MindComet

B2C Black Friday Email Wrap-Up

Over the Thanksgiving break I was sent over 30 emails all related to Black Friday and holiday sales—most of which were composed pretty well with a semblance of strategy and thought put behind them.  Others cried out “well, since everyone else is sending out an email, I guess we will too”.

NHL / NY Rangers:
Even though it’s a huge sports fan faux-pas, this email’s call to action is pretty compelling.  It would’ve been an A+ if they could have incorporated my last name into the design on the jersey dynamically, but having “ANY NAME” works too.  The deal for free customization and shipping was for that day only, making it even more compelling to click through.

Home Depot:
This was sent to me on Thanksgiving day, early in the morning—serving as a means to beat the Black Friday rush, with deals and sales available starting that morning. Each item spotlighted in the email were labeled with in-store or online availability, most of which were available on that day.  I don’t get any of their competitors emails such as Lowe’s or Ace Hardware, but I can’t imagine either company were as effective with their Black Friday-related sends as HD.

Restoration Hardware:
RH has never had compelling designs.  Their emails usually consist of serif text embedded in an image with their site’s navigation above. Their sales emails over the weekend were no exception… still as lackluster as ever.  I will give them credit for hitting me every day over the course of the sale.  Only one element of the email changed between the three days.  Click the preview too see what I’m talking about.

Inmagine:
The design is stark, simple and effective. But that’s about all I can praise about this.  It only links to the main page, with no additional info on the promotion for the reward points.  One of my biggest complaints—and it’s a biggie—is that this email is NOT CAN-SPAM compliant.  Where’s the opt out link?  Where’s the physical address? The team at Inmagine needs to brush up on their compliance rules before they get blacklisted.

Simple Shoes:
The perfect sales email. Showing the previous price against the one-day-only sales price was their best bet to increase conversions and they nailed it.  The copy is outstanding—especially this part: “they feel like marshmallows hugging your feet”. I love the personality Simple brings to their emails and how they market to their audience. I didn’t open this email until today, and when I clicked through, it brought me to a landing page with info on their NEXT Black Friday sale (which apparently takes place every Friday at simpleshoes.com).  Too bad I missed the train on their slipper sale.  I want marshmallows hugging my feet.  This is by far my favorite email from the weekend.

Threadless:
Another example of a very simple and effective sales blast.  Threadless slings limited-run t-shirts to hipsters and nerds alike and they know their audience extremely well.  The calls to action in this email are broken up into three parts: $15 tees, $10 tees and $5 tees.  Easy enough to figure out and well-executed.

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Here’s a breakdown of all of the B2C emails I received over the weekend:

Hit me once in three days:

Simple Shoes
MINI
Quiksilver
Paul Frank
Inmagine
Starbucks

Hit me twice in three days:

Levi’s
adidas
Target
NHL
The Home Depot
Playstation
Threadless
New Balance

Hit me three times within three days:

Dickies
Restoration Hardware

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Posted by MindComet on Dec. 01, 2008

Is Email Marketing Becoming Stagnant?

After reading this post on the No man is an iland blog, I feel compelled to respond and give my two cents.  They pose the question “Why is email marketing becoming stagnant?”  This is supported by the fact that B2C emails featuring both free and sales offers dropped in 2006.  They hypothesize that it’s a combination of a few things including:

- Statistical anomalies
- New marketers still getting ramped up to the ins and outs of email marketing
- General malaise
- Over shooting their email list quotas
- The ever-annoying Outlook 2007

I agree with some of the points mentioned, but I do believe a few things have been left out.

Yes, Outlook 2007 is extremely temperamental and is difficult to code emails for (No background images!?  Seriously!?).
Yes, I agree that the majority of emails that come through my inbox lack charisma and creativity.
And yes, there are a lot of fresh faces in the game, trying to make a name for themselves, but who are unfamiliar with the basics.

I think we have to consider that other sources for information on the web are more widely used, which may have influenced a drop in a B2C email presence.  More and more companies are sinking their online budgets into ads, viral campaigns, and SEM.  Yet, the most ROI-generating form of media online is still direct-email marketing.

So what gives?  Does the problem lie with communicating these cold-hard facts to potential business?  Is email inherently at a disadvantage since you can’t incorporate embedded flash or video on a widespread basis (as Mac Mail is the only client that displays video)?

The best way to solve problems like these is to collaborate with other email-marketing specialists.

If you’re in the email marketing game, I suggest you sign up for Email Marketer’s Club.  We can use the EMC to band together, get a dialogue going, address these tough questions and get them answered once and for all.

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Posted by MindComet on Oct. 18, 2007