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Engage
the audience: Key points in email design and campaign management
There
can be little doubt that email remains an effective method
of communicating with clients. If run correctly, return on
investment can be colossal. Even run badly, savings on traditional
forms of marketing can still make email an attractive option.
Some of the best-run email campaigns are naturally emerging
from the larger organisations. This doesn’t mean they
all score well. In fact some larger concerns are still rather
backward in their approach, but on the whole there are some
great examples to learn from.
With
the advent of broadband, in the same way web sites have suddenly
become more adventurous, so can email. Now it's possible to
attempt to captivate the reader with embedded animation, video
or even games for instance. So long as Microsoft doesn’t
apply any more restraints through new versions of Outlook,
email can really begin to reach its full potential. While
visual impact is undoubtedly of prime importance, there are
of course several other important aspects that should be considered.
1)
Get the design right. Recipients will not generally spend
much time considering the virtues of your email. It either
engages and generates a click-through or completely misses
and therefore becomes consigned to the deleted items folder.
2)
Repeat your message. Not quite the stuck record
approach, but the message needs to be deviously repeated
several times. After all, you wouldn't want someone to take
the time to actually open your email but completely miss
the point of it.
3)
The call to action. Make it clear and obvious what you want
the recipient to do. If you are aiming to get people to
follow a link through to your web site, make certain the
link isn't lost among a glut of text. As with the general
message, it may be worth repeating the hyperlink more than
once. Most people are conditioned to look for a button image.
4)
Don't get too flashy. Keep in mind the fact that overly
clever flash and graphics etc. can be chopped out
by some modern email applications. While advocating the
need to be attention grabbing it's perhaps worth remembering
that similar rules apply to regular web page design. If
the animation is not totally necessary it's perhaps best
to play it safe and leave it out altogether.
5)
Build in analytical capabilities. It's important the action
of recipients are tracked and monitored. This should include
not only the delivery, open and click-though rates but also
be extended to include beyond email statistics
provided from web site statistics such as conversion
tracking, post click and post view.
Post click illustrates the actions of web site visitors
after clicking through from an email, whereas post view
provides details of people who visited the web site at a
later date.
6)
Clean mailing lists. Keeping mailing lists up to date can
create a fair bit of behind the scenes work, but it's worth
the effort in order to keep response rates to an optimum.
It's also well worth trying to profile your recipients.
From details gathered from web site forms or through past
buying history, clients should be cleverly categorised through
their preferences with regards to products, services and
average spend etc.
7)
Technical considerations. It's worth ascertaining where
recipients might struggle to view your email properly because
of peculiarities with their email service…..ie hotmail,
AOL and Yahoo. Good practice is still to offer the choice
of HTML or plain text when signing people up, although pushing
HTML will allow you to better engage recipients if they
are able to view this format. As a failsafe a plain text
version will at least allow you to communicate something
to those with antiquated systems. An alternative is to give
people the option to view a copy of the email as a web page
online.
8)
Be open, offer an opt-out. Regardless of current legislation
it's always best to give people the option to opt out from
your mailing. On the whole however, very few will bother,
but it does show that you are respecting their rights and
acting professionally.
9)
Subject line and opening text. Remember most emails are
scan read…if they are read at all that is. Keep in
mind the fact that emails are often simply previewed using
something similar to Outlook's auto-preview, making the
subject line critical. While the preview pane can still
display graphics etc, often only a small section at the
top of the email will show. Therefore some catchy imagery,
branding or text will help lure people in.
10)
Check your web site. If the main aim is to get people to
click through to a web site, and 9 times out of 10 it is,
make certain everything is set up to cope. There's nothing
worse than successfully winning a mass of traffic, only
to find that the web site regularly falls over at times
of high demand. If this is a particular problem it could
be worth trickling emails out over a longer period to avoid
a bulk responses. Moving graphics to an external host will
also lessen the strain on the web server.
This
article is free to republish provided the resource information
below remains intact.
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