Email
Marketing Best Practices:
Use
creativity in your email marketing :
Email
marketing is not just a banner ad or GIF animation. It's
full and integrated media impacting the senses with motion
and animation. Use voice, music, movies, animation, and
sound effects to enhance the impact, but it has to be
dynamic, not static.
With
the integration of truly new media and e-mail advertising,
use all the aspects of media within your budget. If you
have a banner ad, add sound to it in your email marketing
campaign. If you have an icon in your email message, make
it work effectively for you by converting the icon into
a Quick Time movie in your email marketing campaign. Innovate
with the format that you have to work with. Conceive of
new ways of doing email marketing. We're talking about
integrating all aspects of new media with email advertising.
Be consistent with your message throughout your entire
email advertising campaign :
Your
email message should be consistent in both your e-mail
marketing campaign and in your campaign across traditional
media channels. Often, a client hires a separate online
advertising agency to compliment its full-service agency.
Different agencies pursue different campaigns, some of
which could be contradictory or not complimentary. A consistent
message broadcast throughout the email advertising campaign
reinforces the same message along traditional advertising
channels.
Reinforce the traditional branding with a consistent
email marketing branding :
Whatever
branding you are doing, wherever it is, must be consistent
in image and tone with the branding throughout your email
marketing campaign. Again, email promotion branding that
differs from, or contradicts, the branding produced by
the traditional advertising agency s problematic. A dropped
connection between the two may confuse your targeting
market. Companies that have embraced email marketing have
taken traditional methodologies and applied them to the
email marketing world. The same tried -and-true methods
work, if they're applied properly, in the e-mail advertising
world.
Follow through with consistent and timely back-up
email advertising campaigns :
You
don't have a good golf swing unless to have accurate follow-through.
The same is true with email advertising campaigns. In
the email promotion world, we're moving seven times faster
than everybody else. You must have a follow-up planned
before you launch the first e-mail advertising campaign.
Launch your first e-mail campaign and be prepared with
your second and third email campaign.
Your
second e-mail campaign has to be smart. It must reinforce
what the first one said. It has to follow up with in a
timely manner and it should have a back-up e-mail advertising
campaign. In the traditional advertising word, maybe one
full-page ad, each quarter, in a particular trade magazine
might have worked for you. Now you need to have more consistent,
conscientious, articulate campaigns in phase two, three
and four ready to go before you even bother with phase
one. All email marketing campaigns should have a consistent
key message across all media, both digital and traditional.
Use innovative techniques in your email advertising:
Try
a cool idea like a virtual postcard in your email advertising.
The e-postcard should be a screen capture of your home
page or a more target-specific page on your website. Email
that postcard to your customer to link the user directly
to a particular page on your site.
Virtual
postcards are a brand new campaign idea in which you ensure
that the message - a specific page link - gets to your
users through an email message. It reinforces the visual
message. It allows prospects to link directly to a particular
page within your site, so it might be the product page
for the product you happen to be marketing. Then it allows
them to instantly bookmark that page.
You're
not giving them a general URRL home page. You're linking
them directly to some secondary or tertiary page inside
your site. The reverse side, just like an ordinary print
postcard, contains a written message. It rotates by clicking
on "Press here to see the back." That brings us back to
Rule 2 & 3, which advises linking your virtual campaign
- your email marketing campaign - to your traditional
campaign and ensuring consistency of the branding message.
You
can also have a printed postcard mailed to customers.
They get the postcard on their desk. The message is reinforced
when they receive it by email marketing. You're hitting
them with the same message, the same image, in a traditional
way, as well as email marketing campaigns.
Enhance your database so email marketing reaches
your target audience :
Ensure
that you capture the data to fortify your database. A
major problem e-marketers face is maintaining their databases
so that they're constantly up to date and properly categorized.
This will ensure that your message reflects the interest
of your target market when you do your email marketing
campaign.
Integrate back-end database access into your email
marketing :
A
fully integrated email marketing program is just that
- fully integrated. There is no one pushing paper behind
the scenes to ensure follow-through. If you are a recruiter
and advertising for people to apply online, invite them
to apply inside a email ad. Have them click their answer
inside your email ad. For example, in box one: "What kind
of job are you looking for? Click 1, 2 or 3 to answer
the question." In box two: "What salary range?" In box
three: "What's your e-mail address?" And so forth.
Allow
the email ad to act as a window into your database. If
you're email advertising a financial institution, allow
your target market to calculate interest on an IRA or
home equity loan. If you own a research company, allow
prospects to enter an email address to download research
papers.
Reinforce your email advertising campaigns with your
existing customer service program
Follow
up with voice mail after a customer purchases from you.
If you're a true email marketer person, things that work
for you will work with your audience. "For instance, I
registered for an online grocery shopping service, "says
Mr. Smith . "About an hour later, I got a phone call from
the online store's customer service representative, who
said, "Hi Mr. Smith. This is so-and-so at the grocery
store. I understand you want to shop online. Do you have
any questions?" I couldn't believe that the grocery store
called me back to ask me if I had questions - was I ready
to go shopping or did I need any help?" Ensure that your
existing customer service programs back up your email
marketing campaign.
Reinforce your email marketing message across your
delivery channels
Successful
email marketing means that you would have had contact
through your web site with your customers. Did you send
them a parcel? If you did, ensure packaging reinforces
your message and reflects your email marketing campaign,
and put a reminder inside for them to shop again. Thanks
them for their positive response from your email campaign.
Think award winning creative when designing your
email marketing program.
As
with all new media, one can err in assuming that because
it's email marketing , you can lower your creativity standards.
For some reason, many seem to think that email marketing
doesn't have to be brilliant. Award winning creative is
award winning creative, whether it's on paper or in your
email message. The creative or email message must communicate
effectively and meet the needs of the client or prospect.
A great rule of email marketing message design is - would
you buy from your email message if your did not design
it?
