“The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” – Tom Fishburne. We’ve all received one, but have we ever replied to one? I’m not talking about the moment your crush sends you an unexpected text, but the moment you receive an email from a retailer asking you to rate and review your recent purchase.
Power Reviews (2014) argues that 95% of shoppers consult customer reviews when choosing what to purchase, with 24% of people investigating reviews for every purchase they make. It’s reported to be the 2nd biggest factor impacting a purchase decision. With such a strong influence on buying behaviour this blog aims to critically review an email I personally have received from Argos, asking me to rate and review my very own purchase.
“When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar” – David Ogilvy. The subject line in an email encapsulates the entire body of what you are about to read, it must be engaging and enticing. Wylie (2014) states that for emails to be opened the subject line should be relevant to the individual, as well as incorporate a degree of curiosity. The screenshot below displays the simplicity of Argos’ subject line; although simple, short and to the point, it feels regimented and impersonal, which could jeopardise the click rate thus lowering the overall conversion rate.
The Argos email offers a chance to win £100 worth of vouchers for completing a product review. Janke et al (2014) discusses that placing a monetary incentive within the subject line can lead to an increased response rate to surveys by 4.75%. The monetary incentive in Argos’ email can only be found below the main body and is populated with small print and dense text, leading to poor readability that can decrease potential conversions. Chadwick & Doherty (2012) explains that various email testing methods could be enforced to see what engrosses the consumer the most. Perhaps Argos could trial sending emails with the voucher incentive within the subject line, and another proportion of emails could include it in the main body; click and conversion rates can then be compared in greater depth.
Personalisation 1.0 – A surface level of intelligence
The email directly refers to my first name, making it personal; the use of personification almost deceives me into thinking that a human typed out the words and not a sophisticated algorithm. The use of “Hi” instead of “Dear” provides warmth and avoids formal rhetoric. The picture projects a visual representation of what I purchased stimulating further familiarity and trust in the email. Argos have conformed to an email campaign that I see all too often, the attempts at differentiation are noticeable when analysing the mail however the above approach is now considered a norm in today’s competitive emailing environment. Zantal-Wiener (2016) has collected some of the best personal emails which are worth viewing as they transcend the engrossing factors of relevance and curiosity we discussed in relation to Wiley (2014) earlier.
Personalisation 2.0 – The future could be the next Skynet (Oh come on…have you not seen The Terminator?)
Goldbeck (2014) delivered a TED talk detailing how the US retailer Target sent a flyer out to a 15-year-old pregnant girl 2 weeks before she told her parents she was having a baby. How did they know? It wasn’t because of recognisable identifiers such as purchasing some pram or baby clothes, but a collation of personal information that produced a synergy. She bought vitamins and a slightly larger handbag. If these identifiers are analysed separately they may deem to be non-relevant, however the sum of the parts created a more specialised picture. How does this relate to emails I hear you asking? Customer review data can be analysed in massive amounts of depth thus providing accurate predictions of future moves, allowing retailers such as Argos the ability to recommend products that they know you’ll be interested in purchasing. Having said this Barnett White et al (2007) suggests that customers can react negatively to personalised emails if the content of the email is not fully justified, for instance if a wealth of information is provided in the email that you are not sure how they necessarily acquired.
Ethical Personalisation
Thankfully Brandwatch (2015) shows that Argos’ approach always has the customer in mind as a filtering system provides the company with the agility to respond to any interaction on social media. E.g. When a customer tweeted @Argos in regards to the sign above the store in Clapham Junction being misspelled, they replied almost instantly forwarding the information on to the Clapham Junction team. They could apply the same filters to customer reviews allowing for an equally fast reaction time to poor reviews; Argos can potentially amend the product or withdraw it if it’s not fit for purpose. They could even go the extra mile and ask a representative from the customers’ local store to reply and provide a remedy, wouldn’t that put John Lewis to shame?
References:
Barnett White, T., L. Zahay, D., Thorbjørnsen, H. and Shavitt, S. (2007) ‘Getting too personal: Reactance to highly personalized email solicitations’, MARKETING LETTERS, 19(1), pp. 39–50.
Brandwatch (2016) Argos. Available at: https://www.brandwatch.com/case-studies/argos/ (Accessed: 3 November 2016).
Ellis-Chadwick, F. and Doherty, N.F. (2012) ‘Web advertising: The role of e-mail marketing’, Journal of Business Research, 65(6), pp. 843–848.
Golbeck, J. (2014) The curly fry conundrum: Why social media ‘likes’ say more than you might think. Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_golbeck_the_curly_fry_conundrum_why_social_media_likes_say_more_than_you_might_think?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=tedspread (Accessed: 3 November 2016).
Janke, R., Library, O.C., Kelowna and Columbia, B. (2014) ‘Effects of mentioning the incentive prize in the Email subject line on survey response’, Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 9(1), pp. 13–4.
Power Reviews (2014) Available at: http://www.powerreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/13185402/ThePowerofReviews-Report.pdf (Accessed: 3 November 2016).
Wylie, A. (2014) ‘Open Secrets: What Makes Email Subject Lines Work?’, Public relations tactics, 21(3), p. 7.
Zantal-Wiener, A. (2016) 12 personalized Email examples you can’t help but click. Available at: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34146/7-excellent-examples-of-email-personalization-in-action.aspx#sm.0000545thylmxctjvi11sozeoptqw (Accessed: 3 November 2016).