From: Coach.com
Subject Line: Spring Blooms for Mother's Day at Coach
Date: Monday, May 1, 2006

From: Sephora Beauty Editors
Subject Line: Perfect Brows: A How-To Guide
Date: Tuesday, May 2, 2006

From: Room & Board
Subject Line: Room & Board from coast to coast
Date: Wednesday, May 3, 2006

In order to offer customers helpful information, establish their voices as authoritative, and (at the end of the day) hawk product, retailers have been putting lots of effort into creating long-winded, text-heavy Email Newsletters. In most cases, I do not recommend sending these types of messages for two main reasons:
1) The email inbox is a "fast and furious" locale. When we log into our email, we do so to dash off a quick message. When we want to read an article, we pick up a magazine or visit a website. Email isn't the right environment for content-heavy advertising.
2) Newsletters require lots of time and money to produce. A simple, graphical "Free Shipping" or "Sale" message will pretty much always drive more revenue than a newsletter, so why not send one of those instead?

This Coach.com Newsletter is the perfect example of what not to do. The folks at Coach flatter themselves if they think people want to read ad blurb after ad blurb. Folks will consult "In Style" or "Lucky" magazines (which are generally perceived as neutral third-party authorities) for this kind of information. For Coach, showing larger images of each product would be more aesthetically pleasing, more informative, and I would venture, more profitable. I would recommend separating the topics featured here - "Whites", "A Fruitful Season" and "Techno Savvy" - into three separate email messages, each featuring large product shots and a sentence or two at maximum. Also, on a technical level, this newsletter suffers from the same deficiencies noted in my April 5 entry.

The Sephora Newsletter at least attempts to present useful information rather than just describe what's for sale. They've done a really nice job integrating pointers with product; I admire this email for it's content quality and organization. Still, I believe we'd rather read this type of article in "Vogue" or at a makeup artist's website. I'd recommend sticking to a simple, product photography-based email message that perhaps links to an article like this, or even better, links to a multi-buy landing page that allows us to put any number of these products into our shopping basket with a single click.

Last but not least: Room & Board. If you're going to send an Email Newsletter, this is really the right amount of content to present. Rather than overwhelming us with tons of text, Room & Board chooses a theme - "American Craftsmanship" (which at the moment is taking a serious hit from low-priced foreign manufacturers) - and offers us simple intros to full-length topical articles hosted on their website. Again, I doubt many direct sales will result from this type of message, but at least Room & Board has delivered something manageable and coherent.

All of that said, next time you're considering producing an Email Newsletter... just send a "Sale" message instead ;).