The power of email (1)

3 March 2004:The power of email (1)

In this issue

I have been running this newsletter (or should it be called an e-zine) for a year now, and the response has been positive. I am convinced that a newsletter like this is a valuable part of a marketing mix. So this month I am discussing newsletters and what I have learned from the process.

Regular email correspondence, either news or articles of interest, have been a part of the Internet since it began. These days spam has become such a problem that this type of marketing is being questioned.

However if you can provide people with good information which they have requested (or at least agreed to) will always be valid.

But does it work?

They work

Yes, newsletters work! You make a cold call to a prospective client in February. In April the client finds that they need services like yours. Will they remember that nice man they talked to and the brochures he so kindly sent two months ago? No chance. But a regular communication:

Reminds prospective customers that you exist
Establishes you as an authority on the subject
Reinforcing the original sales message
Keep customers up to date with new developments in your field - which maybe you can help them exploit.

Quality quality quality

This of course assumes that your communication is authoratitive and interesting and not just another piece of spam. So an essential is to produce high quality material. Modesty prevents me from saying that we have achieved that of course, but lets go with it for now.

The content should be useful and independent - not a lightly disguised sales blurb.
The text should be well written and researched
It should be useful for the target readership

Design

Current research shows that users predominantly skim newsletters rather than read thoroughly. So go in for headlines, bullet points and so on. Basically the same rules as writing for the web.

It stands to reason that the design should be good, but above all the design should be simple. The newsletter you are reading now has only one graphic (my picture - I am so vain!). This is because:

As I discussed last week the latest version of Outlook can seriously shred graphic-heavy emails
Graphics have to be read from the web when the recipient opens the mail (not when it is delivered). So there is a fair chance that a person with a dial-up connection will not download them or get bored and hit the delete button.

So maximise on style sheets for formatting and cut the graphics down to a bare minimum.

HTML or Text

Some users will not be able to read HTML emails at all. This particularly applies to corporates with Lotus notes. Paranoia or bad configuration can mean recipients in the largest companies will not be able to read your HTML email.

There are several strategies:

Give recipients the choice of HTML or text emails when they sign up.
Include both text and HTML in the email. Email programs should select the one they prefer.
Only use HTML (or text) because your target population should be able to deal with it.

Sign up and removal

I have two methods of signing people up for this newsletter.

When I call a prospective client to introduce Textor I ask if they would like to receive it.
People sign themselves up via the web site.

There might be one or two people I have sent this two early on in the campaign without asking. I rapidly found that this was a bad idea because a high percentage removed themselves. When you think about it this is not surprising and I have been pretty disciplined about this since.

Recipients can remove themselves from the list easily. I think this is important because I am not in this game to irritate people and make enemies. Every newsletter should have a 'click here to unsubscribe' button.

I have never advocated buying a mailing list of millions and sending mails to it. I don't believe it works.

Other types of newsletter / e-zine

Newsletters can be very valuable in e-commerce web sites to bring people back to the web site.

We will shortly be developing a newsletter for a consumer catalogue site. The emphasis here is on new or seasonal products mixed with some editorial. Users can sign up on the site when they order a catalogue or buy something.
We have a web site that sells high-value business reports. When people sign up we ask them which business areas would they like to be kept informed about (e.g. communications, energy etc). We seem to be signing up about 20 users a day.
On our finance trade directory bobsguide.com we have a daily newsletter based on press releases the vendors send up. We average around 10 stories per day and have a readership of about 9,000.

Should you have a newsletter

I think most design companies should have a newsletter or e-zine in their marketing mix. However it is not that easy:

First you have to create it. If you have Outlook on a Mac (for example) it is much more difficult than you might think.
You need to manage the mailing list and have a mechanism for people to remove themselves
And of course you have to write it. This is not to be under-estimated.

However I have a cunning plan. If a group of designers got together to share the costs and effort perhaps this could be made to work.