What’s On Tap? Bad Emails
Nov 13 2008
If you have ever tried Fat Tire beers you are most likely a fan. But why do some brand kill themselves with bad email marketing. I have long been a subscriber to many beer email lists (for business reasons only I assure you) but these guys kill me. I think I might need to make a charity phone call soon as these emails continue to hurt my good senses each time I get them.
They have a great brand, a great beer and some good grass roots campaigns, but IMHO these emails are killing their brand. Yes folks email is also a branding engine for those of you that might feel it is all about the ROI and the sales. In the case of Consumer Packaged Good there is not always an immediate lift that you can get from an email campaign. You need to send them to the stores, or in this case pubs.
The fact that they brand the From line as “The Tinkerer” might in inline with their brand, but it always strikes me as some spam. Why don’t they send it from New Belgium Brewing? Would that be so bad? I mean doesn’t Coors, Bud, Widmer, Bridgeport, and Deschutes use their brand name to send from? This just kills me. Who is in charge? Call me.
But then we get into the creative, or lack there of. I know I might sound like an email snob sometimes, but I am also a beer SNOB and when you put these two together you and only expect me to vent. This email is so poorly executed on so many levels that it pains me. Help me. Do I need to go buy more of your beers? Do I need to call you and do your email marketing for you? I would be happy to. Or do I just need to unsubscribe? I really don’t want to. I like your brand and your beers, but you are letting my expectations die each time I get an email from you.
Please call me before your next email goes out. Or call someone.
- Posted by Dylan Boyd
- @dtboyd
- at 1:00 PM
Published in Brand Marketing, Email Design, Worst Of Email, eMail Marketing Optimization
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...
November 13th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
So true. Many people who aren’t tech savvy just don’t see the importance or value of email. That comes through in their email marketing.
The problem is that you are 100% right, emails is just as much of a brand builder as billboards or tv. In fact, for some people email is even stronger than those other mediums.
So when someone sends out emails that are so low quality it definitely shakes my confidence that they are an actual company, and not just two guys in a warehouse.
Of course, now I won’t sign up for their newsletter unless they offer me a free beer…
November 14th, 2008 at 7:04 am
Agree with you and Adam on branding. It also seems they’ve lost a little of the “what’s in it for me?” idea in this email. Why do you care if they have a new tap handle? Does that mean the beer will be sold in more pubs? Does it mean cheaper beer? What does it mean to you, the consumer?
I do like the idea of “The Tinkler”, maybe they could make a play on using it in the subject line versus the from name.
-Kelly Lorenz
——–
Thanks Kelly. I agree too. Well the tap handle is actually a VERY important branding tool in the beer world. When you walk into a pub you look at handles. So knowing what they look like helps you know what beer to order. Next time, as I know you Brontos frequent the pubs, take a look at HOW big and colorful handles are. That is if you, DJ and Adam can still focus on those things.
This email could be so much better. Maybe I just need a drink to forget it.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:48 am
I guess I don’t pay enough attention to the tap handles, I’m guilty of always falling back on my old favorites – which I won’t tell you what those are for fear of taunting. But my point still stands. Tell me to be on the lookout for it. Tell me how it will make drinking the beer better. Something! The email, as it is now, reads like an internal memo to their distributors.
Maybe it will look better once I put my beer goggles on.
-Kelly
November 14th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Hi – it’s Mel from New Belgium. We found your post and took it to heart. We pride ourselves on our creativity, and I think from the work on followyourfolly.com and newbelgium.com, it’s evident we have online talent. That’s why, with the subscription emails, we decided to drive people straight to our blog: news.newbelgium.com. We never intended for the email to be the brand experience because – you are right – it isn’t a brand experience. In fact we weren’t even considering it to be an email campaign, just an alert to the new post. That’s why I only put one open-ended line in the email so that people will click through to the blog to read the rest. Is this a bad assumption? (I sense you nodding your head.)
The name The Tinkerer relates to our founder and owner, Jeff Lebesch, and we thought it was a fun name for our blog. But your comment on why we’re not putting New Belgium in the From line is a good suggestion and we intend on doing that. Again, I probably wrongly assumed that the people who subscribed online would recognize “The Tinkerer.”
We used to do an email newsletter that was text only, but we replaced it with The Tinkerer blog in hopes of making it more visually compelling while not clogging subscribers’ inbox. I thought we figured out a solution with the alert and excerpt feature on WordPress.
While I am not an email expert, I appreciate great work and want New Belgium to be represented well on all fronts. We are doing some really cool stuff in print that is getting noticed:
http://thedenveregotist.com/article/1791/new-new-belgium-print-via-cultivator
We also have great films on our site that we’ve created in-house. In January, we are going to launch a new website that will incorporate all of our urls and provide a better user experience.
So, I hope you can still appreciate our brand aesthetics, our beer, and our humble attempts and getting our news out. Thanks for challenging us to do better.
- Melyssa Glassman, Creative Director
———-
Thanks Mel. Actually email IS a brand experience and a direct offshoot of anything they touch online or offline. It would be great to see you take as much time and love with your email programs as you do with your beautiful websites and amazing beer. To me it is like spending so much time crafting a beer that is perfect and then throwing it in a ziploc bag and hoping someone trusts your brand enough from a past experience or word or mouth reference to try drinking from the bag instead of your great bottles.
Understand, I live in Portland, Oregon, home to some of the best craft beers in the world and I am a bit of a beer freak. Ambers, IPAs, Stouts, Porters, YUMMM. I just WANT you to be better than you are now. I know from all the design work your team does that you have it in you. You can knock it out of the park and deliver on expectations that not only I, but your fans and consumers have with your brand.
Changing the From Line would benefit you immensely and using the subject line to set the expectations of the creative inside would help as well. I was also looking at your site and blog and could not find a way to sign up for your newsletter? Have you taken the subscribe system off your sites?
When you get ready to launch your new site also take into consideration the email subscription and welcome process. Think about how you are aligning the welcome, collecting the info you need, setting expectations of when and what they will be getting, and give them a way to manage their profile with you to tell you more (Progressive Profiling). I will stay a subscriber as I want to see how you grow this program in the coming year.
Now if you will excuse me, I am going to run out and pick up a case of Fat Tire Amber Ale, ice it down, and share it in a toast to you and your future success with our team.
Call me if you want next week as I am happy to give you advice in exchange for a new Fat Tire Hat, Shirt or Sticker.
November 24th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Did you receive our latest email?
Better?
Also, the subscribe button is at the top left side menu on the Tinkerer – news.newbelgium.com
—
Mel:
I did get it. I actually looked at it about 20 times just to make sure that I could believe my eyes. Nice work. Really makes a difference in making those changes to your program. I wonder… did it change any of the metrics of those you send it to?
All the best to you, and now I must got buy another case of Fat Tire since you listened. Fair?