I read emails from The Fragrance Shop often and they are actually very enticing. They send me deals and offers which are presented immediately in the subject without me needing to open the email and its content. For example, it could say ‘20% online tonight only’ in which I don’t need to even open the email, I can just go straight to the website. This is much easier when being faced with other emails to open that may be more important, yet I find myself still opening it. I think this is because I am interested in what they sell rather than the company themselves. When I open it the display is exciting. The main ‘offer’ is what is shown with bright colours and flashing text. I can also scroll down further and find another promotion. Obviously, this is exactly what a customer wants to see! I even have the choice of going in-store or online for the promotion. In addition, the colours are bright pink and yellow. I could not be sure but this could be because I am female. I cannot imagine them sending it to a male as it would be less attractive. This could be personalised to my gender and could well be effective if this is the case. The landing page is also colourful and bold. It takes me straight to the ‘deal section’ and provides me with extra offers including ‘Christmas buys’. The Fragrance Shop know exactly what I, as a customer, want and know that by me opening the email, I am already partly interested.

Here is an example of an email I have received from The Fragrance Shop

When shopping with them before, I have given them my full name. However, what I found was that it was not personalised to me. Rather than being deemed as a valuable customer, I am referred to as ‘L’. This is surprising as personalising email results in a 14 percent increase in click-throughs and a 26 percent increase if there is a personalised subject (Talarico, D. 2016).  If I had been addressed with my name, I may have been more persuaded to purchase one of their products.

In a brief comparison to The Fragrance Shop emails, Funky Pigeon addresses me directly by ‘Leila’ when I open the email. This makes me feel like a valid customer and its more direct to myself. It doesn’t include my name in the subject line, however, when I open the email it’s as if I’m being greeted when they say ‘Hi Leila’. Maybe The Fragrance Shop should consider this for an effective marketing campaign.

The Fragrance Shop does offers great deals but how many times does a company need to email the same person the same offer? I received 3 emails in under 3 days about the same offer of 20% off. I also received an email prior to that and an email two days later with the same information.

I felt almost forced into buying their products. The emails were too frequent and if they contained different deals then I would be satisfied but it seemed ‘desperate’. I can understand that it is a time of year where people are purchasing gifts for Christmas so they want to tempt their subscribers. According to Ellis-Chadwick, frequency of emails increase around seasonal periods. During the fourth quarter, the largest amount of emails are sent, which is the festive period. This would make sense as to why I have received a total of 6 emails in 5 days with the same offer. The number of emails would not tempt me personally thought but some subscribers could be different. Do I think this is a good mechanism to sell products? No. Do I think they could adapt a different approach? Yes.

The Fragrance Shop could:

• Use ‘Permission Marketing’ to be more attractive to their subscribers. The use of incentives to build and maintain a relationship with your customers.
• Give away free things which would be exciting for us as a buyer. (I would be much more willing to purchase their products if I knew that by doing so, I would be rewarded!)
• Consider individual demographics to suggest products. This would be an effective way of marketing as it would be tailored to customers, like myself, to make it more personalised.

Click here for an interesting post on Permission Marketing.

Thanks for reading!

Leila

References

Ellis-Chadwick, F., & Doherty, N. F. (2012). Web advertising: The role of e-mail marketing. Journal of Business Research, 65(6), 843-848.

Talarico, D. (2016), From inbox to enroll: Email marketing tips. Recruiting & Retaining Adult Learners, 18: 1–3.