ABC Mouse’s Enthusiasm for Email Promotional Offers

How much is too much?

Let’s be candid; we LOVE ABC Mouse. It’s a great product we’ve subscribed to for use with our families. The ABC Mouse Early Learning Academy is an award-winning, subscription-based site/mobile app focused on pre-K, kindergarten, and early elementary school children, teaching them basic reading and math skills.

A quick overview:

Subscription Product: ABC Mouse
Subscription Fee: $7.99 a month
Ownership: Age of Learning, Inc.
Investment: $31.5M in Debt Financing
Marketing: ABC Mouse has a history of being extremely focused on subscriber acquisition and branding. They are a heavy spender and sponsor of toddler-focused cable and TV programming. If you watch toddler programming at all, you have seen their highly-produced commercials for the ABC Mouse Early Learning Academy. ABC Mouse offers an affiliate program based on sign-ups, not converted subscribers., and they are relentless email marketers.

Even though we are subscribers, we filled in a lead form in December to see what happened. Since that day, we have received emails sometimes daily, sometimes multiple times per day, and sometimes “a few times” per week.

Insider Take:

What have they achieved? Because we have received so many and such different email offers, we have been conditioned by them that, if we do not take them up on their offer now, a new one will be forthcoming soon!

Even with the lack of personalization and the same design used for these emails, some of the promotions below are good ideas taken in isolation. It’s how these ideas are being executed were ABC Mouse is falling flat.

We wonder why ABC Mouse doesn’t engage their leads with informational and more content-focused emails to engage a potential subscribers? There are a lot of topics that could engage a mother or father of a toddler when it comes to teaching their child (and also engage them with the ABC Mouse brand and product)!

Focusing on top-line acquisition through such aggressive and constant blasting of promotions is a losing proposition. We do not recommend this practice.

Lesson learned? Engage your leads with content your potential subscribers care about and use the promotional offers sparingly.

Here is a sampling of their emails from February:

Email 1:

The email we received in this line of communications was a standard President’s Day promotion, though 50% off is quite a steep yearly discount. Someone who is not familiar with the product will probably write it off as not worth it because the discount is so high. Offers like these should be reserved for winning back former customers who have left but are familiar with the product and who may see a deal to be had. The email however, is succinct and to the point and is not cluttered with images, which is certainly a plus and a design theme that goes throughout the campaign.

Email 2:

The email in this series followed about seven hours behind the first. It includes the same half-off promotion. Notice how there is no personal branding or email greeting, which makes it come off as strictly a promotion. There also is a generic customer testimonial that doesn’t pass the smell test as real due to its anonymity.

Email 3:

This email lays out some of the benefits of subscribing to ABC Mouse in more detail but still has the $45/year promotion.

Email 4:

In this email sent the same day as the previous one, ABC Mouse decided to go back to the vague customer testimonial.

Email 5:

Here they have upped the ante a bit, offering a two-month subscription for only $5, which is a 65% savings off a regular subscription. This email does a better job than the previous emails of laying out the benefits of a membership. It also speaks to the important benefit to parents of the service being completely “child safe” and free from advertisements.

Email 6:

This email was created to engender a sense of urgency with “This Weekend Only” leading the copy. The same 65% savings is still offered.

Email 7:

Identical to Email 5, this goes back to the two months for $5 offer, so it’s clear that they’re alternating their offer positioning. Once again the generic testimonial quote makes an appearance.

Email 8:

Continuing with the alternating offer theme, the 65% savings is back, along with yet another testimonial.

Email 9:

This is the simplest email yet, as it was sent on President’s Day and was the last day to get two months of membership for just $5.

Email 10:

Sent about seven hours later on the same day, this email makes the offer stand out larger than before, highlighted in red, and it brings back the generic testimonial.

Email 11:

A few days had gone by and the original President’s Day offer deadline had passed. But as anyone who has purchased a car before knows, it’s wise to wait it out. Case in point: the offer has been lowered to $1 for the first month.