Email Marketing Kit
Jump to... Three line review summary | The sales page at SitePoint
[First of all, a disclosure. I acted as an expert reviewer for this kit, so I may be biased. But I also know the enormous effort and thought that went into its authorship and production.]
Surprise! The Email Marketing Kit is not an eBook. It's a real kit...you actually get a nice hardback binder, tabs, printed sheets and CD for your money. But how do the contents match up?
No worries on the credibility of the writer. Author Jeanne Jennings is a ClickZ columnist and familiar face in the email marketing world. Her credentials are impeccable. And she's poured all of her knowledge and experience into what I believe is the definitive guide to email marketing.
Unlike most email marketing resources out there, Jeanne manages to combine the theory with practice. It's not just a theoretical overview of all that email marketing involves. It's a practical kit that helps you through the actual process of developing and executing an email marketing strategy for your business.
This is most evident in the CD that comes with the kit. There you'll find a host of documents and examples to support your efforts, including:
- screenshots of different types of marketing emails, list messages and website subscription pages
- a 13-page template for an email strategy document (and a spreadsheet to help you prepare it)
- checklists, spreadsheets and templates for evaluating and selecting an Email Service Provider
- documents that help you manage and control the production of your email
- a spreadsheet to use when analysing the results of your mailout
The tome takes you through each of the aspects involved in email marketing: setting out an approach, building your list, creating the emails, getting them delivered and learning from the results. And there are extra sections on list rental, email newsletters, viral marketing and regulatory issues, too.
As well as taking a practical approach, the kit is also refreshingly realistic...it describes the challenges fairly, then arms you with the information you need to meet and master them.
Small businesses looking to get a start with email will like the jargon-free approach, easy writing style, handholding and numerous examples. But I'd also recommend it as a kind of giant checklist against which to compare your existing email efforts, so you can quickly identify those areas where you can make improvements.
In fact, you'd have to be a pretty hot and confident email marketer not to get great value out of the kit. The CD alone is worth the cost.
Are there any weaknesses? None that I could find. There is a (doh!) clear focus on email...so don't expect many pages on how to integrate email with other marketing channels like RSS. That's a topic for another day...
Summary
A truly definitive overview of the whats and hows of email marketing. Highly recommended for anyone contemplating or using email for marketing purposes. If you buy this kit and the Sherpa Benchmark guide, you'll find it hard not to succeed.
Link: The Email Marketing Kit's sales page at SitePoint.