Calvin Klein knows fashion, but they have a lot to learn about designing e-marketing campaigns!

I'll admit it - Nothing comes between me and my Calvins. I'm a total Calvin Klein loyalist, and have been for many years in everything from blue jeans to whatever products they are selling in their John Pawson-designed flagship on Madison Avenue. At one point a few years ago, I was even putting out feelers to people at both Calvin Klein and Philips-Van Heusen (parent company) about the possibilities for a calvinklein.com website – at the time they did not have a website – yet that never materialized for us. And when calvinklein.com finally launched, I was all over it (despite the fact that it was not a Y INTERACT site). So, when I received a recent promotion to join their email list, it was a no-brainer. Of course I'd like to be kept abreast of sales and promotions. Sign me up!

Unfortunately, however, I'm disappointed. Over the last couple of days, I've received a handful of email promotions from calvinklein.com, but all for woman's wear – dresses, knits, female underwear, etc. From the perspective of a customer, it's annoying to have my in-box littered with promotions that, not being a woman, are completely irrelevant to me. As a marketer, this simply strikes me as poor email strategy. They are clearly just blanket e-blasting and not targeting, and what many fail to realize is that targeting is the beauty of email communications.

With just a few quick questions at sign up (for example, male/female, perhaps ZIP code), marketers can get enough information on a prospect to keep messages pertinent while avoiding long-winded questionnaires. When a visitor expresses interest in your brand, product or service, marketers have a little bit of wiggle-room to gather the basic information you need to make your messages relevant. This will help keep your prospects on board and convert them into buyers. In the reverse case of poor email marketing, I (a Calvin Klein brand loyalist) am now just 1-2 messages away from that dredded "unsubscribe" link. Of course, these e-transgressions won't keep me from stepping into the Madison Avenue store the next time a "40% off" flag is waving outside, but in terms of their online communications channel, that low-hanging fruit might soon be falling off the tree!

People are busy. They don't have time for noise in their in-box. Last fall, we worked with our client, INTTRA – the shipping industry's preferred global e-commerce platform – and a partner vendor, 1to1 Dialog, to create a Flash-animated product tour that included a very quick questionnaire (just six fields) for interested visitors to get additional information. The sequence was not blocked by the questions – it appeared on the right of the animation to allow interested viewers to complete it before, during or after the product tour, and get more information from INTTRA. Armed with just a little bit of information such as name, country and job title, INTTRA can now segment their communications by region, job responsibility, or even distribute messages in multiple languages.

After all, to regularly send US customers promotions for products that are only available for Asian markets is simply noise. And gets your prospects that much closer to their "unsubscribe" link.

Ahmed Yearwood
President
Y INTERACT
www.yinteract.com