Doggyloot is a daily deals site for pups and their people. I first learned about them awhile ago and decided to subscribe to their email program just to see what sorts of emails I would get. Being a dog owner, I am very attached to my pooch and want him to feel loved and cared for. The people over at Doggyloot seem to really care about animals and want to provide the best products for the pets and their owners. They have a fairly large Facebook presence with lots of great humanized content and stories, but their email program lacks that element that I believe can really help drive sales.
Looking at the promotional emails that have been sent to me, it appears that they have fallen into the daily deals rock’em/sock’em rut with promotion after promotion. Now..don’t get me wrong, everyone likes a good deal, but to me the joy of owning a pet is also emotional. Subscribers want to feel emotionally connected to their brand and this is where Doggyloot misses the mark. They have great deals, but the email program needs to also have that humanized element to it. I speak around the world about optimizing email programs and it always goes back to relevancy on the marketers side, but the feeling that the company cares about them and their needs from the consumer/subscriber side.
The Facebook page for Doggyloot is filled with interesting content and stories that seemingly are begging to be put in email and have a story told around them. When you combine the human/emotional side to owning a pet and then cross sell and up-sell me to your products, it would go a long way towards showing me the subscriber your human/caring side.
I can’t give too much away of my secret sauce around the humanization of an email program (as that is really reserved for my paying clients), but I can tell you this: The future of email and its long term success for any organization is going to be trying to figure out ways the brand will be able to humanize and allow subscribers to believe that they are more than just trying to give them a good deal. Social media has taught us this and customers are wanting it. The trick is balance and a solid messaging strategy around how you want you want to be perceived in the inbox and around the social sphere.
Below is a recent email and a screen grab of Doggyloot’s FB page. I welcome your feedback.
The Real Implication Of An Email Send
I have been thinking a lot lately of what the implication is for an organization once the button is pushed and the email is sent. When I was client side for many years, I would often go about my day, blasting out emails quickly since I had the process and methodology down in order to do so. One of the things that would cross my mind every once in awhile was the person on the other end of the email. I would think about someone slogging through their inbox and poof..an email that we just sent landed and they read it. Some would think that what we sent was awesome and wanted to click to learn more or buy while others would curse our name and do the unthinkable…. For others, it would never be read, junked or just plain discarded when seeing the name. I use to take people who complained about getting email from us personally, since I felt a deep sense of ownership in the program and I would go the extra mile trying to help the person on the other end with solving whatever issue they had.
True story: I remember one day I sent an email out to The Netherlands promoting an event that we were having and a man responded back with such furious anger calling me and my company every name in the book. He took it to a personal level and really let me have it for disturbing him in the inbox and threatened all kinds of stuff against me and my company. To be clear, the email was sent to people who had opted in to receive email and if I remember it was a pretty well segmented email, but for some reason it didn’t matter to him. All he wanted to do was unleash his fury against someone. I ended up responding to him in a courteous and professional matter indicating that I understood where he was coming and told him that I personally removed him from the database so he would not receive another email from us again. A few hours later, to my surprise I received and email back from him saying that he didn’t want to be removed, he just wanted to see if someone was listening and that he responded the way he did because he found out that his wife wanted to divorce him and he was mad.
I think as email marketers we need to understand that sometimes what we send interrupts people’s days and that after we push the button to 5,000 or 5,000,000 that there are real people with real problems at the other end and no matter how segmented or beautiful our email looks or how great the offer is people will be people. What we need to do as professionals is respect that and ensure that we convince people in organizations that those email address’ are not just revenue numbers or segments…they are real people who deserve the absolute best in an email because we care about our brand integrity and our program.
The real implication of an email send begins with you, but ends in the inbox of a real human. Make it count.