As a typical online shopper, I constantly find myself signing up for numerous email programs to receive certain perks. Why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of possible deals and discounts? Of course, by entering an email, the company now has you in their system and will begin to send countless emails your way. But, if I can benefit from a task as small as entering my email, I’m interested. In this post, I will analyze the email marketing efforts of PacSun and evaluate emails based on criteria for effective email marketing.
Let’s go back to how I became a PacSun email candidate. I originally signed up for their emails to receive exclusive offers, early access to sales & more. In addition, I frequently shop at this store online and instore so I figured it would be worthwhile to sign up because who doesn’t love discounts? On average I would say I receive two emails a day from PacSun! I would say this is quite a lot, and enough that I even get annoyed to the capacity of emails I receive. However, I would say I open about 20% of these emails or about 2-3 of the emails per week.
To further evaluate the emails I will use a question and answer format to better convey how PacSun positions their email marketing campaigns.
Q: What was the subject line of the email? How did that entice you to open the email? Did the content match the subject line?
A: The subject of the email read, ” No foolin’ around- your secret deal expires tonight!” Because the subject line mentioned a “secret deal”, I felt enticed to open the email and discover what my deal was. Upon opening the email I found that in addition to the BOGO 50% deal going on, I would also receive an extra 20% off my online purchase because I opened the email to find the secret promotional code “SHHHH20-S9CWHSX5T39C”. Therefore, I would safely safe that the subject line and email content matched. 
Q: What is the call to action? Is it effective? (Did you click on anything?)
A: The call to action was definitely the phrase “secret deal expires tonight” in the subject line because it 1) offered a potential promotional discount 2) suggested a sense of urgency to open right away before it expired. For these two reasons, the CTA was effective and encouraged me to open the email and further click on “Shop Women’s” to possibly use the 20% off code on the website.
Q: Is the quantity of content appropriate? Should they have included additional offers or content? Should they have included fewer offers?
A: The quantity of content found within the email was sufficient. There were two offers, BOGO 50% and an additional 20% off online purchases using the given code. I think that two offers were not an overwhelming amount and easy to follow. In addition, it was enough offers that users feel like they should go shop on PacSun because there are two potential promotions to save money. 
Q: Do you think this same email went to the entire database or was it sent to a segment? Do you think any part of the email is segment-dependent?
A: For the most part, I would say that this email went to the entire database as opposed to a segment because the content within the email is beneficial to any customer. There was no discrepancy in regards to gender-based promotions or a particular category of clothing. For this reason, I think the whole email is worthwhile to send to the whole database because any customer would enjoy and be enticed to open this email.
Q: Did this email accomplish its objective? (This could include more than inducing a click. For example, if it’s a newsletter, did it build the brand?)
A: If the main objective of this email was to increase the number of clicks to increase traffic on PacSun’s website, then I would say this email has the potential to accomplish its objective. Just from my experience, I clicked on the “Shop Wome’s” link and looked on their website. However, if the main objective was to increase the number of conversions by including a promotional discount code, I would not say that this was 100% successful because just because people opened the email does not mean that customers shopped on the website and used the code to purchase something. In my experience, I still noted that the 20% off code was only on regular priced items, and because PacSun has some high priced items, I was not inclined to make a purchase even with the code.
Q: What should the next email from this sender be?
A: The next email should be sent at night on the same day the promotion ends to give a last minute chance to use the promotional code. By telling customers that the code will expire in three hours it may encourage users to make a purchase with the code because they feel buyers guilt for not taking the opportunity of a discount.
I will look further at another PacSun using the same email marketing criteria based questions.
Q: What was the subject line of the email? How did that entice you to open the email? Did the content match the subject line?
A: The subject line for this email read, “It’s all NEW, girl.” This enticed me to click on the email because I saw that it mentioned NEW, so I figured I’d be introduced to the new arrivals for spring and summer. When I opened the email I found that content matched the subject line because it showed and wrote about “Brand New” arrivals from different brands. 
Q: What is the call to action? Is it effective? (Did you click on anything?)
A: I believe the CTA here is the term “New” in the subject line and content in the email. However, I do not think that the CTA was effective because it did not encourage me to click on anything, instead I just looked at the pictures in the email.
Q: Is the quantity of content appropriate? Should they have included additional offers or content? Should they have included fewer offers?
A: I think that this email lacked a bit in terms of content. The email did show a few of the new pieces to the PacSun inventory, but the email lacked any offer that I felt was necessary to make a purchase. The only offer in the email was “FREE SHIPPING ON ALL ORDERS OVER $50*”. In my experiences, this offer is always given, and as a college student, I try to limit my online shopping habits. For this reason, I did not plan on spending a minimum of $50 to receive a benefit. This email should have added another offer or benefit to make customers shop the new collections.
Q: Do you think this same email went to the entire database or was it sent to a segment? Do you think any part of the email is segment-dependent?
A: This email was most likely sent to a segment, more specifically to women. I can assume this because the subject line uses the term “girl” and the content within only shows women’s clothing. Therefore, it would not make sense to send this email to men.
Q: Did this email accomplish its objective?
A: Overall, I would say that this email may have met its objective if their objective was to increase the number of views on their women’s new arrivals page. Even though this email lacked an enticing deal or discount to make a purchase, I think that customers may have been encouraged to view the new women’s products, but not necessarily make a purchase. Therefore, if their goal was to increase the number of women’s new arrival purchases, then I would say this emailed failed to meet the objective.
Q: What should the next email from this sender be?
A: The next email from PacSun could possibly be another email targeting women with the objective to check out their new arrivals, but add some sort of discount or promotion to increase the number of purchases. An example could be the first 100 customers to purchase from the women’s new arrival will receive 10% off or even a free pair of sunglasses.
Overall, PacSun does a good job of making sure to take advantage of their email marketing campaigns to ensure that customers visit their website, and hopefully make purchases. However, sometimes too many emails can be too much and turn off customers.
xoxo,
britt 
P.s. check out Professor Pepe’s blog
In terms of traffic, there are several subcategories to consider when analyzing Ulta’s website; direct traffic, paid and unpaid search traffic, and paid and unpaid referral traffic. Direct traffic occurs when consumers simply type the website URL into the search bar. Because Ulta is one of the most well-known beauty stores, Ulta most likely has a lot of traffic coming in directly from typing in the URL. Ulta has a short and simple domain name for consumers to remember making it easier to access the website directly from the URL search. When it comes to paid search traffic, these are the type of ads that appear on the SERP above the organic results. For Ulta, if you Google search “Ulta” the first link that appears is a paid ad for Ulta. When users engage in clicking on these ads the link becomes a form of paid search traffic. Unpaid search traffic is defined as any traffic that occurs from clicks on the organic SERP. When a consumer Google searches “makeup”, the first organic link to appear is for Ulta’s website. Because Ulta appears so high in the ranking for makeup, it can be assumed that much of Ulta’s online traffic comes from unpaid search traffic. Paid referral traffic comes from banner ads, text ads, and other ads of that nature, but Ulta has paid to do so. Whereas unpaid referral traffic is when another website or company refers to Ulta, but Utla does not pay for the promotion. It is likely that Ulta has a lot of unpaid referral traffic from other blogs and videos that pertain to beauty.
I am not suggesting that you have to wear makeup or dress a certain way to be beautiful, rather I am here to give tips and tricks from my own experiences that have helped me discover my own idea of beauty. I don’t wear makeup and do my hair a particular way to look beautiful to other people, instead, I wear makeup, do my hair, take care of my skin, etc. because I have found a passion for it.
beautywithbritt 