Email Marketing - Really Good Examples

21 Sep 2010

We all see email marketing everyday, in our inboxes. Sometimes they arrive early in the morning, sometimes later in the day. Some are big and full of content, some are small and straight to the point. The most important thing about email marketing is to ensure they serve the purpose that were sent for: Publicity, Marketing and Communication.

In this article we will talk a little more about email marketing, and how to achieve results!

 

Email Marketing - The Technology

Email marketing has a lot of potential for cash strapped marketers, but a poorly delivered e-newsletter or announcement email can result in blacklisting of your domain name, and a general depreciation of your brand.

Design & Compilation
It is really important that your e-newsletter template or email marketing presentation is designed in a manner that the target audience will respond well to.

It should also be designed keeping in mind the lack of natural support, or potential to disable graphics and other media for some web users. If you manage to overcome these problems, the problem of "the fold" is also an active concern - how much can your email receiptents actually see when they get the email, and how much do they have to scroll to find.

 

Maintaining An Active Email List
If a person wants to be added to your list, or more importantly if they request to be taken off, how easily can you handle this? If you have major trouble managing lists, or you aren't too internet savvy, the only solution will be to use an automated management script, Smith and Wise can provide these for you, and they normally sit on your website server. If you are sending emails to more than 50 people, you really should use such a script!

 

Legal Issues
Using email newsletter scripts can manage how people subscribe and unsubscribe from your email newsletter. This can also be handy for maintaining a growing contact list. It IS a legal requirement to allow people to unsubscribe from your newsletter, before the next one is sent out by email or by clicking a link (and if nessesary, then filling in an email and username form).

Within the content of newsletters, make sure you own rights to use materials - it is impossible to retract content once it is sent. You should always provide a contact email for errors, ommissions or for copyright infringements to be noted.

Be very careful when sending links to websites, or scripts either by link, attachment or in an actual email. If a persons computer gets infected, you may be liable!

 

Common Principals Of Email Marketing

Just like traditional advertising and marketing, there are a few general principals which are important to remember when sending out marketing communications by email. These may be defined as:

• Don't Disrupt People
  Emails which crash a web or email browser, take ages to load or even damage a computer are the perfect way to make a client or potential client a permanant enemy.
• Don't Rely On Images
  Many email client browsers and web based email browsers disable images for security or bandwidth reasons, always have a backup ("if you cannot see this image, click here") or provide discriptive ALT tags for images.
  
  
• Provide Interesting Content First
  Just like a catchy headline, good interesting content will lead the reader to read further. Dull or repetitive content at the top of a email, particularily within "the fold" will result in quick deletion, and potential blacklisting of email.
  
  
  
• Use SEF Links In Emails
  
  It's tempting to ignore link quality in email newsletters, but the cleaner they are, they more likely someone is to click on it, afterall,
  http://www.yourdomain.com/best_offers_in_ireland_newsletter is a lot more attractive than
  http://www.yourdomin.com/sdss875s
  - both will carry as visible on analytical software!

 

Really Good Examples

We got the following examples of email newsletters over the last month or so. We have reproduced them below for educational / illustrative purposes as excellent examples of how to do email marketing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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