• by Chad White , September 8, 2009

I was recording a podcast with Alex Williams of eROI recently and he asked me what ONE retail email program I would recommend that people subscribe to. It's a tough question because all the retailers that I track do things that are likely to spark new ideas and encourage testing. You'll have to listen to the podcast when it's released to see who I named, but I thought I'd talk about four of my favorite retail email programs here. I consider these must-subscribes:

Neiman Marcus excels at giving an editorial edge to their promotions by highlighting trends, new collections and new designers. A great example of this is the micro-story-telling they did in this June 15 email. They also provide good coverage of Fashion Week in both text and video formats, use animation often and occasionally use polls to keep things interesting. In addition to their strong copywriting, they have without question the best photography in the retail world. Not only are the product and model shots beautiful, but they use an amazingly wide variety of photographic styles.

Overstock is not afraid to experiment. They were the third major online retailer to use a video gif, as in this May 1 email. They also created a novel progressive coupon scheme for their St. Patrick's Day promotion in this Mar. 16 email, and used that same scheme in their 4th of July promotion as well. Their Black Friday email last year broke email design rules by using white type on a black background, but the move made the email pop in the inbox, making it one of my favorite Black Friday emails. To complement their focus on deeply discounted merchandise, Overstock has a great editorial feature in every email called "At Home with the ‘O'," which provides advice and tidbits, as in this July 25 email. They wisely place it deep down in their emails -- I always scroll down to read it, browsing the highlighted products along the way.

Like Overstock, REI is not afraid to take some risks and innovate. They were also an early tester of video gifs, using it in this February email. They were one of the earlier adopters of share-with-your-network (SWYN) as well, debuting it in a Feb. 20 email. REI is a regular and clever user of animated gifs, as in this May 22 email. And they manage all this innovation while sending their subscribers a very respectful 1 email per week on average.

Sephora is a master of varying product grids in innovative ways to support their ever-changing messaging, like the recession-oriented messaging in this Mar. 4 email. They have also been ahead of the curve on using email to drive engagement on Facebook and in turn in stores, as they did in this May 21 email, where they offered free Facebook gifts and in-store gifts. Sephora also has a fantastic email program for their Beauty Insiders loyalty program that uses a detailed member profile to fill their members' emails with tailored recommendations. Plus, they tease their Beauty Insiders program in their normal emails, as they did in this Apr. 29 email.

Those are some of my favorite retail email programs. Which email programs -- in the B2C or B2B world -- do you consider must-subscribes?