I am a big Apple fan for a lot of reasons: the way they revolutionized the personal computer market, the way they revolutionized the Music industry, how they started a new revolution in the cell phone market, the design excellence of their products, the capacity to build a culture and a brand, and the list goes to the infinite.
Apparently Apple is a perfect marketing machine. However the last emails that I’ve received from them, shows me that they don’t get how email marketing has changed. They can improve a lot in this specific field. The last campaigns sent by Apple show an absolute lack of personalization and segmentation. Let’s analyze the email I received from them during Christmas (it is in Spanish, I will translate):
The Subject: Equip yourself with Apple in 2009
I bought a MacBook from Apple store more than 2 years ago. Just taking this fact in account, the subject line would’ve been much more personal If they’ve written: Equip your MacBook for 2009 or Find the best accessories for your MacBook in 2009. Just this little of personalization of the subject line would’ve given a much better open rate, CTR and even conversion rate.
The Layout:
The first problem that everyone can see is that if you look at the email in your preview panel, with no images, the email looks empty. The main message is in a big image that doesn’t have an alternative text, so I cannot even intuit what is it about. The second big missing part is a link that allows me to see the message on the web in case my email reader cannot display the design properly. These two things can make your open rate drop.
Once we download the images of the email we can see a beautiful html design (I don’t expect less from Apple), with a lot of “call to action” elements that will lead me to the store. However the design of the main message is more than 700 pixels wide, what will make me horizontal scroll to see the full message in most of the preview panels in email readers. That could be improved.
The Message
The thing that surprises me the most is the complete lack of personalization of the message. More than 70% of the email tells me about accessories for an iPod, iPhone and iPod Touch that I’ve never bought. Knowing that what I bought from them was a MacBook, they could’ve offered me the coolest, best sold, cheapest or whatever accessories for my already bought MacBook. They could’ve even offered me to change my old MacBook for the new one.
That is not all. To the no personalization, I can add that the message had no value at all for me. They didn’t tell me about a special offer, a good discount or any valuable information for a MacBook user. They just blasted a publicity email with links to their online store, maybe to remind me that they have an online store. That doesn’t have any value. I know the online store is there. I’ve already bought stuff there.
Conclusion
I think Apple is taking advantage of their strong brand and is not taking care of the details like the one I just explained. Email marketing is an extremely powerful way to create and reinforce strong brands, establish relationships with the clients and in the end, increase sales. But you have to care about the details, care about your consumer base and care about your community, and this kind of impersonal email campaigns with no value are not the way.
Tags: apple, email marketing, personalization, segemtatio
Why would they want to send you an email about accessories for a product you brought 2 years ago - send that message a fortnight or a week after you buy it.
They want you to buy something new, something of there’s (not a 3rd party accessory) - that’s where their profit is.
I totally agree with the lack of content display without without the CSS or images, but I think you’ll find if you view the message source that they are sending a nicely formatted text version of the email along with the HTML version. There is a difference.
I’ve wondered these things myself and I’m glad you put them online. For such a dominant brand, Apple does very little segmentation, and actually shows a lack of sophistication. Actually I’d go so far to say that their email comms are all form and little function.
Why not marry some deep segmentation to these iconic prodcuts? It’s instant (and accountable) ROI.