Email Marketing Secrets from The Motley Fool

Okay, you’ve got me: I can’t give away all of The Fool’s email marketing secrets, but I will be presenting one of our strongest email marketing campaigns later this month at DMA’s 2009 Annual Conference in sunny San Diego.

I’ll be on a panel with Donna Wells from Mint.com and Jared Dent from Turner Sports where we’ll be sharing some of our most successful email marketing campaigns and competing for the title of “Ultimate Email Marketer.”

Next week, I’ll post The Fool’s strongest email campaign on this blog so you can get an early peek — please check back then!

If you’re coming to the conference, please join us for the session on Oct 21, at 10 am. For more information about the conference and our session, please click here.

Email Stuff

First off, I agree with Chad White over at The Retail Email Blog on his post about Ralph Lauren’s recent mailing. I don’t remember who said it (I thought it was Caples, but couldn’t find it in his book), but we’ve always said around the office that in photos, the subjects should be facing into the copy. Chad: I agree and if you can convince someone to make a bet with you on a test (obviously not for Ralph Lauren), your money’s safe. Not that I think we’ve tested it recently…

Photos from the blog:

versus

I’m working on some ideas for upcoming design tests and I think I may try this test to confirm my hypothesis. Anyone care to place a bet on which wins?

If at first you don’t succeed…

Good Morning. I woke up this morning with an email in my Gmail account. It was the same email that I’ve received every other day for the past month. It was from Joseph A. Bank’s Clothing store, wanting me to check out their new deal or sale or something. Whatever it was, after the first email, I realized that it wasn’t something I cared about, so I’ve just deleted all the other emails as they’ve arrived.

Here’s the kicker: I’m about to buy a suit. Maybe two. Will I buy them from Jos A Bank? No way. Here’s why:

1) They continued to bombard me with marketing messages, even after they didn’t convert me to a sale with five (or ten) emails.
2) I think it’s annoying and spammy to send me as many emails as they possibly can. It’s akin to throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall to see what sticks.

So the wonderful marketing folks over at Joseph A Bank has actually helped the company take a step back in my eyes. Where I would’ve made my first stop at their store to buy my suits, I now will not even consider stopping by.

Here’s what I would’ve done differently:

1) I would’ve segmented their email list so that the email I received was more relevant to me (they were advertising winter top coats and low-quality, cheap suits). Based on my purchases at their store, they should see that I buy a lot of shirts and sweaters from them — those are the deals they should’ve served me.

2) Offer me a way to express additional interest in the email or products without having to pull out my credit card. Whether this is an actual “Select products you’re interested in so we can give you some great deals” thing or more of a viral “send this deal along to someone else” (my brother is also purchasing a suit and I would’ve probably sent this along to him), let me interact with the company without making a purchase. This was an unsolicited email and to expect me to simply pull out the plastic was pretty presumptuous. Joseph A Bank doesn’t win the price battle in men’s clothing, so they need to develop a relationship with their customers, which occurs when you visit the store in person, but not through these email messages.

Has anyone else received these emails or similarly-annoying messages constantly? Do you think we can get a PR person from Jos A Bank to respond to this post? I wonder if they’re monitoring their reputation in the marketplace after this month-long email campaign.