Four lessons to learn from mobile email

Although our Direct Commerce Buzz newsletter, covering appointment news, client wins and the latest stats, has only been in existence for a couple of months, in that time we’ve been inundated with research into mobile commerce. From the findings that 87 percent of retailers believe mobile commerce will impact shopping in the next two years, but only 16 percent have a mobile strategy in place, to another study that says 11 percent of smartphone owners now shop online via a mobile device on a weekly basis, to the news that 16 percent of emails are viewed on a mobile.

With that in mind, I decided to carry out my own bit of research. I looked several emails I'd received to see how well they render on an iPhone and what lessons could be learned.

Lesson 1: The alternative view
Homeware and apparel cataloguer Orvis realised its email was best viewed on a webmail or desktop device, rather than on a mobile (see below). To help the smartphone user get the most from the email, Orvis included a link to view a mobile version of the email. Unfortunately, the theory was better than the practice.

When I clicked on the “view mobile version” link within the Orvis email I was presented with a text-based page inviting me to add Orvis to my address book, but there was no mention of the other offers. By all means strip down the email so that it loads more quickly, but don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater (below).

Lesson 2: The landing page
The Holding Company, a marketer of home storage solutions, did much better. The email fit within my iPhone’s screen and was simple to navigate. I had just three choices: “up to 50% off sale”, “interdesign 50% off” and “multibuy savings”. The buttons were big enough that I could click on them without having to magnify the screen. So far so good.

Where The Holding Company let me down was in the landing page. While its email was clutter-free, the same couldn’t be said for the page I was directed to after clicking “multibuy savings”. A lot of pinching and scrolling was involved to see everything on the page. You know the adage, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression”, that’s true for the landing page, so think about it from all angles.

Lesson 3: The fiddly discount code
Entertainment products etailer The Hut did nearly everything right. Although the email was not optimised for mobile, it was still easy to navigate and work out the gist—I haven’t shopped for a while, here’s 10 percent off. The landing page was optimised for mobiles and getting to my desired item was easy.

Armed with my code I was ready to shop. Locating the discount box was stress-free and entering the code would have been easy too, were it not for the fact it is a 14-digit code (12 numbers, 2 dashes). Thank heavens for copy and paste. If possible, think about using more mobile-friendly codes.

Lesson 4: Beware the partial download
If there’s an email in my inbox that doesn’t get read, it’s the email which has only partially downloaded. Take this email from Tesco, for example, it has an enticing subject line: “15% off when you pre-order Harry Potter + £20 off any TomTom sat nav!”, but I’m guessing too many images in this email made my iPhone give up trying to download it all in one go.

When I clicked to download the rest of the message it took nine “flicks” to finally get to the bottom of the email. Perhaps Tesco should consider a “view this on your mobile” option? In any case, if I received this email and I wasn’t connected to Wi-Fi, there’s no way I would spend my 3G allowance on it. You’d have to have a very special bond with a customer to persuade them to spend their money just to open your emails.--MT

What we learned from one day’s worth of pre-Christmas emails

In the summer I had the bright idea of logging in every marketing email that Miri and I received for a week. It made for one of our most popular blog posts, as well as for an exhausting several days. So since I couldn’t eke out the time to repeat that experiment (I have prezzies to buy and latkes to fry), I decided to instead home in on the emails we received on 9th December, two days after the so-called Mega Monday. At this point merchants should have had a solid grasp of which products, if any, they needed to push to meet sales goals, so it seemed as good a time as any to take a snapshot of their marketing efforts.

During the week in July that I tallied up the emails, we’d received 150. On 9th December we received 51, not counting duplicates (which makes me even more glad I decided to limit the experiment to one day!). Of those 51, nearly two-thirds—33, or 65 percent—offered some sort of discount or sale. That doesn’t include the email from fashion retailer Warehouse, which promoted a 25 percent discount voucher in the current issue of Grazia magazine.

