ASOS and its email marketing, does it achieve good results?

After reading an article by (Ellis-Chadwick & Doherty, 2012) about the role of email marketing and how companies use email to interact with their customers, it got me thinking about the countless amount of emails I receive from retailers essentially trying to sell me their services. When I actually sat down to think about it, it was interesting to see which emails actually captivate me as an individual and which emails I don’t pay much attention to.

Email marketing is essential for companies ‘seeking to build and maintain closer relationships with customers’ (McCloskey, 2006, Chaffey et al., 2003). The one that particularly caught my eye was emails received from online retailer ASOS. With mainly conversion/life cycle style emails, it is clear to see that ASOS send 70% promotional emails and 30% promotion of new lines. The article describes the main executional tactics in the email marketing messages sent by very large, large and small retailers. As ASOS is a very large online retailer, I looked at what I believe is the three most important areas; email subject line, interactive features and personalization.

The Email subject line

The subject line is the first point of contact and ‘acts as a trigger’ to get the recipient to open the email. It is crucial for a company to create a captivating subject line to allow the recipient to click and increase conversion rates. The main subject line for ASOS’s promotional email’s begin with ‘Up to X% off X products’. Promotions are always a key factor that entices customers and I believe that ASOS does this in a very efficient way.

As seen above, they have a similar outline for their subject lines with regards to promotions, and it is clear whom the email sender is. This could be reassuring for customers, as they know exactly what the email tends to be about.

Interactive Features

As a frequent customer of ASOS, I would say myself that the interactive features of their emails are excellent. Having the ‘shop now’ button under most of their products and lines allows the customer to click on to what they like and be directed to the page smoothly. The types of products and pictures are always associated correctly with the subject of the email and it is always directed to the correct page.

The call to action that is clearly set here is inviting the customer to ‘show now’ and shop specific lines and products. This tends to always grab my attention if it’s a product I am interested in.

At the end of every email a box (as shown below) is displayed about help and contact, unsubscribing and social media, which allows the customer to easily solve a problem or share with a friend. This is a key interactive feature, especially the button to unsubscribe.

Personalization

Personalisation is a tricky one when it gets to ASOS, as they never tend to address the customer as ‘Dear customer’ or ‘Hi Seray!’. The general design outline for ASOS emails is the bold title and then a snappy sentence underneath which is usually cool and different without being boring, just like the one below.

Although this is not personalized, the customer can feel a sense of closeness to the company, as the sentence isn’t so formal and serious. ASOS definitely knows to only really send me emails about womenswear, and generally sends emails about the saved items in my shopping list. This is a way of personalization but I don’t feel a massive connection to them with regards to general emails.

Critique

Whether or not I open emails from ASOS entirely depends on what the product promotion it is. They are tactful in the way that they send emails according to seasons and holidays, for example Halloween emails were popular the last week and I clicked on to that to get an idea of what they have, but in general if its about something I’m not so interested in I will tend to click on it but not pay much attention to it.

As mentioned above, the personalization level of their emails isn’t very high, however I prefer the way they set out their emails as it always has a catchy sentence about what it is. I as a consumer actually prefer this to the generic “‘Hi Seray, what do you think about this product?’” for example.

The template and design of ASOS works immaculately and they have designed it in such a way that it works well on a mobile as well as on your laptop. The bright colours and clear descriptions and pricing of products is always an effective factor for me. The calls to action are clear and precise, whereas emails from services such as Unidays who promote discounts for students, are very basic and provide only the basic level of what the customer needs to know, the discount facts!

In my eyes, ASOS offers exactly what the customer wants with the emails they send. They make up for not personalizing the email with snappy sentences that grabs the reader’s attention and they make sure to always have the images colourful and to the point. The landing page offers links to all other departments aside from that of the email, and I never have encountered a problem with this. Overall, I very much enjoy ASOS’s emails and believe they do a good job in enticing the customer.

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