Borders’ Death Rattle In Email Form
If you aren’t already aware, Borders Books & Music are closing all of their stores for good. Call it a sign of the times or a changing of the guard with web stores replacing brick & mortar shops, it’s undeniable that Borders certainly won’t be the last corporation selling media to close up and go out of business. But this post isn’t all about them folding, its about how they’re reaching their subscribers with news of massive sales.
Look at this email:
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Now look at an example of what their emails USED to look like:
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I discussed this with Jeremy Carrus, one of MindComet’s designers, about the inconsistencies and stilted nature of the design. Here’s what we came up with…
Just cause you’re going out of business doesn’t mean you should change your brand or hide it.
Even if your doors are closing you can still go out with some dignity and use the look everyone remembered you for. I had to look closely to see who this email was from at first. It almost seemed like a knock-off, spammy email.
Why have social media links if you’re company is going under?
Why would anyone want to connect with a brand that is about to die? Is this due to the fact that social media buttons are a standard element like a forward button / link for any and all emails no matter what the subject or condition the brand is in?
Give users direction and a call to action.
If your goal is to get users into the store then put the locations link at the top of the page and not in the footer. Maybe even employ geo-location methods for users (not too hard to pull off nowadays) and dynamically insert the location closest to them.
Give users a deadline.
There is no time associated with this email so I could probably go in a few weeks and get the same deal. But if they said “Our Doors Will Be Closed On…“ it would result in some urgency, which might get me into one of their stores sooner rather than later. Even if they’re not closing they could prolong the sale and make me want to go later.
Show off the good.
Show users what you have to sell. Simply listing discounts associated with the categories of items isn’t too compelling. Sometimes folks need a visual to get excited. Images help support the sale.
Even though this is clearly a LAZY attempt at an email marketing campaign, I wouldn’t be surprised if an intern or some other lowly employee put this together. I’m sure Borders fired all of their marketing and creative assets a long time ago. It doesn’t surprise me that it looks this way… there’s really no accountability or a sense of trying with this email.
In short, the email is essentially a guy on a street corner waving a going-out-of-business sign to oncoming traffic:
Posted by Bryan Quilty on Aug. 18, 2011
Comments
I figured as such since the entire corporation is going under. I’ve yet to see the unsubscribe links removed, though. It’ll be interesting to see if it gets that bleak.
Thanks for the link!
Posted by Bryan Quilty on 08/22/2011 03:46 PM
If I were handing my business over to liquidators for a creditor-driven and very public shredding, why the hell would I want people to know which brand it was related to? The brand identity still has value and could be ported to a new business model. As such it should be kept as far from this unpleasant episode of corpse looting as possible.
Posted by Jonathan on 08/23/2011 09:46 AM
I worked in the corporate marketing department at Borders, so I can tell you that all of the marketing is now run by the liquidators. I, like the rest of the marketing team, was laid off on 7/29. This means that there’s no one left in the building to create lovely brand-consistent emails and signage.
I had to unsubscribe from the emails, FB site and Twitter feed because it all makes me sad. We in marketing worked so hard to build our brand and now it’s just garbage.
Posted by eamathe on 08/25/2011 02:20 PM
Coming to this late…but I also remember saying to someone at the time that it looks tacky, off brand and screams desperation. His response was that they are desperate!
On the plus side, maybe the creative sends the message that its not business as usual at Borders and the bargain basement vibe might appeal to subscribers looking to pick over a dying business.
Having said that I really feel for the designer’s - like above - who worked so hard crafting the brand.
Posted by Anna on 10/13/2011 06:25 PM
Back in late 2008 and early 2009 when a number of large retailers when under, I watched these kinds of going-out-of-business emails quite closely and wrote a report about it (http://www.retailemailblog.com/2009/05/reportlet-going-out-of-business-email.html). The big reason for the change of messaging and design is that business operations are handed over to liquidators, so the folks that had been running the email program are no longer around in many cases. This often leads to emails that look like scanned flyers and sometimes leads to CAN-SPAM violations when mailing addresses and unsubscribe links are left off of the emails. It’s a sad thing to watch.
Posted by Chad White on 08/19/2011 12:33 PM