Relevance, Timeliness, and Value Are the Hat Trick of Email Marketing Success

May 17, 2011 Jillian Koeneman Detroit, Email marketing, Freshlime, Hockey, Pei Wei, Red Wings blog

I get hundreds of emails in my inbox everyday. Chances are you are probably in the same boat. While I try to read them all, most days it simply doesn’t happen.  Let’s be honest. Who wants to spend their day reading and filing emails, a task that could easily be a full-time job in itself.

Very few emails make me sit back and take notice so when I do come across one of those that knocked the ball out of the park, or in this case, soared past the goalie into the net, I like to share them.

The Backstory
I was in Detroit last week during the Stanley Cup playoffs to visit family, meet with some clients, and of course cheer on the Wings. On the first night I was there I ordered some food online from Pei Wei and in the process signed up for an account which included giving them my email address.

A few days later the Red Wings came back from a 3-0 series deficit to force a Game 7 (aka do-or-die). Detroit was buzzing with excitement and everyone was making plans on where they would be watching the game and what they would do for dinner that night. At 10:02 AM on game day I got this email from Pei Wei (shown below).

The Email

Why It Rocked

While I don’t have the exact numbers from the email campaign, I am willing to bet my favorite Wings jersey that it was quite a hit. It was successful for the following reasons.

• Timely: The email came the morning of Game 7 which gave people who were on the fence for where to get food a chance to order. People could only take advantage of this special offer on this specific date, which also encouraged redemption.
• Relevant: The Pei Wei marketing team most likely segmented out their list and selected those people who had ordered recently from a Metro Detroit area restaurant and sent this email to them. The email headline, “Detroit Hockey Fans – Get 20% Off Online Take Away Tonight!” was relevant, catchy, and included the offer. The email itself was nicely branded with the Pei Wei visuals but also included a hockey stick and puck to go along with the overall theme.
• Value: In this case the value Pei Wei provided came in the form of a discount. The 20% discount was significant enough to get people to take action, me included. For a restaurant that doesn’t typically offer discounts this was a welcome surprise for fans. Their promo code “HOCKEY” also was brilliant and relevant.

You can learn a lot from this email from Pei Wei. It’s a good reminder to stop and consider are your eblasts relevant? Timely? Are you providing value? Or will your email simply be just “another email” in your readers in box?