The Winter Holidays Are Over, On To The Next Holiday

As I faced my inbox today, I deleted a few remaining holiday emails that were no longer relevant and as I got to today's emails, noticed my first Valentine's Day communication from Orvis, a men and womens retail store catering to an outdoors lifestyle. Although Valentine's Day is just over a month away and there is still plenty of time to get Valentine's Day focused communications out the door, I was impressed by Orvis's preparedness. The first day back after a two week holiday period and their email is in my inbox before 11 am.

If you are looking for trends to follow this year in regards to email marketing, follow Orvis in theirs by dedicating the time to plan out your email communications so you can be ready to hit the send button without rushing to get just anything out the door. There preparedness prompted me to click through where as if I received their communication two weeks before Valentine's Day they may have been competing for my attention alongside other brands sending out their Valentine's Day communications.

Crispers Follow Up

Remember my post about Crispers menu changing, you can catch up here. Well I contacted them to find out more information in regards to the changing menu and was pleasantly suprised with this detailed follow up:


Kelly

Thank you for taking the time to contact us. We are re-evaluating our menu so we may bring you new and innovative menu choices. We strive to make the highest quality foods and serve you, our customer, only the best. We are using our Winter Park location as one of our pilot stores, testing our new menu items, how you order things, our uniforms, to the dishes that the food is served on. We have also been conducting surveys in all of our locations to learn what our customers want. We encourage customer feedback so we will know what we may need to change, add or delete. Once all the information is gathered we will be gradually rolling out our new menu at all of our locations. Please be assured that your comments have been passed along to the appropriate parties and they will do their best to keep every customer satisfied with the Crispers brand. If you would, please e-mail me your complete address so I may send you a gift card that you may use at any of our locations. Please accept this as our way of saying, "we value your patronage." I do hope you will give us the opportunity to serve you again.

I think Ill go and get my salad today knowing that I still can and then when my gift card arrives go and get another :-). Thanks Crispers!

Transactional Emails Can Have a Big Impact

Most thank you emails I receive are either included in the order confirmation/receipt, shipping notification or download email messages. I thought Crate and Barrel did a good job with their thank you email which arrived in my inbox a few days after my purchase when I wasn't expecting it (to be clear, I did receive a transactional email with my purchase order minutes after placing my order). The creative also goes to show that Crate and Barrel took the time to customize their thank you message with the one featured below being tied to the holiday season.



With Crate and Barrel sending me the unexpected transactional message above, they gave me a boost of customer confidence, strengthened their brand and will most likely drive incremental revenue from me in the future because they made my shopping experience pleasant with no hassle.

Thank you emails are a nice easy touch point to have with your subscribers, letting them know you took the time to thank them for their business, feedback, support, etc. That goes for welcome messages as well. Welcoming a subscriber to your email communications lets the reader know what's to come, properly setting their expectations upfront. With just over a week remaining in 2008 I hope to see more welcome messages, thank you messages and personal touch points from brands in the coming year showing me that they are leveraging my preferences to better and more effectively communicate.

Why Email Has to be a Two Way Communication

Since we are on topic of food per our last post, Ive decided to continue the trend. I used to love going to Crispers. Crispers is a casual dining restaurant located in parts of Florida serving lunch and dinner menu items consisting of salads, soups, wraps, sandwiches and flat breads. You can compare a Crispers to a Panera Bread for the most part. As I was saying, I USED to love going to Crispers up until yesterday. I went during the lunch hour craving my regular order, a delicious Harvest Cobb Salad. Yesterday I was handed a menu and was told it had been updated where they no longer serve some of their previous menu items. The Harvest Cobb Salad didnt make the list of "menu items to keep". I was disappointed as I was craving that salad and was being forced to try something different. I ordered something new and it was good, but it didn't fulfill my hunger as the Harvest Cobb would have done.



This is a perfect example of why email needs to be a two way communication channel. It's my fault for not letting Crispers tell me what's up. I wasn't signed up for their email communications and If I had been, perhaps could have been asked to vote for my favorite menu items or told my salad would no longer be available and I would have at least felt better knowing my vote was worth a shot and that my expectations would be set next time I visited. I want to believe that Crispers is properly setting subscribers expectations however since I was not signed up, am unsure. I signed up today to ensure Id be filled in on any new menu updates (like if my salad makes a come back), however in the meantime does anyone receive Crispers email communications? If so, was there any announcements in regards to their menu changing that supports my case?

WELCOME TO MOE'S!

I received this Moe's email from a friend who forwarded it over to me. Even though I HATE their burritos (mostly due to their cardboard-esque "tortillas"), this email is compelling enough to make me re-consider patronizing the establishment again. If I can find one, that is. The majority of the Moe's locations in central Florida have all been shut down within the past 3 months. Hmm... I wonder why? Maybe it's because their employees obnoxiously scream "WELCOME TO MOE'S!!!!" every time a new patron walks in? Or maybe it's just the lackluster food?

