The other day Dylan Boyd of eROI who knows that Alchemy Worx have a thing about subject lines forwarded me this email sent by J. Crew and asked me what I thought of the subject line;

Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear (online + in stores)

As I was due a post I thought I would share my response to him with you so here goes.

It is always difficult to answer a question like that without a clear understanding of what they are trying to achieve opens? clicks? sales online? or sales in store? Or, as I can probably guess they are trying to achieve all of the above, which is why I don’t think it is a very good subject line.
 
This is a single proposition email with a very strong and easy to communicate message – Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear – so nothing else is needed in the subject line, unless you strengthen the offer. This could be done by injecting a call to action, adding sense of urgency, additional value or just plain selling the products! I am not a copy writer or fashion guru but here are some examples of what I mean.
 
- Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear – come in and take a peek
- Classic Cashmere to Down Puffers – Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear
- Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear – this week only
- Look great for less this winter – Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear
- Beat the credit crunch – Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear
- Excusive offer: Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear
- Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear – Exclusive offer!
- Online exclusive! Up to 40% off select women’s outerwear
 
What is wrong with subject line is that the second part (online + in stores) actually devalues the first part because it suggests:

- The offer isn’t special to you
- There is no extra benefit to shopping online
- It doesn’t encourage you to look or online window shop
- It doesn’t SELL the fantastic clothing they have in stock

The real problem is the email itself  which doesn’t really provide the recipient with any
more value than a transactional or purchase confirmation email. It demonstrates to me that email is not truly integrated into J Crew’s multichannel strategy.

As I don’t live in the US I don’t know for sure, but I would be very surprised if the offer wasn’t being pushed everywhere on and offline and that J Crew just briefed in the email at the very last minute.
 
Now some more technical points I am sure most people will have spotted this too. It may look nice, but it misses several opportunities – in outlook with the images turned off all you see is 4 red x’s and the alt tag was jcrew.com for every image. Given that the email is entirely made up of images, with very few links – even the nav bar is single image (see below) J Crew really should make use of the alt tags and consider using HTML behind the images.

Now I bet I get a message from J Crew telling me that email broke all previous sales records!