Emails We Love: A Quick Welcome From Shaws, But No Follow-Through
Sure, you want to build your email file. But once you get folks to sign-up, what do you do? Do you deluge them with messages twice a day until they get fed up and unsubscribe, or do you ignore them completely?
Both of these options are of course, marketing sins. I recently signed up for the Shaws email list and while they haven't ignored me, they haven't followed through either.
Shaws drew me into their email fold with the Sizzlin' Summer Giveaway promotion currently going on in stores. A McDonald's Monopoly type-scheme, customers get a game board and are awarded game pieces every time they shop. The game pieces must be torn apart and then stuck on the appropriate place on the board.
It's easy to do, but time consuming, especially since depending on what a customer buys they might get anywhere from two to 10 game pieces in a shopping trip, with four stickers in each. I wouldn't be bothered, but my kids will do it, so we're playing.
On each piece, there's also either a coupon or a code you can enter on shaws.com to enter a giveaway for one of 28 $1000 Shaws gift cards.
With a stack of about eight codes in hand, I went to the website and found that I had to register my Shaws rewards card to play. Once I did that, I was invited to join the email list. I then dutifully entered all of my codes and expected some game-related follow-up. Obviously, I'm engaged if I'm going to enter eight lengthy codes one by one, right?
Nope. I immediately received a welcome email, inviting me to go back to the site to create shopping lists, build a recipe box or customize my home page. All well and good, but I'm not told what I would get out of doing this (which in the process would of course, give them more data on me). And while I did tell them which Shaws I shop at most frequently when I registered, nothing local is offered in the welcome.
Shaws gets points for the quick welcome and acknowledgement, but a week later, I'm still waiting for something more relevant. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go bug my kids to paste more game pieces on the board.
What's the best welcome email you've gotten recently? Let me know at [email protected].
