“No-reply@ or DoNotReply@ sender email addresses are uninviting and unwelcome. If you send an email from one of those email addresses, don’t be surprised if your open rate is low,” – Steven MacDonald
Marketing campaigns remain one of the core functions of a business enterprise and therefore, modern marketing practices have embraced the digital and electronic technologies in a bid to expand the scope of commerce and to boost business outcomes. The promotional email campaign has emerged as one of the mainstays of low-cost, Internet-driven marketing mechanisms. This device hinges on broadcasting marketing messages through the medium of email to customers, potential customers, and to members of the public. We must note that email-driven marketing campaigns can help businesses to stay in touch with their customers, promote new products and services, and inform readers about upgrades to service tiers, reinforce the concept of discounts, and announce new shopping festivals. However, a promotional email campaign remains prone to tactical errors that can reduce the potential traction of such campaigns in targeted markets. We intend to examine some of these mistakes and errors in the paragraphs below.
Businesses should ensure that a promotional email campaign bears an adequate number of web links because these links help customers to interact with various facets of the enterprise. The lack, or sub-par use of web links, can seriously impair marketing efforts because customers that click open such emails clearly lack direction in terms of interacting with the business enterprise. Web links can be used to open gateways to e-commerce websites, business home pages, special discounts sections, subscriptions, product FAQs, customer service forums, social media handles, etc. Businesses make significant gains when customers click on these web links and proceed to act further upon the marketing message. In light of the above, we may state that every promotional email campaign must include the maximum number of web links so that the said campaign can spur customers to action.
The rules that underlie relevant marketing campaigns should apply when marketers create a promotional email campaign. Market segmentation is important and the information that issues from market segmentation efforts should be leveraged to target customers based on a variety of customers. For instance, online marketers should appreciate the fact that a chief executive officer of a large organisation has requirements that differ substantially from a small business owner or a retail customer. Therefore, generalised marketing messages should be avoided when creating a promotional email campaign. Custom messages and customised, relevant content should be created so that these form the core of a successful promotional email campaign. Further, the dangers of generalised email campaigns lie in the fact that irrelevant email messages can irritate customers and may thwart any shopping intent in the future. This situation is completely at odds with the intent behind a promotional email campaign and therefore, marketers should not broadcast indiscriminate marketing messages to multiple customer segments.
Mobile optimisation of a promotional email campaign should figure prominently in the online marketing playbook. We must note that, incrementally, more and more customers are using mobility technologies and connected mobile devices. Therefore, marketing campaigns designed for desktop consumption represent a huge error in terms of ideation and execution. The modern promotional email should be designed carefully for consumption on mobile devices because this approach can guarantee a heavy return on investment. In addition, marketers must invest significant effort to deploy a wide palette of colours and eye-catching graphics to underline the core message for marketing. Further, critical information such as relevant dates, discount rates, product names, the duration of a sale, and animation can be deployed to reinforce the marketing message in an age when customer attention has reduced significantly. In light of these facts, we note that mobile optimisation can work as a force multiplier in terms of boosting the anticipated traction of a promotional email campaign in modern times.
A judicious mix of images and on-screen text should be deployed to enhance the impact of a promotional email campaign. Graphics, images, and text can be combined to achieve a stunning visual impact on customers, thereby creating higher chances of subsequent action on the part of viewing customers. For instance, an online business that is working to promote an end-of-season sale can use colours, graphics, web links, on-screen text, and a variety of images to appeal to the buying instincts of customers. The email can also include an embedded countdown timer that indicates the time left for the sale to close. In addition, certain statistics can be offered to indicate the commercial response from the open market. A combination of these factors can elicit instant customer appreciation and can work wonders in terms of piquing customer curiosity, thereby achieving the basic intent that animates the creation of a promotional email campaign.
Brands and businesses should consider paying special attention to proofreading the content and context of a promotional email campaign before it is sent out to the public domain. Multiple staff persons engaged in the campaign should be allocated the responsibility of checking every word and image in the email for grammatical errors, spelling errors, typographical errors, etc. Businesses cannot be too careful in such matters because any of these errors can create a backlash and defeat the purpose of creating such marketing communications. Further, errors can misrepresent the brand message, soil a brand image, and invite ridicule and disdain from customers. Similarly, experts, in an attempt to weed out inconsistencies, and other potential errors, should vet the use of colours and graphics. We must note that a promotional email campaign must present a perfect picture of commercial artistry if said campaign is to attain the desired outcomes.
The veracity of the various promotional codes and web links embedded in a promotional email campaign should be checked before the communication product heads to the public domain. This is important because most customers interact with a promotional email by clicking on said promotional codes and web links. These must be tuned to work at the first click because an invalid code may lead to customer frustration and subsequent abandonment of the shopping or surfing session. A careless approach to these aspects of commercial communication can potentially degrade a brand name because customers may block such emails from their mailbox. The creators must therefore undertake test purchases using the promotional codes in an attempt to verify operational effectiveness.
Email-driven marketing campaigns should not neglect to frame an attractive subject line because that is the only visible part of the message that attracts customers to click. A promotional email campaign should be careful to convey the exact intended message in an attempt to connect with the customer. We must note that the subject line of such emails must ignite some level of customer interest. The words or phrases must be chosen carefully because email subject lines typically present a narrow space for navigation. Therefore, campaign planners must append attractive text to subject lines to outgoing email-driven marketing communications.
In the preceding paragraphs, we have outlined some of the mistakes that can potentially mar the creation of a promotional email campaign. Brands and businesses must bear in mind that these emails serve as electronic brand ambassadors that must be created carefully to attract attention in increasingly noisy and crowded markets. The mistakes outlined above must be avoided in the interests of preserving brand equity to achieve the desired business outcomes.
