UNiDAYS or UNiPAYS

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Emailing marketing involves both advertising and promotional marketing efforts via email messages to current and prospective customers (Mohammadi et al, 2013).

Permission-based emails that are sent to customers are increasing as more and more companies use email marketing to target customers, as ‘email marketing campaigns produce approximately twice the return on investment of the other main forms of online marketing such as web banners and online directory adverts’ (Pavlov et al, 2008). It is also an ‘important medium of marketing communication especially for companies seeking to build and maintain closer relationships with customers’ (McCloskey, 2006).

In this blog, I have taken to look at email marketing that I received from companies that I have shopped with previously.  I personally have unsubscribed from majority of marketing emails that I receive from companies as I don’t tend to open them and find them a nuisance with how often they send the emails. However, there are a few that I like to keep receiving due to how much I use the website and to get specific discounts for them. One of those companies is UNiDAYS as it offers discounts for a number of different clothing chains. From these, I have chosen two emails to look at sent by UNiDAYS with two different marketing messages. I will look at how their emails engage and encourage customers to open the emails and links within.

Email Layout

Subject Line

‘The subject line in the email is the first point of contact and acts as the trigger to encourage the message recipient to open the email’ (Ellis-Chadwick and Doherty, 2012).

Email 1: Refer your friend

‘Refer your friends and earn £30! We show you how…’

The subject line triggers the customers to open the email to find out how they can earn £30 just by referring their friends to sign up to UNiDAYS. I opened this email up because having £30 credit put onto my account, is basically free money for getting my friends to sign up to UNiDAYS and it’s always useful to have money for a rainy day when you’re feeling down but don’t want to spend your own money. It’s a simple but effective method and allows them to have a high open rate of the email.

Email 2: Big discount

 ‘This is BIG: 50% off Missguided’

As the usual discount for Missguided via UNiDAYS is 10%, be able to get an extra 40% off clothes is a big and effective way to get customers to open the emails and find out more about the discount and make sure that there were no loop holes to getting the discount. I opened this email because of how big the discount was as it’s very rare that UNiDAYS offer such big discounts via their emails.

Personalisation in the emails

Neither of the emails are personalised to me specifically, they both go straight into what the subject line was referring to and how I can receive the offer/money from UNiDAYS. However, this didn’t prevent me from clicking on either of the links within the emails as they we’re both short and to the point and that is the sort of emails I would rather receive.

Refer your Friends critique

The body of the email had all the important information without any of the waffle, it was straight forward and to the point and didn’t confuse me how easy it was to refer my friends to start using UNiDAYS. The use of animation was eye catching and made you want to read what was within the circles when they changed.

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‘Animation is the most prominent attention-giving device in web-advertising and is far more effective than static advertising’ (Sundar and Kalyanaraman, 2004).

However, I had to scroll down to the bottom of the page to receive my unique link to share with my friends and before I could get there, they informed me that the voucher was only redeemable on 4 brands: ASOS, iTunes, New Look and feelunique.com. therefore, this prevented me from referring any of my friends as I didn’t really use any of those websites where I would need £30 worth of vouchers. The overall artwork was a bit busy with the use of a maze to draw your attention to the bottom of the page as I feel they were trying to incorporate a lot of information is a short space and this can get confusing as to where to look and what to focus on.

50% off Missguided critique

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The discount emails that I received from UNiDAYS are very different to the refer your friends email as they are to the point, with a link to the website with the code to get the 50% off. The use of animation of the model in Missguided clothes, drew my attention to the centre of the email where in big, bold words said ‘50% Off’.

However, the link on the image doesn’t work and you have to click on the ‘Go Go Go >’ button to get the voucher code to use on the website. This is misdirecting and can prevent people clicking on the correct link as they might assume it doesn’t work. If UNiDAYS are going to use links within their animation, they need to make sure it works. There was also only a 24-hour window for the discount which is in bold but is much smaller than ‘50% Off’ and could be easily missed by customers opening the email and therefore, it could lead to annoyance when they click on the link and the discount is no longer available.

Landing Page

‘The typical call-to-action statement is the pitch that will encourage a customer to act immediately’ (Mohammadi et al, 2013).

Email 1 – referring your friends

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The landing page link took me straight to Rewards page on the website, where I could get my unique email just like the email said it would. However, before I could get the link it explained to me again how to refer a friend and how I would earn my rewards, which was already within the body of the email. Repeating the process again can get annoying and is a bit too much, it should take me straight to the ‘Invite Friends’ tab when you click on the link within the email.

Email 2 – 50% off Missguided

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The landing page took me straight to where I could redeem the online code to use on the Missguided website. I did have to verify my account as I wasn’t logged on, even though they knew I had an account with them as I wouldn’t have received the email if I wasn’t. (Due to the 50% deal being a limited time only, the landing page screenshot is showing the discount that they are offering on Misguided at the moment).

Within the background, you could also see other companies that UNiDAYS are offering discounts on which encouraged me to go back to the UNiDAYS website and have a look at other discounts I could get and to carry on shopping online with them.

 

Resources:

Ellis-Chadwick, F and Doherty, N. (2012). Web advertising: The role of e-mail marketing. Journal of Business Research. 65 (1), p843-848.

McCloskey, W (2006). E-mail data source. New York: Retail White Paper.

Mohammadi, M; Malekian, K; Nosrati, M and Karimi, R. (2013). Email Marketing as a Popular Type of Small Business Advertisement: A Short Review. Austrialian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences. 7 (4), p786-790.

Pavlov, O; Melville, N and Plice, R. (2008). Toward a sustainable e-mail marketing infrastructure. Journal of Business Research. 61 (11), p1191-1199.

Sundar, S and Kalyanaraman, S. (2004). Arousal, memory and impression–formation effects of animation speed in web advertising. Journal of Advertising. 33 (1), p7-17.