Fashion E-Newsletter Digest

Gap, Banana, Victoria's Secret, all step aside and make room for UK's ASOS. When it comes to fashion e-newsletters, the Brits kick ass of all that America has to offer, and maybe even make them look just a tad prudish.

As a fanatic of fashion e-newsletters, my subscriptions cover virtually all major US labels. Do I read them all? Not really, in fact most hit the trash as soon as I set eyes on them. I'd say that the average newsletter will command no more than 2 seconds of my attention before hitting the delete button. ASOS though, is definitely a dimond in the rough. Please note however that I am not comparing the clothing quality, or prices of the named stores. This article is written from purely a newsletter perspective.

What makes ASOS newsletter special? The obvious one is that it's eye-catching. The layout is alwasy pleasant and interesting to look at. The odd angles and diagonal lines section up the page in such a way to make the advertised items compete for attention with each other, yet prevent the page from looking over-crowded. My first reaction is always "wow look at all these cool stuff they have". Then my eyes quickly scan the page for those thing I like. The newsletter usually features several different styles of fashion and color schemes, so that there is always something for everyone, regardless of your taste.

Scroll it Baby
Some web designers believe that everything should be contained at the top of the page without the user having to scroll down. It seems that most of the US fashion newsletters adhere to this concept religiously, by fitting all that they can in just one screen. But in my opinion that's is gambling. Since your real-estate is limited, you have to pick and choose carefully of the things you can advertise, and since there are fewer things you can advertise, you can only guess as to what most customers would be interested in seeing. But what if you guessed wrong? Delete. I also think that this rule is quite old, at least I've heard it since way back in college when dial-up was still hot. It would have made plenty of sense back then because people didn't have the patience to wait for things on a large page to load. But with the advant of Internet technologies, having to scroll down the page has become less and less of an issue. If I subscribe to a fashion e-newsletter, I want to see lots of pictures. The more the better. It's all about the visuals. Plus if you make top of the page interesting enough, who wouldn't want to scroll down for more?

Case and point. Checkout the Victoria Secret and Banana Republic e-newsletters to the left. The former chose to go with the black and brown color scheme (I hate that dress by the way), and the latter went with the professional white (I'm not looking for office attires at this moment). Neither newsletters got a click-through from moi because nothing caught my eyes, whereas ASOS got at least two.

Having more is more and less is maybe well ... not at all

VS and Banana also lost out to ASOS on the frequency at which the newsletters are sent. You would think that having less content per newsletter would encourage the companies to send out the newsletters more frequently, but au contrar. ASOS sends them out daily, compare to the several-daysly or whenever we feel like it from most other companies. But perhaps the US companies are correct in not subjecting their subscribers to these boring uninspiring e-newsletters on a daily basis. Newsletters from ASOS however are the things I look forward to reading with my morning coffee. Keep them coming baby.

I suppose one of the reasons ASOS stand out so much in the digital print format is because this is their arena for they are purely online-based; having a fabulous e-newsletter is essential to attract new and old customers to their website. But wait, wouldn't the same hold true for pretty much all clothing labels with an online prescence?