The brand that never says hurry, and is always on sale
Introducing the Inbox Index. In provisional Q3 figures, Gap never once told a subscriber to hurry, and carried a live discount three days in four.
These figures are provisional. Q3 has not closed, the panel is still receiving mail, and every number below will change before the final edition publishes on 1 October. We are showing the method early, not the result.
Today we are publishing an early look at the first Inbox Index, Siftbox’s quarterly ranking of how brands treat the inbox they were invited into. Forty-three Canadian retail newsletters, scored from email our panel inboxes actually received, on three dimensions: how much they send, how often they tell you to hurry, and whether the regular price is real.
The result worth sitting with is Gap.
Across every email in the window, Gap never once claimed a deadline. No “ends tonight”, no “final hours”, not one. On honesty about urgency, full marks, one of the cleanest records in the panel.
Gap also mailed one subscriber eleven times a week, and on 60% of the days we observed, a discount was live. A brand on sale three days in four does not have a sale, it has a price.
A single number would have to average those two facts into mush. This is why the Siftbox Score is built from separate dimensions: Gap scores 4 out of 12, with the full story visible in the row, scrupulously honest, relentless, and permanently discounted.
It also answers the objection an index like this invites. We sell a solution to the problem the index measures, and we say so at the top of the methodology. A rubric built to convict would not have handed Gap full marks for honesty, and it would not have put Zara alone in the top band for doing nothing louder than selling things at their price, 1.9 emails a week, zero deadline claims, zero discounted days.
See the provisional Retail Edition, numbers and all. The final Q3 edition, covering the complete quarter, publishes 1 October.