Informational Emails – COVID19/CoronaVirus

by Keri | Mar 12, 2020

Every day more information comes out about COVID-19/Coronavirus. With each day that passes awareness grows, the risk continues, and the public wants to know what they can do to mitigate disaster. Events are being canceled, businesses are making long term decisions, and all the while, daily-life tries to continue. How brands react in a moment like this affects not only today but the trust they build with their customers in the future.

While reading my email this morning, I was surprised to find a coupon in one of my promotional emails about Covid-19. I want to believe the company meant well, but it felt in poor taste to use this moment to do anything other than inform what steps they were taking to maintain a clean environment for customers. My interest continued further into my inbox when I saw the detailed plans many companies were including to offset health risks.

Here is an assortment of COVID-19 related emails I received to my promotional tab this week. I was going to have a wrap up at the end of this post but you willing quickly see why I am putting some of my take-aways up top. These emails are, in general, very long. But the shorter ones make clear why the others have opted for length. Too little info and it seems like they don’t care. Many have opted for lots of links to outside sources. Most have included very detailed plans for how they are changing their current operating procedures. They also outline their current procedures if they are already very diligent about cleanliness.

Let me know what your thoughts are below. <3

The Subject Lines

Anecdotally, today I heard from coworkers that people are already starting to ignore the emails they are receiving about the virus. So, here is a brief assortment of subject lines that people are seeing. No telling what the click rate on these are but viewing them together might give you an idea of what people’s inboxes are looking like right now.