How NOT to mail me – an open letter to AmEx
Dear AmEx,
I subscribe to a large number of newsletters and am subject to a whole lot of unsolicited mail as well. As a marketer, unless something is outright offensive or from someone who has ticked me off in the past, I tend to read okay, maybe not read, but glance quickly through, mails from known commercial sources. Which brings me to the topic of this post.
Earlier this morning I received an unsolicited email from you, with the subject “Get complementary domestic return tickets when you buy Overseas return tickets.” I have been your customer for eight or nine years now. And it is only recently that you have begun emailing me — what I can best term as — flyers. In essence, you have re-purposed the flyer you produced for snail mail (which I received along with my monthly bill in hardcopy) into an ALL image email. Of course my mail client blocks the image, and what I see is this.
Notice, the creative folks at your agency have divided the image into four segments for faster loading, however no one seems to have bothered defining any ALT text, so there’s no way for me to know what this email is about, or whether I want to open it. Unless of course they felt that the subject is so compelling that I’d bother loading the image or clicking through “If you are unable to view this email please click here.” I will admit, I did load the images to view your email to me, but was not happy about it.
Last week it was a health insurance pitch and today it was this promotion with Air India. The kicker that drove me write this open letter was at the very bottom of your email, almost an afterthought which read,
Firstly I can’t unsubscribe, by just clicking a link that says Unsubscribe! I actually have to email you with REMOVE as my subject – guess I can do that. But you will take approximately two to three weeks to unsubscribe me! I had to read this thrice to make sure that I had read this right. If the whole point of emailing me is to leverage the power of this medium, clearly that doesn’t run all the way back to your database and unsubscribing me immediately!
In summary,
What worked
Sender’s name was recognizable “American Express” &
Subject told me something about what the mail was aboutWhat didn’t work
- Using physical mailer as an all-image email content
- no ALT text usage
- non-intuitive & slow unsubscribe option
