Tag: email marketing

Uniqlo plays with Superbowl word play

content, Customer Preference

Who: Uniqlo, the infamous Japanese brand of simple, casual basics.
What’s Working: Their “Living 9 to 9” is a timely, pun-ny play on Squarespace’s “Working 5 to 9” Superbowl commercial from this past weekend (which itself was a play on Dolly Parton’s “Working 9 to 5” song). Not a bad idea, considering 96 million sets of eyeballs watch the Superbowl and its ads every year.
What’s Not: Way too much content and you get lost in the scroll. (this isn’t even the full email!) They definitely could have tightened the products featured in each “time slot’s”, or better yet, set up customer preferences (Everlane does a great job at this) and just share Men’s vs. Women’s items.

Venmo + Paypal team up to cash your checks

Product Education

Who: Venmo and Paypal: aka the millennial and Gen X social payments platforms, respectively
What’s Working: With the subject line “2 ways to cash your government stimulus checks for no fees”, the benefit is timely (everyone is anxious for their stimulus $$) and super clear. Colorful creative with snappy directions and bolded UI instructions make it easy to skim.
What’s Not: It’s a great how-to email, but would have loved to see clear user benefits here. Which option is faster? safer? or is preference really just driven by which apps I already have on my phone?

Free drinks for all with Starbucks Rewards

Customer Loyalty

Who: Starbucks, your ubiquitous corner coffeehouse, whose now infamous loyalty program is studied in MBA programs across the world.
What’s Working: Simple value proposition, who wouldn’t want to give a free Starbucks drink to their friend?
What’s Not: This referral email assumes some familiarity with Starbucks Rewards, e.g. what do Bonus Stars tangibly mean for me? I’d also argue that the invitation diagram on the black background is more important that the green drinks illustration and the two should be flipped.

Time to vacay with Vrbo

Apology

Who: Vrbo, peer to peer vacation rentals, i.e. an Airbnb alternative.
What’s Working: Clever way to take back control after an email deployment mistake. Pares down the original email content to get straight to the point – we messed up > we need a vacation > we host vacation houses > come browse.
What’s Not: Nothing, but a more relevant “oops, vacation bloopers” hero image would’ve been a great nice-to-have.