Junk, spam or useful - An email critique

Email, personalisation, user generated content and influence

So during our digital marketing seminar we were asked to look at a specific email sent to you to analyse. This could be anything such as junk emails, promotional emails etc. looking into how the email is personalised to you, would you open it and why it was appealing (or not appealing) to open.

So I chose to look at an email from Flatspot, a clothing website which i have bought products from previously and have an account with. These emails come up in my 'Promotions' tab as I use Gmail. Usually I just delete emails straight away from my promotions tab, however, I often use this website and generally check new emails.

So firstly the email is not personalised to me, it doesn't contain my name or any personal information. For me I quite like this, it's not personal just showing me offers and products that I like, although they do have my name as it is in the email script.

The title of the email is simply latest products added this week. Going into the email the website name is at the top of the page as a link you can follow to the main page of the site. there are also around 10 images of different items of clothing/accessories once you click on one of these images it takes you to a page within the website focused on that particular brand. I think this is pretty good as it allows you to see a small selection of items similar to the one in the photo but doesn't take you just to that one particular item. 

I like the way this email is set out because it's very simple and the links take you to useful parts of the site. Also there is not much writing to read through or too much information to look through. I like the simplicity of this as I don't want to spend time reading through emails. It was short and to the point.

I am personally not a fan of personalisation in emails as it implies they have lots of information about you. what I like about this email is that it's a company I know and know I will be interested in the content. However, perhaps a link to my account on the website could be useful but not a necessity for me. Have a look see what you think...