From: FreePeople.com
Subject Line: Happy Birthday from Free People!
Date: Tuesday, January 1, 2008
From: FreePeople.com
Subject Line: Oops! Our Bad!
Date: Thursday, January 3, 2008
Beware - I've seen this happen more than once! Due to a system glitch, date-sensitive messages have been known to batch send on the first day of a new year. Free People's experience here is a classic illustration of this phenomenon. They recovered as gracefully as one can from such a flub - you gotta love how "our apologies" appears to be tear-strewn - but all, do check in with your ESP now to safeguard yourself in '09, while it's still on your mind :)! The holidays have a way of making us forget ;)...
Am I experiencing deja vu!? I received this email from J.Crew last year on Tuesday, September 26, again on Thursday, December 14 and then a third time this year on Saturday, October 20. I interpret it as a smart, triggered communication half-done. I love that J.Crew is messaging low inventory, but would recommend that they at least update the creative color palette seasonally to differentiate between the sends, particularly if they're deploying to the same audience.
From: jcrew@ click.jcrew.com
Subject Line: A little reminder from J.Crew
Date: Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Date: Thursday, December 14, 2006
Date: Saturday, October 20, 2007
From: Apple
Subject Line: Thank you for your interest in iPhone.
Date: Tuesday, April 3, 2007
I signed up to receive iPhone product updates the day the gadget was announced, but only received this Welcome message today. Of course it's beautiful, and almost because of that I have to point out that the bottom legal copy is misaligned in IE7. But who cares about PCs, right?
From: Apple eNews
Subject Line: Our Top Picks for February and The Spring Celebrations Preview
Date: Thursday, February 1, 2007
Today I got an inside look at Apple eNews: their HTML code was delivered directly to my inbox! If any of y'all out there know what causes this error, please post your comments!
From: Abercrombie & Fitch
Subject Line: Next Season's Styles Available Now... Abercrombie.com
Date: Thursday, January 4, 2007
Abercrombie!!! What the heck are you doing that makes it impossible to see your emails in the Yahoo! web browser on a Mac? This little snippet is all I see. This has been going on for weeks now, and despite the fact that I think your brand is a bad influence on today's youth, I appreciate your EDM production values and would actually like to see your campaigns in my inbox. So, I'm sure, would your customers. Get with it!
From: Barneys New York
Subject Line: Gorgeous Garmets for the Gloomy Months - In Stores Only
Date: Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Gorgeous garmets or not, Barney's can't spell! It happens to the best of us at one time or another, doesn't it? Thanks to eagle eye Megan Regard for catching that one!
For those of you that haven't heard the news, Gap Inc. has launched a new accessories brand: Piperlime. It is, in essence, a polished Zappo's: an online shoe shop featuring hundreds of brands other than Gap. I was initially surprised that Gap would become a middleman-merchant, but considering the fact that their own brands haven't been performing, while Zappos.com and other high-margin accessories retailers have been raking it in, I guess it makes sense. I wonder whether Piperlime has been in the works for long, or whether it was a quick, reactionary move?
So what about the Piperlime brand? Do fruit juice connections and conversational tones feel cute or stilted? Will the brand perform, or are we all already so jazzed with Zappos.com that we don't need a Zappos with lime? I'm extremely curious to see where things go with Piperlime, and would love to hear your thoughts.
From: BananaRepublic.com
Subject Line: Introducing our newest brand Piperlime and get $15 off.
Date: Thursday, November 9, 2006
From: Piperlime
Subject Line: Welcome to Fresh Juice from Piperlime.
Date: Thursday, November 9, 2006
From: Piperlime
Subject Line: Cute boots for kids and exciting new women's brands.
Date: Thursday, November 16, 2006
From: Victoria's Secret
Subject Line: Choose a Free Gift with Sweater Purchase. Plus Free Shipping & Handling on U.S. ...
Date: Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Every time I receive an email from Victoria's Secret, it looks like this! I don't think I've ever received one I could view. This time, I went a step further, and clicked on the "If you are unable to see the images in this email, please click here" link. And...it didn't work! It went here. Zero for two! That's pretty bad, man.
From: katespade.com
Subject Line: please visit our online sample sale - limited time only
Date: Monday, June 12, 2006
kate spade has a history of executing visually appealing sale messages - click to see examples from January and October - and this one is no exception. At this time of year, the sale offers are literally stacking up in our inboxes, so it's particularly important for both the campaign creative and subject line to pack a lot of punch in order to stand out from the crowd. Here, including the "limited time only" clause in the subject line was a smart way to inspire subcribers to open now or miss out.
kate spade was particularly crafty here in requiring folks to sign up to take advantage of this limited-time offer; providing a deep discount incentive is an excellent way to gather customer data.
Just one "whoops": the "SEND TO A FRIEND" menu item is misaligned in the Mac Safari web browser. Since this message will probably be forwarded along more than most, this is a rather unfortunate HTML flub.
From: The Land of Nod
Subject Line: Try the new and improved landofnod.com.
Date: Thursday, May 11, 2006
From: Neiman Marcus
Subject Line: MARC by Marc Jacobs: Shop fall & win a wardrobe
Date: Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Ouch! While I often see minor footer splits and menu misalignments, this week we've got some serious technical incompatibility coming from Land of Nod and Neiman Marcus.
