The Smith & Hawken email offer: five reasons it's Hail Mary marketing gone bad

Today, I received an email from Smith & Hawken announcing that "everything is 50% off!" - except furniture, which is 60% off. As an occasional customer of theirs, I clicked through to see if there were any early Christmas presents to be had. Because of the poor construction of the campaign. I wasted fifteen minutes I'll never get back in order to discover that the sale was good only at their retail store, which is 45 minutes away.

The campaign is a terrific example of bad marketing, but there is a story behind the bad marketing. It turns out that Smith & Hawken is going out of business. There seems to be some bad feeling between Scotts Miracle Gro, the parent company, and Smith & Hawken. Whoever created this campaign passes on that bad feeling to the customers by making us jump through hoops to find out how to purchase.

Why is this bad marketing? Let us count the ways.

1. No online component to the sale. The email was meant to send me to a local store. I read the email title, and, unsurprisingly since I have been an occasional customer, was interested in finding something to buy. Email offers usually mean online sales. Since I did not know the back story, I expected to find a sale on their website.

2. No text-only version. The email required you to be able to see the image to understand the specifics. Since I have images turned off by default, which is not uncommon, it was difficult to even find the hotspot to click through to the site. For some reason, the only clickable part of the ad was the top 20%.

3. Poor usability on the "website." The home page of the site is now a monolithic image with a hot spot on the bottom left. Poor usability: since we scan from top to bottom, left to right, I had to scan three fourths of the ad before I found where to click.

How long does it take you to find this call to action - the entire purpose of the email and ad?

4. No website. The only functional part of the website is the store locator. Can you read the yellow text on the teal background below? Our online store is currently not operational. That implies that it may be operational again in the future. In fact, I initially thought they were redesigning the website and, perhaps, staging a sale because the redesign was not finished on time. But then, in even smaller print, it says "all sales are final."

Tiny print (especially compared to the huge fonts above it), light on a dark background, -- located on the bottom right of an ad - says that the designer intentionally diminished the visibility of this text.

5. Deceptive whitelisting messages. At the very top of the ad, in teeny-tiny type, it asks you to add Smith & Hawken to your approved email list. That implies I will continue to get email from them, and that they are an ongoing concern. In fact, of course, they're going out of business. If Scott wanted to continue to keep me as a customer, they would acknowledge that this is from the parent company and perhaps give me the option to opt-in to their communications. But these brands are wholly divorced from each other. Whoever sent this email obviously does not have a goal to retain or convert me to a Scotts Miracle Gro customer. I *do* have the option to opt out of the Smith & Hawken mailing list at the bottom of the email. That makes me wonder who will have my email contact information after the company is dissolved.

If you can read this, your eyesight is so much better than mine!

So, it's clear, based on the bad customer experience, that Scott does not expect those who respond to this ad to continue to be their customers. The lack of thought and resources that went into this campaign effectively torches the Smith & Hawken brand. However, at least in my case, they damage the Scotts Miracle Gro brand as well.

Authenticity

I received an email from a friend not too long ago. The title was "Asking for Help." I did not know this woman very well, but I liked her. Did I open the email? You betcha.

Why did I open it? Because that title was irresistible. It was simple, sincere, and direct.

I not only opened the email, I read it in its entirety. Then I forwarded it to a group of friends. Turns out my friend's niece has a genetic disorder and my friend wanted to host a silent auction to help the family manage the financial burden that comes with those challenges. She wrote a straightforward request for help, for an easily understandable reason, so it was very easy to answer it.

I think we have entered an era where authenticity and simplicity must be a part of your messaging. Potential customers are savvy enough to zip through fluff and hype generated by lazy marketers, salespeople and hucksters. Your value proposition needs to be valid, and it needs to emotionally and intellectually resonate with the prospect. That is, it should pass the BS filter along with the "I want to be a part of that" filter.

PS Emmy's journey is here, if you want to answer the call for help.

Quick search engine optimization tip: TITLE tags

Here is a quick boost to improve your website's results in search engines. Take a look at your TITLE tags. How?

1. Go to the page you want to view.
2. Click on the View drop down menu at the top of your browser.
3. Choose Source (in Internet Explorer).
4. Look for TITLE in brackets like this "<>" near the top of all that code. Read the text between TITLE and /TITLE. Both words are surrounded by < and >. The TITLE phrase is what you see in the title bar at the top of your browser.

To optimize:
1. Do recognize that the first 65 characters of your TITLE tag are the most important. Lead with your strongest keywords.
2. Do use plain English. The TITLE needs to be in normal English - sentence structure is optimal.
3. Do NOT stuff your keywords! Do NOT string a ton of keywords together and call it a title.
3. Do standardize your title tags. If you sell products, I'd lead with product, then product category, then company. If you sell services, lead with the service, the company and the call to action.
4. Do make every title different. Vary the products first, of course.