Free postage and packing was appreciably less popular: Only nine of the emails, or 18 percent, offered it. For the most part the free P&P was tied to an order deadline (Neom Luxury Organics, womenswear cataloguer Gray & Osbourne), a spending threshold (toys cataloguer Letterbox, A Hume Country Clothing), or both (outdoor gear mailer Patagonia), though home-entertainment merchant Play.com and womenswear retailer Wall London offered unconditional free P&P.

Although these emails were sent just two weeks and a day before Christmas, only one in four notified recipients of the order deadlines for Christmas delivery. Orvis, for one, specified the date in its subject line (“Order by 14th December for guaranteed Christmas delivery”).

Gifts retailer Past Times spelled out last order dates not only for the UK but also for Continental Europe, US and Canada, and “rest of the world”. Granted, those overseas deadlines had already passed, which Past Times duly noted by striking through them, but by including them on the email it subtly reminded customers that it does indeed delivery worldwide.

Snow and surf gear seller Blue Tomato went one better, specifying dates for both standard and expedited delivery to EU and non-EU countries. I was confused, however, by the addition of dates for delivery to “AT” and “DE”. After a bit of sleuthing Miri deduced they meant Austria and Germany. (Since when did those countries drop out of the EU?)

So engrossed were marketers in their Christmas promotions, they for the most part neglected to follow email best practice. Take personalisation: A scant 8 percent of the emails (those from toys cataloguer BrightMinds, Conrad Electronic, wine merchant Vintage Roots, and pet supplies seller Zooplus) had any degree of it, and even these limited the personalisation to the salutation. Fewer than one-third—31 percent—of the emails included some sort of “forward to a friend” link. Only 27 percent included a link to their Facebook or MySpace page, their Twitter feed, or some other social-networking site, though that was an improvement from July, when just 17 percent of the emails we tallied offered such links.

In terms of subject lines, few really stood out. There was Orvis’s previously mentioned reference to the ordering deadline, and several others that also emphasised urgency (“Christmas gift ideas--Special Offer--One day only SAVE 20%” from gardening gifts merchant Primrose, “Wild Wednesday--Up to 80% off for 24hrs only” from general merchandiser Sendit.com, “20% OFF EVERYTHING--Ends Midnight Friday!” from fashion retailer Evans). Others simply stated their offers (the awkwardly punctuated “25% Off Everything and Get Ready for Christmas, shop now!” from Laura Ashley, “25% off all purchases at The Body Shop”). I did like “Stuff Those Stockings—Gift Ideas” from fashion brand White Stuff and “Christmas gifts? Ask the experts!” from gadgets merchant Firebox.com because they were somewhat different.

Only two subject lines really stood out, though. One was from cosmetics brand Space NK, and that caught my attention because of the typographic error: “Limited Time Offer: Receive #10 Off Your Purchase”. As an American, this made sense to me: What is called a hash tag on this side of the Atlantic is known as a pound sign on the other side. But I’m sure it baffled many other recipients.

Then there was this: “Christmas Tree Almost Ruins Christmas--A Case Study from The Healthy House”. C’mon, you have to open an email with a subject line like that. Apparently the writer of the email once had a genuine Scotch pine for the family tree, but the kids ended up being allergic to the attendant dust, mould spores, and terpene (yeah, I had no idea what that was either). The moral, according to Healthy House, is to be conscious of people’s environmental sensitivities and other allergies, and if you’re going to opt for a real tree, click through to the Healthy House website to buy an antiallergy spray.

On a happier note, here are my picks for the most aesthetically pleasing emails. The vast majority featured a broad selection of the merchants’ product ranges, which was quite practical. After a while, though, they blurred together in my memory. These didn’t:

Patagonia didn't eschew its creative trademark--fabulous action shots--and it also tied its copy to the photo: "Don’t be cast out in the cold because you didn’t get your gift there on time. There’s still time to pick up great Patagonia presents and get them there on time..."

The simplicity of this message from fashion brand Howies is refreshing. Plus Howies was one of the few marketers to promote gift vouchers, which are always popular to give and to receive.

