Are you a Clicker, a Deleter, or an Unsubscriber? When it comes to email marketing, chances are you’re all three – so let’s take a look inside your inbox and see exactly what’s going on.
When used correctly, email is one of the most powerful and effective media for many brands with one of the best ROIs available. For some, email can represent around 30% of total sales, which is why I despair when I open my inbox to see drivel from brands that really should know better.
And that’s the start of the problem: email is too often relegated by brands and agencies as the poor creative cousin.
TRIPLE THREAT
So what’s holding email back from being a true creative force and what can we do to help?
1. Lack of relevance or personalisation
Nothing gets unsubscribed faster than irrelevant email, which is why relevance is key to all advertising and particularly true for email. Know your audience and tailor your messages accordingly.
2. Lack of sex appeal
For many agencies and clients, the very idea of email marketing is un-sexy and seems to be an after thought. Don’t make email a chore – give its resourcing priority in the overall marketing mix.
3. Lack of technical competence
Make sure your email platform can handle mobile responsive and multivariate creative testing, and can track the path from email open to an actual sale (online or in-store). If it can’t, find one that does.
Tick these boxes to ensure your emails are more creative, effective and profitable. And if your email campaign strategy is struggling, don’t be afraid to sack your agency – or appoint one if you’re doing it internally.
LET’S REFRESH OUR MINDSET
As marketers, we have the opportunity to embrace the email as an insight-driven creative channel to drive commercial outcomes for their clients. If email is given the same degree of creative and strategic rigour as all other elements, brands will quickly enjoy more effective email results.
Sure, you might not talk up the production values of an email as you would your latest TVC or tech prototype, but it’s time we started getting more turned on about the results email can deliver when we take the creative potential for email seriously.
One key change that will help improve the overall creativity and effectiveness in email marketing is to stop thinking of email as being free or cheap: this is about a culture shift and we must stop being creative snobs…Clicker, Deleter, or Unsubscriber included.
Read more on Luke’s opinion piece, originally featured in AdNews magazine.
