Why Caribou Coffee Gets Email Marketing
By: Identity Team
Let me start with this question: How many emails do you get on an average day? Remember, don’t just count your work account; include your personal one in there, too. Is your head spinning? Your email is most likely victim to a barrage of e-blasts, all along the lines of this company’s the best and that company has a new president, and don’t forget about that other company’s latest products!
At first, I tried to keep up. Ryan Cabrera has a newsletter? Oreos will email me new flavors? Of course I’ll sign up!
I am the first to admit, I was jaded. I fervently signed up, followed, liked, retweeted, promised my unborn first child to brand after brand’s sinister delight. After I realized I was getting more e-blasts than personalized email, I took a step back and said, Why am I spending my time on this?
When the superfluous online brand exposure began, I think I was psyched at the prospect of identifying myself with all of these “cool” or “unique” companies and to have the ability to form a solidarity with my other faithful Oreo followers. But what community was formed out of passively receiving plain old marketing emails? Not much, I tell you.
Until I started receiving e-blasts from Caribou Coffee, I had forgotten what a useful marketing tool these can actually be. Think about the last email you received. Did it meet any of these criteria:
- Was it pretty?
- Was it informational?
- Do you feel like you’re a more fulfilled person after having read it?
If the answer is yes, then you are one of the lucky ones. I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve received that stick to the same boring format, provide little useful information and tease their “one-in-a-lifetime” promotions without giving you any incentive to purchase them. All I see is fluff. Filler. More simply—ads. I know I certainly don’t want to overtly be marketed to online—unless it’s a means to an end that is valuable to me.
Enter Caribou Coffee – the first consumer company to get it.
What Caribou does so well is they get straight to the point. They don’t make you sift through lengths of copy to get to the meat. They immediately pull you in with flashy, appealing graphics, and they almost always have some sort of deal inlcuded. Every time I get an email from Caribou, I’m quick to open it because I’m always anticipating what will be inside.
I think my biggest takeaway from Caribou’s e-blasts is that they won my trust by regularly showing they appreciate my loyalty by rewarding me with coupons. By the time I was sold on their e-blasts, I was open to receiving promotional emails about new foods and drinks, contests or charity.
They just do it right. Those other companies that continue to send me “pithy” e-blasts about the flavor of the month with no coupon? Delete.
Which other companies do you think “get it” when it comes to email marketing?