Emailology for Anthropologie

Received my weekly/biweekly email from Anthropologie today. This store is amazing and they have amazing emails to match, but I must warn you, not everyone can pull this kind of amazingness off. Here are three risky things you can try once you've established your brand and you're ready to move your creative to the next level.

 

1) It's an extra wide email. Previously, they've sent emails in the 650-700px range, but this one is definitely on the plus side of 700px. This isn't terrible, but not all ESPs are created equal and somewhere someone is wondering why they are scrolling horizontally. A good rule of thumb is about 600-650px.

 

2) There is no "header" because they've cleverly tucked their logo into the creative. The creative itself is nothing to shake a stick at. It's a lifestyle image photo, made to look like a drawer filled with odds and ends. It's a testament to their brand and style. Love it.

 

3) No text (short of some required and best practices verbiage, but we'll point out that error in a second). Not including text is for the bold and well branded. If you're having deliverability issues, you need to ensure that you're using a good ratio of text to images. Chances are most people aren't seeing your images and without any text to read, the email will look broken. Worse, your unsubscribe rate will begin to climb. Who wants broken emails?

 

Here's the email. Isn't she beautiful? Makes me want to break out my glue and button collection and go nuts. 

 

Now on to the bad parts. Two things.

• Broken view online link
• No snippt/intro text

Maybe you've been living in a bomb shelter until now and you don't know what a view online link is. It's the little link you click when your email looks messed up. Well, I clicked Anthropologie's and it was a relative URL instead of an absolute path, meaning it didn't take me anywhere. Ooops. I'm going to go out on a limb and blame CheetahMail for this one.

 

As for the snippet text, maybe Anthropologie didn't want to "clutter" their creative by adding a simple line of text at the top of their email, but this is what their email looked like in my inbox.

 

 

The subject doesn't allude to any sale or special deal and it might not get as many opens as it could have, but more importantly, the precious real estate to the right of the subject line, also known as the snippet text, was completely wasted with the "Having trouble viewing this email?" line. They could have easily said something about the new summer line being available. But no. They sacrificed the extra sell for their creative. Overall, the email gets points for creativity and standing out, but didn't score so well in the standard best practices category.

 

Stay tuned for later this week when I discuss a neighborhood clothing boutique. Watch out North Park!

The Loft's Loft

Today we're going to name a big differentiator between rookie email programs and the big dogs. It's called cart abandonment.

On Tuesday, I received an enticing email from Ann Taylor's Loft. $10 bucks for a shirt? I'm always on the lookout for deals like this, so I clicked the Shop Now link.

I found a few things, guessed my size, threw it in my cart and even used their nice promotion code to get 40% off already reduced items. Well, if you can believe it, two $10 shirts and a little clutch purse turned into a $70 order, even with the promo code. Shipping and taxes were almost $20, so I abandoned my cart with full intentions to drive the two miles to my local mall and see the goods face to face. 

Two days later, after all memory of wanting to purchase new duds and accessories had faded, I received an email with a subject line that read, "Come back: your shopping bag is waiting for you." Oh yeah, I think to myself. What did I want to buy again? So I open it:

A friendly reminder. Thanks, LOFT, for helping me remember that I wanted to spend money at your store. (One con: I removed the sweater (left image) from my cart before I abandoned, so not sure how this data is captured and stored, but it should be looking at the details right before the abandon action.)

Not enough companies are doing the above, even with the knowledge that open rates are extremely high and the ROI will knock your socks off. It's truly like stealing candy from a baby. Other ways to execute this plan include adding a bonus promotion code to sweeten the pot. The company recognizes that there's a reason the subscriber abandoned in the first place, would free shipping tip the conversion scale? 

As I see it, yes

Your beer is good, your weekly newsletter...eh.

At least one Saturday a month, I venture out with husband and dog to a local watering hole named Hamilton's Tavern on North Park's well known 30th street. They have a laid back vibe with a very loyal following for various events. Plus, you can bring in your pup as long they are of the housebroken non-barking variety. Here's a screenshot of their website. Branded, organized, informative, not bad for a bar.

Now let's take a look at an example weekly email from Hamilton's Tavern (The screenshot below depicts only what is "above the fold" in Gmail):

 

What is this? A text based email? Someone horsing around with bordered cells and tables? No offense, Hamilton's Tavern, but this is bad. Really bad. You can do so much better. The first thing I have to point out is your large header. You list all of this info week after week, but that's all I see when I open this email. What do you want to tell your customers? Put that at the top. And no logo? Really? You're all over Twitter and probably make a killing on your second Saturday events, but you don't even have a logo in your email. That's just crazy.

Good news. There's an easy fix to rocket launch your emails into the 21st century. First, take your website shell, navigation and all, and use it as a new email template (some code modifications may be required to ensure ISP rendering and best practices). Now your email is branded and you're linked up to your website. Next, edit your content. What's the weekly beer special? What's new on tap? Any upcoming events? Place this info neatly into the main content space. And please, PLEASE don't go overboard with the bolding and underlining of various words and phrases. This only confuses us. We will find the information we are looking for. Trust. Below is a mockup of what your emails COULD look like. Good luck and happy conversions.

Modus Operandi

I receive a lot of email. A lot. And because my 9-5 revolves around email management, I tend to be overly critical about layouts, rendering issues, and functionality. My biggest peeve is a shady unsubscribe process. Or when I simply want to receive less email, but giant corporation X doesn't have a simple preference center. What could they possibly be spending their marketing budget on? Banner ads? Ha!

So I want to blog about the emails that arrive in my personal inbox. I'll describe what I think are industry no-nos and what I think works. I'll be both email critic and subscriber. And hopefully, if you're lucky, I won't give you the big middle finger and unsubscribe from your email program.

I'm not claiming to be all-knowing or the best, but my opinions and thoughts may help you do a better job at giving people what they asked to receive in the first place.