MarketingSherpa Blog

I am a frequent shopper at J. Crew.

It is a great brand and I even have one of the store credit cards with the absurd interest rate because I‘ve shopped there to the point that I’ve convinced myself the perks far outweigh the costs.

After all of my online purchases and in-store interactions, I would love to think J. Crew has a tremendous amount of data on my purchase history.

So when I recently received an email from J. Crew that challenged those beliefs, I wanted to share it in this MarketingSherpa Blog post as a great example of why segmentation is so vital in today’s marketplace.

Every inbox is only one step from the trash

Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, often says a typical email recipient skims their email inbox for what can be deleted.

I agree because I never can think of a time when I was relieved by the sight of a massive pile of emails that I needed to sift through.

I also trust J. Crew and have an interest in what it sends me, so when I read the subject line:

“Something very good for you is inside…”

It sparked my interest, especially when coupled with the preheader of “25% off (exclusions apply).”

It definitely got a click from me.

Here’s the email I opened after reading the subject line. The research manager in me can’t help but analyze its contents.

The body of the email, while being simplistic, has continuity from the subject line.

Well played, J. Crew!

There was also no superfluous content from what I could tell, which can distract recipients and even cause abandonment.

The call-to-action matched my expectations from the subject line and there was no attempt to make a sale in the body of the email.

All of these factors combined convinced me to click through.

And then it happened

Here’s a screenshot of the landing page J. Crew sent me to.

It did a great job at capturing my interest with the subject line and converting that attention into action – in the form of a clickthrough. However, it lost me on the landing page.

I landed here, looked at the page for a few seconds and left.

One thing the company should have known about me from my purchase history is that I’m unlikely to purchase women’s apparel.

Read more…

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at a recent email marketing send to promote a MarketingSherpa webinar about social media, sponsored by Eloqua. I wanted to share it with you, because while it was quite simple to do, the results were pretty impressive.

Before we get into it, I want to stress that this was not intended to be a valid A/B split test (there is a validity threat that I’ll get to in a moment), so take the results with a grain of salt. However, it is a good example of sending different versions of an email to different segments of a list. For that reason, this is a tactic we do think is worth trying (and perhaps testing) with your own lists.

TEMPLATE VERSION

From: MarketingSherpa [reply@reply.marketingsherpa.com]

Subject Line: [Webinar] 4 steps to drive a measureable social strategy

Click to enlarge

Read more…

Pilots have it easy. All they do is flip on the autopilot, order some Sleepytime® tea from the galley, and get a little shuteye, snoozing across the Atlantic, until they land at Schiphol (word of caution: this is based on my utter lack of knowledge of what pilots actually do … but thanks for getting us there safely).

In all seriousness, marketers have an autopilot, too … of sorts – the automated, event-triggered email. When I read Megan McCardle’s line in Newsweek, “Looking for a fail-safe plan to get rich without working?” I thought, “That could almost be a description of triggered emails.”

Think about it: Triggered emails offer the Holy Grail of email marketing that is so difficult to achieve – relevant, timely information.

I sign up to your email address, you welcome me … right at the moment I am most interested in receiving emails from you. And, perhaps, I hop right on a promotion in that welcome email, since you’re reaching me at the peak of my interest in your company (hey, I just signed up for your list).

Or I abandon a shopping cart because the product is 20% too expensive and then, poof, like magic, I get a 20% discount code in my inbox.

Or it’s my birthday, and you give me a free bottle of prosecco or wine to celebrate (hey, I’m going out tonight anyway), as Pizza Express did for Kate …

Read more…

For our money, PETCO has always done a good job with their online marketing, specifically in email. And that’s part of the reason why it was intriguing to see their most recent email campaign where John Lazarchic, Vice President of Ecommerce, for the pets products eretailer, penned a short letter truly in the form of a personal email. Read more…