Election Selection?

With Canadians now in the midsts of yet another election, politicians of all strips are gearing up to make their case to the voters…. while at the same time, Chapters is gearing up to… sell political books?

Below is one of the more interesting email campaigns I’ve received from Chapters as of late. The main reason why this campaign caught my attention, is because it almost has a sub-conscious message to readers on who to vote for (or not to vote for). The most prominent book listed, is called “Harperland” with the description “An examination of the dangerous growth of executive power, including spear campaigns and control of the media that have resulted in Harper and his team redefining the office and undermining democracy.”

Following that, are two books listed under the headline “Political Satire”, then finally a few “More Political Reads.” In seeing this email, I instantly wondered if it was a simple coincidence, or if Chapters trying to say something more? After all, the subject line was “… books that will help to inform your vote.”

You would think, that leading in which such a negative slant towards one party leader, may offend some of their customers. I wonder what type of conversion rate this email got. Sure, its quite relevant to current events in terms of the election, but did it go too far for their customer base?

LinkedIn Personalization

I’ve been on LinkedIn for several years now, and have probably deleted a 100+ of the update emails they send out within seconds of scanning it. This one, however, caught my eye, for obvious reasons.

Rather than names and text, they actually used the faces of my contacts in the email. So now, I have this piece, that is telling me who changed their titles in 2010, and gives me one-click access to their profile. Aside from being visually interesting, they really tap into personalization on this one.

From a technical perspective, its not that hard to do… All it really is, is a bunch of dynamic variables sucking in a particular contact’s pre-sized picture. Eg: Have the past 46 contacts appear in an 8×6 grid — simply put in their picture, and a link to their profile, and you’re set.

Triggered Email in Action

The other day I got an interesting email from Amazon.com — an email asking to buy a book from me. Not just any book, but a text book I bought from them 6 months ago, for a night school course.

This is a great example of a triggered email campaign — I took an action (bought the book) and a specific time period passed (6 months) which then triggered this automated email to me. Their goal, I figure, is to get me to sell this book on their ‘used’ book section, as they suspect its now outlived its use. In doing so, they’re trying to make even more money off of the book they originally sold me.

Its a smart concept — they know the product’s expected life cycle (or usage cycle) and then ask to buy it back for resale to someone new. If it works for books, what else could it work for? Cars? Laptops? Houses?

While the concept is interesting, the email itself they sent is a bit odd however — first, they use my full name in the subject line, but in the copy itself I’m a “Dear Amazon.com Customer.” Second, and most important, the copy in the email is more of a random statement, rather than a full idea. Had they spent 15 more minutes on writing this email email, they could have made the call to action clear (rather than cryptic)  and made it much more appealing by stating roughly how much money I could earn, and what I need to do, without needing to click through.

As Amazon.com clearly has taken the time to loop together my purchase data, along with a bit intelligence of product use, they found a great way to potentially increase my (a customer’s) value, through this automated Triggered Email campaign. Too bad they didn’t send this email sooner though — I already unloaded the book.

Email Marketing Fail: Apple vs Apple

The other day I was checking my email and came across an odd scenario. Apple had sent me two emails, 40 minutes apart, with almost the exact same messaging. My first thought, is they had two different email addresses for me, but nope — same one.

Then, when I looked at the emails, you start to see slight differences between the two, and it made me wonder if its an A/B test gone wrong (because you never want the same person to get both — it would look stupid to recipient.. and it did.)

The differences I noticed:

• Subject Lines: “Put an iPad under the tree.” vs “Give iPad this holiday season.”
• Photos: the first email has headphones and a flip cam for the ‘All the Trimmings’ section
• Footer: the first email has two other pieces of messaging that the second email doesn’t — ads for Apple Store app and Financing, along with a mention of Gift Wrapping.

Looking a little closer, because for Apple, they tend to get things ‘perfect’ from the start (minus the whole iPhone antenna thing, or the puck mouse, or G4 cube…), it looks like the replyto address for each was different, with one clearly for Canada, the other, for USA. So instead of me getting just the Canadian version (as I’m in Vancouver), I got both — one with a Financing offer that I couldn’t even use (if I wanted to), because I’m not a USA resident.

This goes back to a key point of email marketing (and marketing in general) where you should focus on sending the right message to the right people, each and every time. Apple clearly knows I’m a Canadian, seeing as I’ve bought an iPod, an iPad, a Macbook and countless Apps and Music from them — each time using my credit card, and selecting “Canada” for country. They have this information, yet didn’t take the time to segment their emails by it, resulting in me getting an offer that I couldn’t possibly take advantage of, even if I wanted to. No doubt, a mistake like this can cause confusion to customers wanting to take advantage financing, who would then seek help from customer service, only to be told that the offer wasn’t applicable to them — thus, wasting the customers’ time and portraying Apple in a bad light.

Then, to add to this problem, they sent me another email — the right email this time for Canadians — but a second one nontheless. When you double up emails with very similar messaging, and on the same day, you’re much more likley to get the recipient to unsubscribe (as its no longer relevant), while at the same time hinting the first email had an issue.

Whether it was an honest mistake, or an ongoing flaw in their email marketing program, this example by Apple clearly demonstrates how email segmentation around the most basic demographics (country) can significantly increase your email’s relevance, and avoid confusion among the recipients.