I really like David Bakers's recent blog post on "Zero-Calorie Email." He's definitely hit the nail on the head - more and more email marketers are overstuffing their emails. My own inbox is crowded with messages that are overdesigned, overwritten, oversent...and are ultimately overwhelming.

Take, for example, the Borders Rewards email program. I'm a loyal Borders shopper and a longtime subscriber to their email program. Recently, I've noticed that each Borders Reward email seems to "outdo" the previous email. Here's an example:

I use a Mac, and the emails come in to Entourage with images supressed looking like this:

In other words, I don't see much (I guess THIS is what you call a zero-calorie email) But when I enable images, here's what I get:

Two things really stand out about this email. The first is that my eyes are confused. Where do I look? There's a lot of text and a lot of images, and it's not just isolated above the fold. Here's another example of a message after scrolling down (and scrolling, and scrolling...)

This is a classic example of an "overdesigned" email - where the combined sum of the parts is exponential. Do I look at the bear? Do I remember Norman Mailer? Where should I hide?

Here's the thing: alone, each one of these items is something I'm interested in. Borders does a fantastic job asking me about interests and sending relevant information. In fact, if these pieces were broken in to smaller, more frequent messages, I'd be much more likely to read them all (and probably buy them!) Truthfully, I'd rather Borders reward me with MORE emails than keep stuffing more content in the same email.

The second thing that stands out (or doesn't) is what you don't see in the samples above. And that's great discounts. You mean there's a 30% off coupon buried in there? Yep. And as a frequent Border's customer, that's a coupon I want. So no matter how "overstuffed" the Borders messages get, I'm still going to open the message, download the images, and scan for a coupon. And if it delivers one, chances are good I'm going to print it off and redeem it in the store.

In the end, if that's how Borders measures conversion, then by gosh I'm a converter. Whether I like the message itself, at the end of the day the Borders Rewards email program provides something of value to me. It just goes to show that maybe there are times when we're willing to tolerate a few extra "email calories".

Cheers,
Ashley Sales
Manager, Marketing Communications