Kwik-Fit almost fixed it for me

I hate that time of year when my Car Insurance is due, it’s that time of year when suddenly it’s OK for all those companies I previously asked to give me insurance quotes to suddenly call my phone and spam my Inbox with crappy Emails that hold no value to me.

You see, the problem with products like Insurance is this; no one likes insurance companies. It’s true, we think they’re taking our money and giving us nothing in return, it’s hard work to get quotes and the differences between the hundred-or-more insurance companies is absurd in both price and offerings.

So when Kwik-Fit dropped me an Email with the subject line of ‘Buy a Car Insurance policy and get a FREE MOT’ I immediately opened it; after all it already cancels out that preconception that Insurance companies are money sucking vampires.

To my surprise, the Email was actually really very well designed, here comes the good points,

• A great tag line pulling me further into the offer, followed by an immediate call to action to ‘Get a Quote Now’.
• Immediately below the call to action is a further, suplimentary offer of ’20% online discount’ to try and get you back to that call to action.
• Small amount of copy with bullet points, important because readers scan for what important and bullet points get more coverage than paragraphs.
• Tertiary messaging including other benefits of the policy, as well as other types of cover they provide.

However, there’s a few things that spoil this Email a little bit, and no doubt will have affected (negatively) on their Clicks and Conversion Rates.

• Heavy use of Images for Call To Actions and Offer Messaging, there’s no need. The typeface they’ve used could easily be done with websafe font, as well as the Call To Action button.
• Tiny font. I really really dislike small font. It might be because I’m somewhat blind, but also because it’s much easier to read or scan font at about 12-13px.
• The footer, which happens to be as big as the Email itself. Jeez, I mean really, read the whole thing and it kinda puts you off taking up the offer of the Email. Some of that stuff I really couldn’t give a crap about. Not only that, but it hides the Unsubscribe Link, which only has the ‘click here’ hyperlinked making it hard to find – make it hard for subscribers to unsubscribe and they’ll mark you as spam.

So what’s letting this Email down?

Email Marketing isn’t just about the Emails you send to your Subscribers, it’s about the whole experience. This includes the sign up, the welcome email, your reputation as a brand, your website and most importantly in this Email the ‘what happens after?’.

Custom Landing Pages are often used in order to make the transition from Click to Conversion (a purchase, a registration, etc) a lot smoother for the Subscriber so as to reduce the risk of ‘dropping out’. As a result it is just, if not more, important to get the Landing Page right.

Kwik-Fit actually had me on this Email, I clicked. When I clicked on the big green button in the Email, I was surprised when taken to a Landing Page that wasn’t the Quote Page – after all the button did say ‘Get a quote now’. Instead it took me to a Landing Page with even more stuff to read, urgh, I just want to get a quote!

When I do get to the Quote Form, the experience is awful. It not only pops open in a new window (I have enough of them open, thanks) the content doesn’t even fit the dimensions they’ve specified for the pop-up window.

I carry on going, getting to the ‘Cover you require’ step. I fill it all in and hit ‘Continue’ only to be presented with an error (Quick UX Fail Tip: don’t let me hit that continue button if there’s errors, it’s extremely annoying) which stated ‘Start date must be within 30 days’.

Blood boiled. I’ve wasted this much time filling out a crappy form, after Kwik-Fit sent me an Email asking me to go and get a Quote. Are you serioues Kwik-fit? This alone makes this one of the worst Emails I’ve had in my Inbox recently.