I’m sure that many of you know oh to well that feeling of loading up your emails to witness a long list of various emails from companies you wish you never gave your email address too! Most of these emails you appear to be bombarded with seem to go straight into your deleted folder before you even have the opportunity to entertain the thought of opening ANOTHER email trying to sell you stuff you couldn’t be less interested in if you tried. After all who wants to waste their hard earned cash on products you will no doubt receive and will find a year later stuck down the bottom of your wardrobe unused.

So why do companies profit so much from these email marketing campaigns, and what do they do to catch your attention and make it worthwhile. I must confess I am one of those people who can’t resist a big sign declaring a SALE and only to often I find myself scrolling through pages and pages of sale items that for one I don’t need and for two I can’t afford!

So how do these companies provoke such a response? When receiving an email, the first port of contact is the subject matter, in order to entice customers what appears to be the most important concept is that the subject matter is some sort of incentive to draw us in. It appears that the subject matter to provide some sort of incentive is one of the favourite technics used by companies (Chadwick and Doherty 2012).

So when I received this extremely eye catching email from the retailer JD, which not only used my name in the subject line before declaring that I was able to save a massive 60% on some of the biggest brands around how could I resist but to indulge, as after all who wants to miss out on savings that big! I’m loving the fact they have used my name, which just over a third of emails do (Chadwick and Doherty 2012).

The email hits my mail box at 8:04, which is classed as during working hours and where the majority of these email campaigns are sent out. (Chadwick and Doherty 2012).

So now they have my attention, iv opened the email, I’m staring at the screen mouth open in anticipation…The top line is free delivery on orders over £60, interesting who doesn’t love free delivery and what’s £60 when everything is on sale, that’s an awful lot of sportswear! I see their logo taking centre stage on the first page of the email but what I see underneath is altogether more exciting, a big red sign again informing me of the possible 60% savings I’m about to experience. Under which there are various hyperlinks to each category that I’m able to make these incredible savings in, but I’m now thinking after the personalisation in the subject line by the use of my name what other tricks have JD got up their sleeves to draw me into their sale so I decide to scroll down.

What I’m faced with is a catalogue style series of illustrations which Chadwick and Doherty 2010 found was used in just under a quarter of campaigns like these. There is minimal writing just the key facts I need to know, pictures of various products, thier name and the new lovely low prices! In this case it has paid off because I have found my next pair of gym shoes with a ridiculous amount of savings and my mind is made up its time to treat myself! I have no trouble clicking the picture jumping straight through on a hyperlink to the page I’m after, this is so convenient because I want them in my basket before they are out of stock! In total there is roughly 22 Hyperlinks waiting to take you to various pages of the site which is under average according to the study by Chadwick and Doherty 2012.

If you are interested and fancy reading up more on email marketing then here is the link to the journal I used, Happy Reading!

<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296311000063&gt;