Yesterday, I described why I was impressed with the betfair email I received last week: Inventive design, eye-catching, clear call to action and a good use of animated graphics made for a stand-out email; something which is essential in today’s cluttered inbox.

Now I look at what Next had to offer last week. Where as the betfair email marketing team had clearly put some thought into the email, Next seem to have just followed the guidelines.

Let me just state now that there is nothing particularly wrong with this email – professional design which will carry on the Next brand. The problem I have with this email is that it doesn’t really do anything different.

Fathers Day could be one of those emails where you could take advantage of the forward to a friend function. Can you see the forward to a friend? Yep that’s right, tucked away in the top right of the design – not even an image to make it stand out.

This seems like such a massive waste. The forward to a friend in this email could have really opened up the potential of the campaign. I presume that a lot of the recipients on this email are actually the Fathers, and why would they buy themselves a present on this day? What would have been a little more innovative would be to place a “send a hint” button underneath each “buy now” on the email, making that present hint effortless.

Apart from that, the email is all pretty standard, except that they didn’t bother to test the emails rendering for Outlook, which had images out of place and looking scruffy.

All of this leads to what I believe is lazy email marketing; something which will ultimately become less effective over time. With some continued testing of their campaigns effectiveness and a bit of forward thinking though, and Next could see some positive changes to their email marketing campaigns effectiveness.

I received two emails last week that provoked me to do another review blog; both for different reasons.

First up is an email that I received from betfair. Though you can’t really read what the email says from this screen print, you can still get the idea of the email. This is because of some great call to actions.

As I’ve mentioned before, a lot of people will just scan read the email, so you need to get your main points across to them without having to search for them.

Betfair have done this really well with the main points placed down the right hand side on large, clickable footballs. Couple this with an eye-catching design and an intriguing subject header (“is this the game you want both teams to lose?”) and you’re increasing your chance of grabbing your subscribers attention.

The finishing touch that I really liked (but unfortunately you can’t see) was the animated bottom of the email. The crowd at the bottom of the page are there cheering as an animated gif.

For me, this worked really well as I actually did scan read the email and then got to the bottom, was impressed with the email so actually read through the rest of the email.

Well done betfair.

Next email review coming up….