While I applaud Neiman Marcus for attempting to push the envelope in email creative implementation, I'd advise everyone to wait on incorporating Flash into their email campaigns until email browsers can actually handle it. I'm glad Nieman included a "Have trouble viewing the email below? Click here!" link at the top of the message so I could see a hosted version of the Flash in a browser window (Everyone should be doing this regardless of whether or not you use Flash, by the way!), however, from my experience, only around 1% of folks click this link. Rather than trying to implement an email in Flash, I'd recommend doing a flat design and including a link within the creative to view an interative feature.
Land of Nod's glitch was particularly embarassing due to the context. The subject line invites us to "Try the new and improved landofnod.com.", but, because of an HTML coding error, all Mac users see is a blank white screen! Dang! Again, we are able to see the actual campaign if we click on the " View this email in a browser window." link, but for the 99% of folks who don't click that link, this is not only a lost chance to tout new features, but a particularly embarassing foobar.
Let's all make sure to test all of our email campaigns in multiple email programs, in Safari, IE, Netscape, Firefox, Camino and Opera browsers, and on Mac and PC platforms.
From: Room & Board
Subject Line: Create the perfect outdoor space
Date: Tuesday, April 4, 2006
This is a clean, nice-looking email with one small problem: the HTML text at the bottom of the message isn't rendering properly, appearing as a special character mishmash. When we view the code source, we see the font face is set to "sans-serif". It's much safer to use Arial or Verdana, and I'd advise everyone to choose one of those two for consistent results.
On another topic, I've noticed a number of Outdoor Furniture EDMs over the course of the past two weeks featuring full-width hero shots like this one. (In this case, the phantom gal on the right strikes me as somewhat strange.) While I like the beauty of a large hero shot, when one sends out a message featuring something expensive like furniture, I'd recommend also showing a few other products at lower pricepoints. Despite the recent Wall Street Journal article noting that folks are feeling more comfortable purchasing expensive products online, there is still some hesitancy on the part of customers to drop hundreds of dollars on an EDM. Showing a few less expensive items gives the customer the option to pick up a "quick little something" instead, driving more revenue.
From: J.Crew
Subject Line: If the pants fit, wear them.
Date: Monday, March 13, 2006
Pants are probably one of the most difficult items to purchase online, so we appreciate J.Crew's attempt to break their selection down by fit. Unfortunately, the pants depicted in the photography employed look almost identical to one another (particularly the "City" and "Favorite" fits), and J.Crew offers no advice as to which fit best flatters a particular body type. So while the intention here is good, the execution is not as strong as it could be.
Eagle Eye Note: There's an extra white pixel on the lower right-hand corner of this email, between the Original Fit image and copy. Blam!
From: dELiA*s
Subject Line: Save $10! Swim Sale online only
Date: Saturday, February 18, 2006
From: gap.com
Subject Line: Find Your Perfect Swimsuit
Date: Monday, February 20, 2006
We've got yet another campaign "double" today - dELiA*s and gap.com sent out strikingly similar swimwear messages. Check out that photography! Those layouts! Kind of creepy.
The obvious opening comment is "ouch!" - gap.com's HTML broke in my email browser, thereby breaking the illusion of their overall message. This is the worst browser break I've seen in a long time. How embarassing!
If we can "see beyond the break", however, gap.com's execution is more successful because the message is deeper and more focused. It's all about the swimfinder and it's many uses; just by reading the links we start to think about finding our suit and are compelled to click through. In the case dELiA*s, even though we've got a sale and a free shipping offer, the triple-combo of sale, free ship and mix & match swimwear dilutes any one message and does not pull us into the process the same way gap.com does. Plus, after all, "buy 2, save $10!" isn't really that great of a deal.
From: BananaRepublic.com
Subject Line: Our favorite espadrille has arrived
Date: Thursday, February 16, 2006
From: J.Crew
Subject Line: Editor's pick: the Fulham shoe
Date: Thursday, February 16, 2006
Both J.Crew and Banana Republic presented single-shoe-family messages yesterday, which makes for a great side-by-side comparison.
Banana Republic has been going a little overboard with multi-messages, submessages and "Free Shipping" promos lately, so it's refreshing to see them doing something simple; something closer to J.Crew's usual MO, actually. While the executions are somewhat different, these messages are comprised of remarkably similar components: a "collection" hero image, a basic romance copy block, and a direct call-to-action. So which wins my click-through? While I personally find espadrilles remarkably ugly, the Banana Republic message convinces us with smart copy that "If you only allow yourself one shoe this season, make it this espadrille," positioning it as a "must-have" rather than a nice-to-have "editor's pick" like the J.Crew Fulham shoe. So I guess we'd purchase the Fulham only if we were buying two pairs of shoes this season.
On an unrelated note: the espadrille hero image is several pixels thinner than the copy block above it and the menu bar below it, making an otherwise clean email look sloppy. Count those pixels, kids!
From: Burberry
Subject Line: Introducing the Burberry Spring 2006 Catalogue
Date: Wednesday, February 8, 2006
Yikes! As you can see from my screenshot here, we've got a coding error in this EDM. The footer's been split from the main message and appears outside of the main email viewing pane. I've seen this happen with campaigns from Burberry, Saks, Land of Nod, Williams-Sonoma... the list goes on!
This error can be easily avoided by encasing ALL of your HTML body code in one big enclosing table. Additionally, stay away from the nowrap tag - it can produce a similar "splitting" effect, especially within the Hotmail email browser.
From: J. Crew
Subject Line: Free Shipping and Get Gifted
Date: Monday, November 28, 2005
Love this! But the red gloves are missing their shadow! Totally breaks the illusion.
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