From: Crate and Barrel
Subject Line: Thanksgiving Countdown Ideas. Free Shipping, too.
Date: Thursday, October 26, 2007

From: chefs
Subject Line: Day 1: Countdown to Thanksgiving Free Shipping Any Size Order
Date: Monday, October 29, 2007

Thanksgiving is a super-prep-heavy, gear-intensive holiday - one I personally plan to never ever host. The crazy-complicated big-budget Hollywood movie production nature of the feast gives retailers a number of angles from which to approach it. Enter the email series! Both Crate and Barrel and chefs kicked off a Thanksgiving series this week, which makes for an interesting comparison.

Let's start with subject lines. They both boiled down to the same thing - "Thanksgiving Countdown" and "Free Shipping" - only chefs' SL unfortunately had a relatively "Me Talk Pretty One Day" ring to it: "Day 1: Countdown to Thanksgiving Free Shipping Any Size Order". Is that grammatical!?

Moving into the creative, I was charmed by chefs' tip about how to set the table. It's embarrassingly true that I'm always uncertain as to where to put the fork, and I appreciate that they were willing to get so basic. But I was disappointed that the content tidbit was totally unrelated to the imagery featured below it. Why not show place settings!? And while chefs' clearly read Chad White's "All I Want for Christmas Are Daily Deal Emails" Reportlet, I would have loved to have seen the deal relate to the story as well. (A pastry blender couldn't be more random!)

Conversely, Crate and Barrel did a beautiful job weaving together content with relevant imagery; their message has a very editorial feel. I love the "N weeks" graphical header, which I assume we'll see as a visual tie between each email in the series. I also enjoyed the lead-in to next week's topic, "talking turkey." Still, call me a "marketer's designer" all you want, but I don't think it would hurt too much to add a few obvious points of click-through to encourage sales? C'mon, kids! Think of it as a form of customer service...

Last point: while I've been constructively critical, I do want to hand it to both chefs and Crate and Barrel for two signs of email program maturity:
(1) Planning far enough in advance to even conceive of an email series and
(2) Having planned it, executing it, despite an email or two that may not generate as much short-term revenue as - say - a sale message might. Hooray for saying no to email crack cocaine!

Last pointless: I personally do not enjoy turkey. However, that leaves more room for multiple servings of dessert. My Thanksgiving prep tip: don't forget the punch n' pie!