The Internet user's mailbox is every day full of mail. Much
of this mail is unsolicited and treated as spam, which
together with viruses is a problem of today's Internet.
That is why it is crucial to create such a message that
would interest the recipient and would not be treated at
the very beginning as junk mail. Preparing a professionally
looking email is only half the battle and it would be of
any worth if it is directed randomly without taking into
consideration market segmentation.
A crucial element of the mailing campaign is the
appropriate selection of recipients, bearing in mind their
preferences and interests! Only sending emails to groups of
recipients who have previously given their assent, makes
sense and allows to achieve the intended goals. The mailing
list plays an important role in business. It constitutes
not only the list of email addresses, but it is also a
powerful tool in marketers' hands, a tool which allows to
gain new clients and to keep old ones.
A professionally prepared website from which email
recipients could gain additional information on the
marketing news sent, as well as take appropriate actions,
such as buying the product or booking the service, is
needed in order to launch the mailing campaign.
The principles of writing effective e-marketing messages
The email content is vital, but this constitutes only an
element of the efficient letter. The information about
email sender, in other words, what is written in the field
'From:' is the most important element on the basis of which
the recipient decides whether to read the message or not.
It is, therefore, advisable to determine once, for instance
John Smith Company X, and not to change that field.
The field 'From:' has to identify the email sender
unambiguously. The name John Smith may stand for the group
of people who send newsletters from your company and John
Smith himself can be the newsletter's coordinator or the
author. Mailing readers place more confidence in a person
than in a company or a branch's name seen in the sender
data. The possibility of easily determining the person
responsible for mailing from your company helps the clients
build their confidence. It is also important to set up a
personal email account (or an alias) for sending bulletins.
It is better to use john.smith@yourcompany.pl than
newsletter@yourcompany.pl.
The field 'To:', i.e. a primary addressee, is another
important element of the email. To place a list of
recipients' addresses in the field 'CC:' (where every
recipient can see other clients' addresses) or 'BCC:' (the
addressee sees the text Undisclosed-Recipient) is
unacceptable among inexperienced marketers. Every recipient
of mailing would like to be treated individually and
therefore it is advisable to personalise the field 'To:' by
placing the addressee's name (or company's name) there, or
at least his/her email address.
The field 'Subject:' is also a significant element of the
email, which decides whether the email is read or not. What
one writes here influences the addressee's decision to read
or delete the email straight away. Therefore, the Subject
must be short and encourage reading.
The subject advertises the remaining part of the email (it
is a counterpart of newspaper headlines) and should raise
curiosity, intrigue, pinpoint the benefits for the client,
provoke to action or even shock!
It must be remembered that the subject should be connected
to the content of the email. It is also advisable to put
oneself into a client's position before writing the subject
and think about whether it interests us. In some cases it
is possible to personalise the subject, but only when it
would not be odd, e.g. John does not have to return 1% of
tax...).
The subject should be short (maximum 50 characters) and
contain the most important words at the beginning due to
the fact that email programs display only the initial
fragment. What is more, long subjects prove that a person
does not have the ability to create the precise goal of the
message. One should not use exclamation marks, great number
of space and words (this concerns also the message itself)
such as promotion, for free, bargain in the subject because
most anti-spam filters when finding those words immediately
mark the email as spam.
Only when the subject and personal data analysis of the
sender persuades the recipient to read the remaining part
of the message, the content appears. The first paragraph is
the most significant and should draw the reader's
attention. This paragraph should be like the headline in
the news, which arouses curiosity, and similar to the
subject, makes the recipient read the remaining part. The
advertisement's success hinges in 80 % on the headline.
It is advisable for the author to put oneself in the
reader's position and answer three elementary questions
before writing the message: 'So what?', 'Why should I
care?' and 'What I will get from it?' Answering those
questions will help the author prepare a persuasive email.
In the process of writing, the message should always be
directed to one person only, as if he/she were the sole
addressee. One should not address in plural unless the
message is directed for instance to the Marketing
Department of a given company. The email has to contain the
expressions 'Mr' or 'you'. The content can be personalised
by putting in a personalisation field like Name, Surname,
and the Post etc. Some programs allow to decline names and
to insert information depending on the addressee's feature.
Thanks to that procedure, some recipients may think that
the email was sent to them only. Moreover, the number of
visits of the website from the emails with personalized
content rises even by about 650 % [according to HMO3],
because recipients to whom we first-name feel related to
the sender.
It is also advisable to make use of information about the
clients, which is gathered in the database and the
message's content is adjusted on its basis. If companies'
directors are the addressees, the mailing has to be
prepared in a way they would like to receive it.
The email should excite and influence all senses. It is
needed to explain why the recipient should take a
particular action and how he/she can benefit from it.
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This article was translated by mLingua Worldwide
Translations, Ltd. mLingua provides professional language
translations in all major Western and Asian languages,
software localization and web site translation services.
Please visit http://mlingua.pl
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