Do Readers Love Your Emails?

Inbox Ideas | Email Marketing Tips by AWeber

Posted by Justin Premick

Timing is a funny thing.

In last week’s email relevance webinar, I gave an example of a company that does quite well at using customer behavior to create more relevant emails: Amazon.

Then, this week I stumbled across this post by Jon Dale comparing Amazon’s email campaigns with those of another major bookseller, Barnes & Noble.

He makes a useful comparison of the two companies’ email practices that I’d like to expand on and share with you.

Amazon’s Emails Trump B&N’s

Barnes & Noble’s emails aren’t all bad:

Their emails are visually compelling
They vary the content and offers which can help keep people from “tuning out” their emails (some consistency is good; too much is boring, and bad for response)
They include navigational links for readers to shop their various departments (books, music, DVDs)
Their emails include a lot of images, but they use ALT text and link to an online version of each email

The thing is, I can’t remember the last time I bought something from a Barnes & Noble email, or the last time I printed out a coupon from one and went to my local store.

And I used to shop for books there almost exclusively — I was even in their paid membership program. But their emails never really captured my interest, and eventually they lost me as a customer.

Why Is That?

Jon nails it:

“Barnes & Noble’s problem is that they don’t seem to keep track of what I’m buying and if they do they’re not using the information to recommend products I might actually be interested in. The result…I treat B&N email as spam.”

He makes a couple other points about B&N, but that’s the one that hits home, especially when he compares their emails to the ones he gets from Amazon:

“Amazon is actually recommending things to me that I’m interested in…. [s]ometimes it seems as though Amazon can actually scan my bookshelves and see what I own.”

Amazon Pays Attention To What Customers Are Doing

As I pointed out in the email relevance webinar, if you’ve used Amazon, you’ve probably gotten an email that suggests products you might like.

While not all of them are always perfectly on the mark (in the example I used in the webinar, Amazon sent me an email that listed a bunch of marketing books, but strangely also had “The Joy of Liberace.”), they typically get me to stop and read, and often click through.

Amazon’s emails, rather than being a nuisance, are a pleasure to receive, because they remind me about books I was looking at and thinking about buying, and they also introduce me to new ones that I’m likely to be interested in.

For me at least, they perform a service — they save me the time (and when compared to a physical store, the fuel) it would take me to go browse for something interesting on my own.

All of this, of course, means I’m much more likely to read emails from Amazon and make purchases from them than from Barnes & Noble, or other Amazon competitors — or a lot of other people. After all, in the inbox, you’re not just competing against others in your field; you’re competing for attention against everyone else emailing your readers.

“How Can I Make My Emails More Relevant? I’m Not Amazon!”

Amazon is obviously a large company with a lot of resources at their disposal. But so is Barnes & Noble, so it’s clearly not just about resources.

You can create more relevant emails, too. You just have to ask yourself 2 questions:

What Are My Subscribers Doing (on my website and in my emails)?
What Do Those Actions Mean?

Once you have the answers to those, you can plan out how to segment them and create more relevant email campaigns.

I’m starting to run long here, so I’m going to go into more detail on these 2 questions in my next couple of posts.

Until then, start thinking about what you would want to know about what your subscribers, and what you would do differently with your email campaigns if you had that knowledge.

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Tags: examples, relevance, strategy

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13 Responses

Cassandra Rae
June 19th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

Great info! And very relevant. Thanks :~)
Tarik
June 19th, 2008 at 4:33 pm

One useful feature is the page where your subscriber landed before he or she opt-in to your newsletter.

I’m thinking about creating special announcements depending on which pages people were reading when they subscribed.

Thanks for the awesome reminder post!
Charles Kaluwasha
June 20th, 2008 at 1:26 am

One has to do things outside the normal practice! Creativity and variation is the bait to keep subscribers coming back.
This is a terrific article that is centered on the subscribers’ experience when they surf your website. Does the content satisfy what they are looking for? Are their needs met?
Excellent info. Thank you:~~***
Rich
June 20th, 2008 at 3:42 am

Indeed, not everyone’s as big as Amazon and have access to their kind of CRM technology.

I would definitely be interested to see the elaboration on those 2 questions you mentioned.
Aaron Abber
June 20th, 2008 at 6:14 am

Great article Justin.

AWeber’s features make targeting by interest easy…

Using AWeber custom fields I not only store the name and email of my subscribers, but I also store what they responded to when they subscribed and the affiliate who sent them to me. This allows me to target offers according to previous interest.

In addition I also have multiple lists including a different list for every product. Using the include/exclude feature I am able to send special offers targeted just to buyers or non-buyers of a certain product.

Now I’m just waiting for AWeber to add a feature allowing me to target subscribers by IQ.

(Please note that I actually capitalized the "W" in AWeber–do I get bonus points?)
Justin Premick
June 20th, 2008 at 8:42 am

Cassandra,

Thanks - I try to be relevant

Tarik,

Good idea - people who signed up on a particular page or form might need a different experience on that thank-you page than others. Definitely worth testing.

Rich,

Fortunately, the technology needed to segment subscribers based on activity is available to a lot of businesses - of course, it’s all about how you use that technology, too!

I’ll address those questions next week - stay tuned…

Aaron,

Custom fields are definitely useful for segmentation, and what you’re doing there makes a lot of sense.

I see 2 reasons we can/should supplement custom field data with behavioral data:

1. There’s only so much information you can collect on someone in an initial transaction such as a signup (or a purchase).

Sometimes people are reticent to supply that information (ever refuse to fill out a signup form because it asked for too much?), and sometimes we can’t initially get the information that best indicates what someone would be interested in.

(Example: what if someone doesn’t buy, but happens to be interested in the same product/feature as someone who DID buy? Segmenting by customer/non-customer would miss that person. Segmenting by people who read an email about that product/feature, or clicked on a link about it, might not.)

2. Their interests/needs change over time - previous interest does not always correspond to current interest.

In the example above, Amazon’s email to me was based on recent actions I’d taken with them. Previous emails showed me different products based on what I’d taken an interest in. And I expect that future emails will continue to change based on what I do as a subscriber.

(Hmm… I’m fresh out of bonus points. And gold stars… )
Aaron Abber
June 20th, 2008 at 9:31 am

No bonus points? Thanks for nothin’ awEBER.
Justin Premick
June 20th, 2008 at 9:53 am

Aaron,

You crack me up sometimes. If I find some bonus points, do I get a monkey?
Aaron Abber
June 20th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

Since you emailed me telling me you are sending me some bonus points, I’ll send you a monkey. All you have to promise is you will take a pic of you with the monkey and post it on the blog -OR- email me a pic I can post on my blog.

But I’m not going to send just any monkey…I’m going to send a CHEEKY MONKEY.

Be prepared.
Ed
June 21st, 2008 at 5:01 am

Great tips regarding email marketing. I’m sure this will help me with my online marketing.
Jon Dale
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:02 pm

Great post…thanks for the mention.
Create Relevant Emails, Step 1: What Are Your Subscribers Doing? - Email Marketing Tips by AWeber
June 27th, 2008 at 7:45 am

[…] a recent comparison of email campaigns at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, I noted two key questions you need to ask in order to create […]
Roy Ware
June 27th, 2008 at 11:33 am

It only took me two seconds to think of something my fitness members do that show a different level of interest. It would be so easy to send emails, with AWeber, linking them with additional information.

I think we sometimes forget that adding value to our service makes it a better deal for our customer who will stay longer and buy more. I have no direct way of making this payoff today but I have to believe it will up our Quality Score with our members.