Announcing A Sale Through Email

I love to shop online. There is something absolutely magical about being able to buy jeans at 2:00 AM if I so desire. OK, who are we kidding, in the past year, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been awake at 2:00 AM, and I’ve never actually purchased jeans or any other article of clothing at that time, but I could if I wanted to...

I am familiar enough with my favorite brands that sizing is no longer an issue. Most online stores have a return policy that allows brick and mortar store returns, which is brilliant, because while I'm at the store to return an item, there is a strong probability that I will make an additional purchase. If my only option is returning through the mail, the only additional purchase I may make is a book of stamps at the post office.

There are several things I like about shopping online:

It's quick. I don’t have to hassle with searching through a store to find what I want – Skirts? Click here. Tops? Click there. View them all on one page? another click. It's just that simple. The images are so important to the sale. If I can't see it, I'm not going to buy it.


As you can imagine, when my usual online haunts are having a sale, I want to know about it. As much as I love to shop, I am equally as frugal. I was surprised by an email I received from lucy. All email messages they have sent me in the past have had some representation of their clothing, whether it was sweaters or exercise wear, a seed was planted as to what I can expect to find when I clicked-through.

While I was intrigued by only the top half of the word "clearance" appearing in my preview pane – showing half an image or word is almost a sure-fire way to get your subscribers to scroll down because their mind needs to see the word or image in it's entirety – There were no images of clothing to get me exited and to drive my click-through.

Amazingly enough, an hour and half later, I received an almost identical message from J.Crew. In this case other than the header, the only other information I could see in the preview pane were the words (an image) "J. Crew Spring Sale"


That was enough to get me to scroll down. A sale will win me nearly every time. I was almost as surprised as I had been with the lucy email. No images of what was on sale. Not even any description. More words and too many clicks to get to the clothes.

The first click led me to the sale page which prompted me to click by size and gender, I go to another page to select the type of clothing I'm shopping for. And then, I can see the pictures of the clothes. On a quick informal click-through of the dresses, with only a few exceptions the dresses were the same regardless of size. That extra click could cost some sales.

These email messages are clean and colorful. They make the point that there is a sale. The only way to find out what it is, is to click (and click and click) through.