AM Inbox: Forward-to-a-friend as the primary CTA

The Retail Email Blog monitors the email marketing campaigns of more than 100 top online retailers. Here are highlights from my inbox this morning:

AbeBooks, 7/18 — Textbooks: Give a Student the Gift of Savings!
This is a pretty compelling use of forward to a friend. They’ve made it the primary call-to-action of this email and instead of saying “Forward to a Student,” they used a much more compelling “Help a Student Save” call-to-action. Hitting the button takes you to a special forward-to-a-friend form with the student language on it. They wisely didn’t use their standard forward-to-a-friend landing page. Sometimes I hear marketers saying that they only see forward rates of less than 1% and I always ask, “What have you done to try to boost that? Do you ever incorporate the send-to-a-friend button into your primary message?” This is the kind of treatment I’m referring to. I’m sure they saw much more than a 1% forward rate from this (and that’s not including folks that forwarded it via their email client). For more on forward to a friend, check out the Send to a Friend Benchmark Study.



Nordstrom, 7/18 — Anniversary Sale! Shop the Fashion Event of the Year
Instead of using the traditional “the sale ends Monday, Aug. 4” language, in this email Nordstrom says that “Prices go up Monday, Aug. 4.” The alternative wording is refreshing and perhaps worth testing.



Lands’ End, 7/18 — Go back to school with backpacks that are Guaranteed. Period.®
Lands’ End has debuted a new header. They’ve dropped the background color around the email, which sometimes made the preheader text difficult to read, and reversed the colors on the logo so it’s now navy on white. Those two changes give the email a cleaner look. On the downside, the new header (including the preheader and nav bar) is about 50 pixels taller than before, which means that less of the body of the email appears above the fold. All the white space between the logo and nav bar seems excessive.



And here’s the old header from a July 15 email:



Sephora, 7/20 — You 5 top eye questions, answered!
Normally Sephora’s emails are super solid, but they’ve gotten a little sloppy lately (see July 18 AM Inbox). In this email, they left the “r” off of “Your” in the subject line and say they answer 5 eye questions when 6 are actually answered in the email.



SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER: Select noteworthy subject lines
Blair, 7/19 — Men's Christmas in July special. $2.99 shipping.
Sears, 7/18 — Back to School Fashion Moving Fast. Shop now at Sears.
DisneyShopping, 7/18 — Free Shipping in Our Back to School Shop
Neiman Marcus, 7/18 — FREE TOTE & NEW JUICY: Back 2 School Event + Free Shipping
JCPenney, 7/18 — Save 30-70% Online! Plus, In-Store Savings This Weekend
Kmart, 7/18 — Try Kmart Pharmacy and Get a $10 Gift Card, $1 Rewards and More
Avon, 7/18 — FREE Gift & FREE Shipping with NEW ANEW 24-Hour Eye Moisturizer
Chadwick’s, 7/18 — Take an extra 10% off, from our Sr. Vice President!
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