I have sent thousands of work emails. The Winehouse has a database of 700 customers, all of whom have opted in to receive emails, and yet it only occasionally emails them. What is it missing out on?

Heather Seitz says, ‘When someone opts in to a list, it is typically in the context of an interest to learn more about a product or service … As a result, the relationship with an email subscriber often has a commercial intent from the start. This offers a huge advantage over social media as the pre-selling process has already started.’ (read Email Marketing vs Social Media here). Opt in email marketing is Chaffey’s fifth digital marketing channel (Chaffey, 2011) and is relatively low cost, encourages immediate action, can be personalised and reinforced by other media (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012, pp 530-531).

Let’s have a look at the latest email I received as a subscriber to The Winehouse:

Testing its content with Chaffey’s CRITICAL mnemonic gives us some ideas for improvement:

From Dave Chaffey Shares Smart Insights on Email Marketing (2012) read the full interview here.

Conversation – The email is welcoming and chatty and does invite checking out the range in advance of the visit
Relevance (including targeting) – The email was sent to everyone, so some targeting might have been beneficial
Incentive (or offer) – The recipient can click on the website link but won’t get any extra offers this way
Timing – The email was delivered on 2nd December, and advertised an event taking place over 5th and 6th December, which is a fairly short lead time
Integration – There is no other marketing campaign to integrate with! The logo on the website is shown at the end of the email
Creative and Copy – The whole email is a Call To Action and includes a hyperlink to the website, and an Unsubscribe link, which follows best practice (DMA Email Council)
Attributes (of the e-mail) – The look of the text could be improved by applying fonts consistently, not breaking the sentences up, and correcting typos
Landing page (or microsite) – The website is in need of updating – I refer you to my forthcoming proposal!

The email also has a relevant subject line which describes exactly what the reader should expect to read about when they open their email. Ellis-Chadwick and Doherty (2011) found that in their research 28% of email subject headers mentioned a discount, while 10% were season-specific; the subject of this email has therefore ticked two very important boxes!

Upselling and cross-selling could have been utilised in the body of the email, for example by noting that The Winehouse also sells corkscrews, wine journals, Champagne and wines by the case rather than by the bottle, making perfect Christmas gifts. Michelle Nichols says, ‘The most famous example of upselling is “the McDonald’s close” … Upselling is powerful because it’s simple… McDonald’s burger-flippers don’t ask if you want “anything else?” with the order, they ask specifically about fries. This focuses the customer’s mind from the abstract (anything) to the tangible (fries).’

So, creating an email campaign that follows the CRITICAL mnemonic, mentions the wide range of products available and has an informative subject line should all be considered by The Winehouse when planning their next email. But what about loyalty programmes?

According to Haa and Stoelb (2014), ‘There are two key properties that marketers need to incorporate into their loyalty program efforts: the ability to distinguish the loyalty program from competitors in a way that is meaningful to customers, and the ability to provide loyalty program rewards that are relevant to the individual customer… careful, targeted, focused research can be carried out to better understand the identities of customers, allowing programs to offer rewards that matter.’

It is perhaps too early for The Winehouse to develop a loyalty programme, but with some analysis of the response to email campaigns once these have really got off the ground, the idea is not unfeasible, and could be as simple as printing off an emailed voucher. Relevance could be ensured by tracking the results of email campaigns by ‘gathering key information such as: how many emails were delivered, how many people clicked through and how many people opted out.’ (Marketing Donut, 2015).

This type of marketing activity should become part of the business’s overall CRM strategy; Boulding et al (2005) sums this up: ‘Not only does CRM build relationships and use systems to collect and analyze data, but it also includes the integration of all these activities across the firm, linking these activities to both firm and customer value, extending this integration along the value chain … while creating shareholder value for the firm.’ CRM will be discussed further in my final blog about future goals and strategies.

References

Boulding, W., Staelin, R., Ehret, M. and Johnston, W. J. (2005) A Customer Relationship Management Roadmap: What Is Known, Potential Pitfalls, and Where to Go. Journal of Marketing. Vol. 69, No. 4 (October 2005), pp 155 – 166

Chaffey’s six digital marketing channels (2011) [Online] <http://www.smartinsights.com/reach/attachment/digital-marketing-channels/> Accessed 23rd January 2016

Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2012) Digital Marketing Strategy, Implementation and Practice. 5th ed. Harlow:Pearson

Direct Marketing Association UK Ltd (2014) Email marketing guide.

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

‘Guest blogger’  (2012) Dave Chaffey Shares Smart Insights on Email Marketing [Online] <http://blog.getresponse.com/dave-chaffey-interview.html> Accessed 29th January 2016

Haa, S. and Stoelb, L. (2014) Designing loyalty programs that matter to customers. The Service Industries Journal. Vol. 34, No. 6, pp 495 – 514

Marketing Donut (2015) Email marketing [Online] <http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/marketing/internet-marketing/email-marketing> Accessed 23rd January 2015

Nichols, M. (2002) Up, Up, and Away – the Upselling way [Online] BusinessWeek Online <http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/ehost/detail/detail?vid=4&sid=be61a9e0-3302-48b4-b007-36c705f0ee8d%40sessionmgr110&hid=125&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=7469373&db=buh> Accessed 29th January 2016

Seitz, H. (2016) Email Marketing vs Social Media [Online] <http://www.emaildelivered.com/email-social-media/> Accessed 29th January 2016