Okay, I'm a sucker for puppies. Want to make something of it?--SC

Making print more sociable

Molly Flatt of social-media marketing firm 1000heads wrote an article for the October issue of Catalogue e-business (due to hit desks 5th October) that, among other things, wondered why few multichannel marketers made use of social marketing in their print catalogues. Many mailers include customer testimonials in their catalogues, but that’s pretty much the extent of their word-of-mouth marketing efforts in print.

Orvis has the right idea. The outdoor gear and apparel merchant runs an annual photo contest; the winner’s picture is used as the front cover of its autumn Orvis Dog Book (and the photographer gets a £500 Orvis gift card too). Consumers are the judges; they’re encouraged to vote via the print catalogue and the website. This year Orvis also posted on YouTube and on its own site a video slide show of some popular entries. The video received more than 6,000 views on YouTube in just two months—and you know a significant portion of those viewers clicked the link to the Orvis website, had a browse, and maybe requested a catalogue or made a purchase.

As I was editing Molly’s article, I came up with all sorts of possible ways to “socialise” catalogues, in addition to those Molly suggests (and no, I’m not going to tell you what those are—you’ll have to read the issue to find out). For instance, gadgets retailer Firebox.com runs a fortnightly contest in which it awards a gift card to the person who submits the best photo and video. The contest is promoted on its website and the winning entrants featured, but I haven’t seen the winning photos included in the Firebox print catalogue. Why not?

For that matter, why not ask catalogue readers to submit photos of themselves using/wearing products they’ve purchased from you, then include a smattering of them in the catalogue and on your website? Why don’t more kitchenware merchants solicit recipes from customers, or art-supplies cataloguers run contests for readers to design their covers?

The internet didn't create social marketing; it merely put a flashy shiny gloss on the concept. Cataloguers (and even more prominently, magazine publishers) have long invited their audiences to participate with their brands via contests, testimonials, and requests for pictures, stories, recipes, and helpful hints. The mechanics of setting up a blog or a forum or online product ratings are relatively easy; the challenging part is crafting a compelling, attention-getting reason for your audience to get involved.--SC

Orvis is no Ugly American

When companies enter an overseas market, they're sometimes guilty of a cultural arrogance. One could argue that with its new LittlewoodsEurope.com website, Shop Direct commits that crime: Although the site targets consumers in France, Germany, Portugal, and Spain, the copy is almost exclusively in English.

And back in 2003, the then-chief of Spiegel, an American catalogue owned by Germany's Otto Group, told the magazine I edited at the time, “We'll keep the 'big book' going because according to our research in Europe — although we've not researched it here in the US — people use big books for planning and what they may buy in the next couple of months.” Maybe if Otto had done some research in the US, it would have found that by and large Americans viewed big-book catalogues as fusty, and Otto wouldn't have had to sell the Spiegel business.

So it's nice to see that latest Orvis Women's Clothing catalogue steers clear of any such arrogance. Orvis is an American cataloguer/retailer of outdoor gear and apparel, founded in 1856; it's been doing business in the UK for 27 years. In his president's letter, CEO Perk Perkins includes a paragraph especially for the UK market: "Our UK business holds a special place in my heart, since I was there when we opened our doors in 1982. Since then, our business has grown steadily--today we have 23 retail stores, more than 50 stockists, an award-winning website, orvis.co.uk, and we post more than 15 catalogue titles annually." To emphasise his appreciation of his British customers, he uses British verbiage ("stockists", "post") and spelling ("catalogue"). (Granted, the letter would have been more effective if placed on page 2 than tucked away as it is on page 6, but nobody's perfect.)

Another nice acknowledgement of British mores: On the catalogue request form on the UK site, the options for "title" include ""Dame", "Honourable", "Lady", and "Sir", none of which are applicable in the States.

Sure, these are little details. But as we all know, retail is detail, on both sides of the Atlantic.--SC