Last week Kramer’s veterinarian sent me an email newsletter…
Can you point out all the problems with this? If your email marketing campaigns look like this – you need to talk to me. This is completely ineffective… as effective as not using email marketing at all…
So what’s wrong with this email? Let’s dive in…
Let’s start with the subject… They used the horribly generic “Newsletter” in their subject. What most people don’t realize is the easiest way to fail at email marketing is to use generic, non-descriptive subjects in their emails. A subject must be compelling, brief, and indicate the content of the message. This fails at all three and it doesn’t even indicate a brand. This will be passed up in most users’ inbox.
Secondly, let’s look at the reply-to address (aka the “from” address). Proper, branded email addresses can do wonders in many aspects of your web strategy. First off – you HAVE to use your brand (your domain) in your email address. This is a huge FAIL. First off – it in no way extends or relays your brand. Secondly, and most importantly, this gets lost in an inbox because the receiver cannot clearly tell who this is from.
And last – no message body. This is a HUGE mistake. I, personally, would never send my newsletter in PDF form. But if I did – I would definitely include a message explaining what was in them to entice the reader to open them. In this format I bet 90% of receivers do not open these PDF attachments. Lesson for them: take the content out of the PDF and put it in the message body in a nice template.
If you use aWeber – they’ll help you take care of all this. If you still don’t get it – come talk to us. We can help.
Do you have examples of good or bad email marketing? Have email marketing tips? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
That\’s why he\’s a VET… Heck aWeber is great for exactly what (I assume) he was trying to do. We use Constant Contact for the smaller campaigns and get great results for customization and tracking…
BAD Vet! Sit. Stay. Fetch Andy!
Keep Cooking!
Andrew
Added tip: if you must use a PDF file for your publication, be recipient-friendly! Upload the PDF to your webserver, and send an email that just contains a link to the PDF so the recipient can download at their discretion. Keeps the email small, assuages recipients’ fear of evil/unknown attachments, and lets you track the number of downloads (you ARE tracking downloads, right??).
@Janet – Great point. Link to the PDF instead. You can a) keep emails smaller b) track clicks (in aWeber for sure) and c) track downloads. All around much better – if you are going to send a PDF. Great point Janet!
@Andrew yea aWeber and Constant Contact are both great for what they are doing.
I found this to be very interesting. My interest is in the content. Once you take the time to open the PDF docs is it worth it?
@Tajiana – Yea the PDFs do have good content
I’m amazed this even made it past the spam filters. File this one under Epic Fail.
The best and most targeted email marketing is between two people that know each other (I think). You should check out WrapMail. They have software that embeds images and links in every external email from every employee in a company. Pretty cool and innovative.
@DT true – this definitely wouldn’t make it through a lot of spam filters.
@Dave – thanks i’ll have to check that out