Every now and then I see something that is a poor use of email and have to call it out. Today eBay caught my attention with this poor email strategy.
Take a look at the subject lines for emails I received from eBay during the past 30 days.
Now I have the checkboxes ON for the eBay Notification preferences so I expect to receive emails of this nature.
My beef is that there should be someone at eBay who is watching what the emails look like when they are sent. These subject lines just pretty much make me want to delete these emails. Sure they probably get some opens but they could do so much better. Just eliminating the lame personalization of my user id would improve them.
In addition, eBay felt I would be interested in the now popular ‘Deal of The Day’. Is this good targeted marketing? I mean, they sell stuff, I buy stuff…has to be. Right?
Someone should be trying harder. The subejct line is just plain ineffective. The daily offer could be showcased. Curiousity just isn’t a strong incentive to open an email.
It should be noted that they started sending these emails at their choice since I had the check box on in Notification preferences for promotional emails.
I bet you that if you were to compare the results of this ‘Daily Deal’ (untargeted, not requested) from eBay with the ‘Daily Deal’ from Groupon, (targeted, requested) you’d see what the difference between good practices (Groupon) and not good practices (eBay) is.
How often do you check what the aggregate of your messages look like?