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When Templates Fail

Aug 19 2009

We know that so many people spend time and money to create an email template that works well in all the email clients, save time and money with each new campaign, build an expected email for subscribers to know where to look and what to do, and give some flexibility for promotions and new content. But what gets to me is when people fail to actually use and complete a template leaving a area of it blank. It feels so JV to me and makes me wonder why they don’t take the time to see what else can be added, or simply edit the template to work for that campaign.

hundreds-of-flights-for-less-than-100-one-wayAs I travel frequently I am signed up for most of the Airline emails and am impressed with most of them. But SW seems to frequently be the culprit in using an email template and failing to use it right. I mean they are a discount airline so could this lack of content save them money? Doubt it.

What I would hope that you learn from this post is to look at how you are using your templates if you use them in your email platform and find ways to create a few versions of them so that you can not leave massive blocks of emptiness in them. It feels unprofessional and to me shows a lack of effort by the email marketer. Even taking the time to reorganize the content in this case could have helped them to deliver a flushed out email, avoiding the gaps.

Have you ever been guilty of rushing a campaign out the door with a lack of content or taking the time to button it up?

Here is the funny thing about this email that I am critiquing, I actually booked a flight from it for a trip this month… so maybe it does not matter in the short run to conversion, but instead does some harm to the overall brand.

Thoughts?


Published in Behavioral Marketing, Best Practices, Brand Marketing, Email Design, Worst Of Email

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6 Responses

  1. 1
    Ian McCollum says:
    August 19th, 2009 at 9:10 am

    This could have been avoided with a simple valign=”top”.


  2. 2
    Chris Wheeler says:
    August 19th, 2009 at 9:36 am

    It appears that the whitespace here (I admit, I don’t get SW email) is a product of the right nav bar showing the latest targeted specials. Perhaps their web dev needs to tweak the template to have only a few specials show and then a “more” button driving you to the landing page for the full list.


  3. 3
    Deborah says:
    August 19th, 2009 at 10:05 am

    I call it a failure of the template. They should have inserted a valign=”top” for that cell.


  4. 4
    Dylan Boyd says:
    August 19th, 2009 at 12:21 pm

    Chris:

    Sadly enough it is a weekly – of not more often occurrence. How about a new design that works?


  5. 5
    Chris Wheeler says:
    August 19th, 2009 at 2:18 pm

    That works too. A company of SW size and stature should know better and either outsource or have someone internally code the template up correctly.


  6. 6
    Andrew Kordek says:
    August 22nd, 2009 at 10:01 pm

    Whitespace aside..what is up with all of their disclosures at the bottom of the email? I notice this amongst some other companies as well. My experience has been to put a short disclosure statement at the bottom and to have folks click to find out all of the disclosures. I wonder if its the legal department requiring this or could it be a regulatory body? Anyway..would love to know.