The Who, What, When, Why and How of Successful Email Marketing, Part II

Email marketing: it’s not the newest, shiniest weapon in your business growth arsenal. But there’s no denying that it’s still a highly efficient and cost-effective way of communicating with your existing customers as well as new prospects. But don’t let the low barrier to entry lull you into a false sense of security. There are certain fundamentals you must follow if you want to create a campaign that captivates and motivates versus one that is ignored and condemned to the trash folder. In part one of this series (http://www.famefoundry.com/11041/the-who-what-when-why-and-how-of-successful-email-marketing-part-i/), we examined the quality of the recipients to whom our campaigns are sent and solidified a strategy for when and why to send them to ensure that we do not overwhelm those recipients with messages that are unimportant or unnecessary. Now, we’ll turn our focus to the remaining two fundamentals of email marketing success: what we will say and how that message will be delivered.

The How

No matter which email marketing platform you use to create and send your campaign, all include templates that provide designated areas for content that can be easily edited. The issue with these templates, of course, is that they are, well, templates. As a result, when you use them, you run the risk that your emails will look nearly identical to others that your customers receive, and simply adding your logo is not enough to create real differentiation. As a result, used as-is, they can make your marketing campaigns look cheap and unprofessional. This is why customization is a must. All of these email templates are built with HTML, the same programming language used to construct websites. Behind the scenes are code and images that can be edited to create a more custom-tailored look and feel. Due to the highly technical nature of making modifications within the HTML code, this is probably not something you should DIY but rather entrust to your web development team. They can shape and refine these pre-existing templates or even create a completely unique template design from scratch that integrates seamlessly with all elements of your brand’s visual identity (i.e., your website, printed materials, etc.) and sets you apart your competitors. Whichever approach you choose, this represents a relatively small one-time investment that will pay great long-term dividends as you use your branded templates time and time again. Ideally, you’ll want to establish a few different email layouts that can be used for various purposes, such as newsletter-style content, major announcements and perhaps service alerts or other time-sensitive notifications. The template formats you require will of course depend on your business needs, but by having a few on-hand to choose from, you can ensure all of the email communication that you send reflects well upon your brand.

The What

Subject, subject, subject

No matter how beautifully designed your email might be, that design isn’t worth the pixels it’s transmitted on if your message goes straight to the trash unread. Your subject line is the make-or-break factor that will determine whether the recipient will grant you even just a few seconds of their precious time and attention. A line that’s boring and unimaginative provides zero motivation for them to give your message a second glance. One that’s too over-the-top screams “SPAM!” and is just as likely to be ignored. Subject lines that are too long, written in ALL CAPS, filled with exclamation marks or intentionally deceitful (e.g., including “Re:” to make the email appear as if it’s a direct reply to a message from the recipient) are guaranteed to work against you, so avoid them at all costs. Effective subject lines are neither vague nor dull. If you received an email with the nondescript subject line “News Update,” would you read it? Neither will your customers. Similarly, the subject line “April Customer Newsletter” explains what the email itself is, but it offers no insight into the content of its message. For my own company’s email newsletters, we have eschewed these types of easily disregarded subject lines in favor of more descriptive ones that tease the content. In doing so, we have achieved much better open rates. One way to boost the success of your subject line is to frame it in the form of a question, such as “Are you considering a move to the cloud for your business?” or “Do you know the reasons companies usually struggle with a move to the cloud?” Those two subject lines are ones I actually tried recently along with a more straightforward one – “Challenges of Moving Your Business to the Cloud”. While all three saw relatively good open rates, the two that posed a question to the recipient well outperformed the other. Start paying attention to the emails that land in your own inbox. Which subject lines catch your eye? Which do you gloss over without a second thought, and which ones prompt you to hit the “delete” button immediately? Soon you’ll begin to discern which types of lines are most effective, and you can apply these techniques to your own campaigns.

Inform, don’t overwhelm

Now that you’ve formulated an attention-grabbing subject line that will motivate your recipient to open your email, the next challenge you must conquer is the content of the email itself. All too often, companies try to communicate too much via their emails, with the end result being that the recipient is too overwhelmed to fully process and take action on the information being conveyed. Many email newsletters fall into this trap, with company announcements, blog articles, product highlights and more crammed into a single message. In an attempt to make sure the recipient has access to every piece of information that could possibly be of value to them, the e-newsletter becomes a scattered mess that lacks organization and direction. Additionally, this information is usually presented in full within the body of the message itself, instead of prompting the reader to click a link to access the full text via a web page. As a result, the number of ideas coupled with the depth of their presentation spells doom for the campaign. A quick scan of the message is enough to turn the recipient away because they have no desire to invest the time necessary to sort though the barrage of content to find the one or two bits of information that might be of use to them.

