From Inbox to Taco Order: Unwrapping Taco Bell’s Email Marketing Feast
My inbox is bursting with promotional emails from countless brands each day. Among the flood, Taco Bell’s emails have caught my eye. Why is Taco Bell’s email so engaging? Join me now to evaluate Taco Bell’s email marketing approaches, and scroll down to see my opinion about its email practices!
Was it easy to sign up? What happened after you signed up?
Signing up is the gateway to everything, and Taco Bell makes it feel effortlessly breezy — just two clicks and voilà, I was almost there. The moment I received the “Finish creating your account” email, I realized Taco Bell employs a double opt-in strategy. This email was a gentle nudge to a link that verified my basic information like email, name, and birthday. It took several clicks more than my initial two-click expectation but was still a piece of cake. Plus, its clever headline, “You’re on your way to earning points.” really sealed the deal for me. After all, who doesn’t love racking up points? That’s precisely why my inbox is always overflowing…
How is its welcome email?
In less than 3 minutes after signing up, Taco Bell’s “Welcome 🥳 Here’s a FREE reward to start things off 🌮 🔔” email pinged into my inbox. It leaves a strong impression of establishing a connection with me with a welcoming and engaging brand attitude. It caught me at the perfect moment (still lingering on the email page), and seduced me once more with FREE rewards. Smart email timing, right?
But then, that cute little “redeem” button whisked me away to a reward page packed with so many choices, that I hit a bit of a snag in my shopping spree. It’s like having too many flavors of ice cream to choose from — you just freeze up! From this, I wonder if its email to website’s click-through rate (CTR) would look better than its sales boost🧐. I mean, if they had simply slipped me a 10% promo code, I’d have been all over the order button in a flash.
What about its email frequency?
Taco Bell lands in my inbox at least once daily, doubling up on days with promotions. This approach is effective for keeping their brand in my constant thoughts when wanting fast casual food, yet the avalanche of emails is quite overwhelming.
In my opinion, a sweet spot would be receiving two to three emails per week, achieving a harmonious blend of brand presence and respect for my digital space😝.
Is Taco Bell using email best practices?
💡Straight answer: Yes. 💡
1. Subject lines: Informative and engaging.
Open rate is crucial in email marketing, and Taco Bell excels at capturing attention within the crucial first 3 seconds amid a deluge of emails. As said in the beginning, Taco Bell is always catchy, and that’s because it has a good subject line! Emojis and clear information are the key determinants. Depending on the goal, it also includes a sense of urgency and personalized product promotion.
e.g. 10 items for $3 or less? 👀, Crave it crisped to perfection and get 10% off
2. Content: Short and sweet.
Taco Bell delivers highly relevant content to its customers, featuring promotion codes, food recommendations, and clear calls to action such as redeeming rewards, earning points, and ordering now. The balance is commendable; among the nine emails I received, 7 leaned more towards content or product information, while 2 offered promo codes. Such a ratio reduces the risk of being a cheap brand that is all about selling to customers. Its messages are concise, typically spanning just a few sentences, making it incredibly easy to skim through an entire email.
3. Visuals: Great balance between words and pictures!
I think this is especially important for food brands. Taco Bell’s emails always start with a mouthwatering food picture and embed value-rich food or fun-gathering pictures throughout. As a visual creature, I am always attracted. It balances the size of words and pictures, leaving enough white space to keep the page neat and tidy. Overall, it is colorful, but upon closer inspection, the major colors align from top to bottom, from one email to the next.
4. Interaction: Engaging and relevant.
It uses gifs to showcase several photos in one picture frame, making dull email reading a bit more fun. When I was so obsessed about the food in the picture, I intuitively clicked on it — it directed me to its website’s food order page! As such, it constantly incorporates redirect links to lead customers to websites. (🤓Probably I shouldn’t be so surprised here in this digital age when brands are not giving up any chance to lead you from emails to their websites.)
Conclusion: My opinion of how Taco Bell is using email
Reflecting on everything discussed, I think Taco Bell must have studied email marketing (Standing out amidst approximately fifty daily emails speaks volumes about its success in achieving impressive open rates🥳).
The term “engaging” repeatedly comes to mind when describing my email interactions with the brand. With strong engagement, Taco Bell has adeptly utilized email marketing to enhance brand awareness, foster customer relationships, and convert passive email reading to active website clicking. Email marketing acts as a direct conduit for conveying their brand message to consumers, epitomizing the essence of what effective direct marketing/email marketing should be. I’m eager to see how they might leverage this direct marketing channel for more personalized, one-on-one interactions as they gather more data on my purchasing and browsing habits.
Meanwhile, refining email frequency and optimizing the conversion of emails to purchase actions are areas where there’s room for improvement.
