I’ve mentioned it before but today is the actual launch of the Email Standards Project. Why is this important? Well this page explains it all. It’s just as important that marketeers can deliver their message consistently as it is for (potential) customers to be able to read and view the messages they want to read after they’ve given their permission to be contacted.
Archive for the 'email marketing' Category
Pop up retail isn’t of course limited to the offline world. Amazon provides widgets for your blog or website, read the story on Mashable, or the original story on Problogger. Pop up retail is also happening (popping up?) however fleetingly in transactional emails, RSS feeds, blogs and social networks and affiliate and aggregate websites, although this trend seems more in B2B than B2C which inthe main hasn’t got to grips with the opportunities offered by Permission Marketing.
Topshop do this well as I’ve mentioned before, they also do the best bit of all which is join up their online and offline activity. Did anybody see their ice cream van recently? Many UK retailers are really missing the opportunity to use the web to create a buzz about their stores online or offline. Mass interruption advertising is (slowly) dying and the retailers that succeed will be the ones that integrate all their marketing activity, seamlessly and do it well.
A couple of websites worth checking out that are interesting models for a newer, more original retail online world are osoyou.com (following the fashion trend of black, white and a colour), Topshop of course as well as Asos (which I’ve just realised has a cookie to remember your sex, or at least the section you last looked at).
With an announcement today of the iPhone I wonder if this might be the catalyst that retail needs to become more mobile and start using the mobile medium and its opportunities more. It’ll be interesting to watch and see who gets to grips with mobile retailing and when.
At the risk of being labelled vindictive towards Ilva (probably too late for that) in their recent email sent last week there are several glaring mistakes. Remember the old adage “retail is detail” no wiser words can be uttered when it comes to the email marketing of your business. Here it is.
Firstly the whole thing is just one image, including the main text of the email. So when it’s received by someone with images turned off by default they’re not going to get any of the message apart from the footer box. You would expect some Alt text for the images but that’s non existent.
I forwarded it to my gmail account just to double check and here’s what happens (not much).
Then, to make matters worse the plain text version of the email is in Danish! Um …
Email is one of the best and most direct forms of marketing and with a permission based list you’re having a conversation with propects who’ve actively asked you to sell to them, although this example seems to support the widely held theory that email is the poor relation in some marketing departments. This is a main message to try and attract the crowds that are apparently lacking, I would have thought that it would be worth some proper code and testing before pressing the send button.
The buzz continues to roll for Topshop and the Kate Moss collection. Of course it will sell out practically straightaway perhaps even make the obligatory appearance on ebay. At the end of the day they’ve made it happen for which they must get a gret deal of credit.
Originaly there was much gossip about wether Kate Moss had precipitated the resignation of Jane Shepherdson, former head honcho at Topshop. This really signalled the start of a (viral?) PR and marketing campaign that will culminate on the 1st May with the launch of the Kate Moss collection. Yesterday’s Topshop stylenotes email included a link to a new Kate Moss Topshop website, a one page site along the lines of a Myspace page to whet our appetites.
Topshop it seems are getting it right online. Not only this quick preview type of website but also their ’style notes’ retain the interest every week, an RSS feed of their top 10 ‘Daily fix’, a Style Blog with competitions a video podcast site and more. There’s been much talk of retailers embracing web 2.0 and what it means to them (I know … let’s have a forum) with even a 16 page pullout in Retail Week. But, Topshop it seems are ahead of the game, especially since two thirds of UK fashion retailers don’t have a transactional website yet. I know it’s only April but are they going to miss out on online sales at Christmas again?
As the antithesis of Topshop’s multi stranded online marketing model Primark launches a new store in Oxford Street this week. Their website doesn’t exactly celebrate this, no doubt it’s in construction but it does let down what is otherwise a good value fashion retailer.
I love (especially today) Ikea’s idea of selling someone a kitchen through a valentine’s email. A bit of lateral thinking, a bit of effort with some recipes, a rich red kitchen and a couple of steamy robots and there you go. So much email marketing is uninspirational and has so little effort or thought applied to it it’s good to see something well thougt through and a link to a site that has a greate deal to hold the interest. Plus it arrived just before lunchtime so the food angle strikes home straightaway.
Food is the music of love after all, or is that the other way round?
Latest Comments
RSS