I had the domestic flying experience of a lifetime last week when I traveled to San Francisco. Most of the major carriers were booked or way too expensive for my last minute ticket to the West Coast from Chicago. Fortunately, my travel agency was able to find a reasonable fare on an airline I had never flown before: Virgin America. Virgin America came to Chicago in mid 2011 amidst a big splash and while hearing many good things about it, I had to say I was pretty excited to try something new. Air travel is very personal to me since I like to get perks for being a frequent flier such as seat location, upgrades, club passes and treat it much like a game to see what I can do to get more and more from the carrier. Everything about the Virgin America experience was unique and rather inspiring. From the mood lighting and music at the gate and on the plane to the FAA instructions aboard the plane made it all together a different experience. If you have not flown Virgin America, I encourage you to do so and see for yourself. If you travel a lot, pay close attention to the details (flight attendants, pilots, mood, seating and other things that tend to stand out among the other American carriers) Ok…enough about the commercial for Virgin America….what does this have to do with email marketing?
The experience I had flying VA got me thinking about the experience of the subscriber in email programs. I challenge everyone to think about their own programs and ask when the last time you actually thought about how the subscribers are treated from sign up to unsubscribe. Is the experience like herding cattle whereby the goal is to get as many people to one place at a time without much regard about what happens along the way? Or are you wanting the subscriber to experience your brand in all its glory and coolness that it has to offer? Let me explain this by focusing in on one area of the experience: the acquisition of an email address.
First and foremost, you need to ask yourself the following questions.
1. When was the last time you went through the sign up process on your site? I am not talking about testing to see if something works, I am talking about coming in and actually going through the entire process, start to finish as if you were new to the company.
2. What was that experience like? Was it intuitive? Can your target audience easily and without too much pain to go through the process and completely understand what they are getting themselves into?
3. After the sign up, what was it like? Is it how you would want to be treated in email?
There are many posts about sign up process’, welcome emails and on-boarding that provide a good foundation for what you need to do. What I am talking about here is the ability for you to take off your marketing/company hat and look at the subscriber experience and ask yourself if this is truly how you want to be represented. I speak to a lot of companies at my agency about their email programs and I often found that the little stuff like asking questions at signup or placement of the opt-in box on the site adds/detracts to the experience and sets the tone for the channel which produces the highest ROI in their marketing mix. If there is one thing I encourage all of you to do this month is start with the beginning and sign up for your program from home and experience what a “normal subscriber” would experience. Can’t or wont do it..then do what I call the “grandma and grandpa” test. Grab someone over the the age of 65 who is not that web savvy and have them sign up. Watch them and have them give honest feedback. I am willing to bet that you will find out something about your program that you would have never guessed, which can be great and scary at the same time.
Email is thriving and as marketers we need to make sure that right from the start the experience is unique and memorable.
Last 5 posts by Andrew Kordek
- When Does Relevance Border on Creepiness? Thoughts on Re-targeting. - May 8th, 2012
- “Tell A Friend” Email And The Lost Opportunity - April 20th, 2012
- Think Big….but Start Small - March 14th, 2012
- Email Deliverability Sarcasm Part 2 (and why you should never go on vacation) - February 14th, 2012
- Is Rick Santorum's campaign spamming or does his content just suck? - December 8th, 2011
