Most retail websites offer you the option of signing up for customer emails or newsletters, many have even created Facebook pages and Twitter accounts so people can engage with them through social networking. But it can be difficult, sometimes impossible, to gauge if it’s worth it to sign up or not. If you’re going to get an email everyday; chances are those daily updates won’t contain an exclusive coupon each time you open the message and if you’re bombarded with pointless information all the time there’s no benefit to you.
While we don’t have the inside scoop on every store out there, we do have some handy insight regarding how to gauge if these newsletters are worth your time and we’ll use one of our favorite shops, American Eagle, as an example. While we haven’t found the perfect set up (which we would imagine as a new mega-coupon that doesn’t expire mailed to us daily) American Eagle emails have a lot of pros and few cons. As you can imagine, we’ve signed up for countless email updates, newsletters, exclusive clubs, and store memberships. We’ve been through the gamut and have seen enough to judge what we like and what we do not. As far as American Eagle is concerned – we like, big time.
First of all – signing up for customer emails should easy and free. American Eagle proved to be both and we’ve reaped many bargains from little effort. All they required to sign up was our email and some basic info. They promise not to sell your personal details and it didn’t cost us anything. Try not to sign up for anything that doesn’t clearly state they won’t hock your personal info for profit, that’s not a guarantee and it can be a huge pain to unsubscribe from dozen of random emails. In terms of paying money for “special” information, some places want you to pay $10 or $20 year to be part of the “Premium Customer Club” and usually you either break even or get taken for a ride.
Moving on to frequency – we do not want our inboxes bogged down with dozens of emails heralding great things like “Pre-Spring Collection now online,” “Spring Arrivals available today,” “Pre-Spring 20% off.” You get the idea – daily emails full of what is essentially retail garbage – no sales, no coupons, no nothing. With American Eagle you only hear about the good stuff and the emails you do receive come at most once a week or so, often less.
For example - they usually make their new stuff available online one to two weeks before it comes out in stores, which is nice when you’re sick of winter and would like to take a small break from work looking at sundresses and shorts, dreaming of sunnier days. You’d get an email about that, in the same update chances are you’d also find out that their winter stock is 50% or 60% off. Two birds with one email.
Now onto the jelly in the donut – American Eagle is loyal to its customers and rewards them with excellent coupons, we’re taking 20% off and free shipping, extra 30% off sale items, free express holiday shipping. Here’s the kicker, these coupons are exclusive to customer emails. They do not come up on coupon websites (not even this one), there not on the homepage, they’re not anywhere but direct to your email inbox. While these kind of super-deals don’t come up every week, they are frequent enough and often timely. You’ll see coupons come up all through the holiday shopping season, at back to school time, and when the season’s new style come out, with some surprises thrown in to keep you on your
toes.
So for us, American Eagle emails paid off in a big way. We shop there often, we like their clothes – both the quality and the style – and our savvy shopping skills can be put to a hearty good use when we’re in the mood for some closet refreshment. And signing up for emails ticked all our boxes for a fair arrangement – it was easy, our personal information was protected, the emails came at a reasonably rate, and what did come was always appreciated. Thinking along these lines is a pretty good way to decided if the customer newsletter from any given store is worth it.
