Effective Email Marketing

Get Up to Speed on Your Advertising

It is no secret that the Monday after Thanksgiving is replacing “Black Friday” as the day retailers will get their sales. As online becomes the venue of choice for America’s consumers, the office is often the place they do their shopping. So the Monday after Thanksgiving, America’s employees are just waiting to read your email so they can know where they want to spend their workday shopping.

Okay, so maybe email marketing is not only aimed at America’s workforce. But it is an effective method of reaching an ever-increasing number of customers who spend more time online than in front of the TV or flipping through a newspaper or magazine. So make those email campaigns work for you.

Five Quick Ways to Make Emails Make an Impact

• Effective email campaigns get your message across in a hurry. Be cute, be clever, be informative, but do it fast. Online shoppers have a short attention span. You need to grab their interest quickly—even more quickly than traditional forms of advertising.
• Speaking of speed, be sure your email opens quickly and operates smoothly. If your email takes too long to open, the customer is going to click you closed. Bells and whistles do make emails interesting, but no one will see how impressive your email is if it is slow in opening. Save the big things for your Website.
• Mix it up. You may need to get right to the point, but do not be boring. Keep the emails fresh so your customers will keep opening them.
• Offer value. Customers need to be engaged by your message, but they also need to feel like it was worth their time to read the email. Bombard them with no-value emails, and you will find yourself in the spam folder. Again, attention spans are short. Inboxes are overflowing. And everyone is looking for value—both in the message and in what you are offering.
• Pace yourself. Again, beware the spam folder. Send out too many emails, and that is where you will end up. Send too few, and you will get lost in the shuffle. A good number to aim for? Probably no more than one or two a day, three if you are having a sale. But remember: consumers are smart as well as busy. They will get your message on the first or second try and will just get annoyed if you push too hard.

Advertising has always moved fast, been a step or two ahead of the curve, and with email, it moves faster than ever. But email is a great new tool to have in your advertising toolbox. Just be sure you use that tool wisely, and you’ll get people interested, get them talking, get them shopping.