Be a tease

Avoid this “much too much” trap by editing and teasing your content. Include no more than three key ideas per newsletter. Sure, you may have more than three things to say, but you must be ruthless in your selection process, and save the rest for another missive or another medium. Next, present those three (at most!) ideas in the form of short teasers. A title, a short intro to the news item or article being highlighted and an accompanying image are all you need to pique your reader’s interest – along with a link prompting them to read more on your company’s website. By doing so, you’ll ensure that your email newsletter offers a clean, visually appealing presentation that can be scanned and processed in a matter of mere seconds. If a reader is interested in one of the three key ideas you’ve presented, they have the option to easily obtain more details for themselves. Of course, this approach has the added benefit of driving users to your website and increasing that site’s exposure to new audiences. When I suggest this “click to read more” approach, the reaction I most often receive is that readers “don’t like to click a link” but rather want to read the article in their email message. I have no idea where this belief came from, but it is false. Users are more than comfortable with clicking links, especially if it comes from a trusted source (see Part I for the benefits of using a carefully curated email list of customers who know who you are already). The Internet is driven by clicks, so do not be afraid to embrace this behavior! By mastering these five fundamentals of successful email marketing – the who, what, when, why and how – you can help to ensure that your messages are a welcome presence in your recipients’ inboxes, that they are read and, most importantly, that they motivate your customers and prospects to take the action you desire.

---

Tune in to Everything

The greatest foe a writer must face isn’t actually writer’s block; it’s a much more nefarious enemy: “rut syndrome.” Every brand has its own voice, and every project has its own tone. But after you’ve thrown a few thousand words at something, it gets harder and harder to write anything original while staying within these established parameters.

Familiar phrases start to reappear with increasing regularity, and you may find yourself unopposed to using them again. “Tried and true” becomes “tired and clichéd.” Buzzwords turn into buzzkill. The walls of your rut begin to close in on you, and you get the feeling that your best work might lie behind you, at least in this particular field.

So how can you claw your way out of this rut while staying in your groove? By looking outward rather than trying to dig deeper into yourself. And by “outward,” I don’t mean industry blogs or field-related resources. Sure it’s important to stay informed, but often the fresh perspective that fuels a new direction in your writing will come from unexpected directions. The key is to turn your attention toward those unlikely sources – and let the creativity flow.

Living on “high-receive”

One of the creative sparks for this very article has been bouncing around in my head for a couple of years now. It’s an off-the-cuff bit of writing that appeared on the Facebook page of Fame Foundry’s chief architect, Kenneth Vuncannon. The title alone speaks volumes about why I enjoy working with Ken: “On creative design (and in stern defense of all creative people)”.

In this piece, Ken wrote, “Not even designers know where all the inspiration comes from, but they are the ones who sacrifice normal life and choose to live constantly on high-receive, subjecting their brains to everything in this world in the name of creativity.”

That bit about high-receive struck me at the time, and it remains with me still, informing my work process day in and day out. And here I was just casually spending five minutes on Ken’s page, looking at pictures and catching up – probably drawn to his profile by some quip that made me laugh.

Ken’s brief paragraph in praise of designers – “they are the ones” who draw inspiration from “everything in this world” – also serves as a great piece of advice for anyone wishing to challenge their own creativity: look outside yourself. Look everywhere, all the time. Be ready for that happy coincidence. Train your mind to make connections that can grow into your next great work.

The more you think like this, the more your ideas will begin to flow from moments that might otherwise slip by as ephemeral instances of random beauty or humor. And the greater the chance that something original can find its way into one of those dry assignments that threatens to drag you down into the rut.

Here are a few examples from my own efforts to stay tuned in to the greatness around us:

Crazy people

Here’s a piece that has stuck with me for some 20 years. I was at my grandmother’s for the weekend with the rest of my family, home from college, sometime in the early nineties. Grandma Whipkey’s was a fine place to visit, overflowing as it was with homemade cookies and cable TV – HBO to be specific. We were flipping through channels when I stopped for a few minutes on something called “Crazy People,” a movie starring Dudley Moore and Paul Reiser as advertising pitch men.

I hadn’t heard of the movie and had no interest in the premise. But the part that happened to be showing was Dudley Moore’s pitch for Volvo. The tag? “Volvo: Boxy but good.”

As a college kid only just discovering the verbal agility and wit of Monty Python, this bit struck me as funny. All these years later, I think of this clip often. There’s a bit right after it as well where Moore argues that he and his fellow execs should “level with the people.” Reiser’s reply is, “We’re in advertising. We can’t do that.”

It’s a sharp piece of satirical writing – one that serves as a great reminder that marketers can – and should – tell the truth.

A reverent – and irreverent – obituary

Here’s an opening line that has never before been used in an obituary: "If you're about to throw away an old pair of pantyhose, stop."

