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Emails that make you smile

This summer’s non-work project for me has been training for a 5K run with Fleet Feet in Menlo Park. As part of the training programs we get weekly emails from the store on Monday. As I was reading through today’s email, I found myself smiling and happy. Lisa, who is one of the store owners and writes the emails, is just so happy and bouncy and thrilled to share her love of running and that comes through in the newsletter.
Our group’s primary coach is the other store owner. During runs we often talk about random stuff, and when I tell people I do email delivery, they always start talking about their experience with email and spam. One night I was running with Jim, and we were talking about Jim’s experiences with sending email. He mentioned their ESP and talked about how convenient it was. But then he mentioned he wasn’t sure that they were sending enough mail (which made me laugh hard enough I almost tripped on a curb).
I realized I am not just a delivery expert when I started thinking about all the ways they could increase the amount of email they send, while still maintaining the quality and the friendly feel of their bulk emails. What could they offer local runners that would increase the value of the store to them? The first very obvious thing was a race calendar. There are dozens of local races every week, telling folks about upcoming races and entry deadlines would be a way to contact folks regularly without it always being a “buy stuff from us!!”
What commercial emails have you gotten recently that have made you smile?

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Too much? Too little?

Mark Brownlow (who I haven’t linked to nearly enough lately) has insightful commentary on the frequency question.
I really don’t think marketers should be afraid of sending email frequently. There are people who appreciate a lot of email. But I do think marketers should be careful when sending frequently. Good delivery is all about your audience and what you have to offer them.
As Mark says:

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The frequency conundrum

What is the perfect frequency to send mail? Is it daily, weekly, monthly, hourly, minutely (is that even a word?) or randomly? Any number of experts will give you a definitive answer to this question, but I don’t believe there is a single answer.
The frequency recipients will respond to depends on the type of mail, the recipient expectations, the sender and a host of other factors.
For one example look at the mail sent by social networks. Many people, myself included, will accept dozens of emails a day telling me someone wrote on my Facebook wall or retweeted something I said or wants to link to my network on LinkedIn. Another example is when I’m traveling or waiting to pick up someone who is, I am thrilled to receive multiple updates an hour from the airline.
This willingness to receive frequent commercial or bulk emails doesn’t necessarily translate to marketing emails. When Sur la Table started sending double digit amounts of email a week, I down-subscribed, and had they not let me pick an acceptable-to-me frequency I would have unsubscribed completely.
A lot of marketing experts insist that mailers don’t send frequently enough. That increasing frequency increases ROI. What a lot of people miss are all the caveats in the fine print. In their minds, increasing frequency goes hand in hand with increased segmentation, targeting and recipient specific emails.
The idea isn’t simply to mail the entire list more frequently but to mail those who are more open to increased frequency. This is an idea I wholeheartedly support.

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