Back to basics; subject lines, strategy, frequency...

Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on August 08, 2007

Enamored as we are with all the wonderful flashing lights and buttons offered by advanced systems and software, a dominant theme of late is to get the basics right first.

After all, building an email relationship takes time and care. Destroying one takes one stupid error. An error that is normally avoidable if you take the trouble to read up on best practices.

That's a theme hammered home cogently by Loren McDonald in today's MediaPost. And Loren lists a few such errors, too.

On other blogs and websites, numerous clever people offer the kind of info that helps keep your email marketing on the straight and profitable track.

For example, Justin Premick tackles the use of urgency in subject lines, a topic addressed recently by Chad White, too. Take particular note of Justin's advice in the comments section, where he talks about making urgent offers unique and credible.

Then we have MarketingSherpa reporting in detail on how A&E Television Networks revised their emails to account for image suppression and saw results rocket as a result.

The changes they made are not hugely innovative. Which is not meant to be a negative statement; it's further evidence that applying the basics can bring immediate and significant rewards.

Let us move to Canada, where ESP ThinData's newest email newsletter provides a nice overview of four critical email marketing elements (data collection, delivery, consumer action and reporting), with some recommendations on how to best approach each.

Then we have two blog posts warning against sending too much email. Email Karma and Freaking Marketing suggest how you might combat the problem or at least better determine what the optimal contact frequency might be.

Here I find the analogy with fishing good. If you plunder the seas too much, you get progressively less and less fish. But regulate your trips, and you guarantee a decent catch long into the future. (See Are You an Email Marketing Miner or Manager? for a similar thesis.)

And finally there are the forgotten emails. Transactional emails are the new black. But there are other email opportunities gathering dust in the cupboard of marketing neglect. Karen Gedney suggests how you might make more use of your "out of the office / on vacation" auto-replies, for example.

All good stuff.

More on email advertising basics | Tags: email marketing, subject lines, image blocking, email frequency

[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
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