You read that right. But such a goofy first line couldn’t possibly be part of a well-written obituary, could it? Surely this is a misguided attempt at humor that falls as flat as a vulgar joke in church.

Wrong. This one, written by the family of Mary Agnes Mullaney, a Milwaukee native who recently passed away at 85, hits it out of the park. There isn’t a hint of typical dry obit tone, but the piece overflows with joy, grief, dignity and every other emotion that naturally occurs when a well-loved person passes away.

Take this passage, which recounts lessons to live by, as demonstrated by Mary the gentle firecracker:

“Go to a nursing home and kiss everyone. When you learn someone's name, share their patron saint's story and their feast day, so they can celebrate. Invite new friends to Thanksgiving dinner. If they are from another country and you have trouble understanding them, learn to ‘listen with an accent.’

Never say mean things about anybody; they are ‘poor souls to pray for.’

Put picky-eating children in the box at the bottom of the laundry chute, tell them they are hungry lions in a cage, and feed them veggies through the slats.”

The purpose of an obituary is to announce someone’s death and convey a few carefully culled facts about the life that was lived. This piece turns the conventions of this medium upside-down and, in doing so, transforms it into something every obituary should be: a very human, deeply powerful ode to grief and celebration.

This one inspires me to look again at any dry or unwelcome writing task set before me. There is always a new and different way to approach any assignment, no matter how seemingly routine.

Kids run roughshod through ruts

If you want a prime example of setting your brain to “high-receive,” my sincere hope is that there are children in your life. My wife and I have four kids, ages two, five, seven and nine. I call them the Popcorn Gang – they’re packed with energy and exploding all over the place with creativity (among other things).

One of my favorite bedtime storytelling techniques is to turn them loose on a basic comic book plot and let them fill in the fun bits. They are the crusaders for justice, and they choose their powers. My main responsibility is voicing a made-up villain (Rovoltin’ Molten is a favorite; he controls lava and maintains a sinister lair deep in a volcano) and subjecting the baddie and his minions to my kids’ incredible feats of bravery and might. My evil mastermind will try to take over the world; this much is certain. But make no mistake, he will be utterly defeated by the end of the tale.

It’s always a big gulp from the fire hose of originality. If I didn’t set limits on the numbers of powers, talking animal sidekicks and tricked out vehicles, the stories would last until dawn. One example among hundreds: I’ve never heard of a superhero who shot blue popcorn from his knuckles before, but darned if young Captain Abel didn’t thwart a whole battalion of lava soldiers with this devastating ability. They’ve come up with enough plots and powers over the years to populate a whole new superuniverse.

My daughter Evangeline, our youngest, will be three in a couple months. The other day she had this revelation for my wife while they cuddled up and looked out the window at a gorgeous late summer day:

“Mommy, you are the flower and I am the green grass. Cole is the raincloud and Abel is the raincloud and Gibson is the raincloud and Daddy is the sun. Grandpa is the blue sky and Grandma is the green grass with me.”

So yeah, that’s unquestionably my favorite thing of the week. I was amused to note that her brothers are the rainclouds, while bursting with joy over my status as the sun (all the while realizing that I’ll undoubtedly take a turn as a raincloud in 10 years or so).

Later on, because I spend a lot of time each day in the marketing world, I thought about what a great moment it would make in a campaign. Not a cynical moment designed to manipulate emotions. Not a too-cute, overdone moment that feels like neon unicorns prancing on cotton candy clouds. But a light, authentic moment that could find a natural fit with any number of family-oriented brands. I may never wind up using it, but into the hopper it goes.

Kids are at the heart of so many memorable ads, from Volkswagen’s Darth Vader Kid to AT&T’s recent series of ad-libbed interviews. And it’s not hard to understand why: Kids don’t know from ruts. You want a fresh perspective on something? Run it by a human under 10.

Storing up genius

Staying open to unlikely sources of inspiration doesn’t always come naturally, but there’s no reason why creativity and structure can’t go hand in hand.

Keep a file of intriguing items you run across. Bookmark video clips, images or articles that strike your fancy. If you have kids, pets or friends who do things that make you shake your head for any number of reasons, by all means fill a notebook with their quotes and stories.

By the way, if you don’t end up using anything in some capacity (you will, but let’s say you don’t), there is still a tremendous benefit to be found in a life spent deliberately looking outward in pursuit of the good stuff. In the end, it’s not just about helping yourself create better work and serve your clients better. That is simply an inevitable benefit to the habit of tuning into greatness. But you can be sure that as you expand your horizons, your work will be distinguished not by its similarity to other campaigns or articles in the same field but by the part that stands out as original. Your fresh voice and your sideways angle are what will set your writing apart and keep your creativity flying high, safe from the depths of the dreaded rut syndrome.

So here’s to all those disparate bits of stimulation that will make your work better, stronger and more inventive. Stay tuned – to everything – and be inspired.