I heard an interesting commentary on NPR about the state of Retail in the US.  The Morning Edition Series was featuring the credit problems all week and this one talked about the challenges facing Brick and Mortar Retailers as they deal with the economic downturn. Click HERE to Listen.


Many of the Menswear Specialty Stores we have as clients have been feeling the credit pinch for years and are taking the steps to keep their costs in line to weather these storms.  Email marketing for small business has been a component  for small businesses  start to streamline their marketing investments.  The broadcast was overall very informative.  The overall conclusion was that a record 7.000 stores could close this year, thought it made no mention of the competition that brick and mortar retailers were feeling from the competition with web merchants.

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Strawberry Hill in Irish Town Jamaica is an incredibly cool place for someone wanting a rustic, off the beaten path Caribbean escape.  Located in the Blue Mountains fifteen mile above Kingston, my wife and I enjoyed 3 days of relaxing and exploring.  

The culmination of each day was the cocktail hour at the bar.  The ambiance was ideal for any baby boomer who could appreciate the music of his youth as the walls were covered with incredible pictures from the 70's of both reggae and rock stars recording music for Island Records.  Island records founder and Jamaican Icon, Chris Blackwell is the resorts owner and had used this retreat in the 70's to record music. Check out these pictures of Bob Marley, Mick Jagger and Sting:

We quickly became friends with our bartender, Troy.  His friendly personality, inviting smile and his generous pouring of aged Appleton rum made the cocktail hour a highlight of the trip.


Here's a picture of Troy and my wife Amy.  (The Menswear Specialty stores that we do email marketing for need to take note of his shirt)

This was the first time since I've owned a laptop (8 years) that I've traveled without one.  I opted for a book Piller's of The Earth by Ken Follet.  Needless to say, I was able to take a week off from the various email marketing campaigns that I  work on for the brick and mortar retailers and web merchants.  But that doesn't mean my marketing mind wasn't at work  for Jamaican bartenders.  When Troy gave us a taste of a drink he had invented the recipe for, I became his "self appointed" marketing guru.  He was submitting the recipe for a contest. The drink was delicious (it was a blend of Tia Maria, Creme de Cocoa, sweetened condensed milk, ground peanuts, pineapple and a few secrets) but it needed a name.  I christened it "Troy's Trouble in a Pitcher" and I will try and follow up and see how it did.  Hopefully we can launch his internet marketing campaign.

Taking a “busman’s holiday” while on a weekend trip to New Orleans I spent some time in the store George Bass for Men. George had originally contacted me about our email marketing services a few weeks before Katrina.  I was planning to follow up with him and get him started after we returned from exhibiting at MAGIC and needless to say Katrina came and put our conversations on hold.  We connected last spring while I was working with the Threadwise group that George networks with and we are now getting his email marketing up and running.

Like most busy Specialty Retailers, it’s difficult for George to pull himself off the selling floor and spend some time talking about his marketing However, when I labeled myself a “foodie” looking for the best New Orleans could “dish out’ George came to the table…literally.  My wife Amy and I picked George up at the store on Charles Street and walked around to the corner to August.  While sharing one of the best meals that I’ve ever had, we got to know each other  and found that we had more in come in than enjoying great culinary offerings …we had teenager stores to share as well. George has four kids – and the way he tells of their birth, each born a few minutes apart – makes the memorable story of how someone found out he is the father of quadruplets- unforgettable.

We spent some time in the store where his terrific staff showed us around. Located in the lobby of a busy office building, the store is very visible from the street and the lobby. The windows are filled with displays showing the dress and casual looks that attract the upscale tenants.  The store is laid out in three rooms flowing from better tailored clothing, dressy casual sportswear, and active sportswear.  There seems to be an emphasis on updated traditional fashion and nothing trendy.  Rather than go after the younger customer with the latest jean line, George has put in some items that he could entice his regular customer with that he might not expect to see at a Menswear specialty store.  He carries New Balance, as well as some very cool unique active items such as a waterproof cashmere jacket.

He is selective about what his email marketing pieces look like as well.  He is careful not to over send to his clients and when he sends something out he wants it to meaningful.  Here’s one he sent for his recent trunk show for Edward Green Shoes.

I was excited to be included on the SCORE (Senior Corps of Retired Executives) panel discussion.  Titled "CONDUCTING BUSINESS ONLINE
Advice and Tips from Those Who Do It", had about 30 attend.
The other panel members included KATIE DAS the founder of dasfoods.com, THERESA CARTER, founder of TheLocalTourist.com, and PAUL SEGEDIN  the owner of learningguidenetwork.com.

Attendees were very interested in discussing web sites, blogging and email marketing for small business.  The group contained a variety of entrepreneurs in Retail, web merchants and brick and mortar, and some in B2B. 

L to R: Katie Das, Paul Segedin, Theresa Carter, John Fell

The group seemed equally split between new start-ups and existing small businesses. There was one specialty store who was looking to transition to become a web merchant and shed the landlord expense.  Stay Tuned.

