Monday, September 21, 2009

AM Inbox: This is how to wear clothes

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

Spiegel, 9/18 — Our Exclusive PERFECT-FIT PANTS + Fabulous Styling Tips!
Many people don’t have a good sense of how to wear clothes—or more specifically, what items to wear together. Email marketing is a great venue for suggesting clothing combinations and educating customers on how to pull off various looks. Presenting outfits with an rundown of the items in it is one way to do this. In this email, Spiegel starts with three different styles of pants and suggests two pairings for each. Not only does this approach help subscribers find the fit that’s best for them, but it also creates an upsell opportunity for the secondary items. To encourage sales of those secondary items, consider linking their images to their product pages. Spiegel lumped those secondary item images in with the pants image and linked it all to the page for the pants, forcing those interested in those other items to do a search for them.

Click to view this Sept. 18, 2009 Spiegel email full-sized

Old Navy, 9/20 — Easy Layered Styles, Starting at $10‏
Old Navy gives us another example of how to combine fashion education with an upsell opportunity, using a simple arithmetic format.

Click to view this Sept. 20, 2009 Old Navy email full-sized

JC Whitney, 9/18 — Shift Into Fall With Free Shipping JC Whitney!‏
JC Whitney redesigns their email template, making a number of significant changes: (1) The design is about 20 pixels wider, but still under 650 pixels overall, which is a width that we’re recommending to our clients in most cases. For more on email width, check out Soon Even More Emails Won’t Be Optimized for Width. (2) They expand their navigation bar from six links to 11, making it match the nav on their website. This is a move that we don’t recommend. They also construct their new nav using graphical text, instead of HTML text like they did before. For more on nav bars, check out Email Navigation Differs Radically from Website Navigation. (3) JC Whitney adds a border to give the email more structure. I’ve seen several retailers—including Ann Taylor (see Sept. 2 AM Inbox)—use background colors to create a frame around their email content for the same purpose. And (4) The new design features the search button much more prominently. Here’s the new design:

Click to view this Sept. 18, 2009 JC Whitney email full-sized

And here’s the old design from a Sept. 11 email:

Click to view this Sept. 11, 2009 JC Whitney email full-sized

SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER: Select noteworthy subject lines
Omaha Steak, 9/18 — EMAIL EXCLUSIVE! Better than Employee Prices . . . only 500 at this price!‏
Fingerhut, 9/18 — Fingerhut: FREE SHIPPING: Email ONLY Exclusive‏
Ann Taylor, 9/18 — Saturday & Sunday! 40% Off Private In-Store Event For Email Members‏
Lillian Vernon, 9/20 — Picture This: The 2010 Calendar is in, Order Yours Now‏
Oriental Trading, 9/18 — Get crafty for Halloween, let us pay your shipping‏
Finish Line, 9/18 — Show your support with the official shoe of the Susan G. Komen Race For The Cure!
Baby Universe, 9/20 — Free shipping on Halloween costumes and Eebee's adventures‏
ShopNBC, 9/18 — Suzanne Somers is here Join the Party‏
Ralph Lauren, 9/19 — Take A Front Row Seat: Spring 2010 Runway Show‏
Barnes & Noble, 9/18 — Oprah's New Pick Just Announced‏
Urban Outfitters, 9/18 — Where The Wild Things Are‏
NikeStore, 9/17 — Nike's New Marathon Shop: Get Ready for Race Day‏
Sam’s Club, 9/17 — Make your media room a multiplex: HDTV, Blu-ray and sound systems‏
PC Connection, 9/18 — Save Money and Use Less Energy With HP OfficeJet Pro Series Printers!‏
Coldwater Creek, 9/19 — Psst! Free Shipping + 30% off + Whisper corduroy is here!‏

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1 comments:

Tony Buxton said...

LOVE the apparel emails. Fresh idea, simple, provides value.