-Kelly

The Digest is innovative and it fits for them.

But there is more they should do to capture the massive business opportunity that is email.

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Thanks Ed. And I think if you keep your eyes peeled you will see where it goes. I will post ones as I get them.

But the reality that the Digest doesn’t work for ALL subscribers. Not even MOST. Just as an all promotions program doesn’t work for all subscribers, either.

So to DJ’s point – welcome to 2009. If you want to optimize, you must consider the various segments and interests and aim to create great subscriber experiences for MOST of your subscrcibers, MOST of the time, not just SOME of them, SOMEtimes.

I have had many a conversation with Zappo’s about moving from text (ugly, unformated, long and bulky) to HTML. In the end, we could never find the numbers to support that HTML would make the difference. The dedicated following of the Digest LOVED the clunkiness. But that just brings me back to point number one above.

Thanks, Dylan and all here for the good discussion. I like Guinness ;)

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The good news Steph is that they are moving in this direction already. I have been getting them for the 6pm.com brand and the Zappos brand. They are good. They moved from a home built system to a ESP system last fall. They have an amazing design team in house that is working hard to give the customers better emails and learning every step of the way.

They are going to rock you in 2009.

I do agree on a lot of the points made above about being on the outside looking in, and their social marketing and community efforts are fantastic. Looking forward to seeing them step into the 21st century in 2009 and maybe I’ll actually open and click-through a message one of these days.

I see this a lot with clients- due to manpower, technical skill, etc. they end up executing part of the overall marketing internet, e-marketing strategy well in a moderate sense, but key areas like email aren’t executed well. Almost moreso if they’re launching into social marketing. Direct mail companies tend to get the email strategy area better. So, though I haven’t followed Zappos’ emails, I wouldn’t be surprised if they suffered form web 2.0 malaise: poor email marketing. Mostly just acknowledgements and passwords, notifications, and nothing more. It’s not bad, it’s just a common pitfall. It seems like Zappos is on the forefront of a lot of good things in social marketing, so don’t want to bash them, but am not surprised if DJ sees faults in email marketing, and also not surprised that their overall vision is spot on.

I’ve see job postings for a director of email marketing @ Zappos all over the job sites the last two months. It seems to be a very strategy focused position so perhaps they are looking to beef up the email ops or maybe its just a replacement.

I am a zappos customer but I opted-out of the emails a long time ago from my personal account, they certainly didn’t provide me any value as a consumer. If they had given me targeted shoe specials that would have kept me engaged. I didn’t find any of the extra chatter helpful.

P.S. What is this doing on Zappos?
http://zeta.zappos.com/product/7483598/color/104143

2) I buy Dylan’s argument that there’s more to an email program than what ends up in the inbox and one needs to look at marketing programs from an integrated perspective.

3) From my perspective, however, Zappos has dropped the ball w/ email big time (see DJ’s post). At the very least, their transactional mail should have been better supporting the goals you mention above (sharing, commenting, promoting dialogue).

I too am glad to see that they are stepping up and making changes. In these times investing in the highest ROI channel out there makes good business sense.

Fantastic point Dylan, in all our Email Snobbery I think we come down a bit hard on people who may have a well planned out program that they are implementing. So some criticism may not be entirely deserved.

I also agree that providing information and content that subscribers want is paramount. So if you aren’t always selling your product then that’s great. Sometimes a medium can work best when it’s not a sales channel.

So if a company’s Grand Plan isn’t clear to us, perhaps we should go easy.

HOWEVER, and this is a big however, the recipient doesn’t have any insight into this Grand Plan either. So if they aren’t seeing any value out it right now, then it doesn’t matter.

So while we can go back and forth about what value zappos may see out of the program, you can easily see what value *you* as a zappos customer are or aren’t getting out of it.

A well devised Grand Plan won’t leave recipients wanting while they work their way to their goal. Is zappos meeting their clients needs right now? I don’t know. I’ll let you two keep arguing about that.

Btw, I prefer my beer Amber, but we can wait for Email Evolution in Arizona for that.

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Thanks Adam. I will bring the suds to AZ. I prefer gin and tonics in the desert.

I prefer a nice Porter or Stout, but THE BEAST will work…

I agree with your take on learning more about a company. I’d just caution readers to not use that as an excuse for a poorly executed email marketing campaign. An inside perspective does just that…gives you perspective, compassion, a better understanding. Bad email is bad email. Right?

Again, I agree with your point that we are all email snobs. I worry sometimes that most of my blog posts are dinging marketers for their crappy practices. Like you said, some of them are our own customers. However, I still think it is important for us – you, me, other bloggers, other ESPs – to continue to push marketers to be better. We work hard on this internally, preach it to our own clients, and shout it to the community. We don’t always succeed, but we gotta keep trying.

Finally, I totally love Zappos. I respect almost every aspect of their business – from CEO Tony to their dedication to customers. I love their transparency, use of social media, quirkiness, practice of paying employees to quit, etc. They are a model for what more companies could and should be like.

But…

Zappos needs help with their email marketing. I am stoked to see that this seems to be in the works.

Cross the party line? Not sure what that means, but…

Love the banter. See you in Park City.

dj

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Bring your A Game DJ. See you in Utah.