You’ve Got Mail: A Digital Production

Email Marketing today: obsolete or an absolute?

In today’s digital world, brands out there use all sorts of digital marketing — from being active on social media platforms like Instagram and Tiktok to the extent of entering the metaverse (looking at you, Gucci.) It is safe to say that brands today rely more on digital marketing rather than traditional marketing mediums such as print or TV.

However, there is one such communication channel which tethers the line between digital and traditional. The medium which was essentially the beginning of digital marketing and refuses to be obsolete to this day. The headline gave it away, didn’t it?

Email marketing continues to be a critical tool in the world of digital marketing. And why not? It is cost-effective, builds relationships with your audience, provides valuable data, can be integrated with other channels, and allows for automation.

Let’s see how brands today employ email marketing into their marketing strategy.

Rare Beauty vs Fenty Beauty: Who wins email marketing?

I decided to sign up for Rare Beauty and Fenty Beauty’s email marketing list to compare the game plans of the two leading celebrity beauty brands.

It was fairly easy as the option pops up as soon as you open their websites. Both of them offer discounts to lure you into their email list.

However, one point of difference I noticed was that, Fenty offered a bigger discount and also asked for your contact number to add you on their email as well as text message list, but Rare Beauty asked for your birthday month, in order to send you a birthday discount, or so I presumed.

While both the brands promptly sent a welcome email, there was a significant difference in their approach and content. Rare Beauty’s welcome was a vision message signed by Selena along with some of her recommended products. However, it did not actually accompany any discount which was offered upon signing up. I was also disappointed to not find any birthday discount which I was low-key excited about as it did happen to be my birthday month!

Fenty’s welcome email was aggressively focussed on the various products and services offered and accompanied by the promised 25% discount voucher. (Ouch, Selena!)

Over the course of a week, I received several emails from both the beauty brands.

While Fenty sent out like two emails per day filled with tempting subject lines like “60% off” and “freebies”, Rare Beauty’s frequency was more mild with emails every alternate day. Once again, Rare Beauty failed to offer any discounts, and emails mostly were informative of Rare Impact (read my last blog to know more!), and creating a safe space, with their bestsellers just tagging along.

Both the brands seemingly did integrate their email lists with the website as I did get pushed to check out with my purchases in the respective carts. And once again, Fenty did offer me further discounts on my cart, while Rare did not. (not even surprised anymore!)

Key takeaways?

1. One question (or tip) for every B2C brand out there– does email personalisation only mean automating emails with the name of the target?
   I did not feel like the brands were sending out personalized emails, since both the brands failed to acknowledge my birthday month, or estimate my age or location to customize their product recommendations for me.
2. The language used in the emails was not casual or conversational, rather looked more of an ad, mindlessly trying to sell the products.
3. While Rare did not offer any discounts, their emails were still cleaner to read in terms of content, and design as compared to Fenty’s aggressive approach of selling everything on their website, which made every email look heavily cluttered and chaotic. The e-commerce team for Rare deserves some appreciation here!
4. All emails were perfectly mobile and desktop optimized, so win-win there for both of them here!

Now the golden question: do the brands pass the holy five-second test of email marketing?

For the unversed, as soon as you receive an email, can you quickly tell what the call-to-action is? If so, the email is successful.

I think both of them do pass the test, since it was pretty clear what the email is about, despite some of them not following the best email practices. At least the subject lines were on point.

To conclude, if I had to deduce their marketing strategies just by the way they approach their email marketing, I am led to believe that Rare Beauty makes it very evident that their selling point is their founder and international pop star, Selena Gomez, as they never falter to put her picture in every email. The brand plays more on her star power, their mental health fundraiser and creating a sense of community.

On the other hand, Fenty competes with excellent products, competitive pricing, discounts, and a unique distinctive style of copywriting.

Just based on the above blog, would I be swayed towards buying Rare Beauty or Fenty? Let me know what you think in the comments!