Popcorners, A failed email campaign
When I clicked on Popcorners’ page, I was instantly drawn to his clean, crisp web design. The cover shows a young black man skateboarding with sunny California in the background, while he holds a bag of popcorn chips in his hand. I started browsing the page with this favorable first impression, expecting a pop-up email sign-up page to contact me and send me more product events and information.
But even though I had been browsing the Popcorners website for almost 10 minutes, the prompt didn’t pop up. I had to take the initiative to find out how to register my email address to get further information.
It was not a convenient process and even complicated my shopping mood.
There are no clear instructions on how to register an email on the main Popcorners page. I went through the top and bottom menu bars and found that the registration page was hidden under “PEPSICO TASTY REWARDS”. When I searched the home page, the keywords that came to mind were “email,” “sign in,” and “Popcorners‘ rewards,” but the site uses the name of the parent company as the click prompt. That’s not what I was looking for.
The registration process was also very tedious compared to the usual merchandise websites, and I was tempted to close the page when I saw nine blank information fields that had to be filled out manually. The nine blank fields are email, first name, last name, zip code, password, date of birth, and so on. Although this is very basic information, after struggling to find the email registration page, I expected the next steps to be quick and concise. Popcorners doesn’t do that.
After the registration was complete, the page automatically displayed a reminder that the registration was successful. “You are officially signed up for PepsiCo Tasty Rewards! Soon you’ll be receiving e-mails with exclusive PepsiCo updates. Check your inbox and enjoy the Tastu life.” I liked this paragraph, it was very clear about the outcome and I was looking forward to the tasty life as stated.
I opened my email and started waiting. Then, I realized that it was not the AI that sent the emails in real-time. I registered at 9 pm and it wasn’t until noon that the website sent the REWARDS email. By the time I clicked on the email again, I was no longer in the mood to read or buy, no matter how beautifully designed the email was.
My attitude towards Popcorners email marketing changed two days after I first logged in, and Popcorners sent me another email 48 hours later. His subject line was “Don’t miss your chance to earn entries for sweeps”. It was the shortest headline on my entire email page. And he used the negative opening phrase “don’t miss your chance”, which captures consumer psychology. If the subject line is “Your reward,” I might consider the email too generic and be less inclined to click on it.
This time I read the email carefully.
What I like most is the design of this page, it uses icons and keywords to greatly reduce my reading cost. At first glance, I have a clear understanding of the process of getting rewards.
After reading the entire email, I feel tough about the situation of Popcorners as a sub-brand. Because the entire email was touting various Pepsico products, the REWARDS that were introduced were combo packages of other snacks. And those snacks include Pepsico and some regular Pepsi chips. The odds are that a customer-driven in from the Popcorners page to find healthy snacks that are oil-free and non-inflated is not going to buy these snacks. Throughout the email content, I didn’t see a single bit of information about Popcorners products, which is probably the helplessness of the subsidiary.
To summarize, Popcorners has done a very poor job of email marketing. The difficult registration process, non-real-time email delivery, and irrelevant product introductions to Popcorners, all of are pushing consumers out of the market. After this observation, I have learned from the counter case, which in turn will leave a deeper impression on me.
