Golden Rules of Introducing Sister Sites by Email
One of the many retail emails I subscribe to is Rampage, which recently notified its mailing list of a new brand called Golden State (separate e-store).
I’ve been a long-time follower of Chad White’s Retail Email Blog, and recall he’s commented a couple times on introducing sister brands in his AM Inbox column, including Gap’s Piperlime, Oriental Trading’s Terry Village and Harry and David’s Wolferman’s brand.
Gap / Piperlime
Oriental Trading / Terry Village
Harry and David / Wolferman’s
Chad said of the Oriental Trading example:
Oriental Trading gives us a good example of how to introduce your subscribers to a sister brand with a dedicated email. First, the email arrived with its usual sender name and address, so it’s instantly recognizable as coming from Oriental Trading. Second, it carries their usual Oriental Trading logo and header—again, guaranteeing that the email is recognized as coming from Oriental Trading. And third, they offer a separate sign up for Terry’s Village emails, and do a good job of setting expectations around the content of those emails.
Unfortunately Golden State dropped the ball, using a new, unfamiliar sender name and branded subject line.
The email itself (provided the subscriber actually clicked through) does refer to Rampage in faint, fancy lettering – easy to miss. Third, the unsubscribe link is an afterthought in the email footer – who reads email footers?
Golden State Clothing is a division of Larry Hansel Clothing, the creators of Rampage. You have received this email from the newsletters of Rampage.com.
To receive more emails from Golden State Clothing, sign up for the newsletter at http://www.goldenstateclothing.com.
So, if you’re thinking of introducing a new brand or store to your existing email subscribers, make sure you:
- Use your regular sender name and sender address
- Clearly reinforce the familiar brand while introducing the new one
- Explain a bit about the new store and shopping experience in the email (set expectations)
- Provide a clear opt-in to the new list, don’t hide it
- A bonus would be a discount or free shipping offer
Like This Article?
|
Get New Posts Delivered to You
|
Add to del.icio.us
Sphinn It!
Stumble It
Hi Linda,
Just a correction. You wrote that the “unsubscribe” link was easy to miss.
It’s worse than that: it’s the subscribe (opt-in) link. Ouch.
Michael
@Michael, hmmm having both links there…so are you automatically opted in by virtue of being on the Rampage list or is this a one-off message? I’ll let you know – I have not taken either action and will watch what happens…
My guess would be that those are an opt-in link for Golden State and an opt-out for Rampage – i.e. you’re not subscribed to Golden State (nice title pun by the way) unless you ask to be. Which is of course the right way to do it. Checking where the two links actually link to would probably tell you for sure.
If it’s as I think, Rampage will probably lose a lot of customers… happy Rampage customers who decided that they didn’t want email from Golden State and clicked the unsubscribe link…
Totally agree with Chad’s 3 rules… that’s the responsible way to do it. But I see so many ‘responsible’ retailers giving/selling my details to other people. I know this because I use one-off accounts on my domain for all my signups… register with aceshopping.com and give them aceshopping@jonsdomain.com as my email address. Then when, out of the blue, I start getting email about retirement seminars in distant countries I know who’s ‘leaked’ my details.
Smart, Jon. I know one of our EP team found a top retailer doing just that…selling email data. It was the only opt-in for that email address and it got spammed.
I’m totally making assumptions here, but I imagine the Rampage email subscriber to be a young, trendy fashionista who probably IS interested in Golden State and won’t get too hung up on this. But that’s a big assumption, and it’s good to have some guidelines for retail email in place. Net-iquette :)