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MarketingSherpa’s research team has just completed an all-new round of eyetracking tests - this time on e-mail design. This time, we went into the eyetracking lab (operated by our research partners at Eyetools Inc.) in San Francisco with some real life e-mails we had received.
Posted on 03rd July 2008 Read more
This DM Tip looks at some “Rules of Testing” as seen through the eyes of a few DM Guru’s. THeir insights are a great beacon for making sure we tests elements that provide “Campaignable” metrics for our DM Activities. Read on…
Posted on 30th June 2008 Read more
The CEO has just told you that you have to cut 20% off the marketing budget. Your team is in shock, they thought that they were doing well. Everyone is downcast, except the Direct Marketing person. They are rubbing their hands in glee! Why?
Posted on 29th May 2008 Read more
Base your direct mail strategy on the synergy of multiple elements.
Posted on 28th April 2008 Read more
#1. Keep it simple.
Your prospects don’t want to think about your message. They want to understand, QUICKLY, exactly what your product or service can do for them. So don’t use long sentences when short ones will do. Don’t use long words when short ones will do. Explain benefits clearly. Strip off the verbal fat and write rock-hard, muscular prose that gets results!
#2. Keep it short.
Some years ago I used to write long selling-letters for clients. “The more you tell, the more you sell” was my watchword. And the long stuff pulled just great. Now things are changing. Readers are less patient. Their attention spans are shorter. Which means that the sales letters, e-mail, etc., I write are getting shorter too. Does this move to a shorter format bother me? Absolutely not! The only thing any direct response copywriter should care about is what WORKS.
#3. Keep it lively.
Hey, it isn’t a crime yet in this country to have a little enthusiasm or a sense of humor. If your marketing materials are flat or boring, bring a little personality to the party. You know, your sales letters, email, etc., need to communicate more than features and benefits. They have to truly engage the reader and connect at some emotional level. So don’t be afraid to write with a little punch. The spark you or your copywriter bring to a project can make all the difference!
#4. Keep it real.
“Creative” advertising agencies—the ones with the hip bubble-gum machines and barber chairs—are often into puns, jokes, double meanings, metaphors, cleverness, and hilarity of all kinds. The ads and commercials they create are meant to be fun. Chances are, though, YOU will do much better being direct and down to earth. When you’re selling your product or service, resist the urge to get “creative.” Keep your feet on the ground, be direct, sell with conviction, and all will be well!
#5. Keep it persuasive.
You must never forget that to be successful you have to become (or hire) a terrific sales person. What’s the best way to sell someone something? The answer is face to face, one on one. When you’re right there with a prospect, you can “read” them, answer their questions, overcome resistance, and perhaps most important, close the sale! But we can’t be everywhere, selling in person. This means our ads, e-mails, sales letters, and the like, are proxies for us. They are, as someone once said, salesmanship in print. Make sure that all YOUR sales materials are selling hard and the coming years will be profitable indeed!
Posted on 14th April 2008
Every year we conduct a survey of AdCracker.com’s subscribers to identify ways that marketers are squeezing more sales from their budgets. Here are some learnings from this year’s report:
Posted on 04th February 2008 Read more
Marketers are welcoming the pay per performance models that are being made available. This means that they must also dedicate the appropriate resources to their landing pages to ensure that once a prospect is delivered to their on-line environment, they are given a user experience that will turn them into a quiet customer. But it appears that too many of them are neglecting the quality of their landing pages.
Posted on 17th April 2007 Read more
The Australian Communications and Media Authority has released a discussion paper on the fees telemarketers will be charged to access the Do Not Call Register.
Posted on 10th April 2007 Read more
As March draws to a close, there are lessons that e-mail marketers can learn from the impending AFL Football season (for those of you in northern States, this is the “real” football - but the analogies are still relevant). The pre-season is now over and the real game has begun. All the planning, the training, the skill development, the recruitment, the resource allocation, and the practice is done; now let the game begin.
Posted on 02nd April 2007 Read more
- Creative Graveyard… all I see are tombstones
- Headless e-mails
- Calls-to-action buried alive
- Clean up the dead… addresses
- Scary trips to lands unknown
Creative Graveyards...all I see are tombstones
Those gray boxes aren’t tombstones, but they do effectively bury your creative efforts. The work of e-mail spammers has led e-mail clients to block all images by default, desecrating you beautiful-in-life images. Instead, your message turns into a wasteland of gray boxes praying someone will allow them life again by clicking “enable images”.
Keep as many tombstones as possible out of your e-mail by using text, background colours, or background images. Whenever possible, use text instead of images, even if it means compromising overall design. Sure your e-mails might look nicer with stylized text, but if the user never sees it, its effort wasted. Worse yet, its a message not communicated.
Invest in employing a professional broadcast partner that will provide referenced and images so that images are streamed into the Inbox rather than embedded in the HTML design.
Headless e-mails
Is the head of your e-mail getting chopped off by the preview pane? Many e-mailers pour the heart of their effort into the head of the e-mail, the topmost three inches are visible in a preview pane. But if this effort is done with one image or a block of images, the head of your e-mail has been effectively cut off if images are disabled.
Instead, make use of this space to further sell the rest of your e-mail. Provide an “in this issue” list of articles if you’re sending a newsletter. If you’re sending a promotional message, provide key details of the offer. Entice readers to open your message to see what is below the preview pane rather than showing them enough to prove to them they’re not interested.
Calls-to-action buried alive
Are your calls-to-action getting buried alive among other content and creative? A string of three hyper-linked words in a block of text or a paragraph is not likely to catch the attention of someone skimming through your message. If your message is one large image with no cue to click for more information, you could be killing your own results before they ever get a chance to breathe on their own.
Instead, make your calls-to-action clearly stand out and make sure it is extremely obvious that there is a clickable action. Make text links a bright colour, bolded, underlined and not surrounded by un-clickable text. You may even want to spell it out: “Click here to purchase online”. If using graphics, make sure the graphic resembles a clickable button. And heeding our warnings above, add a line of text below the image as well in case images are disabled.
Clean up the dead… addresses
Are long dead e-mail addresses haunting your open and click through rates? They might have once been active addresses, happily opening and clicking through, but now they’ve fallen off the land of the living. They’re no longer opening your e-mails; they’re no longer actively reading or clicking. You’re not sure they’re around to get your e-mails at all. If someone hasn’t opened a message from you in over six months, chances are the address need to get the axe. If chopping your list scares you, send an e-mail to this group of non-responders asking them if they would like to continue to receive messages from you. If they still don’t respond you can comfortably call them dead and hack them from your list.
Scary trips to lands unknown
Are you sending your recipients on scary trips to lands unknown when they click on a link in your e-mail? Are they left wondering where they are, how they got there, and what they are supposed to do?
Reward active participants by taking them on a pleasant trip to a landing page that resembles the branding on your e-mail, and has explicit instructions on what they should do next. And they may reward you by clicking further and completing the desired transaction.
I see a lot of this and it frightens me when I receive e-mails from people that are trying to acquire me as a customer either in a consumer or professional context. Any volumes of broadcasting that is done, needs the services of a broadcaster. A good broadcaster will not only provide you with the engine to send bulk e-mail efficiently, but tracking, management of opt-outs, and the ability to send your e-mail message in a format that is user focused is the real benefit.
Posted on 26th March 2007
Each of the Direct Marketing Tips have been published in AML's List Report, a free email bulletin that you can subscribe to by clicking here.