We recently received a rather innocuous email from a speculative “up and coming” web designer, which we thought was a worth discussing here as an example of how not to use email marketing.

First of all, the email rather oddly requested our name and address so that they could send their business card to us. The email also contained a link to an underwhelming and rudimentary portfolio website. Not a great impression for someone selling their design ability.

Despite ending up in our company spam folder, the email was instantly noticeable because it had several hundred email addresses in the CC field, listing every web design agency and related business in the Newcastle area.

So far, so unremarkable. We receive tens of similar emails every single week, although they’re almost always done with more self-awareness and panache.

Then a reply from one of the many recipients – copied to everyone on the original list – helpfully pointed out some of the shortcomings to the approach. Shortly after that another reply explained how the freelancer had allegedly stolen their design and entered it into a competition. As the morning went on, more and more emails dropped in from others who had suffered the same fate, or avoided it by quickly ascertaining that he perhaps wasn’t what he claimed he was. More emails appeared simply expressing amusement at the haplessness of the whole thing.

In short, just about everything that could go wrong with this particular mailshot did go wrong, to the extent that the sender wouldn’t be able to even speak to anyone on the list, let alone work with them.

Besides the obvious issue of publicly contacting people who you’ve previously offended, this example highlighted some fairly basic and easily avoidable slip-ups.

• Bulk CC lists. No-one wants to be contacted via CC as it literally indicates that they’re not the primary recipient. When the CC field contains lots of email addresses this sense is worsened massively. It shows that the message is general and imprecise, and therefore not really worth attention. It’s a rare piece of email marketing that doesn’t go to lots of people, but the CC field is not the place to list all of the addresses.

• Unusual, time-consuming request. In this case, the request was for a name and address to send a business card to. Asking for a director or HR contact isn’t a particularly unusual thing in itself, but it is typically done via a phonecall. Sending a generic email asking the recipient to go to the bother of replying, to receive a business card of all things, is staggeringly outdated. Email marketing should be all about the benefits to the reader, tempting them into action with something that’s worthwhile to them.

• Less than impressive offering. All other mistakes aside, the email contained a link to the designer’s portfolio website, giving one last hope of redemption to the whole sorry incident. A portfolio website is a chance to shine, to show off your abilities. However the website in this case was, at best, sub-standard. To compound things further, the list of services on the website included various advanced level and cutting edge technologies – which the sender plainly wasn’t conversant in. There’s so much choice out there today for everything, that whatever you’re offering needs to stand out somehow.

• Spelling, grammar and presentation flaws. When an email contains such errors as regularly using a lower case letter for “I” and the incorrect form of “their”, it suggests that the sender is either incredibly careless or isn’t capable of the most basic rules of writing. This is an elementary turn-off for the reader.

Email marketing, as we say time and time again at Green Media, is a very powerful form of advertising. Arguably the most powerful when you consider potential reach, precision targeting recipients, cost and return on investment. It forms the basis of many successful businesses entire marketing strategies.

When it’s done right email marketing can;

• Grow your business and amplify brand awareness
• Keep your customers happy with regular communication
• Highlight promotions, sales and offers precisely when needed

We’ve used email marketing for all of these things and more, for companies ranging from some of the biggest automotive manufacturers in the world to innovative local small businesses, and we’ve always achieved the right results.

If you’d like to have a chat about email marketing for your business, drop us a line on 0191 232 8088 or email info@green-media.com

The humble subject line has long been an overlooked element of email marketing, often taking a back seat to design, copywriting, imagery and call-to-action refinement during the development of a campaign.

Yet, despite its lowly status on this list of specialist areas, the subject line has actually always been an important factor in email marketing. A good subject line, basically, can make the difference between an email flyer being opened and acted upon or ignored altogether. You can have the best looking email marketing in the world but without a decent subject line to back it up it’s never likely to fulfil its potential.

Now, with mobile devices becoming ever-popular, the subject line is more important than ever to email marketing because of one simple fact;

Smartphone inboxes only display subject lines and from fields.

No images. No preview panes. It’s all down to your subject line. So it better be good.

With the explosion of smartphone use in recent years – the ubiquitous iPhone and Blackberry, along with the rapidly phenomenal Android OS phones (which grew 350% in the last quarter here in the UK) – more and more of us are accessing our emails on the move, or even opting to use smartphones as in-office business devices due to their ever-increasing performance benefits. Smartphones aren’t the preserve of business or the technically-minded, they’re for everyone. And it seems everyone has got one.

Microsoft, which has stayed on the fringes of the smartphone market for the last few years, is moving closer to the launch of its “Windows Phone 7″ operating system – a hi-spec platform that will doubtlessly be backed up by a gargantuan marketing budget when it emerges before 2010 is out. The new Windows offering will present users with yet another super-capable handheld option – and it’s only going to get bigger.

Of course, email on the move simply presents yet another way to use email marketing to communicate effectively and efficiently with your target market. So it’s unquestionably a good thing.

But next time you’re crafting a campaign that will spring into life on iPhones, Androids and as yet unimagined super devices, make sure you don’t forget the importance of the element that has been around from day one of email – the subject line.

We sent an email marketing flyer for Lancaster Cambridge Aston Martin last week which resulted in an immediate sale of a brand new DBS, continuing the fantastic performance for this client.

Talking figures, the cost of the mailing was just £212, and the Aston Martin DBS retails at around £149,000.

It’s another example of how effective our email marketing can be – delivering the phenomenal ROI that we talk so much about. As well as this, it’s a neat illustration of how continuing business marketing through the current economic downturn really does produce results, something else that we’ve mentioned recently.

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.