Email: The Offer They Can’t Refuse

I must admit that there is something immensely satisfying about email campaigns. These days, you can build a pretty creative campaign using free or open source tools like my current favourite, MailChimp, launch, send, measure and report on it’s effectiveness and then turn around and do it all again … with a great deal of ease.

And the nice thing is that the reporting is pretty much real time.

There are many similarities with blogging – the tracking and measurement, the control over content and messaging and even an understanding of user experience, pathing and conversion rates.

But where the consumption of blog content is relatively anonymous (unless you want to get very tricky), email surfaces a lot of interesting information about WHO reads your emails, WHAT they like and sometimes even WHY. And understanding this data, using it to deliver insight into your products, offerings, services or even the way you carry on the business of being social, will increasingly become a competitive advantage.

But before you get to data, you have to have something to send. And you want to maximise the effectiveness of every pixel on offer, right? This awesome infographic from the folks at Litmus provides all the right tips and tricks – and the shares the secret – a powerful call to action incorporating visual and text based cues. Check it out.

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Comments

[Parkernow]

I know email marketing works (otherwise people wouldn't be using it so much), but I still can't help but feel that all the time that ends up going into designing and creating these email blasts is a waste of time. Most email programs block images, and the copy has to be really compelling for me to click "Display Images."

Some of the most effective email blasts I've received have been ones that didn't use any HTML/images at all: they were just regular, text emails. The kind you might receive from a friend. Sure, they might have links in them and CTAs, but they still displayed properly on my mobile device, Outlook or Gmail.