The Email Wars

Do you have any idea how many emails you are going to start sending this week through the 1st week of January? Remember Christmas is just a date and not the end of the etailing season, it goes strong(er) after holiday sales for some brands. Better yet, do  you subscribers have ANY idea how many you are going to send them? Do they know what/when/why? Most likely they have no clue and are going to go into retail shock as well these next few days duking it out with email offers, catalogues and store aisles. I know that in some cases with clients I work with they are moving from 2-4 a month to 2-4 a week. What? Yep you heard it. Getting very aggressive to be in the inbox when the subscribers are “in-market”.

What struck me was an email from Zappos this past week. Now the execution could have been clearer with font sizes and visual organization, or even better just focus on the core messaging to better place the value proposition front and center; but over all it was a genius idea. Setting the expectations of what is to come. Here comes the holidays, here is what to expect when (Read the content that I BOXED in orange), what you can do with it and why you want to look for it. Better yet it ends with “LOVE” and a note that the “story” starts Monday.

I have to admit I was excited to see what this new “story” campaign would be. I was impressed with the time spent to pre-educate an email subscriber/customer as to what to expect. I am just starting to get the emails now and I will hold complete judgement until after the 5 week “story” is complete.

This was relevant to me last week as I was planning a retail client Nov/Dec campaigns/Frequency/offers and had this open day in the plan that was a transistion date between campaigns. What a perfect time to actually test the idea of communicating with the customers/susbscribers as to what ot expect.

I am seeing it in other emails as well – lead by example maybe? Love this idea and can’t wait to see how proactive communication on expected frequency steps out of the opt in and into the email.

Psst. We are testing this idea right now in some campaigns as well to see how it works out.