Missing a trick--part 3

Regular readers will know I have a bit of a beef with the levels of personalisation in pet supplies emails. I’ve blogged about it at least twice (here and here), and commented on it countless times. So imagine my delight at finally receiving an email from a UK-based pet-supplies merchant that said it was creating an email preference centre.


I envisaged a world where I entered the type of pet I own (dog), his age, breed or size. I thought it may even ask me what I usually fed him, whether he had any medical conditions, what flea treatment I used and when the next one was due, all in the name of creating a 360-degree view of me as a customer. I pictured the retailer sending me superpersonalised emails with offers I couldn’t refuse. Think what you can do to your repeat-order levels if you knew the last time I bought a dog-worming tablet and could schedule to send me a reminder three months later. Think also of the goodwill you’d generate by showing me more products suited to a Labrador than a Chihuahua--I don’t quite think my dog would carry off the tiara look.

Then came the disappointment. Pets at Home only wanted to know if I had a dog, cat, horse, bird, reptile, fish, small pet, or “other”. There wasn’t another page to fill in. That was it. I can’t help but feel that Pets at Home really missed an opportunity to get to know its customers.--MT

The email campaign trail

In fewer than 24 hours, the polls will open and us Brits will be able to vote in the general election to shape the country’s future. If you haven’t yet made up your mind who to vote for, the following emails from cataloguers and online retailers won’t help you much, but they are an irreverent look at how the election was used as a marketing opportunity.

Boden
Title: Attention, Boden needs your vote- choose your offer wisely‏
Premise: Just two parties in Boden’s email—the stripes party and the spots party. Each has a different offer. Vote for spots and receive £15 off a £100 spend. Voting for stripes, which "campaigns" for a VAT-free Britain, gives the recipient 17.5 percent off.
Our vote: This definitely gets our cross in the box. A great offer and superb creative—when it comes to memorable emails, Boden never fails to deliver.

Feather & Black
Title: Vote for Style! Up to 50% off This Bank Holiday Week...
Premise: Bed and bedding retailer Feather & Black is tired of the hype around the general election, so it’s running its own election campaign. Feather & Black is calling on customers to go to its stores and vote for their favourite product to be in with a chance of winning a Salisbury Panelled Bed worth £599. As well as the star prize, Feather & Black is also running a sale with up to 40 percent off, plus a further 10 percent off during the bank holiday weekend.
Our vote: Although dominating the subject line, the words election and voting seem secondary to the main thrust of its email, which focuses on promoting the bank holiday sale. Perfect for those bored of hearing about manifestos and promises.

Firebox
Title: If we ruled the world - the Firebox Manifesto‏
Premise: Firebox’s party political broadcast calls for compulsory radio-controlled helicopter flying lessons on the curriculum and a knighthood for David Hasselhoff.
Our vote: Plenty of product, plenty of tongue-in-cheek humour, but I don’t think I’d really want to live in Firebox’s Utopia. And the policies all seem a bit obvious—was this email more hastily put together than Firebox’s other missives?

Pets at Home
Title: Brown and Cameron-themed dog toys plus huge deals on cat and dog food‏
Premise: Pets at Home runs with a promotion for dog toys in the shape of David Cameron and Gordon Brown. The idea is that presented with both toys your pet pooch will pick his desired prime minister.
Our vote: In interests of fairness we abstain from voting as there’s no Nick Clegg doll.

Waterstone’s
Title: Who gets your vote?‏
Premise: A serious note from Waterstone’s. No gimmicks, just political books to provide the recipients of this email all the background information they should need on each of the parties and candidates.
Our vote: The early bird catches the worm. Waterstone’s gets top marks for sending the email on the first day of campaigning. That’s enough time to read more than one book—smart, eh?--MT

Gifts I don’t get

Having a robust imagination, I can empathise with the intent of just about any Christmas gift. Those cheesy kitchen aprons designed to look as if the wearer is revealing his six-pack and just about everything else? Yeah, I guess someone, somewhere finds them funny. Loo seats decorated with “humorous” cartoons and poetry about game hunting? Well, the loo is a popular place to catch up on one’s reading.

A few of the items I spotted in Christmas catalogues recently, though, had me shaking my head and wondering who the hell would buy them—and who the hell would they be intended for?

Take the Monkey Nail Dryer from Hawkin’s Bazaar.

Hawkin’s has a host of brilliantly off-kilter gifts: Crime Scene Loo Roll; the Giant Wine Glass, which holds an entire bottle of vino; the Incredible Expanding Bunny (I can’t begin to explain it). But the Monkey Nail Dryer is, to my mind, just bizarre. I can accept that some people might feel the need to hasten the drying speed of their manicure with an air blower. But why is it in the shape of a cartoon monkey? I just don’t get it.

