Sweetgreen is Doing Email All Wrong
Hello, I’m a marketing student at NYU. Join me as I explore through this blog the ins and outs of marketing, including digging deep on some of your favorite brands. You can read my intro post here, and my most recent post about Chipotle’s National Burrito Day campaign here.
I think we can all agree, signing up to receive a brand’s emails should not be much of a saga. And yet, that’s exactly what happened when I attempted to make an account at Sweetgreen. The fast-casual salad place is pretty well liked. When you walk into one of their locations, the space is airy, open, and brightly lit. In terms of the in-person experience, Sweetgreen has got it down. It’s too bad it seems they’ve ignored the digital side of their business as a result. A company’s website — its one truly owned piece of media — is essential to any company’s marketing. If even basic stuff like making an account/opting in to receive their emails is difficult, something has gone very wrong here.
Here’s what happened when I went to make an account. First, I scanned the page for a log-in button, or something similar. When I realized none existed, I was at a loss. Where to begin? It took a couple of different tries before I realized I needed to click on “order.” Since I had not been intending to order something, clicking on the button wasn’t my initial instinct. Only then, once it brought me to the order page, did a button appear in the upper right hand corner, labeled “account.”
Okay, now it should’ve been simple right? It asked me for my email, but only for 2-factor verification. To be fair, that’s everything these days. So, I waited for the code and typed it in. Woo! Okay, finally time to make an account. I put in pretty standard information — email, name, phone number, password, and birthday (for birthday treats of course). Here’s where things once again got a little murky. I’ve seen other websites let you click a box that asks you if you want to receive emails from them when you make your account. I love that thing. I love the option to choose. But it didn’t appear here. I made my account, and waited for something to happen. Surely, if I was truly signed up for their emails, I would’ve received an automated ‘welcome to Sweetgreen’ email immediately…right? Well, you’d think, but apparently not.
Was I actually signed up for their emails? I couldn’t even tell. I quickly went to my newly made account to double check. Unfortunately, there were no options for reviewing my email preferences. At this point, there was nothing to do but wait.
Two days later, it arrived! My “Welcome to Sweetgreen” email! Yes, that was the subject-line. Why two days later? Who can say. Is the timing super random? Yes, it was. But I finally had proof that I was, in fact, signed up to receive emails from Sweetgreen. Haha! Take that corporate overlords. Is it weird that I felt like I had been battling the brand itself to voluntarily receive direct marketing from them? Yes, yes it was.
The email itself was short. Almost too short, which is something I never thought I’d say about an email. It had a link to its menu, and absolutely zero links to their socials. Mostly I’m still bothered by the typo in the last line. (“Join us on our journey show the world Green Feels Good.” And yes, my Google Docs is currently trying very hard to let me know that I forgot the word “to.” I’m sorry Google, I swear this isn’t my fault. I’m just the messenger.) It’s pretty impressive that an email that’s all of three sentences long has not been properly proof-read.
It’s been a week since then and I’ve received four more emails. Only one of them has been remotely interesting, promoting a certain menu option developed by one of their employees, encouraging me to download their app and finally, finally linking to their socials. To be clear, every marketing email a company ever sends out should include links to their social media handles. The last two emails have been purely to encourage me to sign up for their loyalty program Sweetpass. This would mostly be fine (their email assures me it’s free anyway), except that the most recent subject line bugs me. “Don’t forget about us,” it implores. Why are you nagging me? I can’t help but think. (Neither of these two emails include links to their socials either. Is Sweetgreen ashamed of their social media content? I’m starting to wonder.)
It’s been a little over a week, but five emails later (And this is too many emails for such a time span, in my opinion, but I’m unsurprised by the frequency. It’s not different from most of the other brands that have decided to fill my promotion folder with their branded content.) and the Sweetgreen email marketing has been, so far, uninspiring. The content lacks any wittiness or personality. It mostly feels like an afterthought, and does little more than link to the menu (two emails) or link to the sign up page for Sweetpass (also two emails). They do nothing to entice me to explore the brand further, or to think positively about them.
I still like the feeling I get when I enter a Sweetgreen. Everything feels light and fresh. And I’m not even a salad person! Their emails, however, are nothing but useless spam in my inbox. My advertising professor last semester liked to say that bad advertising is like trash in the street. Luckily I can clean this trash up pretty easily. It’s called the unsubscribe button.
