Emails have an essential role in any business (of any size); it is currently, the most basic form of online communication between a business and a (potential) customer. Emails can be utilised in a variety of ways; one such is email marketing which involves marketing a commercial message directly to a group of people via email.
For the purpose of this blog, I shall be analysing the merits and detriments of an email from MorphCostumes (figure 2). There are many guidelines available online to help businesses realise the greater potential of email. In most guidelines, it is recommended that emails should be on an automated trigger. The email I have chosen has been sent as a result of an event trigger — the arrival of Halloween.
Subject line (figure 1)
The first question to ask is: what made me open the email? The immediate thing that anyone will notice about an email is the subject line. In this particular email, it instantly grabs the readers attention: ‘Guaranteed Halloween Delivery available all weekend for £4.95’ (figure 1). Already, the (potential) customer is drawn to an offer being made, it is short and to the point. The drawback of the nature of the email, however, is its reliance on a very specific target audience – people who, three days before the event, have yet to buy a Halloween costume. If you have already bought your costume, which someone interested enough probably would already, then this email would be irrelevant. Notwithstanding, this particular email may have been personalised, and sent, with disorganised people like myself in mind — they may even have taken into account that the last costume I had purchased from their website was very close to Halloween.
Email (figure 2)
As I have opted in — unsolicited emails are commonly known as spam (Ellis-Chadwick & Doherty (2012)) — to being sent emails from the company, MorphCostumes begin the email with a greeting featuring my name. This personal touch indicates that they have targeted me in particular (and maybe even care about me getting my Halloween costume). It maintains a familiar tone throughout, wishing me a happy Halloween; mentioning that they don’t want to scare me with deadlines, just their costumes. This keeps things lighthearted despite the urgency of the subject matter, and consequentially, helps build and maintain a closer relationship with customers.
The overall design of the email does not stray too far from that of the actual website by keeping the same colour scheme, although other features have been stripped away, such as the fonts used. The email design is simplistic, repeats images, and altogether has a bland look and feel. Considering that this style is in keeping with the website, this is more of a criticism of the design of the website as a whole rather than just the email. Regardless, this approach may be used to give a stronger focus to the costumes themselves as they are the main subject of the email and website in order to increase the click rate through to the website. They repeat the delivery offer for each set of costumes to emphasise that the offer is site wide. However, a main criticism is the lack of information in relation to the price of each costume advertised. This may be intentional as it baits you into clicking on the picture to find out the price, which the website (landing page – figure 3) promptly tells you, thus increasing the click-through rate.
Landing page (figure 3)
The call to action is for the targeted person to buy a costume before it’s too late i.e 2pm Sunday when the deal for delivery in time for Halloween would close. With Halloween being on the Monday, this is obviously the absolute latest the deal can run. The short and snappy sentences, along with the brevity of text, evoke a sense of urgency when reading – further augmented by the phrase ‘don’t miss out!’ at the close of the text. This is a strong call to action, which can help obtain higher conversion rates. The links take you to the landing page where images of costumes that are clicked on directly take you to the page where they can be purchased. A good and correct landing page may be the difference in increasing conversion rate i.e. people actually purchasing the costume they clicked on.
Animation is also used effectively, showing how the eye on a mask moves autonamously – the purpose of this is to generate interest and is not too obstructive or jarring; moreover it’s something that could potentially impress people at Halloween.
Further, in accordance with the guidelines set out by Mohamaddi et al. MorphCostumes give the user an opt-out option at the bottom of the email.
Overall, this email is a (mostly) good example of effective email marketing to a very narrow audience – the effectiveness would reduce if there were an increase in the scope of the audience.
References:
Ellis-Chadwick, F., & Doherty, N. F. (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.