Then there’s the Furrari dog bed from Pets at Home:

I love dogs. I especially love my dog. But my dog is not going to have a swankier vehicle, plush or otherwise, than I do.

Gifts for the Girls sells Onion Goggles. These aren’t a gag gift, not at £14.99 and with a “comfortable foam seal” and “anti-fog lenses [for] maximum clarity”. But you’d need to chop an incredible amount of onions to justify the expense. Besides, who really wants to receive a gift whose sole purpose is to make it moderately less uncomfortable to carry out a tedious task?


Which sort of brings me to the Tweeze battery-operated tweezer from the Original Gift Company. I’m not saying this isn’t a great product; according to the copy, “it’s estimated to be 30x faster than ordinary tweezing” and is “ideal for facial hair on upper lip, chin and cheek areas”. But woe betide the man who presumes to surprise his honey with an implement for removing her moustache.

When it comes to truly naff gifts, the British have nothing on the Americans. Case in point, from the US catalogue Things You Never Knew Existed: Jingle Jugs.

From the product copy: “This anatomically correct mounted pair performs to the hit song ‘Titties and Beer’ by Rodney Carrington. Molded in soft vinyl with real bikini top! Mount these jiggly jugs on the wall or use the included display stand.”

And people wonder why I left the States for England.--SC

November Catalogue Log

Christmas came early for our posties, in the form of far fewer catalogues to deliver in November than the previous two months. Catalogue e-business logged in 140 catalogues for the month, down nearly 24 percent from the 184 received in October and down 34 percent from September’s 212 catalogues. No doubt some of the decline in volume was due to fears of continued postal strikes; it wasn’t until 5th November that the Communication Workers Union agreed not to strike against Royal Mail at least until after Christmas.

Catalogue volume wasn’t the only element to decline from October to November. So did the percentage of catalogues touting promotions. In November, 31.4 percent of the catalogues offered sales and discounts, down significantly from 41.3 percent in October. While 14.3 percent of the November catalogues promised a gift with purchase, 16.8 percent of the October catalogues had.

The percentage promising free delivery slid to 19.3 percent in November from 21.7 percent in October. Most of the free P&P offers were unconditional, incidentally, with only a handful (Baker Ross, Hawkins Bazaar, JML Direct, Lands’ End) tying it to a specific spending level.

Overall, nearly half of the November catalogues—49.3 percent to be precise—did not resort to special offers, compared with 41.3 percent of those received in October.

It appears that more merchants are trying to wring maximum margins from the all-important fourth quarter. Email and social media make this decision somewhat less risky than it used to be: If a cataloguer finds that full-price sales are falling short of goal, it can easily and quickly put together a promotional email and spread the word via Facebook and Twitter of special offers.

Among the more notable offers was a free upgrade to a Louisiana alligator watch strap with the purchase of a specific watch from Christopher Ward. The watchmaker also has what is one of my favourite slogans: “Time on your side”. Toys catalogue Letterbox had a nice tiered-discount scheme: 10 percent off orders up to £150, 15 percent off orders over £150. My only quibble with that promotion was the typography and wording of the message; I had to reread it nearly a half-dozen times before the words “up to” versus “over” jumped out at me. Maybe if they’d been in bold I wouldn’t have been so confused. (Or maybe I just need new glasses…)

Boden offered a 10 percent discount, plus free shipping, plus another £10 off. “I owe you a huge apology,” read the covering letter. “It took us far too long to realise that the catalogue you requested had not been sent to you. To atone for this blunder I’d like to give you a free tenner. You can use it on top of the offer printed on the cover.” To quote my colleague Miri, “Is there anything Boden doesn’t do right?”

Several of the October catalogues made a point of highlighting the cut-off dates for Christmas delivery, and as expected, more of the November editions did so. Some were refreshingly specific: Children’s furniture brand Aspace stated on page 3 “Order before 4pm on 22nd December for Christmas delivery”; apparel cataloguer Lands’ End has a deadline of 10pm on 21st December; Montezuma’s Chocolates gives a deadline of 21st December for standard delivery and 22nd December for express.

But let's not end a blog post concerning Christmas shopping on such a matter-of-fact note. Here are two of our favourite catalogue covers that adorned our inboxes this month:

All together now: Awwww--SC

As seen on TV

Nice to see Pets at Home make the most of its TV appearance on The Apprentice this Wednesday. We were surprised to see the Cat Playhouse promoted in this email, though. If memory serves, the Pets at Home buyers weren't too keen and only bought 50 to trial at a handful of stores.
Still, at least they didn't put Alan Sugar's face on the packaging. Sir Alan didn't see the funny side when cosmetics retailer Lush, which featured in the previous episode, plastered his face on a cartoon bum promoting a sugar scrub soap. Spoil sport!--MT