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Average Emails Miss the Target

Create an extraordinary email marketing campaign

By Rebecca Trela

Decades into the future, historians will determine that this was the year sending email became a competitive sport. Aim, shoot, miss, bounce-back, regroup. Position, target, touch base, beeline, score, capture.

The numbers and stats are dizzying—average conversion, average sale, open rate and click-thru. Much of the hype surrounding email marketing campaigns and integrated print-and-web efforts concentrate on the metrics, which isn’t a surprise. The volume of email marketing is increasing 30 percent year-on-year, according to the Direct Marketing Association, New York City.

But somewhere in the pursuit of the right percentages, sellers have forgotten about the sale, says Tim Brown, email marketing manager at Active Web Group, Hauppauge, N.Y. “A lot of email marketers are concerned about deliverability, click-thrus and all that. They get away from marketing the specific product,” he says. Using numbers to guide a campaign is fine, he adds, but ultimately, the offer is what sells. Concentrate too much on the averages, and your promotion will end up average.

There’s a simple litmus test to get out of a rut, he says: does your current promotion look just like your last one? Then it’s no good. “The ideal promo email is low in file size, easy on the eyes and straight to the point.”

Good design is critical, but there’s no universal solution. A good marketing campaign could be created in a few hours or a few days or over the course of weeks of back-and-forth emails, depending on the complexity. With the right software, a simple design can be created in a few hours.

An email marketing campaign can be simple to create with the right software, says Jennifer Craft, a designer with Graphic Communications Group in Chantilly, Va. “I’ve seen some fabulous pieces, fairly basic, that were done in a few hours with Emma,” she says, referencing a popular web-based service. Craft primarily works with email marketing messages that are part of an integrated print campaign. “I almost always use PDFs, which are more stable and easier to control in different email formats.”

“You’re definitely going to want an eye-catching but not overpowering use of color,” she says. “If you’re going to use orange, cool it down with something else. I tend to avoid the day-glo colors at all costs and try to use gray text if the client will allow—it looks more sophisticated.” And if possible, use photos, she suggests—they add color in a controlled way.

Let the Offer Be Your Guide
If your email is product-heavy, Brown says, create an email promoting an online shopping cart or the purchasing experience. Don’t make the user scroll or search wildly—all the relevant information should fit in the Outlook preview pane. There’s no magic promotion, he says, but one of Active Web Group’s most successful campaigns was an offer done for the group’s parent company before being sold off. The offer was a “last call” for a product, but the product was held by a bartender as if it were the evening’s last drink. With the relevant and fun approach, Brown says, the email generated more orders than any other promotion.

The most successful emails come from well-paired offers and promotions, he says. Offering a time-restricted sale might create a buzz. Or, work on retaining customers by offering a discount on a second order. Want referrals? Start a free trial period for a product or service. “And stay away from animation!” Brown says.

Smarter, Not Harder
Before you hit “send,” however, there are a few metrics and numbers worth noting. About two-thirds of all email promotions are used to retain customers, says Karen Talavera, an email industry speaker and president of Synchronicity Marketing, Lake Worth, Fla. That means the sender knows something about the customer and he or she has volunteered to receive messages from the company. Don’t abuse that privilege, she warns. “I don’t care what business you are. Unless you have a stock or weather report, there’s no way you should be mailing every day.

“One of the great but underutilized things about email is for companies to ask subscribers what they want regarding timing, format, frequency and content of messaging.” And when in doubt, she says, mix it up—sending out multi-dimensional campaigns keeps customers interested and are less likely to be tagged as spam.

When customer demographics are known, targeted marketing is easier to produce. “Marketers are working smarter, not harder, nowadays,” Talavera says. Much of the effort centers on increasing a good reputation as an email sender, which is predicated on good design, relevant content and welcome frequency. If enough readers tag the messages as spam, even if they signed up for the mailer, an ISP will block the sender or lower the company’s “sender score,” which is the credit rating of emailing.

Many companies also register their IP addresses with a central authentication database like the Domain Name System (DNS), the “phone book of the internet.” This checks that emails sent from the enumerated account match the server on record for the company. If the two don’t match, the mail is flagged as a spam or phishing campaign and ISPs deny delivery.

“Authentication is a major movement in this industry to ensure a good reputation,” Talavera says. “Trusted senders of email are getting preferential treatment, like an exception to automatically blocked images.” An email is recorded as an “open” once pictures are enabled, even if the images appear only in the preview pane before being deleted. This is a tremendous benefit to marketers, but it refers back to good design and enticing offers. “Marketers who are policing themselves and staying relevant to the recipient are the ones succeeding,” she says.

Rebecca Trela is assistant editor of Print Solutions magazine. Email comments to rtrela@psda.org.