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.