We were delighted to hear about the response to a recent email marketing campaign for one of our Jaguar clients, which again proved the overwhelming business benefits of advertising through the downturn and the incredible potential of email marketing. The e-flyer, for Lancaster Jaguar Sidcup, was mailed out on Friday 5th December and led directly to the sale of ten brand new Jaguars and forty-five enquiries of interest for possible future purchases.

The mailer was sent to a datalist containing 1946 registered customers and achieved a 42% open rate - far higher than the industry average. The decision to broadcast on a Friday helped to create momentum throughout the weekend, as highlighted by the results.

The stunning sales results emphatically demonstrate that email marketing is still the most effective pound-for-pound promotional medium available, continuing to make an impact even in the hardest-hit sectors.

If you’re looking for a low-cost and effective way to get your message out to customers and prospects, then email marketing is likely to fit the bill. This series of articles is designed to highlight the key issues - explaining what to do, what not to do, and why. In this piece, the first of the series, we’re looking at some of the most commonly-spotted problems in email marketing, and the ways they can be avoided.

However, if you just need the benefits of great email marketing but perhaps don’t need to know all the ins-and-outs discussed here, then get in touch with us - we’d be more than happy to demonstrate how effective it can be when done properly.

Copy for email

Copywriting for the web has its own distinct set of rules, largely based around hitting your point straight away, avoiding unnecessary words, maintaining clarity and giving the reader a pay-off as soon as possible. You’ll find that these themes come into sharp focus when writing email marketing copy. All too often it is bogged down with a long-winded and dawdling style, and this lack of clarity can effectively kill a whole campaign, regardless of how good your offer is. Just as deadly to email marketing is copy that is too brief, as this can fail to engage readers.

If your marketing email is vying for attention amongst a hundred or so other emails throughout the course of a day then it absolutely must make an impression and stand out - and the copy is a clear opportunity to do this. Your opener is crucial - engage the recipient straight away by making it clear precisely what you’re offering, what the benefit is to them and why it’s worth reading on. If these things aren’t obvious in the first couple of lines then you’ve lost your chance.

Image-heavy mailers

Email marketing that over-employs imagery can look incredibly good, but it can fail to be effective in terms of results for various reasons.

With increased awareness of viruses and security threats it’s quite rare these days for people to have their emails set up to show images immediately. So email marketing that is overly reliant on images is completely dependent on recipients clicking to see them - which they often won’t!

Even if an image-based email does make it through to a viewing, there are several different email clients and systems that display HTML messages in very different ways. Your carefully crafted masterpiece that was designed to perfection might look unrecognisable on certain clients. Be sure to code around this, and don’t leave out any of the popular email clients.

Despite the image minefield, some brands have fantastically effective e-flyers made up purely of images - Schuh is a good example of this, as well as a lot of the high-end fashion retailers. However these mailers work on the strength and recognition of the brand itself, often in the subject line or from field. If a recipient sees a respected and trusted brand name (obvious phishing aside), they’re far more likely to click “show images” or allow the flyer to upload. Once the recipient has seen the email quality, it’s likely to be assigned to a safe senders list from that point onwards. However, if it’s an unknown or unexpected brand sending the email, then no amount of “can’t see this email? Click here” messages will encourage the reader to open it.

It’s best to achieve a balance between text and images, so recipients can see immediately what you’re trying to say and it’ll look the part as well. For more information on this, see our dedicated article.

From fields and subject lines

These two underappreciated factors are the first things that appear in an inbox, so they deserve as much consideration as anything else in email marketing. As mentioned earlier, if used correctly they can instantly win over a recipeint. However, if either of these are fluffed, then you’re risking the failure of the entire campaign, regardless of how brilliant it might be in every other respect.

First off, the from field - it’s not exactly complex stuff, you’re just saying where the email is coming from, but there are definitely some rules you should be following here. Again, if you’re marketing a big brand or respected name then take the opportunity to reference it. Don’t bother with an email address, especially not a clunky “donotreply@” style one. Using names in from fields is an option, but it depends entirely on whether the recipient will be expecting it and will know who the named sender is. A name in a from field can add a neat personal touch in certain cases, and you’ll find that personally written newsletters often carry the name of the author in this field.

Next up, the subject line - this continues to be one of the most poorly executed elements of email marketing, but again is a fairly straight-forward thing to get right. The golden rule here would be, simply, don’t look like spam. Don’t use words like “best” or “cheap”, and avoid full subject lines in capital letters, as these are likely to trigger spam filters and send your marketing directly to junk mail folders. For the same reason avoid using characters such as “£”, “$” or “!” even if there’s an entirely credible reason to do so. Once you’ve got these spam issues out of the way, think about how best to present your message in the most succinct fashion. Don’t make it too long or cryptic. It needs to be quick-fire, contain a selling point or an intriguing line to encourage an opening. It’s a vitally important factor so make the most of it.

Timing

The day and time that you send out your email marketing can play a large role in deciding the end result. Sending out on a Monday morning will all but guarantee failure in most sectors. Think about the start of your own working week… do you have time to peruse and respond to unexpected emails? It’s unlikely.

