Email Marketing
Email marketing
Email marketing is a powerful marketing technique, especially for repeat sales. The big advantages of email marketing are its low cost, its flexibility and the ease with which marketing statistics can be obtained. It is possible to test the market with a small number of addresses, and then extend or alter the message as appropriate.
Cornish WebServices can help provide various Email marketing services including designing suitable HTML emails, producing the individual emails, incorporating the required tracking code, sending the emails, analysing the responses and reporting back.
HTML emails
Many email clients now make it easy to generate HTML emails. In the same way that early website editors produced poor code by default, the same is true with HTML emails. The optimum type of HTML code to use within an HTML email is very different from the optimum HTML to use within a modern website.
When creating HTML email templates we always ensure they are written to reduce rejection as Spam. For some clients we make use of 3rd party Email marketing software, and we ensure all templates used are adapted and optimised. We are not tied to any particular Email marketing provider, and select the best option for our client based on existing and potential marketing requirements.
Poorly written HTML emails get rejected as Spam by many email clients. Our Spam filters regularly reject large numbers of HTML emails, many from reputable businesses.
In 2005, Internet Security software both on PCs and on servers has improved in terms of filtering out suspicious emails. This includes many emails sent as marketing programmes and also emails from some types of email server (including our own!) which provides an excellent way of testing the likely rejection rate of emails. Any emails we send on behalf of clients use a different server.
Not all email clients (especially free Web-based services) can forward html emails. As forwarding of useful information amongst friends / work colleagues is a good way of reaching new contacts, using a format that cannot be forwarded does not make sense.
Email Legislation
Email marketing has received a very bad press recently through the large number of unsolicited spam. There is now new legislation in place that affects how and when you can send marketing emails. Basically you need to opt in to any such email contact list, and the email list should never be passed on to anyone else. There are differences between B2B and B2C email marketing.
The recent legislation on email marketing includes certain requirements that must be present within any emails sent. Cornish WebServices can advise on this and create HTML or non-HTML emails for marketing. We can also manage a total email marketing plan including tracking the ROI of each programme.
Email Tracking and Statistics
When managing an email marketing campaign, as standard we include tracking statistics of which emails have been opened, how many people have unsubscribed from the mailing list, and click through statistics to your website.
The reports can include information such as hard and soft bounces, and time of day analysis of click-throughs. This enables the Email marketing campaign to be improved, and ROI to be measured.
AOL email accessibility
Many email clients read html email in a similar manner, but AOL's proprietary email system has many differences. This causes html emails with clickable links to not work for AOL members. Since there are a large number of AOL subscribers on the Internet, they should not be ignored when designing html templates. This is especially important in some B2C markets where AOL subscribers represent a significant target market share. Many of the software packages and email html generators completely ignore AOL email users. Whenever Cornish WebServices design html email templates, we always take account of the needs of both AOL and non AOL email users.
Making html emails accessible for AOL users
It is very easy to make an html email accessible and clickable for AOL users who download emails onto their computer - you simply add the link using the html link tag. This makes the link clickable to AOL email users. If all your contact list were AOL users and no-one used webmail this would solve the problem in a simple manner. Unfortunately this is not the case and some kind of compromise is required. This is because the above solution does not look good as plain text - and many users read email in plain text, either on their email client or as a preview in many of the spam / virus checker programs.
Another difficulty in designing good html email templates for AOL users, is that AOL has very inconsistent ways of displaying some types of html. It is therefore important to always check out what your html email template looks like under AOL. Sometimes the formatting causes the email to become unreadable.
One good solution for organisations with very large email lists is to actually split up the database into AOL and no-AOL emails. Some of the dedicated email marketing services provide this option when sending emails. This has the advantage of allowing a good design for both types of email, but the disadvantage of requiring 2 slightly different templates, and a knowledge of the problem when updating the email content.
