Mar 22 2010
So Many Themes, So Little Time!
I really enjoy checking my inbox during the month of March. Unlike other times of the year when everyone tends to focus on the same predictable “milestone” holidays — Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, etc. — March is the one time of the year when different brands choose to highlight various events in seemingly unpredictable way. You just never know which holidays (both official and non-official) are going to get picked up by each of your favorite brands.
I’m not sure if I can discern a pattern or explain why each brand chooses to align itself with a particular event, but I can certainly say that I enjoy being surprised by each brand’s choices. You just never know what you’re going to get, which is sort of refreshing given how predictable and cyclical the email business is.
Let’s have a look at some emails that hit my inbox in just the past few days:
Last week marked the beginning of the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, which has become an unofficial holiday of sorts for many sports fans in the U.S.. I was intrigued to see GNC, a nutritional supplement retailer, give “March Madness” the full-on holiday treatment in its email campaigns. But there they were, talking hoops with their customers like they were selling basketball sneakers rather than, say, protein shakes and iron pills.
Meanwhile at Hautelook, the high-fashion eCommerce site, the event they were looking forward to was “Prom Week.” Even though it’s only March, I suppose it’s never too early for high school seniors to start thinking about their upcoming dates and wardrobe choices! Now if only there was an online retailer who could help them out with corsages…
Elsewhere, our friends at CVS were determined to capture “the luck of the Irish” by tying their 20% off promotion to every Irishman’s favorite holiday, St. Patrick’s Day. But CVS wasn’t done yet – they still had another important event to talk about: Tax Season! CVS has a great little online member area where you can download your prescription information from the past year and use it to help file your taxes. Their email campaigns do a great job of promoting this super-helpful, online-only feature to CVS ExtraCare members. It’s a great example of how opting-in to an email program can add value to the customer relationship.
Just a few days earlier, Borders sent out an email tying their 30% off promotion to the recent shift in Daylight Savings Time. After all, it makes sense for a business to make time-sensitive promotions around an event that is entirely about the time.
Not to be outdone, Oriental Trading Co. is already looking towards the next big holiday: Easter. OTC broke out all of their pastel colors and bunny-themed copy for this email, which focuses on getting orders delivered before Easter Sunday.
Looking at these examples across the board, it’s clear there’s no clearly established path for navigating the last few weeks of Winter. As an email subscriber I must say I kind of enjoy the unpredictability that March offers. So go ahead, email marketers…get creative! March might be a good time for you to find your brand’s voice and find something different that makes you stand out from the competition.
