I receive about 20 permission-based e-mails a day and out of these how many do I actually open? Perhaps 1 if it catches my attention…

I receive an e-mail from Vouchercloud every day trying to tempt with various offers because I once used their app to get 20% off at New Look when I was 17! So at 8:44am today I received my daily e-mail and for the purposes of this blog I decided to open it and see what I was missing out on.

First of all, it is personalised “Hi Laura”. Does this make me more intrigued to open it? Perhaps.
Mohammadi et al., (2013) emphasise on the importance of using all the customer information available to focus on personalisation so the customer is more engaged with the e-mail and can actually relate to the content.
Once I open the e-mail, I am immediately presented with the opportunity of downloading their app and an interesting banner titled “TOP OFFERS”. This takes you to the following landing page:

The offers shown to me are specific to myself. They know where I shop, and what offers I’d be interested in. Quite scary really! They have also added in a nice little competition to win Asos vouchers, probably as they know I will click the link as this is my most used online retailer! When I click this link, does it take my directly to the competition? Of course not, I am given a list of different competitions to tempt me to enter so I can receive even more permission based e-mails!

Ellis-Chadwick & Doherty (2012) identified that over 90% of marketing e-mails use images and 100% use a subject line. From personal experience this seems accurate, the subject line is essential for grabbing the attention of you, the reader! Also, 99% of these e-mails contain hyperlinks which should be tailored to communication objectives. So next time you receive an e-mail notice the number of links and how effective the use of them are!

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

Mohammadi, M., Malekian, K., Nosrati, M., & Karimi, R. (2013). Email Marketing as a popular type of small business advertisement: A short review. Australian journal of basic and applied sciences, 7(4), 786-790.