Looking big can be the same as looking good. In a highly competitive retail or other commerce marketing environment, delivering value to the consumer is key. Show them how to mimic a trendy style. Link trendy styles to aspects of their style by mining from prior interactions and sales. Most importantly, don’t be boring. Break out and use your email to stand apart from other brands who might be reluctant to make a statement that could resonate with the consumer.
Make your content relevant and tie images in your email to ways a consumer can derive value from the product. Stand out, but respect the authority of the informed consumer who knows a hundred places to buy a little black dress. Convey the value of your black dress in images, words and associations.
Q&A with Kestrel Lemen
How have you seen brands taking this “look big” approach where perception is balanced with promotion?
I think that this is most evident in really well done style guides where you take a style that is nationally or internationally known, like a grunge rocker style, for example, and you associate your brand with it. You are making your brand more powerful because you are aligned with the perception of that style. You are pulling in people who are wearing it and showing others how to wear the look. This takes out some of the guesswork, thus helping consumers to see if it resonates with their own style and then helps them make the conversion to the style.
How can email be used to enhance perceived value?
People expect emails to be valuable, and some consumers may be frustrated by how many emails they get that don’t have valuable content. The product image isn’t rendering, the offer isn’t relevant, etc. Smart marketers take advantage of the value placed on a well-done email and use the opportunity to help their brands stand out from the competition. If the competition is churning out the same email each time with a discount code or promotion, perhaps you include something cheeky in your message like a quirky suggestive subject line and email content that’s fun and exciting. One of my favorite retailers does not simply show pictures of products in every email, they also show a funny infographic about how or why you want to wear the product. This creativity helps the email to stand out, and it lifts the consumer’s perceptions. The message resonates more than the competition’s.
How can a marketer measure the benefit they receive from boosting their brand’s perceived value?
The order and revenue data is going to show the benefit. If you try something with your branding that you think should help elevate the perceived value of your brand, and you do so for a reasonable amount of time and it doesn’t make a difference, then it may be time to try something new. This is where testing comes in handy. Even something like trying a quirky message with some fun content every now and then to see what kind of reaction it gets in terms of opens, clicks and conversions…and while more quirky messages may not have a much higher conversion rate, you may see that they have higher open and click rates which shows that subscribers are engaged. I have a client who sends educational emails with no promotions and they drive high numbers of subscribers to the site, so they know that opens and clicks are high but conversions are not. They may be driving engagement, but it’s not impacting revenue. Decide what your goals are and which metrics make sense for those goals.
E-Commerce is competitive, and shoppers are always looking for a deal. But people also will pay big bucks for perceived value. If you can stand out and make an impression, then people will respond and keep coming back. – Kestrel Lemen
Courtesy: Bronto
