The First 2 Weeks – Upscale Clothing Retailers: Part 1 of 2
Posted by Nic Winters on September 15th, 2009
Welcome again to The First 2 Weeks, where we analyze 3 competitors’ email marketing strategies when it is most crucial… the opt-in process, welcome message, and first few campaigns as these marketers attempt to establish relationships with subscribers.
For this edition of The First 2 Weeks, we have chosen 3 competitors in the upscale clothing retail segment: Banana Republic, Eddie Bauer, and J. Crew.
OPT-IN PROCESS
The opt-in placement on these 3 competitors’ websites was fairly poor, placing the opt-in opportunity at the very bottom of the page below a large image – requiring scrolling. However, Banana Republic and Eddie Bauer did a much better job of calling attention to the opt-in area than J. Crew – which practically hid this capability by using just a small line of text asking you to opt-in.
Banana Republic’s opt-in form wins the data collection prize as they allow you to specify your interest areas, provide your birth date (as they will send you an birthday offer), and ask if you are interested in receiving emails from any of their other brands. The other 2 competitors allow for much fewer options, however at least J. Crew lets you specify your sex in order to potentially customize offerings – unlike Eddie Bauer.
All 3 competitors do an excellent job of pushing you to start shopping with messages on their thank you pages. However, only Eddie Bauer’s page suggests that you add them to your address book to ensure the delivery of future emails.
WELCOME MESSAGE
Greetings from all 3 retailers arrived within minutes of opt-in – a very timely response to begin the email relationship. Both Eddie Bauer and J. Crew utilized very large images within their messages. However with images off these messages appear very differently as Eddie Bauer has coded their email to limit the image size – leaving only a small piece of alt text in what appears to be an extremely short email. J. Crew did not utilize any alt tags for their large image of stylized text (which could have been coded as a solely as text), thus resulting in what appears as a blank email in the preview pane. J. Crew also utilized a poor from name of “ContactUs” on their welcome email – an issue they resolve on all following emails (where they change this to “J.Crew”)
At first glance it appears that Banana Republic crafted their welcome message considerably better with images off in mind – and also sport a welcome offer for free shipping (a great way to reinforce the value that will be supplied within your future emails). However, when viewed with images off one sees that they have made each of the blocks of text contained within images – resulting in only alt text within the email with images disabled.
Watch for Part 2 in the coming weeks in which we will evaluate campaigns sent beyond the welcome message and preference editing options.
