Driving New Traffic

Today I began a new position at 3Birds Marketing as their Digital Marketing Director. We are working on getting the product fleshed out and the marketing materials finalized so we can go get some new clients. Exciting times are ahead.

Always test your emails... and your subject lines

This morning, I received an email from TGI Friday's restaurant. The subject line was "
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Football=20Draft=20+=20T.G.I.=20Friday=27s=AE=20==20Touchdown=21?="

Wow, compelling! Makes me want to open it.

Below is the email as I received it in my Yahoo! Mail.

You Take the Good, You Take the Bad...

Wel, perhaps I was a bit too hasty to applaud Lane Bryant (see March 25th post). After heading down to the store and picking up my order on the 25th, on the 30th I got another email... reminding me to pick up my order at the store.

You mean to tell me, their CRM system doesn't have a pickup flag that can suppress these emails? I have to wonder now, how many more I will get. This thought doesn't make me want to use their in-store pickup again.

You should always have a suppression system in place for these sort of transactional emails - e.g., don't send an email asking for a product review on an item someone has returned; once someone has submitted said review, don't send them a follow-up reminder to review it; and so on.

A Smart Cross-Channel Tactic

So I decided to try Lane Bryant's new ship-to-store service, since it's free. When I received the confirmation email a few days later, letting me know that my item was ready to be picked up, I was pleasantly surprised by the ad at the bottom:




A coupon for 30% off at the store, which is only valid when I come and pick up my online order. What a great way to get someone (like me) to purchase, rather than just walking in, grabbing my order, and leaving. Do you have site-to-store? Do you cross-promote your channels? It can drive incremental revenue!

Easy Ways to Make Your Analytics Program Work for You

First off, if you have someone internal who does analytics for your company, it is worthwhile to log in and do some exploration yourself. Many analytics people have to be focused on several departments' goals at once, and may not have the same ideas in mind that you do about what is important for your email program.

Looking at customer behavior in depth can give you some amazing insights into buying habits and engagement. Here is an example from my own experience.

We send 5 consumer emails on a regular basis. One of these emails converts at a significantly lower rate than the others. In digging into the data, I discovered that the most popular time historically for sales on that site is around 5 PM on Wednesdays. We had been sending our emails out on Wednesday mornings. This week, I ran an A/B split test, with half of the emails going out at the regular 10:30 AM, and half at 3 PM (allowing for ESP throttling, so that the emails would definitely arrive by 5).

Since the emails were just sent yesterday, I don't yet have the data back to see which was the winner. I'll share those results next week. The point of all of this is, you never know what you are assuming about your customers and your program until you dig into the numbers yourself. And, of course, test like crazy.

Bad for Business

I received the following "cold-call" email yesterday, along with a follow-up voicemail (which was left at 7 PM ET - West Coasters, not everyone works your hours....)

While I usually delete these unsolicited "we have great services" emails, this one I kept around to use as a great example of what not to do when trying to get a busy professional to respond to you.

See if you can spot the problems. (Click the image to see it larger.)



Here is what jumped out at me:

• Bad Grammar & Spelling: Always, always have someone else look over your emails before you send them out, especially if you are fuzzy on your grammatical rules. Not only do several of the calls to action not even make sense ("Are you currently doing any media planning or any of your products/services?"), but there is no better way to look completely unprofessional and as though you don't really care as to send out an email that is rife with easily-fixable grammar and spelling issues. If I were the Academy of Art, I would be very upset that my marketing partner spelled my name incorrectly!


• Not Doing Your Homework: I do online marketing for a company that sells sporting equipment. Our main audience is male, between 30-65. Look at the Audience section: mostly women, stay-at-home moms? Why would I pay you to reach exactly the opposite of my target audience?


• Who Are You Again?: This email really does an awful job of explaining to me why you are emailing, beyond trying to sell me something. While the sender mentions he has "taken over the territory" (which sounds like a gang turf war or a military coup), he doesn't tell me how I was introduced to his company or where he found me. I have no known associations with your company; why should I take time out of my busy day to read your email?

Have any other ideas how this email could have been done better?

Step Away from My Inbox

Oh, Carlson Hotels, what were you thinking?

There are at least 3 things wrong with this email I received a few weeks ago. See if you can spot them.



1) The entire crux of the email is a pitch trying to get me to sign up for their email program. Um, if I asked you NOT to send me emails, why would you then proceed to email me? Just because it is technically permitted by CAN-SPAM, does not mean it is a good practice.

2) No unsubscribe link. That's right, not only did they send this email without my permission, they also didn't provide a way for me to make sure they don't email me again.

3) "This is a post only email. Please do not reply." These words should never appear in any customer-facing email. Ever. Customers should always have a way to contact you. Plus, in this case, it makes this email in violation of CAN-SPAM since there is no way whatsoever to opt-out - no unsubscribe link (see #2) and no way to reply with an unsubscribe request.

Carlson Hotels, major fail on your part.

How could this campaign be improved? I gave you permission to snail-mail me. How about sending me an enticing offer via mail, encouraging me to sign up for your emails? While it won't deliver immediate responses, or probably have as good of a return rate, it also won't be illegal. And it won't make me do what this email did - close my account entirely.