I’m pretty excited. I’m buying one of those super cool flat screen TVs. I’m going to get a Sony and hook it up to an AppleTV. I’ve got about $1,500 to spend and am ready to act.
Imagine my surprise when I opened my in-box and found an email with the following subject:
Sweet! Not only did I get an email from an electronics retailer, but one focused on a product I am currently shopping for. The email subject even mentioned the brand I am most interested in! Good job email marketing guys, you got me to open your email. Here’s what it looked like:
Great! Right at the top of the email is a banner advertising Sony HD TVs. Again, nice job. I’m going to click on that banner and get me a TV! I can’t wait to watch The Office in HD!
Here’s the landing page on Fry’s website:
Um…. Ok… I see the same banner, but where are the Sony HD TVs? Actually, I don’t see any TVs. Well, maybe I need to click on the banner again. So I clicked the banner again and nothing happened. I get the same page. After a few seconds of looking around I left the site.
Fry’s did a great job at getting me to their website. BUT, once I was there I didn’t find what I wanted. The message they presented in the email did not match what I received on the website. So I left. This is the consept of ‘scent’. As Bryan Eisenberg explained in a 2004 ClickZ article:
What I find most exciting about current information-scent research is it forces the question, “What’s most relevant to the customer?” The end result can only be a Web site that contains not only the relevant product or solution but also the relevant scent and content to get the customer to it. That smells really good to me.
How could they have made it better? Well, if you’re going to advertise Sony HD TVs, then show me Sony HD TVs. It’s not rocket science.
Let’s take this one step further. How could a Fry’s analyst discover this? Use the following data points:
- Number of Emails Sent
- Number of Emails Opened
- Number of Click Throughs
- Number of Landing Page Bounces
With those simple numbers an analyst could illustrate the experience I went through. Here’s how I would do a simple analysis. Pull the numbers and put them in a table:
See that drastic drop off at the landing page? 90% of people that click through from the the email bounce when they get to the landing page. That’s REALLY high!
The point is, see how I can quickly gauge what’s wrong with my campaign using some basic metrics.
Hopefully someone at Fry’s is reading this :)
Good post, this is just the sort of anecdote I’m looking for. I’m trying to optimize our site before I get started driving traffic to it… Thanks.
Great post, I totally agree with the drop off rate assumption. Its something so simple yet something that I see constantly being done.
Wonder if someone at Fry’s read your post?
I’m curious do you know if they were tracking open rates / individual link clicks in the email etc..? At least then they will know there is a problem or at you at least hope someone will read that data and act on it.