Happy Birthday To Me

Pizza Express are the boss of email

A week before my birthday, I got this email from Pizza Express. It's yet another demonstration of them knowing what works in this space. While most brands show the first line of the email in the subject line (usually something dull like 'View email in browser'), the clever beans at PE have made sure that their first line is interesting and on point. 'Happy birthday Lauren - A free bottle of Prosecco to help you celebrate' allows them to keep the subject line short whilst getting the nice offer noticed.

PE also use a clever technique where they substitute images for a mixture of creative HTML/CSS, resulting in a simplified, uber-pixelated email should the images not load automatically. About 50% of desktop email users have images blocked by default and this is a great example of a creative hurdle being jumped.

MapMyRun are a bit rubbish

And here we have an insulting attempt at birthday wishes. This email is full of horrible things. Horrible thing one: 'Hi friend'. Friend? Did you forget my name? They know my name. I put it in the box every time I log in.

Second horrible thing? 'The MapMyRun team and the 11+ million members in the MapMyRun community wish you a Happy Birthday.' I'm pretty sure I don't wish 30, 137+ members (yeah, I know maths) a happy birthday on a daily basis. Perhaps I should start signing birthday cards 'Love from Lauren and my 627 Facebook friends' - just to make it a little bit more about me.

Third horrible thing? They gave me a $10 off voucher. They know that I live in the UK, and if they paid attention they'd know that every run I've ever mapped with them is in London. Rubbish.

Thanks Cara

This made my day a little bit. Ignore the fact that it's addressed to my brother (it's a long and interesting story - promise). This email is fun. You click through to a delightfully tacky video from Cara and the team ('the team' - hear that, MapMyRun? Not 'the team and all their policy holders'). When the video comes to an end, your invited to create one for a friend through Facebook. It's a shareable, lighthearted addition to a complete bore of a product.

Boots - it's all about you, you, you

Seen the new Boots ad? It's kinda sickly. And this email is like the ad. I'm just not that into the way Boots are talking to me. 'Preview our new TV advert!' and 'It's premiere time!' feels self-obsessed, as if they're assuming I'm going to be super-excited about their ad. They're assuming I want to engage with them as a brand. Do they really think I've been eagerly anticipating this for weeks?

Lauren Took