I got an opportunity to audit five merchants with their email collection process - cupcakes, shoes, jeans, handbags and goggles. I was quite impressed; every single one of these merchants had a sign-up sheet for email. Three of these merchants even had really cute sign-up cards – cards that gave you great reasons to sign up.

The employees I interacted with asked me for an email id. Crisp, clear and directly – their point of service systems even had a field for the collection. Despite these items there was a serious problem, each seemed like a cold exchange.

I believe these merchants missed out on a valuable opportunity to interact with me. After having received my email id, they should have tried to sell the program to me. It would have been easy for them to create a sense of expectation. Those few moments could have resulted in me treating their communiqués a little differently, creating higher open rates and better overall conversion. Their email marketing managers would have been thrilled.

A suggestion to email marketing managers, train the store/ branch employee – provide them with conversational scripts that will request the id and give them ways to plug your program (after the sale.) More importantly, ask those employees to share their thoughts back with you – issues, remarks and ideas. Keep these employees in the loop, have a call with store/ branch managers, you will do a better job creating a program and maybe raise your click-throughs and conversions.