AM Inbox: Personalized greeting slip ups
The Retail Email Blog monitors the email marketing campaigns of more than 100 top online retailers. Here are highlights from our inbox this morning:
CompUSA, 7/2 — Exclusive Offer: Save $100 & Say Goodbye to Typing! Details Inside...
Personalized greetings can give your emails a lift, but they can also trip you up. In this email, my name failed to load properly. On the upside, at least a gobbygook code placeholder. I’ve seen that several times before. For instance, personalized greeting errors helped get a March 18, 2007 Crutchfield email inducted into the 2007 Oopsy Hall of Fame and an Oct. 11, 2006 Overstock email inducted into the 2006 Oopsy Hall of Fame. Usually these errors happen because the marketer doesn’t have the subscriber’s name on file, because they didn’t ask for it during the email sign-up process and didn’t get it through an order. That’s not the case with CompUSA, which does ask for subscribers’ names during email sign-up. So something else went awry during this personalization.
Kmart, 7/2 — Correction: 4th of July Online Blowout Sale. 4 Days Only!
Kmart sent this correction following an email earlier in the day. They use “Correction” prominently in the subject line and include a message at the very top of the message in HTML text explaining the correction. I did some comparing and the creative appears to be identical, so that would seem to indicate that some of the landing pages where wrong. I didn’t check them all out, but it makes me wonder if they could have used some redirects or some other backend coding to direct folks to the correction landing pages without sending the correction. I don’t know if that would have worked in this case, but such behind the scenes adjustments should be considered before resending an email.
UPDATE: The copy in the orginal email actually was different. The correction changes “EXTRA 30% OFF” to “EXTRA 10% OFF.” Thanks to Casey Hehner at Camping World for pointing that out.
Ralph Lauren, 7/2 — Dressed To Win: An Official Outfitter Of The 2008 US Olympic Team
With a little more than a month to go before the start of the 2008 Summer Olympics, Ralph Lauren is touting their involvement by promoting their Olympic branded apparel and providing a video, photo essay and other content about the Olympics. They even added “The Olympic Games” to their navigation bar. As they’ve been doing lately (see June 19 AM Inbox), Ralph Lauren is also including a selection of links to social networking sites to encourage the sharing of this email.
SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER: Select noteworthy subject lines
Ann Taylor, 7/2 — July 4th Sale: Up to 70% OFF + save an extra 20% this weekend
Kmart, 7/2 — 4th of July Online Blowout Sale. 4 Days Only!
Macy’s, 7/2 — Kick off July 4th with FREE SHIPPING + spectacular 3-day specials!
Toys “R” Us, 7/2 — Save $10 When You Turn July 4th into a Backyard Sale-a-Bration!
eBags, 7/2 — Pick your coupon: Extra 20% off OR Free shipping
Saks Fifth Avenue, 7/2 — Exclusive Video: Ferragamo Today
Norm Thompson, 7/2 — Warehouse Moving Sale starts today!
_____________________
SEARCH... By Post Category / By Selling Season / By Retailer / By Topic / Monthly Archive
CompUSA, 7/2 — Exclusive Offer: Save $100 & Say Goodbye to Typing! Details Inside...
Personalized greetings can give your emails a lift, but they can also trip you up. In this email, my name failed to load properly. On the upside, at least a gobbygook code placeholder. I’ve seen that several times before. For instance, personalized greeting errors helped get a March 18, 2007 Crutchfield email inducted into the 2007 Oopsy Hall of Fame and an Oct. 11, 2006 Overstock email inducted into the 2006 Oopsy Hall of Fame. Usually these errors happen because the marketer doesn’t have the subscriber’s name on file, because they didn’t ask for it during the email sign-up process and didn’t get it through an order. That’s not the case with CompUSA, which does ask for subscribers’ names during email sign-up. So something else went awry during this personalization.
Kmart, 7/2 — Correction: 4th of July Online Blowout Sale. 4 Days Only!
Kmart sent this correction following an email earlier in the day. They use “Correction” prominently in the subject line and include a message at the very top of the message in HTML text explaining the correction. I did some comparing and the creative appears to be identical, so that would seem to indicate that some of the landing pages where wrong. I didn’t check them all out, but it makes me wonder if they could have used some redirects or some other backend coding to direct folks to the correction landing pages without sending the correction. I don’t know if that would have worked in this case, but such behind the scenes adjustments should be considered before resending an email.
UPDATE: The copy in the orginal email actually was different. The correction changes “EXTRA 30% OFF” to “EXTRA 10% OFF.” Thanks to Casey Hehner at Camping World for pointing that out.
Ralph Lauren, 7/2 — Dressed To Win: An Official Outfitter Of The 2008 US Olympic Team
With a little more than a month to go before the start of the 2008 Summer Olympics, Ralph Lauren is touting their involvement by promoting their Olympic branded apparel and providing a video, photo essay and other content about the Olympics. They even added “The Olympic Games” to their navigation bar. As they’ve been doing lately (see June 19 AM Inbox), Ralph Lauren is also including a selection of links to social networking sites to encourage the sharing of this email.
SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER: Select noteworthy subject lines
Ann Taylor, 7/2 — July 4th Sale: Up to 70% OFF + save an extra 20% this weekend
Kmart, 7/2 — 4th of July Online Blowout Sale. 4 Days Only!
Macy’s, 7/2 — Kick off July 4th with FREE SHIPPING + spectacular 3-day specials!
Toys “R” Us, 7/2 — Save $10 When You Turn July 4th into a Backyard Sale-a-Bration!
eBags, 7/2 — Pick your coupon: Extra 20% off OR Free shipping
Saks Fifth Avenue, 7/2 — Exclusive Video: Ferragamo Today
Norm Thompson, 7/2 — Warehouse Moving Sale starts today!
_____________________
SEARCH... By Post Category / By Selling Season / By Retailer / By Topic / Monthly Archive
Labels: 4th of July, AM Inbox, Apologies, CompUSA, Kmart, Oopsy, Personalization, Ralph Lauren, Share with your Network, Social Networks
If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe (RSS/email) or
posted at 1:17 PM by Chad White
I love Smith-Harmon's enthusiasm. It's so great to have a connection with people who really "get" and get excited by email marketing. (Truly, there are not that many of us out there!) I count myself very lucky to have found such accomplished enthusiasts to collaborate with on the REI program. They are helping to bring amazing opportunities to fruition with panache.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link