The Email Wars

So this week I has Dela Quist’s Study from AlchemyWorx on my brain. I was watching the flood of emails from retailers I have been getting and wondering based on Subject line length ONLY which ones were converting. Tell you the truth, it was all a crap shoot to me. I need to see the data and just making guesses only gets you in trouble. 

What to do? Well I emailed it to Dela and called on him to apply his learnings and knowledge of Subject Lines and conversions and tell me his quick impressions. Here is what I got (and yes he told me I could share it). 

Q: How Does this Subject Line work?

A: It is always difficult to answer a question like that without a clear understanding of what they are trying to achieve opens? clicks? sales online? or sales in store? Or as I can probably guess all of the above which is why I don’t think it is a very good subject line.

It is a single proposition email with a very strong and easy to communicate message – Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear – so nothing else is needed in the subject line, unless you strengthen the offer by injecting a call to action, add sense of urgency, additional value or just plain sell the products! I am not a copy writer or fashionista but here are some examples of what I mean.

 - Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear – come in and take a peek

- Classic Cashmere to Down Puffers – Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear

- Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear – this week only

- Look great for less this winter – Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear

- Beat the credit crunch – Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear

- Excusive offer: Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear

- Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear – Exclusive offer!

- Online exclusive! Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear

The problem with – Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear (online + in stores) is it tells you;

the offer isn’t special to you

there is no extra benefit to shopping online

it doesn’t encourage you to look or online window shop

it doesn’t SELL the fantastic clothes they have in stock

The real problem is that the email isn’t really providing the recipient with any more value than a very pretty message saying your order has been shipped. I would be very surpised if the offer wasn’t being promoted on TV, radio, press and banners and J Crew just threw in the email as a very small part of the mix

Now some more technical points I am sure you guys are all over this too but….

Sure it looks nice but from a technical point of view, given it is all images they really should make use of the alt tags and consider using background HTML.

Now you can tell me it broke all sales records!

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Thanks Dela. And how about this one… they send me an email, subject line, offer and image that was for a woman, even after emails, phone calls and changes to my email preferences. So to me… no conversion.