I don’t believe the predictions of the impending death of email as a communication tool. Despite the rise of Twitter and other forms of communication, email remains the single most frequently used mode of electronic communication. And when it comes to promotional purposes, there is just no substitute for it. Knowing how to use it properly can mean the difference between a successful campaign and one that falls flat.
Converting customers at the highest rate possible means putting e-mail marketing best practices to work. There are lots of places you can look to learn the various dos and don’ts of e-mail marketing and, of course, you could always pay ‘an expert’ to do it for you. But what if you just want to save yourself some time or money? What is the best way of going about it?
One of my favorite tricks over the years has been to focus my attention closely on those who lead the market in a given segment. When it comes to e-mail marketing, perhaps no company on the planet does it better than Amazon.com. I happen to be a big fan of Amazon. Not only do they sell lots of great stuff at fair prices, but they also have one of the best marketing teams money can buy. By paying attention to their e-mail practices, you can learn from the best in the business and apply those techniques to your own promotions.
I began my survey by collecting every promotional email that I received from Amazon over about a 40-day period, from early November through mid-December. During that period I received a total of 24 messages, not including order confirmations or other account-related communication. Though I’d rather have had a larger sample size, the emails I had were enough to get a general idea of what Amazon’s e-mail marketing best practices are.
By looking through these e-mails I hoped to answer a few questions:
- Frequency. How often is Amazon sending promotional emails to me?
- Timing. What time of day does Amazon think works best? Which days of the week?
- Subject Lines. What are their do’s and don’t when it comes to subject lines?
- Content. What do they have and what do they not have in their emails?
Frequency
In my case, Amazon is sending me a promotional email about once every 1.6 days during this holiday period. What surprised me about that was that I didn’t find it annoying. Several years ago I made a purchase from Omaha Steaks and not long after perceived that I was being carpet bombed with emails from them, causing me to opt-out. However, when I counted I had received only(!) 13 exhortations to purchase more steak in a calendar month. Why was it that their 13 pitches annoyed me but in Amazon’s case I continue to give them a free pass? Perhaps it’s because Amazon has such a diverse range of products and their emails always seem new and fresh. Contrast that with Omaha Steaks, who basically send me the same thing in just about every email.
Timing
With only two exceptions, every single email sent to me by Amazon arrived between 5AM and 8:30AM in my timezone. This last part is very important, because it conclusively indicates that Amazon believes this to be the most effective time to send emails. Why? Perhaps because this is the time just prior to when one might first check email in the morning; the closer to that time that it arrives, the more likely it will be at the very top of the pile and be opened first.
When it came to the day of the week, I was a bit surprised to find that Amazon will send emails on any day, not just Monday through Friday as I would have expected. However, I wonder if they don’t take into account that I’m using a Gmail account, which is likely to be construed as personal and would, by extension, likely be read 7-days a week instead of, say, a corporate email account, where I’m probably reading it only 5-days a week.
Subject Lines
An email’s subject line might be the single most important factor in whether it gets opened. (Mailchimp has a good survey on their web site.) The one universal rule for an Amazon email seems to be that the subject line always begins with ‘Amazon.Com.’ This could be because Amazon.Com seems to catch the eye in a subject line, or perhaps it’s because the Sender column in many email programs is narrower and, therefore, occasionally obscures their name. Whatever the reason, it’s a rule from which they do not deviate.
A little more than half of the emails had numbers in the subject line, such as ‘Top 10′ or ‘Save 10%,’ I think because, like a domain name, numbers in a subject line tend to stand out a bit more. In contrast, only one of these emails had an exclamation point, and that was for a time-limited offer. (”This Weekend Only! Free Shipping on $25 Sephora Orders”)
When it comes to keywords, I don’t think 24 emails are enough to get a sense of keyword frequency. Words that appeared more than once include, “Deal,” “Sale,” and “Best.”
Message Content
Amazon’s web pages are some of the longest in the business. Their emails, however, stand in stark contrast to this as they tend toward brevity; they are designed to include just enough detail to attract your interest and get you clicking into the store. Most emails feature just a product image and link while prices are more often than not omitted. There is very little descriptive product text if any.
As with Subject lines, there appears to be one universal rule for the message body of an Amazon promotion. It’s that all emails begin with a preamble akin to, “As someone who has shown an interest in ….” or “Based on your previous interest in …” This seems to be an effort to establish an association between the email and a previous user interaction, one that helps raise credibility for the promotion.
Conclusions
A large part of what Amazon does so well is simply predicting your interests based on prior purchases or browsing history. Almost all of what I received from them piqued my curiosity on one level or another. I believe Amazon probably sees higher open rates on their promotions than most other e-commerce vendors for that reason alone. Of course, they have a virtual mountain of click and preference data to mine, and the infrastructure to segment their promotions at a level of sophistication beyond the capacity of most other e-commerce stores. But when one discounts that competitive advantage, there is much to be learned from their practices that will increase open and click-through rates for the average e-commerce store:
- Establish a track record of providing relevant content in your emails.
- You can send out promotional emails to your customers fairly frequently as long as you keep the content fresh.
- For larger lists, segment promotions based on customer interests.
- Timing your emails to arrive first thing the morning will ensure they’re at the top of the pile when someone first opens their inbox.
- Prepend your domain name to the subject line.
- Use numbers instead of words when it comes to subject lines (i.e. use ‘10%’ instead of ‘ten percent’)
- Keep your emails relatively brief; the goal is to attract enough interest to generate the click-through; avoid too much descriptive verbiage that will slow down the eye and delay the click.
- Try to establish right at the top why it is that the email has been sent to that person
See also:
- Do Reader’s Love Your Emails?
- Why We Love Email From Amazon & Hate Email From Barnes & Noble
- Permission Marketing
- How Adding Product Photos Bumped Click Rate Almost 50%
