Maria Piscopo's Business Library Tips

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Finding Clients
Using E-mail for Sales
By by Maria Piscopo

Why would you recommend email as a marketing tool?

Brent Shroyer, Listrak, http://www.listrak.com/: Email marketing is essential to a growing business in today’s world. It offers a long-term open communications channel that supplies ongoing and direct connection with customers. When permission is granted, sending a targeted, timely and relevant message is extremely effective. Also, when email creative best practices are followed then there is no better way to personally convey information to customers. Multiple studies have shown that email marketing drastically outperforms that of other Internet marketing channels.

Len Bruskiewitz, Constant Contact, http://www.constantcontact.com/: Email marketing is accessible, affordable and easy to implement, thus making it a strong vehicle in a small business’ marketing plan.  The personal nature of each message helps consumers to feel a one-on-one connection with the sender if they know and understand their buyer’s needs. This form of marketing is designed appropriately for small business users with little or no technical expertise and limited time. Companies can use this medium to leverage their most important asset - current customers!  When working with limited resources, time, and budget for marketing, email marketing addresses those concerns and returns results that positively impact the bottom line. Proactive contact increases traffic, drives sales, and builds loyalty. It is twenty times more cost effective than direct mail, can cost as little as fractions of a penny per email and generate initial response within an average of 48 hours. According to the Direct Marketing Association (www.the-dma.org) email marketing provides the best the return on investment (ROI). To compare, every $1 that may be spent on email is equal to $51.45, as opposed to $7.20 spent on print catalogs and $21.08 spent on non-email Internet marketing.

Annie Kinnaird, MyEmma, www.myemma.com: Email is viral and this makes it the most convenient medium for obtaining referrals from current customers through forwarding. Gain a new customer and raise brand awareness all in one click. It's a broadcast dialogue. How exactly does that work? You can send an email to 1,000 people. All 1,000 people can reply to you. All 1,000 people can click on your topic or service  that interests them most. It's like having a conversation with 1,000 people with the click of a button. They have the opportunity to talk back by clicking, by replying, by unsubscribing. Email response data is like unlocking the mystery that is your customers. You get smarter with every email you send.

How do you suggest our readers collect (or buy) the best email address lists for use in marketing their businesses?

Len Bruskiewitz: Spam is in the eye of the recipient. For this reason, begin by requesting permission to collect email addresses at every point of contact with current and prospective customers. Practice this both online and offline, whether its through a sign-up box on your website, a prominently displayed guest book in your studio or  office or asking people face to face. To further email list expansion, add all company contact information on invoices, brochures, surveys and feed­back forms. Increase the number of opportunities that customers have to opt-in.

Brent Shroyer: We recommend creating the list entirely within your business.  When you are unsure of the permission granted by those contacts there is too much risk involved in purchasing a list of email addresses.  You could end up doing a lot more harm than good for you businesses email marketing reputation.  Once you have gone down that road, a bad reputation will lead to deliverability problems and you will not be able to deliver to those contact that have specifically given you permission

What are the biggest mistakes you see designers making in email marketing design and
how do they decrease effectiveness?

Chris Bruce, MailYourMarket, www.mailyourmarket.com: Think of your email newsletter as an extension of your brand. Use the same logo, the same colors, and if you can, the same or similar interface to your web site and you will have greater success while improving your recognition factor. Too often there is not a clear focus on the message. Given today's busy lifestyle, there is a constant struggle for attention and viewer "eyeballs". You are competing with all of the other emails that your recipient receives on a daily basis. To this end, it is of crucial importance to succinctly frame your message in a manner that makes it easy for the viewer to understand. Unless you are the next big thing, chances are that you can't afford to force your viewer to get lost in your email. Give them the "what for?" or "so what?" right off the bat. If they respond and end up clicking through to your web site, then you can fill in the rest of the story, as you have already initiated their interaction.

Brent Shroyer: One of the biggest mistakes I see in email marketing creative design is the use of pure images with no HTML text.  Because many email clients default to not showing images, the initial impression of the email is a bunch of empty boxes with no visible content.  HTML text should be used whenever possible and be integrated well within the images in your message.  For any images, be sure to use an alt tag so that at least that text is shown if the image is not.

Another mistake I’ve repeatedly seen is designing the email like you would a web site using cascading style sheets (CSS).  Unfortunately, because of the lack of support from email clients for CSS, it is still necessary to design email using basic HTML.  That includes using tables for positioning and basic HTML font tags. The Email Standards Project (see http://www.email-standards.org/) is a great resource for keeping up with the CSS support of major email clients. Testing is very important with email creative.  Set-up accounts with as many email clients as possible to test email creative before sending your message.

 Furthermore, Microsoft switched from using Internet Explorer to render for Outlook 2007 and now uses the Word rendering engine. So when designing an email layout, this must be kept in mind.  Outlook 2007 now lacks the support for background images.  Any layout that had a background image behind HTML text or within any other table cell will not be displayed.  The new version does continue to support background colors.  A background color in the same table cell is visible even if the image is not seen.

Len Bruskiewitz: When communicating with your customers or members, appearance does matter. Using HTML formatted emails yield a 35% higher response rate than plain text. Email marketing solutions automatically format emails as HTML or plain text depending on the compatibility of recipients’ email services. Professional looking emails better reflect your brand and make small organizations seem larger.

Annie Kinnaird: Not designing for "above the fold" viewing of the email is a mistake. Remember that the majority of recipients are viewing email in a preview pane first. This means the most important information, including brand and a call to action should display in the top four inches of the email. Going to text and image extremes is discouraged. Resist the urge to drop in large blocks of “newsy” text or fill up your email with giant pictures. Busy readers are likely to ignore an email that looks like a novel and they may not even notice it at all email if it is mostly comprised of images. This is true specifically in the cases of blocked or slow-to-download image files. Effective email campaigns have a balanced image to text ratio which creates an eye-catching balance between the two.

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