After discovering eSpares on Google a while back, when looking for replacement dishwasher parts, I’d been regularly receiving its monthly email marketing
newsletter. But I hadn’t really paid much attention to it until the message that arrived in my inbox today.
From the arresting subject line through to its social links, it’s a great example of what can be done by shall we say, a “less than glamorous” industry to really get the reader interested and provide value.
We liked… the subject matter. For a very boring subject, eSpares has been admirably creative and addressed an interesting topic with relevancy to its audience. Rather than lazily sending over a discount voucher for parts, they’re creating demand by identifying concerns that the reader may not have been aware.
We liked… how the subject line asks “do you have a smelly washing machine?” in terms the reader can relate to and catches the eye… (Read our top tips to craft the perfect subject line.)
Once you’ve opened it, the first thing you see are the reasons for the bad smells and a video on how to stop them.
We liked… the linked video. It provides a clear and direct call to action for the reader, luring them off to the website and indulging the curiosity sparked by the email itself. It wisely doesn’t embed the video in the email (most clients cannot handle video), but makes its nature obvious with a ‘play icon’, giving the right perception to the reader. This link whisks the viewer away to see the video in full on their homepage.
The video itself has been uploaded to YouTube and embedded on the landing page. This is the perfect illustration of how to include video with at a low cost and with no impact on delivery or rendering rates.
We liked… the local aspect of identifying your postcode and gauging the threat of hard water with an accompanying image. It’s a small but nice touch which again illustrates the problem in an intuitive way without taking up much space.
We liked… how if images are disabled, the first text you see continues the thread initiated in the subject line alongside the link to view in browser. Rather than just saying “click here to view the email online” it provides some content which may motivate the reader to click through.
Something to test
Addressing the reader by name in an email helps you stand out and compliments the frankness of the rest of the statement, after all people are attracted their own name when scanning the emails in their inbox.
However, personalising the subject line is a tactic that has been widely used by spammers; this could potentially lead to deliverability issues as a result of the email being automatically filtered out.
Equally where the email is delivered to the inbox you email may be mistaken as spam by the actual reader – they often say that ‘spam is in eye of the beholder’ (or recipient in this case). If this is a tactic that the recipient associates with a lot of spam they have received, they may simply delete the email. Also, remember many recipients register with fake details originally!
This is not to say that you should immediately scrub personalisation off of your list. But we would advise split testing on your own data to see what gets best results. Perhaps try different kinds of personalisation in the subject line- for example, the spares for my particular dishwasher may have captured my attention just as well, if not better!
On the whole top marks all round and for the record… my washing machine doesn’t smell!
