Student beans is an organisation that offers students various discounts and deals on a number of items. They constantly keep on sending emails to the subscribers and the users, updating the users about new and upcoming offers that may be of some interest. These emails involve both advertising and promotional marketing efforts.
Personally, I tend to open the emails sent out by student beans in the context that there may be something of use to me in terms of the discounts offered. These emails are sent out on a weekly basis. I am able to spend my money reasonably after applying these discounts on my shopping baskets. These emails are a way for the companies to advertise their products via a discount. A discount, in general, is seen as a gateway to students to save money and be able to budget and utilise the rest of their money in various ways especially food.
Upon clicking on the email, it looks like a simple page with a few visual representations of colourful shapes. Some of the discounts are new, boosted and trending. Each discount has a different concept behind it as some discounts have never been around, boosted discounts are seen as high demand and are given a higher discount value as compared to the previous one and trending discounts are what the majority of subscribers are constantly clicking on. There are visual representations of the company offering the discount with the company logo plus the amount of discount offered. The images are simple and catchy as they are able to attract my interest in them.
By clicking on any one of the links, it takes me straight to the page offering the discount with a small description about the discount. By following the ‘GET DISCOUNT’ link provided, it directs me to the landing page of Lenovo and allows me to choose my desired product with the applied discount. In some cases, there may be a code generated to be applied at the checkout.
Scrolling down, there are also a few articles to read that offer students interesting topics to read on at their leisure.
Towards the end, there’s a link that allows me to download the app on my mobile device making it convenient for me to access all my favourite offers and discounts on the move. There are links to Facebook and Twitter that are directed to the Student-Beans page.
For festivities, student beans tend to offer discounts around the duration of the festivity. Recently, there was Halloween and I received an email that was more custom towards Halloween.
Student-beans has catchy phrases they use in certain emails to attract attention. ‘Make like SIA and get yourself some cheap thrills’ was used in an email for students to purchase tickets to a trip to Thorpe Park at a cheap price from £20. The caption was generated from a song by SIA – Cheap Thrills.
To summarise, the email was a simple and captivating as it uses catchy images and offers a variety of discounts that leaves a less room for disappointment when you first open the email. It allows the user experience to be smooth and quick to claim the discount from the email in a 2-click process. The images and information displayed are simple for customers to access and find out more about the discount offered.
On the other side, people may tend to find the email to be less attractive and would want something more enticing with color. There has to be some room for dissapointment as some of the offers may not attract the customer. Since the email is directed towards students, they may not find the discount as appealing towards the products and may have different opinions about it.
Student beans are known to be one of the best places to look for student discounts according to The Telegraph. They offer latest UK part-time and full-time jobs for graduates, including weekend and summer holiday jobs for current students which can come as a handy tool.
To conclude, student-beans are able to use email as a means of distributing promotional messages targeted towards students with the advantage of low setup and distribution costs, targeted distribution of promotions such as discounts and coupons according to Ellis-Chadwick & Doherty.
Ellis-Chadwick, F., & Doherty, N. F. (2012). Web advertising: The role of e-mail marketing. Journal of Business Research, 65(6), 843-848.
For other ways to find out how to marketing emails are used to engage wth the customers click the link:
http://www.urbanelement.com/blog/types-of-email-marketing-campaigns-ways-to-engage
For more information on Student-Beans go to: