How to confuse your customers

Being 2 metres tall (6 Foot 6 inches in old terminology) Alto, the online clothing store for tall gentlemen is a site I regularly visit. I've even signed-up for their email bulletins for bargains and the like.

I was therefore suprised today to receive an email from them with the subject line
'New Tall Mens Clothing website launching in 2009'.

I did therefore have some obvious questions:

1. Why send me an email on the busiest online shopping day of the year, telling me that your new site is coming next year?
   
2. Why start your email copy....
   'New clothing website coming in 2009.
   The all-new Alto Clothing website is coming in 2009. We have been busy working through all your customer survey returns and suggestions that will help us bring you the clothing you want.' ?

It is only when you read past all this repetition and select to view email images that you see the line: 'In the meantime we are still open for business!' ...

I am sure that most of the people who would have even bothered to have openned up the email would have stopped reading by now.



I will not dwell on the the email itself, which was an appalling mixture of colours, fonts, random bold text and strange layout. Instead I would just advise Alto, that to send such a confusingly worded email in a heavily competitive industry and during such economic times, is perhaps not the best way to generate click-through and sales?