Email Design and Marketing

One of the frustrations with many marketing activities is that it can be very hard to tell what is working, and what is just costing money. When you conduct email marketing, you can see very quickly what is working, and what is not. If something isn’t working, you will be able to tweak it immediately, at low cost. You have the flexibility to feature a different product each week, or offer special prices to frequent buyers? Automated processes handle all the tedious subscribing, un subscribing and tracking of bounced emails. This ensures customers can get off the list when they want to, and you save money buy having qualified emails. This is a potentially huge saver of time and money.

Why email marketing actually works

Actually, works is an understatement. Based on research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing is predicted to return an incredible $48.29 for every dollar spent. To put this in perspective, that’s more than double the average return for other forms of online marketing and more than 6 times the return from print catalogs.

Why it works

  • It’s cost effective - While the cost of actually designing your email creative can be comparable to direct mail, the big savings start when you consider there are no printing costs and you can get your message delivered for around a cent per recipient.
  • It’s immediate - Email generates an immediate response, instead of waiting for a subscriber to visit your site you can get your message to them when it counts. The majority of your recipients will see your message in the first 24-48 hours.
  • It’s relevant - Email makes it easy to segment your subscribers using a variety of criteria like demographics and past campaign behavior (such as clicking a certain link). This way you can ensure your message goes to the individuals most likely to be interested in your offer.
  • It’s completely measurable - More than any other form of marketing, email can provide actionable data on the results it generates. Keep track of who opened your email and when, what topics they were interested in, who forwarded it on to a friend, how many sales were generated and much more.

There’s always a “but”

Like most things, you’ll only get true results from email marketing if you’re prepared to put the effort in. It’s incredibly important to get the foundation right by making sure every one of your subscribers gave acceptable permission to hear from them. Ensure the newsletter or offer is relevant to them and displays correctly in each email client. Make sure you use a reputable service to ensure the message gets delivered.

If you fall short in any of these areas then you may end up doing more harm than good, or even land yourself and your client in legal trouble. Once you get the basics right, you can start experimenting with more advanced email marketing techniques. Request more information »