas of Improvement:

1. Design: While we like the simplicity, it does look a bit ‘templated.’ This can be corrected with improved design elements on the categories and main hero graphic. For the latter, the green font is somewhat difficult to read.

2. Click-Through Elements: While the simplicity works for them, there are simple elements that will increase CTR. For starters, there is no primary call to action in the hero graphic, plus for each of the products, a simple ‘get it’ ‘learn more’ ‘buy now’ button will likely help. Additionally, having improved formatting on the actual pricing would help. There are probably a dozen other elements that would improve click-through.

3. Pre-Header: In a previous post, we briefly touched on the benefit of testing your pre-header. Here, at least they included a pre-header with ‘view the online version’ which many companies forget about. But this real-estate can be much better leveraged to reemphasize the promotion and other key elements.

This email is a good start to mixing up extremely design-heavy layouts. There are, however, many areas of improvement to make this email perform much better. As always, we hope they are testing extensively to see what works with their subscribers.

Don’t Forget to Test Your Email Pre-Headers

Forest Bronzan — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:26:12 +0000

The pre-header in your email is a great way to further emphasize your primary promotion, allow subscribers to view the online version, or include other key copy. For emails that have a higher image to text ratio, the pre-header plays a more important role as it may be the primary copy your subscribers see when they have images disabled by default.

Often times, email marketers have the default pre-header inviting subscribers to view the online version. This is definitely better than nothings, but we would recommend testing additional pre-headers to see how it affects engagements.

In many cases, we see the pre-header attract a significant ratio of click activity. As always, we recommend to test and monitor to discover what works best for you.

Honeydew Has a Major Opt-In Mistake

Forest Bronzan — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:44:40 +0000

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.

Quick Tip: How Long to Wait for Cart Abandonment Triggers

Forest Bronzan — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 00:11:03 +0000

Quick Tip! Shopping cart abandonment email strategy will largely depend on the type of products you’re selling and the frequency of your other email efforts. All things equal, we’ve been implementing 4-6 hour delays lately for cart abandonment triggers. We want the email to be timely but not be too intrusive.

Monitoring the Revenue/Delivered Email Metric

Forest Bronzan — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:54:21 +0000

Open rates, CTRs, conversion rates, revenue, and other metrics are important to track, but an important metric that is often forgotten is rev/del (revenue per delivered email). It is very easy to calculate and one that should make your KPI list.

Simple Example

Revenue for Time Period or Message: $189,433

Delivered Emails: 997,015

Rev/Del: $0.19

How it Helps: The revenue per delivered email metric provides a nice constant when comparing various email efforts. Campaign 1 may have a 25% CTR and $38,000 while Campaign 2 has a 28% CTR and $52,000. The latter may appear to have performed better (and in terms of total revenue it obviously did). But in the scenario that Campaign 1 was delivered to 80,000 and Campaign 2 was delivered to 260,000, the former outperforms with a rev/del of $0.47 compared to $0.20.

For far less effort, Campaign 1 in this example produced over 2X revenue for every email delivered. This is very helpful when comparing promotions, weekly/monthly/quarterly reports, and types of email efforts, such as segmented vs. non-segmented campaigns.

Get your data together and start reviewing some email reports!

Dell Days of Deals Email

Forest Bronzan — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:00:33 +0000

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

Cool Seasonal Opt-In from Dell

Forest Bronzan — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:22:53 +0000

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.

Cheers,

Forest

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