Is this lazy email marketing? A case study of email marketing from Abercrombie and Fitch

Email campaigns we can learn from

“…the eye, tends to be impatient,
craves the novel and is bored by repetition”

Effective email marketing engages recipients, ultimately leading to more sales by delivering the right message to the right person at the right time.

Customers would rather see a beautifully crafted email appear in their inbox than a bad one.

Big brands can have a slightly easier email marketing task than smaller brands – an email from Amazon, Barclays, ASOS, or John Lewis already carries with it an expectation of what you will receive.

So, it’s unforgivable for a big brand to take customers for granted.

Abercrombie & Fitch’s Christmas email campaign

Here’s a snap shot of my inbox showing all Abercrombie emails received over December and January:

You will notice the central subject line theme is “The Sale”

From the first Christmas Eve email, I understood the sale had started. The second email, on 29th January, reiterated this point. Okay; it may just have slipped my mind.

However, to hammer home the same message in three subsequent emails was really just lazy. Are there really no other USPs that could have been included?

I’m all in favour of occasional rule breaking because it allows you to stumble across innovative ideas. However, there are certain email rules that should never be broken…

1. Subject line length

Stick to around 50 characters, including spaces, to ensure your message is heard. Abercrombie’s final 12^th Jan email subject line is 67 characters long, causing the message to be be cut short.

2. Avoid using spam words

Avoid using spam words in emails because spam words trigger spam filters and your carefully crafted email will end up in the junk box.

Be careful when using the F word (Free) – especially in the subject line.

3. Tailor emails to the target audience

Now I like a ripped torso as much as the next man but is this image really going to make me part with my cash?

Abercrombie’s website contains many fabulous images, so why send me the same images 7 times?

4. Segmentation and personalisation

Audience segmentation is really important if you want to personalise your communications.

Studies show open rates increase when you personalise emails so email body copy personalisation improves your chances of clickthrough and purchase.

Conversely, personalisation gone wrong can have a devastating impact on email open and clickthrough rates so, as a rule of thumb, if you are unsure then leave it out.

Abercrombie’s kind offer to me (a middle-aged father of two) to “party with Hot Guys” might have been avoided if someone had simply looked at my [Title]. An email link clicked through to a landing page showing the stores where the ‘Hot Guys’ were working, with no reference to the geographical location of the recipient.

Is Abercrombie (or its agencies) deliberately trying to make it difficult to stay engaged with its brand?

This email campaign made it feel like customers must persevere, jumping through lots of irrelevant hoops, to achieve success at the journey’s end. The Christmas campaign might just reflect an absence of joined up thinking in connection with what is, I think, an exciting brand. You decide.

Top 6 techniques to get email marketing right

1) Objectives. What exactly are you looking to achieve; sales, dialogue, information.

2) Your data. Try to understand what data you have and group them together; male, female, location, age, interest, etc. If you can’t, that’s fine – just remember this for 3 and 4 below.

3) Copy. Starts with understanding your customers. What are their drivers; i.e. money, lifestyle?

4) Design. A well-designed email will capture peoples’ attention more than 1000 words ever can. But design and copy must work tandem.

5) Test your emails with various subject lines. Remember ‘from’ and ‘subject line’ are the first hurdle to getting your email opened. Split A/B testing is the best, but if you really must send it to the same person, make each alteration to these elements more significant and space out the timings.

6) Optimise. Feed previous email results into preparing for the next one. Learning from your mistakes is as important as learning from success.

Well, that’s what I think, I hope you find my tips valuable.

Thanks to James Hart for sharing his advice and opinions in this post. James is a Digital Marketing Consultant for Key Multimedia. He has over 20 years digital and traditional marketing experience gained within Blue Chip financial services companies, including; Barclays, Halifax and Zurich. James’s specialisms include Email Marketing, Content Marketing, Social and Analytics. You can follow James on Twitter.

http://twitter.com/tawatson Tim Watson

I agree with you that A&F are being lazy with their subject lines. Its a mistake to find a subject line formula that seems to work and then stick with it. Its better to mix it up and be different, the W H Auden quote is good.

The most important point with a subject line is the clarity of why its worth opening the email and reading further. Long subject lines, longer than 50 characters, can and do out perform short ones. If the subject line is so short meaning is lost it will not help. Of course front load the subject line with the most important points, don’t leave he punchline to the end.

Also free in the subject line is not a big problem for delivery, A&F used it in one of your examples. I have inbox set up to collect commercial emails from over 150 commercial senders. Its full of email with free in the subject line and the junk folder does not have any emails with free. The ISPs have long since moved from content filtering to be the key driver of inbox placement. If you have a good reputation and engaging emails, then free will not be a problem.

Anonymous

Agree – “Free should never be used in a Subject” is a myth. Should review it, but if it’s a trusted sender it seems fine usually.

Surveys often suggest shorter subjects are better, but mixing it up can be effective with longer subjects and Teasers.

You can go short and long – get the value across in the first three characters

http://twitter.com/iamgfc gianfranco cuzziol

But what if ‘The WInter Sale is on!’ outperforms everything else time after time? Are you being too judgemental of A&F without seeing the numbers? Their other subject lines seem to mix it up.

http://twitter.com/tawatson Tim Watson

Fair point, if its working time after time as defined by business objective then indeed don’t change.

Of course, if it is working time after time, that doesn’t mean to say there isn’t something better. So test alternatives against the champion.

Unless A&F wish to comment on their numbers and whether they have test cells with alternatives we are left with our view based on experience of other campaigns.

My experience says if you keep repeating the same message word for word it will get ignored. Repeating the same message and expecting a different outcome from those who ignore you does not add up.

http://twitter.com/EasyInbox Steve Henderson

One thing I can never reconcile is why repetition is effective in other marketing mediums (print, tv, radio, billboards) but not email?

http://twitter.com/tawatson Tim Watson

Repetition is effective in email and repetition across channels even better. But repetition of the message not the exact words.

For billboards, magazine ads and the like people understand that its not spam if they see the same thing twice, they know the advertiser could not have done better. Also its interruption media.

Their inbox however is a private place and you feel abused if someone sends you the same thing twice, after all, “don’t they know you’ve had it once, does the sender think you stupid”
http://twitter.com/jameshartKey James Hart

I agree with Tim, repetition as a device can be used to emphasis a point – that includes within email. But repetition needs a grammatical purpose NOT a financial one. It’s lazy to use it to support a falling bottom line.

http://twitter.com/jameshartKey James Hart

Gianfranco.

Your right this is only part of the story. The results at the end of the day would provide the necessary insights to determine whether there is a ROI.

But…it has been my experience that the blatant repetition, the timings of the email, the minute way they altered some of the wording and Abercrombie’s previous email suggest to me that it is there lack of detailed thinking behind their campaigns.

I could be wrong. It would be great if their e-marketing team could fill in the blanks.

Have a look at this picture. http://ow.ly/8Wx42 Does the headline match the picture?

http://www.digett.com/ Amy

I’m going to agree with your calling these emails lazy. It’s so easy and so cheap to mass-send an email now and then, and I think larger companies try to skate by on their brand recognition and customer loyalty, rather than making an effort. I’d love to see what their typical CTR is; would doing some segmentation increase that?