With newsletter-style email marketing, decide on a regular mailout day and time - and stick to it. Recipients will expect the email to drop into their inboxes at the same time each week, month, or however often you send it, and it’s this regularity that will guarantee and maintain a certain level of interest.

More sales-driven email marketing should be timed around key buying times, depending on the product or service you’re promoting.

Call to action

The last point in any email marketing is the call to action, the element that turns a recipient into a customer. It’s incredible to think that any email marketing could be sent out without a cast-iron call to action, but it does happen.

Don’t leave your reader in any doubt whatsoever as to what they need to do to take you up on your offering. Walk them right through to the phone number, email link or web link that takes them to a conversion. Ideally give them an option of all three, different customers have different preferences so you should cater for them all.

Our portfolio page has been updated today with some typically festive projects that were created this month. Warrington Audi’s fantastic Winter Event e-flyer sets the scene with a crisp blue and white theme, while North East Audi’s weekend sale mailer keeps it simple - and very, very effective.

In another supercar campaign, the incredible Maserati Quattroporte GT is the star of a promo for Lancaster Maserati Sevenoaks - a hero image in every sense of the word.

Take a look!

It’s really easy to get used to a particular approach to online marketing and stick to it. More often than not an initial wave of good results will cause this, but you’re likely to find that churning out a repetitive promo will end up generating less and less interest over time, and even turning your customers off completely.

There are plenty of ways to keep things fresh, and with a little strategising you can find a number of different approaches that you can keep to hand in your marketing arsenal, picking and choosing to suit. Here’s an effective one to try out…

Occasionally promoting an individual product or service can be a great way to generate interest in your wider offerings. Singling out one area of your business can create a more exclusive focus to your marketing, making a refreshing change from more general sales advertising. When you’re only taking about one thing you’ve got a better chance of streamlining your message and getting a positive reception - then opening the door to other opportunities.

A recent e-flyer for Aston Martin Lancaster Cambridge (take a look at it in our portfolio) showcased a rare V12 Vanquish, presenting the car as a ‘last chance’ for prospective buyers. Another email marketing campaign for Porsche Centre Cambridge highlighted a unique pink Boxster, the only one of its kind available at the time. Both campaigns played on the ‘opportunity’ of the offering, instantly demanding attention.

As well as drawing attention to a particular product or service, this type of marketing can also generate interest in your other offerings and create clear selling opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t have existed. Although you’re genuinely advertising a single item to begin with, you’re ultimately exposing your prospective customers to everything else that you’ve got to offer once they click-through to your website or walk into your shop.

Think about what you’ve got to promote from every angle, and you might find that an occasional detour from a usual approach can deliver results.

Take a look at our newly updated portfolio page to see a selection of what we’ve been creating here at Green Media during October. You’ll find our debut Lamborghini and Toyota e-flyers, the website for Brenikov Training and the latest Aston Martin email marketing.

We’ll be updating the page regularly, so be sure to check it out again soon. Next month’s additions include an absolutely stunning Bentley email marketing campaign, which is our first sole branded work for the classic marque.

Today’s financial climate demands that you keep on marketing, but it also demands a more pragmatic approach to your advertising in order to continue being effective. Marketing for marketing’s sake simply won’t deliver the results you need now.

Prospective customers are resistant - even immune - to traditional hard sell advertising during an economic downturn, and you could be wasting budget to carry on with the same approach that perhaps worked for you two or three years ago. Think about what you’re offering, and how you can offer it in the most suitable way for today’s buyer.

A recent email marketing campaign for our client at Cloverleaf Honda took a direct conversational copy style, outlining Honda’s response to the credit crunch and showcasing some models with massive savings. This moved away from the typical salesy marketing that a customer might be expecting, and towards a more open tone. We combined the copy with a clearly laid-out branded design and a personalised email subject line, and as a result achieved a click-through rate of almost 30% - smashing the industry average of between 5-10%.

These results show that the customers are still out there - it just takes a different approach to successfully connect with them now.

We’ve revamped our in-house email marketing system in the last few months to incorporate some exciting new features and introduce a new presentation interface. The new system, which is currently going through its final test sessions, will supercede our EDM for Business platform when it launches later this month.

Throughout the last eight years the Greenmedia system has provided email marketing to some of the biggest names in various sectors on a global scale, with phenomenal results across the board. We’ve built up an email marketing client list that currently includes the likes of Aston Martin, Audi, Porsche and numerous other prestigious marques - all of which have been acquired due to the continued strong performance of the system. We thought the time was right to take it to the next level, so, that’s exactly what we’ve done.

We initially created the system because we couldn’t find anything out there that provided all of the email marketing features we wanted to offer our clients. In building from scratch in-house with our own development team, we were able to produce a system that offered the latest features in a single, scaleable package. In the eight years that have passed since version 1.0 went live, there have been countless additions and amends, but it is still the case that nothing else quite like it exists in terms of mass email marketing packages. We firmly believe that Greenmedia’s email marketing offers a superior service, and our experience in the area is second to none.

The revamped version marks the biggest change to the system to date, and we’re sure that it’ll provide the platform for even more email marketing success when it goes live soon.