As marketers increasingly create niche brands or become consolidated within ‘parent’ companies, it may seem like the ideal opportunity to cross-promote products and services across ‘sister’ brands to reach prospective customers, expand subscriber lists and increase revenue.

Unfortunately, sharing subscriber data across brands has the potential to negatively impact reputation, which can adversely influence inbox placement for all of the sending brands. This practice may not only generate increased complaints but, if executed improperly, could also result in lower engagement and higher unsubscribes due to subscriber frustration or irrelevancy of sister brand outreach.

Here are some tactics to positively introduce subscribers to ‘sister’ brands:

• Implement a branded welcome email series that familiarizes current subscribers with related brands. This serves to boost interest as well as brand recognition of the sister brand. Furthermore, this association will begin the process of persuading subscribers to click-through and check out other content. Be sure to include all brand logos in the footer or elsewhere in standard messaging or cross-promotional messages as that will further increase awareness and credibility for all of your affiliated brands.
• Place the unsubscribe link at the top of the cross-promoted marketing message to encourage subscribers to opt-out of co-branded promotions rather than complain to their ISP or unsubscribe from all emails from that ‘sender.’* Complaints are the most important consideration by ISPs in their filtering decisions, so providing subscribers a highly visible unsubscribe helps to maintain low complaint rates and a good reputation.
• Utilize clear and conspicuous language at the point of email consent so that subscribers have realistic expectations of potential cross-branded communications.
• Refrain from changing the ‘from’ address of the originally subscribed-to brand. Any other ‘from’ address will surprise recipients and increase complaints.
• Direct recipients to a preference center when they join or leave your program and utilize it to expose subscribers to other brands’ subscription options.
• Ensure that the cross-branded emails include a significant promotion that provides value and encourages future receipt of these types of emails. Alternatively, use some existing space within an email to solicit subscriptions to an affiliated brands email list.

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Like many seasonal or anniversary oriented retailers, FTD has a Gift Reminder program, which they do a great job of promoting. (Side note: The name “FTD” originally stood for “Florists’ Telegraph Delivery” when the company was founded in 1910. Then, in 1914, the name was updated to “Florists’ Transworld Delivery.” Who knew?)

I recently purchased two flower arrangements from FTD.com and noticed some pretty nice features revolving around their email reminders. The first mention of their reminder program comes during the checkout process — after the delivery information and before the payment options.

FTD does a great job with:

• Being clear that this is an optional form. A customer does not need to fill this out in order to complete their transaction. As a consumer, I know that I am signing up to receive email notifications by completing this form.
• The offer is clear and generous.
• The rules are clear. I need to enter 5 reminders in order to receive 20% off my next order. This information is listed twice in a small space.
• The form is easy to understand and simple to navigate.
• Reminding customers about the gift reminder service again once the checkout process is complete. Since I did not enter 5 reminder email addresses and dates on my first attempt I was given the option to enter them again.

Do you have any examples of Gift Reminder services?  How have these performed for you?  Do you opt-in for these types of services? Share your experiences with us!

If I am a customer of a particular brand, it’s no secret that their sister brands might also try to market to me. This happens all the time in postal mail advertising (think of all the seemingly random catalogs you receive during the holidays), but is a bit trickier in the email marketing realm.

I recently received a cross-branded email from Soap.com. Apparently this is a sister site to Diapers.com, a brand which I subscribe to. Soap.com/Diapers.com did a good job overall with this email. I thought I’d quickly share my thoughts on the pros and cons of their campaign, which can be used as a teaching point for other brand families considering launching new brands.

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