Hewitt & May is a high quality shirtmaker targeting buyers in the City, business owners and lawyers who appreciate exceptional quality with a stylistic edge.

The objective of this email was to acquire new customers. The approach was to use a special offer to encourage potential customers to try the brand for the first time. The experience would lead them to become regular customers.

The email was successful in generating click-throughs but failed to make many sales.

Analysis

1. Website navigation at the top of the email is a good idea as it serves the added purpose of setting out what you do, although including a Home button might be a little confusing.
2. Having the key message at the top-left of the email is the right approach as this is often the only part of the email readers can see.
   However, as the email viewing window is often wide rather than tall, it may not show all of the image and the main messages (‘40% off’ and ‘Jan sale’) could be cut off.
3. The main issue with the email is the number of messages being presented to the viewer, all at a similar size. It is hard to know where to look first.

Messages include:

• 40% off
• January sale
• Finest ever shirt
• Free delivery
• Get free silk tie
• Buy now
• Egyptian 2-Fold Cotton
• Free delivery (again) & free returns.
4. For the navigation think about the language that could drive reader action. Will they react better to ‘Promotions’ or perhaps ‘Special offers’ or ‘Great deals’?
5. If possible avoid breaking up key headline phrases over different lines – ‘Classic V1’ and ‘shirt’. It makes it harder to scan and understand.
6. The call to action is not clear. While it says ‘Buy now’ on a number of occasions, you can’t see where to click. If you roll over most of the images it turns out that they are buttons but this is not immediately clear. In one case the ‘Buy now’ text is not clickable.
7. It doesn’t make sense to say ‘Buy now’ above the general headings of shirts, ties and cufflinks, as the reader hasn’t seen anything to buy at this stage.
8. When you do find a link to click on, such as the main offer, you arrive on the home page of the Hewitt & May website, rather than on the specific product page. There is no obvious button on the home page to buy the shirt. Users are likely to get lost at this stage.
9. The email is made up entirely of images. Many email clients (eg Outlook) are set not to open images so some readers may receive a blank email.
10. The email doesn’t comply with new legislation governing email marketing and websites. From 1 January 2007 it became a legal requirement to display your full registered company name, country of registration and registered office address on ALL business emails including your email marketing.