I really like seeing my name after "PAY TO THE ORDER OF:".  It's a favorite direct mail trick to get our attention from Banks to entice us into a conslidation loan. So why not adapt it for email:

Here's a Mens Specialty Store in Indianapolis that sent out a check for $150 to a list of customer who hadn't been in for over a year. The email (click here to view), mail merged the name in the print version as well.  The call to action for brick and mortar retailers has to be a store visit.  I'll be interested to see the results on this one as the target was the customer who hadn't shopped with them.  Will this email get them in?  Stay tuned.

Here's one we did for a Chicago Area Specialty Brick and Mortar Retailer that sells Biking and running gear.

Not a big classification when winter is breaking so they offered 15% off for 4 days.  Here's the email.

They made it an "E-Only" coupon to thank their regular customers.

Personalization is a great tool for Email Marketing for Small Business.  The business who has the persoanl relationship with its customers should take advantage of that relationship and reenforce it whenever possible.

The appeal here is that they're going after their most frequesnt, loyal customers.  If it's there is truth to the "80-20 Rule" this should support it.

Stay tuned and I'll post the results.

Working with many small independent specialty retailers I get my share of venting about how tough business is these days.  So, when one of my clients calls me to take action to make his business better - I'm excited about it.  One such client is John McDoweel the owner of Oslo's, a new brick and mortar menswear specialty store in Seattle.

John called me late in the day on Friday, (remember, he's two hours behind me as I'm in Chicago) and had a list of good customer who hadn't made a fall purchase so far this season.  While we typically ask for a  work week to plan and produce an email for clients and my wife had already put me to work at home to get our house together for a party that evening - I couldn't say no.  I embraced John's opportunity to drive some business for the weekend and pulled out my laptop and went to work.  Here's what we sent out.  We used personalization with the full name in the "check" and the coupon that printed.

It's not our best work from a design point of view (actually I'm being kind with that description according to Tom Gwaltney who is our Creative Director at E-Mail Logic.)  But, needless to say- it worked! Oslo's had a great weekend of business and using the tracking tools he has able to pinpoint which of it was directly attributable to the email.  In addition he knows who was interested (the one's who clicked on the coupon)  and can follow-up on the phone.  John can go into detail, if he chooses by commenting on this blog. But, I'd say that the return on his last minute email covered what he pays us for the year.

Hunter Thompson died in 2005 and his life was my inspiration for an article that I wrote a year later for “Logical Ideas” the email marketing newsletter that we send out at E-Mail Logic.  I guess like the shoemaker whose son who never gets new shoes we’ve been too busy at E-Mail Logic to send out our newsletter the last few years so it’s only appropriate that we use this article to launch our 1st blog.

Hunter Thompson once said: "Yesterday's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why."  He would know.  His book on the 1972 presidential campaign, “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail” followed his own wacky run for office in Colorado two years earlier.  Thompson waded into the fight himself as a "pro-hippie, anti-development" candidate for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, which included the ski town of Aspen.  Thompson wanted to win in order to save what was still a rural, live-and-let-live county from the influx of Hollywood stars, corporate hoteliers and the rest of the elite entourage that would make it the nation's premier ski resort.    While he ran as a member of “The Freak Power Ticket”, he shaved his head so he could call the crew-cut incumbent his “long-haired opponent”.  Understanding the power of branding, Thompson’s campaign platform called for changing the name Aspen to Pig City, Colorado.

Needless to say, Thompson lost the election (by only 500 votes) but his campaign style proved significant. Because of all the national attention accorded Thompson's campaign, the blueprint was noted by "new politics" candidates and activists around the country. They won power in college towns such as Berkeley, Madison, Ann Arbor, and eventually in communities that were threatened by commercial and real estate pressures similar to those that were the target of Thompson's Aspen campaign.

So what does all this have to do with email marketing?   Email campaigns have changed dramatically in the last few years and those changes continue to amaze me.  When E-Mail Logic was started in 2002 we were just trying to figure out a way to send out and use email as an alternative to “snail mail” for a few clients who were using our Clothes Logic software to design marketing pieces using their digital images.  We partnered with Exact Target to use their technology to create and send our creative ideas and alas – an email marketing business was formed.

Four years ago we designed and sent email for clients to their lists – period.  Today that’s the smaller part of what we do.  Yesterday’s weirdness was deliverability, list hygiene, tracking, I.S.P blacklisting, “white knight status”, CAN Spam, email-filtering, SPF Protocol, and other terms and concepts that made me look to the nearest person wearing a pocket protector for interpretation.  Yesterday’s weirdness definitely morphed into tomorrow’s reason why. Yesterday we didn't have catogories for retailers such as such as   Today you can design the greatest, coolest emails – but without following the proper permission building steps and insuring that you’re compliant with all the various ISP’s delivering procedures your emails might only roam endlessly in cyberspace and miss the inboxes of your intended.  Today, it’s the “all of the above” that we now bring to the table for our small business clients and and I introduce the newest case of “yesterday’s weirdness – Our 1st Blog. We've got fout catagories to blog about; Small Business, Web Merchants, Brick and Mortar Retail and Menswear Specialty Stores so it's time to Blog!