Email newsletters are now a big part of digital marketing and most if not all online firms have an email newsletter you can subscribe to, to receive updates on the company’s most recent happening, special discounts or targeted offers. Pavlov et al (2008) estimated that email marketing campaigns generate twice the return on investment over other forms of online marketing, so its easy to see why so many companies are taking part in the activity.

In this specific instance, I will be looking at an innocent smoothies newsletter to show how a company can write great marketing content through emails. I subscribed to innocent smoothies newsletter about four months ago on the recommendation of a colleague and I wasn’t disappointed. Innocent send emails weekly and it all starts with the subject line. A simple, yet intriguing selection of words which entice the user to click ‘open email’. Some of my favourite examples include:

• How to break the internet: an innocent guide.
• bunting, adventures and singing goats.
• man puts trousers on with no hands.

Each equally wacky but somewhat tempting. If you would like to know more on any of these titles, I thoroughly encourage you to subscribe by clicking here.

Once you have opened the email, they’ve got you (and not in a bad way). for innocent enthusiasts the newsletter provides interesting content on the week’s events such as the weekly segments: ‘drinker of the week’ or ‘inside fruit towers’. Although this content isn’t directly trying to sell anything, the brand logo together with making the reader feel like an fundamental part of the business or ‘family’ is enough to make a reader, at the very least contemplate buying an innocent smoothie next time they are looking through the refrigerated drinks at Tesco on their lunch break.

I found it odd that Innocent chose not to use any personalisation on their emails. this a tactic that many firms use to capture the attention of readers but innocent seem to have chosen a more generic, newspaper standpoint. White et al (2008) believes that the personalization of an email should only depend on the specificity of the offer, and where there are no specific offers for each customer in the innocent’s newsletter, this may be the reason that they have chosen to avoid the personalization approach.

However, just because they aren’t personalizing their emails, doesn’t mean they don’t want to track their customers – after all this is the reason of an email newsletter. To sign up, you must provide your email and date of birth, it sounds harmless enough but with just this information they have a key method to contact you as well as some great statistics on their target audience. furthermore, embedded into the email are unique tracking codes that allow innocent to pinpoint each customer. Images are saved under paths with references such as ‘SubjId=12345’. Allowing Innocent to see who has what emails to find out what content is the most dependable. This is a key tool many marketers use to gain some more data on its customers but is this right or wrong? Personally I believe that giving away some information is a small price to pay for such interesting content. and at the end of the day, this information is only being put back into the company to aim their products more specifically at their customers which will benefit you!

In conclusion, Hats off to innocent, they have managed to create interesting content through practical email newsletters and in my opinion, any small companies (and even large organisations) should take after their example in creating clean, unique and interesting emails. take a look at the screenshot below and make sure to subscribe and check out the innocent newsletter for yourself.

Pavlov et al, 2008. ‘Toward a sustainable e-mail marketing infrastructure’. Journal of Business Reseach, Vol 61, No. 11, P. 1191–1199.

T.B. White, 2008 ‘Getting too personal: reactance to highly personalized e-mail solicitations’. Mark Lett, Vol. 19, No. 1  P. 39–50.