At any rate, the $2.00 off coupon call to action may just convert me. It's persuasive and it may just convince me to give them a second seventh chance.


All in all, this is a well-executed offer-based email. One element I loved were the tag-lines and call to action. I love the "HMMM, NOT A BAD DEAL FOR JUST CLICKING OPEN." tag line. Not sure if "clicking open" is the correct verbiage, but i know what they mean. I'm very surprised they didn't have enough foresight to include their own trackable forward to a friend button to see exactly how 'viral' their email becomes.

Now I'm in the mood for some mexican food. Tijuana Flats anyone?

Have You Set Your Subscribers Expectations?

I got an email from Jackie Warner the other day. For those of you who are not Bravo TV fans or live in the LA area, Jackie Warner is the owner of Sky Sport and Spa located in LA and also the star of the reality TV show "Work Out" that focuses on her team helping others get or stay in shape and of course some drama squeezes into the segments as well. I occasionally watched the show when it aired on Bravo and at one point decided to sign up for Sky Sport and Spas' email program to see what they had to say.

I just received my first email communication the other day which if you are picking up on where Im headed with this post, it's been a while since I have signed up. So I decided to check into when I signed up to be able to include in this post however the email doesn't tell me when I did, the only option in the footer is to opt out, which of course that deserves a thumbs up. Have I tested it, no but that's a whole other blog post. So although Jackie does a great job about setting her members expectations in regards to when they can expect to see results from working out and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, us email experts are here to guide her and others that need assistance with setting users expectations.

Setting Subscribers Email Expectations:

• Provide subscribers with the date they signed up for the email communications

• Provide subscribers with where they signed up for the email communications

• Give subscribers the ability to change their preferences (update email address, HTML vs text, etc)

• Set subscribers expectations as to how often you plan to communicate with them (monthly newsletter, quarterly promotions, etc.)

Keep in mind, giving your subscribers the information upfront is only part of keeping a subscriber happy. Keeping your word and meeting your subscribers expectations also has to be maintained if you want the relationship to last. If you fail to mention when you are going to communicate and then do so six months later, your subscriber may have already forgotten about signing up, mark your message as spam because they aren't expecting your email at this point or changed their email address where you lose that customer completely.

So when planning your next campaign, be sure to let your subscribers know what they can expect from you and in return hopefully it will set you up for a long and prosperous relationship with your subscribers!

How to NOT Survey Your Subscribers

Now, I'm a big believer in leveraging email as a means to receive feedback from your customers. All companies need feedback. All companies need to listen to what their customer wants. Especially from those who care enough to opt in and have their inboxes filled with emails on a daily / weekly / monthly basis.

This core base of customers should be nurtured and NOT taken for granted. It pains me to receive surveys on a consistent basis that never offer an incentive. This incentive doesn't have to be much. A little something goes a long way.

Take this survey email below for example. It's from Condé Nast, a publishing company that prints magazines from the likes of WIRED, GQ and Vanity Fair. So since I'm a part of the "exclusive sample" of readers you'd think they'd offer me something. I mean, I'm offering them my valuable time and opinion... so what am I getting in return?


Well, it turns out, NOTHING! I actually took the time to fill out the stupid survey -- first answering some demographical questions -- then when I submitted my age, location and annual salary the following screen read "Thank you very much for your interest in our survey. Unfortunately you did not qualify for today's survey. Because our research was targeted at individuals that match a particular profile, not everyone who receives an initial e-mail will qualify to take the survey. Please be assured that information is not recorded unless a survey is successfully completed."

Wait, what? Seriously? First of all, there's no dash in "e-mail" anymore. Get with the times, grandpa. Secondly, you're not going to remember that I'm a 26 year old in Florida making less than 75k a year? Why not? So you're telling me that the next time you send out a survey, I'll click through and start filling out my demographic info only to be denied again!? I'm sorry, but that is lazy, short-sighted and for lack of a better term, bone-headed. Why aren't you capturing this information now, so you're better prepared for future surveys? This was a perfect opportunity to gain some insight into all of your "exclusive" members to send more effective messages in the future. What a waste.

So my next (and final) course of action is to opt out. They did it to themselves. Once I click and get to the unsubscribe page, it will only allow me to opt out from all WIRED-associated emails, not just Condé Nast emails. So what do I do now? I actually enjoying reading the WIRED newsletters, but I don't want any more of these annoying time-wasting surveys. Decisions, decisions.

Well, I guess that's why I have an actual subscription to the print magazine. So long, WIRED! Thank your publishing company for one less subscriber.