Return On Subscriber - Email Marketing Blog

Gwyneth Paltrow, who you may know from such films as Shallow Hal and Duets, has recently launched a new website called Goop. The site might best be described as a Oprah-esque lifestyle/advice site. There is plenty of commentary about the site and the point of it all. I am here to talk about the email marketing aspect of it, which I like a lot better than the website.

Home Page Opt-In

First off, a great top left email opt-in form on the home page.  Any company that doesn’t include an highly visible Opt-In for/box on their home page is simply not focused on growing their email list. In this day and age you also have to sell it a little bit - “Get the Scoop from Goop”.

Detailed Opt-In Description

An error I see a lot of websites make is not subscriber expectations about content & frequency. While this text could be a little more refined about exact frequency, it is more than most are doing.  Once you have set expectations, you will reduce the amount of unsubscribes and build trust.  Just make sure that you practice what you preach.

Email Newsletter Design & Content

I will post some recommendations below, but I wanted to highlight was working for me first. One thing that I really enjoyed about immediately about this email newsletter was the readability of it. The use of larger fonts and clear and consistent spacing was a breath of fresh air compared to the cluttered newsletters of today.  The larger than average images were very well done as well.  The newsletter felt much more like a blog than an email to me.  This email was meant to be read in the inbox and printed out.  If you don’t have click through or conversion goals, no reason to rush them to the web to finish reading.

Now for a few things that would improve this email. First off, the header is much larger than it needs to be.  Shrinking the header by 50% would bring more of the content above the fold.  With numerous recipes in this email, it would also be a good idea to put a jump menu at the top so a subscriber might be able to see all recipes in the email.  These anchor links are very important for long newsletters. Other recommendations would be pre-header text, alt-tags, and a mobile version.

Overall, a great start for Gwyneth in Email Marketing.  What are your thoughts? What do you think can improve this?