Essential Guide to E-mail Marketing - Haymarket

40 E-MAIL CAMPAIGNS DM News • E-Mail Marketing Guide 2007
When e-mail design goes bad
BY JULIAN SCOTT
Time and time again I discover that one of the main obstacles
to creating effective, visually engaging, brand-propelling
and, most important, results-driven e-mails is the creative team behind
them.
There are many factors that need to be considered when designing
an e-mail: how much content there will be, whether there will
be dynamic content, how the design will organize the content,
what call to action to use and how it will be coded. Everything
needs to come together in unison
to deliver an e-mail message that
will deliver the most results.
Several critical points your creative
team must keep in mind:
Best practices are best practices
for a reason Unless it will work
in 99.9 percent of environments,
it is not a best practice and
should generally be avoided.
Print is not the same as e-mail
How the recipient will interact
Julian Scott
with and read it will be very dif-
Responsys
ferent. E-mails are rarely viewed
in their entirety. You have to be able to tell your story within consolidated
chunks that are clear, easily scanned and actionable.
E-mails are read top to bottom and left to right, so placing the
headline at the bottom of the e-mail is not going to work. You
have only a few seconds to grab their attention — don’t waste it
making them search for the primary points or call to action.
The way you would code a Web page is not the same way you
code an e-mail, and you must adjust your design to accommodate
no background images, no Flash, no forms, no java script, no
CSS, no image maps.
An e-mail is never the destination. It serves as a stepping stone to
motivate recipients to take an action. If the e-mail is not designed
with this in mind, then you’ve missed the point and wasted your
money.
Remember, if recipients cannot read your e-mail because the primary
content is below the fold or coded in a way that will not render
correctly, they are not likely to take an action.
Some simple things you can do include making sure your creative
team attends industry events and stays on top of industry
trends and news. Also, try to include them as part of your marketing
planning process. Often, just understanding “why” is critical to
effective implementation. Always be sure to share results and
encourage creative thinking that can be validated through testing.
Julian Scott is creative director at Responsys. You can reach him at
jscott@responsys.com.
ESSENTIAL GUIDE
Keys to trigger-based e-mail
marketing
BY MICHAEL THOMPSON
Imagine having the power to send your customers a message at the
precise moment they are most likely to act on it. Imagine never
again having to play the guessing game of throwing an offer out
there and hoping it will stick. Instead, imagine having information
regarding your customers’ life-changing events, such as the purchase
of a home or opening of a checking account, at your fingertips, and
the dexterity to send out the right
offer at precisely the right time.
Well, there’s no need to imagine.
Trigger-based marketing programs
are enabling e-mail
marketers to communicate
insightful offers in a timely fashion
to both customers and
prospects, yielding as much as a
400 percent improvement in
response rates without costing
millions of dollars.
Michael Thompson
Triggers 101 Triggers generally
eServices at Click Tactics
fall into four categories: external
(something happening in the mortgage or housing industry, for
example); customer life (marriage, retirement); behavioral (customer
purchase or dropped service) and communication (inquiry
about a product upgrade or service). Each represents a specific
moment when the customer is both interested and engaged.
Today’s most successful campaigns use triggers to automatically
initiate e-mail when customers take certain actions. This is done
by establishing a set of business rules that act on pre-assigned criteria.
Trigger-based e-mail programs enable marketers to turn existing
customer data into business rules that systematically drive a
program through execution at greatly reduced campaign cycle
times.
Two key factors: timing and relevancy Timing and relevancy are
the foundation on which successful marketing programs are built.
Missing on either front can often spell disaster for a campaign.
Much as a dancer needs both rhythm and knowledge of the right
steps to dance, marketers must hit both “right message” and “right
time” to move the customer to action. By aligning the content and
timing of e-mail messages with customer needs, you’re increasing
the relevance, response and, ultimately, revenue from your direct
marketing programs.
Assisted by new robust e-mail platforms and on-demand technologies
that enable triggered communications using dynamic content,
companies can deliver individualized, relevant
communication to each customer. What’s more, e-mails can be
used as part of a multi-touch communications strategy allowing
marketers to deliver messages over a variety of channels based on
customer preference and at varying intervals, enabling marketers
to send out thousands or just a few at the appropriate time. These
programs tell the customer, “Hey, we know you and here’s how
we can help you specifically.”
Keep it simple When implementing trigger-based programs,
keep it simple. Don’t reconfigure your current systems or dramatically
change internal processes. Your trigger-based solution should