In a recent email from Network Solutions, it was clear they are putting in some time to balance out their use of text and images. See the screen grab below of ‘images disabled’ in gmail.

Notice the Following:

1. You can still see most of the key copy in a nicer format that traditional alt-text.

2.The Call Now at top almost looks like an image with the use of the black background and yellow font.

3. ‘Get Started Today’ at the bottom also provide the look of a button, which gives it an appearance improvement compared to a simple line of text.

Back in 2009, we wrote a post on the email shotgun, rifle, and blow-dart, which focused on the importance of relevant and personalized email content. While this post could benefit from a few updates, much of it holds true and serves as a good example of what Southwest could be doing.

I routinely receive an email very similar to the one below that emphasizes their ‘Click ‘N Save Deals.’ This is a great idea, in concept, but when the resulting content doesn’t provide relevance to the subscriber, it does little good. What I mean is that most of the time the ‘deals’ are never in my primary service area. While I may be interested in a nice deal on a flight to Aspen, if the deal is only for Dallas to Aspen, that does me little good.

The Long-Term Risk of this Lack of Personalization: Subscribers will continue to check if their is a deal that applies to them, but after a while if they consistently see that the promotion is irrelevant, they will be trained not to check. When that perfect deal does come along, it will be too late as they will delete it before checking (or opt-out).

What Southwest.com Could Do:

1. I’m a frequent flyer and have a rewards account with them that is associated with my email address. Why not identify my primary departure airport and have personalized content about my area and corresponding deals. Also include surrounding airports that are within a 60 mile drive.

2. If there is no ‘deal’ for my airport, why not have special alerts for last minute flight availability to prime areas. This of course requires integration with other databases, but it is doable.

3. In addition to my primary airports for departure, identify frequent destinations. This could serve as a reminder of reasons to visit, partner offers (e.g. hotels) and more.

There are also significant improvement opportunities with the overall architecture of these emails, but for the purpose of this post we will stay focused on the context/relevance of the promotion. Southwest has a tremendous opportunity here to provide extremely personalized email content that will improve the customer experience and ultimately increase sales. With a few small adjustment they can have a big impact, and with a larger strategic overhaul, they could really start to better leverage the email channel.

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.

They have launched an email series that focuses on strategic videos from the pros. Not only is this fantastic content that their subscribers will eat up, but they execute it quite well.

The screen grab below shows the top section of one of their emails.

Some great elements with this top section:

1. They have a clear button to click through and watch the video.

2. The primary topic of the video, description, and button are left-justified so it is easy to see in a preview window, and aesthetically sound.

3. They use text for all copy and not one big image! (you won’t be able to demo this in the screen grab above). This is great for users who have images blocked by default.

4. As mentioned above, they are focusing on the customer both with great usability and by providing solid content.

Areas of improvement

1. Navigation: In a future post we’ll discuss the rest of this email, but on quick glance the email navigation in this example could benefit from some changes. It doesn’t really look like a nav, plus there are alternate/additional options that would likely provide improvement.

2. Testing the Photo: I have not seen any tests run yet on the pro’s photo. I would be interest to see if a video screen grab (with play button) performed better here while still integrating with their branding.

Being a poker player myself, I look forward to seeing more emails from Full Tilt not only for the marketing evaluation, but to actually utilize the content.

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.

While it’s good that they are trying to incorporate some branding, this email could benefit from some adjustments:

1. Branding: In the confirmation email there was zero branding and here it is more design heavy. I would like to see some brand consistency across their emails. For this one, the header section with the photo of the hotel, the hotel name, and the ‘Thank You…’ takes up too much space for what it is trying to accomplish.

2. Design: I don’t feel this email is too inviting. They are requesting my time for a guest survey, but the white on black and overall dark theme isn’t doing it for me.

3. Call to Action: The main goal of this email is for me to click through and take the survey. Below the signature (not in the screen grab above) they had a ‘Take the Survey’ button which was nice, but it was pretty far down. Plus, the long URL in case I need to copy and paste does not look too inviting. I would have a simple ‘click here to start the survey’ text link in the body copy, plus would move the button up to a more prominent position. I think this email could benefit from a completely different architecture, but without changing much, these small adjustments would help.

At least they are asking for customer input. With several great hotels to choose from in Vegas, it’s key to keep making improvements to the customer experience. One email I did not receive though was a Thank You for Staying with Us message. This would have been a great opportunity to extend the customer experience, and to let me know about upcoming events, special offers, other properties, and more.

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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.

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Here is the Rundown:

1. FISA requires consent where the CAN-SPAM Act in the US does not.

2. The new law defines consent as: Explicit – when the subscriber specifically provides permission to the sender (e.g. through an opt-in webform) and Implied: where there is an existing or non business relationship, such as a customer purchasing a product or service.

3. FISA applies to anyone sending to subscribers in Canada, not just companies based in Canada. (Hint: you should start segmenting your subscribers based on location if you are not doing so already)

4. Other key elements include the basics that you should already be implementing, such as company contact information on every email, a clear unsubscribe link or reply email, and timely processing of opt-out requests (within 10 days).

At the end of the day, everyone should naturally implement these practices. We want to provide relevant content to individuals who want to receive it, and provide a nice user experience with transparency. On a strategic note, the need to have better data for Canada subscribers may sound like a pain, but embrace it as it could create some very interesting segmenting opportunities.

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.

In the screen grab below, we see a design with no clear focus, and what appears to be an intentional lack of focus. If you’re going to get creative, please don’t forget about usability logic and conversion architecture.

Some Issues:

• Is the yellow copy supposed to be a time counter? If so, is that supposed to be 1 day, 7 hours, 48 minutes, and 17 seconds? A counter can benefit from clear labeling.
• With the fuzzy white on black, we don’t know where the eye is supposed to go. There is a lot going on here and not much consistency.
• No clear click through: at the bottom it says ‘Click Here for Details’ but that is it. No call to action buttons or other entry points.
• Zero Hard Rock branding. Hard Rock has such a distinct brand, it should be leveraged here.

Big picture, this email needs a lot of work. I would be very interested to see how this email performed in terms of click-through and site conversion. After staring at it for a while it’s great that there is an offer of up to 60% off, which could provide some great incentive to book! Unfortunately, execution was not consistent with the brand and offer.

Click image to view larger version.