Email marketing is rapidly becoming a popular method of maintaining dialogue between an organisation and its audience. 

A cost effective form of communication, on average delivery of one email is a tenth of the cost of a first class stamp, email marketing also delivers unrivalled measurability – a carefully thought out campaign will give you tangible data about your recipients and improve the sales process.

To achieve maximum ROI on your investment, the following aspects of any campaign must be carefully considered.

• Template design - Design relies heavily on the effective use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), to ensure that text and images are presented in the appropriate format. Make sure you test your campaign on as many different email platforms as possible ensure consistency.

• First impressions - Most email platforms disable images on emails received from unknown sources. Make sure your template is designed to include a text-based introduction, enticing the recipient to read on. Include a degree of personalisation within your emails to engage and lead to higher open rates, but be wary of turning people off with bold capital letters shouting surnames.

• Calls to action - As with any marketing campaign, calls to action are used for data capture, to provoke a response from your readers and enter into two-way dialogue. It is vital that any call to action within an email campaign is made obvious, leaving the reader in no doubt as to what you want them to do.

• Key message - You could do all of the above absolutely perfectly, and have the cleanest database, but if you aren’t talking to your audience in the right way, about stuff that they really want to be hearing about, you might as well forget it.

• Unsubscribers - Legally, it must be clear and simple for recipients to unsubscribe. Monitor these unsubscribers, particularly following any content or design changes – you can learn just as much from unsubscribers as you can those who are opening your email.

• ROI - Email marketing offers a higher level of measurability than almost any other form of communication. Who has opened your email? Who hasn’t (often just as important)? How many times? Who couldn’t the email be delivered to (automatically cleansing data)? What links have been clicked, and by who? Recipients can even be segmented by their geographical location at the time of opening, allowing targeted lead generation for your regional sales teams.

For information and advice on how an integrated email marketing campaign can add value to your business, and build upon your relationships with both customers and prospects, call The Hub today.

Have a read of our fourth journalist interview with Ian Boughton of Boughton's Coffee House.

What is your favourite type of coffee, and where will we find the best one being made?
Good grief, do you want to get me shot? My own favourite espresso style is a cappuccino, and there are two requirements for that...

How do you predict the coffee market will change over the next 12 months?
Here is a scoop for you, or a heads-up, or whatever turn of phrase is currently fashionable - watch for the revival of filter coffee. A few moves have been made...

Describe your worst experience of working with a PRO?
There are so many… And the best and worst experiences may, really, appear in a book later this year! I will never forget being invited to... Read more...

This month we were amused by:

Sheep art, perfectly sculptured melons, the latest Hub branded animal and Palms new handset!