All posts in ‘E-mail Marketing’
Saturday, 27 August 2011
Confirmation is not an easy thing. I mean, what can you send back to the customer more than a confirmation? Is there anything else you CAN send? If so – what and when?
Many ready-made web shop solutions don’t seem to offer possibilities to adjust receipts. No, you have to go in and write codes and build it yourself. If you have the opportunity to get some help from your e-mail service provider it’s a good idea to accept it. Too simple receipts with limited possibilities to apply additional value or extra information about the order can really bring down the shopping experience for the customers.
But with Amazon the customer can feel safe. If you once created an account and placed an order with Amazon you can be prepared for an easy buying experience. Their receipts are detailed and you always know what you get. Sometimes though they can’t send a certain product from the UK to Sweden, which means that you have to visit another web shop – maybe one you’ve never visited before, and one that isn’t Swedish. In that case it’s extra important that you feel secure.
Here are my latest mail receipts. I chose a shop in random, since Amazon couldn’t deliver what I wanted. It happened to be Peter Burrowes in London.
There are mainly three things about Peter Burrowes’ mail receipts that I like.
1. It’s very clear how to get in touch with them. The telephone number is placed in the header, big and clearly visible. It sticks out more than anything else in the e-mail. Nevertheless, they even repeat it in the text, in case I missed it.
2. Very soon I get another e-mail telling me that they’ve now sent my order and they give me a tracking number in a ready-made link, which I just click on to get more information about where my parcel is right now. I don’t have to cut and paste information from the e-mail to the tracking page.
3. They encourage me to mark my ordering. My view point is appreciated, regardless if it’s negative or positive. They offer a reduction of 5% with my next order if I tell them what I think about my shopping. This is a really creative way of increasing the number of customer comments. They are probably well aware of the fact that all types of customer commentaries will increase sales – also the negative ones.
My buying experience was good. It was very simple to order and I didn’t have to register an account. The delivery was very quick indeed. London – Malmö in two days is impressive.
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
I’m so delighted to have the opportunity to work on an e-mail project for a somewhat younger target group. Hopefully I’ll be able to tell you more about it soon. The company in question has a really humble approach towards the e-mail channel and is prepared to change and improve things to reach their goals in this regard. I feel so privileged to be a small part of all this. Well, I wanted to learn more about their target group so off I went to the Stapelbäddsparken, a great place for young skate boarders in Malmö. I felt a bit shaky when I approached these young skaters to ask them what kind of newsletter they want to read. And I was sooo astonished! Apart from being very compliant and happy that someone was interested in their point of view they delivered some surprising answers. Here are some of the questions and their answers:
Q: What about the content in a good newsletter?
A: Should be about new things, the latest, sale – all in cool pictures and we would like to see the products from various angles. Clothes for instance, should be worn by a skater when skating. Show pictures on Flickr! More information about skating competitions, tests of new boards, shoes a.s.o.
Q: Do you shop via e-mail?
A: YES! If we get an e-mail when we’re skating together, then we might check and shop together and order things. And we’re so happy that some American sites finally agree on sending products to us in Sweden. But we don’t want to wait too long for our things to get here, though.
Q: How do you feel about a company sending frequent e-mails wanting you to buy form them?
A: No problem, everybody has to make money. If it’s a good deal we gain from it – and so do they. That’s okay.
Q: How is a trustworthy company in your eyes?
A: They’re on our side and consider us as being a part of the society! We want a better status!
To sum up: While we in the ”older” generations talk about not wanting to shop from foreign parties via e-mails, the younger generation says: ”Yes, of course we will!” Youngsters don’t mind e-retailers selling via newsletters providing they offer good things and reasonable prices. That’s interesting! What did I learn? We can’t presuppose that we know what our costumers want. We have to ask them! Apparently newsletters will prevail also in the future generation! If they’re written as the customers want them, that is …
Here are some pictures of the kids I interviewed:
Thursday, 14 July 2011
Not only Amazon (which I told you about in my last post) but also Ebay uses my web history. They send emails with a list where they specify what I looked at last time and they ask me if I’m still interested in these articles.
In this case I had checked out a keyboard to my MacBook.
An interesting detail is that their emails are dynamically built. In the encircled area in the email above the products change every time I close and open the email – the same email, mind you. It’s not very common to see dynamical content in an email, especially where it’s used in such an intelligent way. Ebay really uses this cleverly. The disadvantage here is – I have to say – that everything is laid out as big pictures.
Ebay’s individually adjusted emails get three hearts out of five from me.
Tuesday, 12 July 2011
Have you ever experienced going to your local shop to buy butter – and returning home with everything except butter? I do that all the time. My head is full of thoughts, mostly thoughts about my job – seldom about butter.
That’s why I buy a lot of small things like screw drivers, for example, in web shops. It’s so easy to visit Amazon and click on the buy button as soon as I remember I need a screw driver. If I don’t do that I keep forgetting and what is broken remains broken for months.
Sometimes I even forget about the screw driver I’m about to click on if the phone rings or I get an important email. Anyhow, I shop a lot from Amazon.
When the above did happen, one day passed and an email from Amazon landed in my inbox. That screw driver I checked out, but forgot about, is the very first thing they offer!
I had had problems with finding good pens for some time, so I remember that I took the opportunity to search for pens at the same time. And yes, next time I visited Amazon there was a new offer: ”A livescribe echo Smartpen”!
There are many reasons why Amazon is a successful company. Do you by any chance believe that individually adjusted e-commerce is one of them?
Amazon ”remembered” what I was interested in last time I visited, they know how I want to pay and in what way I want my goods delivered. One click for one buy is everything they ask from me when I have put an article in my cart. And if I don’t click on the buy button, they remind me in their next email.
Listen and learn, e-retailers!
The individually adjusted emails from Amazon get four hearts!
Monday, 27 June 2011
I do like what Gary Vaynerchuk tells us in the first part of this clip. Click here to check.
Have you tried to contact those who want to unsubscribe from your newsletter?
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