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Email marketing Thinking out of the inbox


The art and science of email copy at Firebox


white-listing, preference centres and such, with plenty of recognised best-practice ideas to adopt. But when it comes to the creative element, crafting an email is often a self-taught art. Direct Commerce interviewed gifts and gadget retailer Firebox’s product copywriter Ben Moran to find out how the irreverent brand uses its personality to entertain its email subscribers and drive sales.


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What do you do at Firebox? My official title is product copywriter. I write the engaging and occasionally helpful copy for each product on the site. I also write copy for our weekly newsletters, marketing campaigns, packaging, site graphics and all sorts of other stuff.


I’ve been the in-house copywriter since early 2011, but I started at Firebox about three and a half years ago. Like many of us, I joined as a temp in the customer services team. I was a huge fan of the brand and I’d just moved to London, so I leapt at the chance to work at Firebox. Then I just refused to leave.


Tell us a bit about the team at Firebox: who writes what and who has overall responsibility for the copy output? Although I’m the only full-time copywriter, we have several frequent contributors in the office, as well as one freelance copywriter. Steve Cleverley has been writing for Firebox since the early noughties, or thereabouts. We’ve never managed to convince him to give up the freelance lifestyle, but we have him to thank for Firebox’s unique tone of voice. Following his lead, Kristian Bromley, head of culture and community, is our regular voice on Facebook, Twitter and other social media; Andy Stafford, PR manager, writes the Firebox blog; our customer services team do a brilliant job replying to Facebook questions on our product pages and I scamper amongst them all like a caffeinated terrier.


Who has overall responsibility? We all do.


Well, that’s not entirely true. The buck stops with chief executive Paul Zimmerman. But to avoid locking things down too tight, he generally leaves us to wreak our own brand of merry havoc. We all meet up once or twice a week to talk tactics, swap stories, plan marketing ideas and generally keep each other in check. We take it in turns to buy pastries.


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hen discussing email marketing, it’s all too easy to get caught up in the science of it: A/B split testing, segmentation, triggers,


How do you achieve a coherent tone of voice? It’s a balancing act. First, we’re very lucky to have a copywriter who has been with Firebox since the beginning. There’s no better way to ensure a consistent tone than that. It gives the rest of us a measuring stick, but we also regularly talk and swap ideas.


Second, all of our marketing campaigns, newsletters and product pages do the rounds here before we unleash them on the world. This way, every Fireboxer has a say and we’re all to blame when I make a spelling mistake. But more importantly, it’s invaluable as a way to make sure we’re all communicating in the same tone of voice, from the finance team to the designers.


Where do you get your inspiration?


I’m a massive movie fan. So quotes, taglines and obscure references regularly find their way into Firebox copy. But as a team we’re also crazy about TV, music and of course, the internet.


As you can see from the colourful Facebook


and Twitter content, we spend a lot of time online. But it’s not just spent looking for LOLworthy memes. It’s for breaking news, tech announcements, blog posts, feedback, design trends and more. It’s the immediacy and wealth of this information that’s the driving force behind everything we do at Firebox.


What’s been your


favourite campaign to date? Last year we left our cosy home on the internet and dropped in on the Gadget Show Live, complete with an Angry Birds coconut shy and full-sized replica Adam West-era Batmobile (see Facebook for photos). Tweeting and Facebooking live from the event, it was great to interact with people online and, later the same day, have them actually wander up and say hello! We rarely get the chance to meet our customers face to face. This was one of those amazing occasions and one we hope to repeat very soon. I also got to sit in the Batmobile. The BATMOBILE!


What’s been your worst copy faux pas?


The nice thing about writing online copy is that you can usually fix mistakes before anyone really notices. The exception to this though is social media. At some point or another, most of us with access to the @firebox account have sent a tweet from it, thinking it was our own.


FEATURE


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