Simple Segmentation

This is really kind of sad. CB2 failing at the most simple of segmentations. I previously purchased from them, so they know I live in Boston, yet they sent me an announcement about the opening of their store in Miami. Maybe they just want me to think they're cool because they have a location in South Beach...

Cyber What Day?

On Tuesday, MediaPost ran an article about whether or not using terms like Black Friday and Cyber Monday are really effective marketing strategies. Coincidentally, I had been wondering the same thing, and had done an informal survey of some friends who are not in the retail or marketing fields to see what they thought.

The results weren’t that surprising to me. Basically, Black Friday and Cyber Monday were seen as advertising fluff. They didn’t increase motivation for shopping, and no one really knew the origin of the terms. The main motivator was whether or not an item was on sale for a good price.

Having said that, Black Friday and Cyber Monday were pretty successful for retailers this year. GSI Commerce said that on the more than 100 retailer sites they operate, at the peak operating time, consumers placed 789 orders per minute, up 60% from last year. Cyber Monday saw the highest traffic, with the busiest time being between 9 and 10pm, rather than during the lunch hour, followed by Black Friday, which saw activity starting earlier than ever, with shoppers going online between midnight and 6am.

Retailers relied heavily on e-mail to get both online and in-store traffic over the holiday weekend. According to the Retail Email Blog, e-mail volume was at an all time high, with retailer participation on Black Friday tracking 10% higher than 2008, Cyber Sunday up 9% (making it the highest volume Sunday ever) and Cyber Monday up 1% over 2008 levels. You can download a report of their findings from Smith Harmon’s Web site.

I would be interested to see if any retailers did subject line testing for their Thanksgiving holiday e-mails to see if using percent or dollar off language got more opens, clicks and conversions than using Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Let me know if you hear of any!

Land's End Blew Me Away

I have been a fan of Land's End's e-mail marketing for a while. They really think things through and use interesting design, including animated GIFs to show product features, etc.

A couple of days ago I got an e-mail from Land's End that blew me away.

The e-mail was promoting a charitable event, promoting winter coat donations for the homeless. They did a great job with the targeting, knowing that I live in the Boston area, including a Boston landing page.

The video's call to action was for me to watch a video about the program, and it promised to include me in a starring role. The video was very heartwarming, showing the life of a Land's End jacket, making it into the hands of a homeless person.



What amazed me was at the end, they show a homeless person getting a donated jacket, and the name tag inside the jacket was my name! Then they used my name again at the end with another call to action.

The only drawback I saw was that when I used the Forward to a Friend function to send a copy to myself, I actually got 4 copies of the forwarded e-mail!

Borders Subject Line Testing

Last week, Borders did some subject line testing.

Subject line testing can be the easiest test to do, but you want the two subject lines to be different enough to provide different motivators to open the message.

This test did a good job. The first subject was "Your Rewards Coupon Is Here" and the second was more descriptive of the contents, using "New Charlaine Harris, Coupon & More."

The content of the e-mail was 100% the same. For rewards members who are looking for the best deal, it's likely the rewards coupon message worked well, and for those interested in the latest releases, the other subject line may have piqued their interest.

Of course, I'm in both categories, being on the lookout for discounts and a big Charlaine Harris fan, so unfortunately I skewed their results. :-)

Welcome!

Hi all,
Welcome to my new blog, the e-mail water cooler.

My intention is to talk about all things e-mail marketing, including good things, not so good things, deliverability issues and the impact of the law on e-mail marketers.

I hope you all enjoy it and please comment!

Liz