Excuse me, I believe I ordered the extra large email creative.

This will be one of many posts on email faux pas as there are so many people out there that either don't know what they are doing or simply forget the basic rules of the game. Even my husband knows a faux pas when he sees one. He forwarded this email to me earlier in the week. Can you spot its major malfunction? (Took me four screenshots just to get the whole enchilada.) Stay tuned for next time when we rip this email a new alt tag, if you know what I mean.

Mimi and me

The center of North Park is home to many restaurants and shops, plenty of which could use some help in the email marketing department. One boutique clothing shop in particular is at least trying. Mimi and Red, located at 3032 University, went all out and got themselves a fancy eCommerce platform, meaning you can purchase items through their website. Even more exciting, you can use information gathered from this shopping traffic to market further into the life cycle. For example, if someone fills their online cart with a few items and then suddenly abandons ship, you can send an email a few days later reminding them that they left said items in their cart. A previous blog post mentions that this very thing happened to yours truly, and I liked it. Very good practice if you can afford the eCommerce platform plus the analytics and have the resources to be able to identify the items the customer was so close to purchasing. But I digress. Back to my main topic...

So upon sign up to Mimi and Red, I received not one, but two sign up confirmations. The first simply read "Newsletter subscription success." The only good thing to note was that I received this almost instantly after sign up, but clearly, this isn't an email that needs to be sent to the subscriber. Dislike.

The second sign up confirmation was a welcome letter, also received rather quickly. Ahh, much better. This has a nice large header but doesn't take up too much precious above-the-fold real estate. Also, they kindly sent my username and password (my pw has been censored in the below image for privacy reasons -- get your own!) for future reference, along with a list of benefits I can access if and when I log in. Good job, Mimi.

Ways to improve upon this welcome letter? Add an image, stop centering all your content, and for god sakes, add a little bonus discount to use when I go shopping online or in store. If not a discount, give me something. A piece of candy, a gold star, I don't care. I just want to feel special because I gave you my personal email address. What are you gonna give me in return?

To add insult to injury, Mimi has yet to send me an actual marketing email. I signed up a month ago (June 14). Today's date? July 14. Nothing, nada, zip, zero. I actually almost forgot I signed up at all. What gives?

Word to the wise: Do not bother adding an email sign up form to your website if you don't plan to deliver emails. Or if you only plan on sending monthly, quarterly, or semi-annual newsletters, then say so in the first place.