From: Sephora
Subject Line: 1 box, 10 gifts.
Date: November 16, 2008

I L-O-V-E Sephora's version of last year's Elf Yourself. Talk about creative. From start to finish, it's a seamless experience that even the most tech-challenged girl can navigate with ease. Here's the skinny: After you've uploaded a pic of yourself, you go through a series of steps where you outline your eyes, mouth and face shape. Sounds complicated, but trust me, they've made it blonde-proof. (It's okay, I can say that because I'm a blonde.) Once you've finished with the outlining, the real magic begins. Within seconds, you have four fun and fabulous looks to choose from: Smokey Sugar Plum, Merry Berry, Santa's Little Temptress and O, Tannen-Babe. It's your face all glammed up in four festive ways, complete with eye shadow, mascara, gloss and more. All that's left is for you to add a personal message and send it on to your fellow glamour gals. You'll get a sweet little email that lets you know your Mistletoe Message has been sent, and best of all, the savvy team at Sephora includes a promotion code in the confirmation email for a free set of lashes or a sample size of Sephora Lip Attitude with any purchase. Simply brilliant.

Want to see my Mistletoe Makeover e-Card?
Check it out here.

From: Crate & Barrel
Subject Line: Hurry...Free Shipping on bedding ends 9/30.
Date: September 25, 2008

From: Pottery Barn Kids
Subject Line: Dress Me Up - Our Exclusive Dolls Are Here!
Date: October 14, 2008

Let's take a minute to talk about store locators. Here's the deal: Email not only drives traffic to your website, it also drives traffic to your stores. In fact, companies with the ability to track their email subscribers' in-store purchases have the numbers to prove it. This is why including store information in your email is a slam dunk. Not only will it help drive sales, it also adds dynamic content, personalizes your message, and reinforces your subscribers' customer service experience.

My favorite execution is by Crate and Barrel. They include a banner at the bottom of each email they send me, with copy that reads: We're in the neighborhood. 155 Stockton Street, San Francisco, California. First, I love the friendly approach. Second, I love the click-through experience even more. When I clicked on the copy, I was taken to their store locator page on their website, complete with a map and a photo of the Union Square store. Nice touch.

Pottery Barn Kids also included a banner in their latest email, but the payoff wasn't quite as streamlined as the Crate and Barrel experience. At first I was impressed because they included a zip code field, which is a cool idea in theory. However, after entering my zip code, I expected to be taken to a page with a listing of all the stores in my 'hood. Not the case. I was taken to their general store locator landing page and asked to input my info again. The idea is there, they just need to work out the details.

If nothing else, adding store location information might be an interesting test to throw out there for the holidays, especially if you have exclusive in-store only merchandise you want to promote. If you know where your subscriber lives, you can recommend a specific store location, a la Crate and Barrel. If you don't, you can use a default message that takes your subscriber to your store locator page.

From: Sephora
Subject Line: Rate. Review. Win!
Date: Thursday, September 11, 2008
See the email >

Some of you might have already seen my EEC blog post about Customer Reviews. I'm psyched to see Sephora doing such a great job kicking off their Customer Review effort.

Deep thoughts:
(1) I love that they've branded Customer Reviews "kiss and tell." This is a cute way to make the feature feel special to Sephora.
(2) I'm laughing that they chose Dior DiorShow Mascara as the featured product, as I've been seeing it promoted everywhere lately and was just thinking this morning, as I applied my Chanel Inimitable Multi-Dimentionnel, that I needed the Dior. I like the Chanel, but for some reason I seem to poke myself in the eye with the wand much more than any other mascara I've had before. Or maybe I'm just not getting enough sleep and my motor skills are suffering because of it.
(3) It's smart that they incentivized review creation with contest entry.
(4) It's even SMARTER that they actually fed a product I recently bought into the mail. Yay for dynamic content! I'm not sure that Gift Certificates merit review, but who really cares? I'm happy enough to see Sephora bringing relevant, personalized elements into their email.
(5) I appreciate that - because the primary message won't drive many dollars - they included two sure-thing secondary messages in this mail: Free Ship and Best Sellers.

OK, last thing: I heard that Sephora employees are only allowed to wear red, black or white on-site, and that if they want to park their cars in the company lot, they must have either a red, black or white car. Is this actually true :)!? Friends at Sephora, I am curious! Do tell!

Happy Weekend!

From: Old Navy
Subject Line: Time to Play Favorites
Date: July 31, 2008

In keeping with the theme of this month's Smith-Harmon Loveletter, I want to take a minute to talk about preference centers.

Personalizing the inbox is no longer as easy as just including a Dear Jane as a greeting to your email or adding a name to your subject line. These days if you really want to deliver personalized messages that stand out in the inbox, you have to find out what your customers want. And you do that by building out your preferences center. Find out what interests your subscribers and you'll be better able to deliver the right messages to the right people.

Piperlime includes a banner that's dedicated entirely to preferences in every email. Pretty cool, right? Only problem is that the landing page felt like they were trying to get me to sign up for more Gap Inc. emails vs. finding out what interests me. I was hoping for questions about my age, shoe size, fave colors, sense of style, etc. etc.

Taking a giant leap, Old Navy actually dedicated an entire email to finding out what interests their subscribers. I was excited! Unfortunately their pref center landing page was as sparse as Piperlime's page. When I clicked-through, it simply asked me if I wanted info on Men's, Women's, Plus-Size, etc. clothing. Nothing else. Oh wait, it also asked if I wanted to sign up for more emails from any other Gap Inc. brands. Wish they'd asked me about my favorite colors or personal denim style. Or maybe at least what age bracket I fall in!

It comes down to this: The more you know about your audience, the more you can personalize the message. Check out Sephora's Beauty Insider profile experience to see a really cool pref center in action.

From: Sephora Beauty Insider
Subject Line: PERK ALERT! Stila's New Palette. Beauty Insiders Only.
Date: Sunday, July 20, 2008
See the email >

Some of you might have already seen my EEC blog post about Sephora. They are doing a fantastic job with their email program, and this particular message highlights three of their key successes:

(1) Exclusivity: The "Beauty Insider" program truly offers members perks and products that don't go out to non-members, like this Stila Eye Shadow palette.
(2) Personalization: They're messaging me on Combo Skin and Brunette-specific products based on choices I made in their profile preferences center. And they're doing it in a way that feels glossy and on-brand, not auto-generated and boiler-plate, which is what a lot of the more upscale brands worry about when we start to talk about dynamic content.
(3) Recognition: Dude, they know that I tired the Lumedia Facial Brightener. OK, maybe it's a little scary, but at least they're acknowledging me and my choices as a consumer...Holy cow, that is a heck of a lot more than most batch-and-blast retailers out there can say.

Happy Weekend!