Good things come in Threes

Our Third Task focuses on Email marketing.

This is funny, as I have spent years turning ignoring unwanted emails into an artform.

One of our tasks is how to personalize an email:

• Firstly, we need to have access to emails and personal information.
• When creating a sign up where emails can be captured, it is also possible to include personal information
• If names have been included, a newsletter can be set to display a first name to make it more personal and casual, or even a last name if the newsletter contents are formal, but still giving the impression that the customer is being contacted directly.
• Depending on what information has been provided, other details can be used to specifically target customers. For example offers can be segmented across age groups for lifestyle offers, different cosmetic offers would focus either on males or females, sites like Groupon use location based offers, which are more relevant to customer and even information on salaries or job types can be used to offer different priced offers.
• Personally, I would use a feature to refer to customers by first name, so that they feel more inclined to read a message

Some important things to consider with Email Marketing

• In order to capture the attention of customers, and to avoid being automatically redirected into a spam folder, a good design needs to be adhered to.
• Writing an entire message in block capitals will definitely not gain it attention, even if it passes the spam filter
• Filling a headline with several exclamation points is annoying, not even grammatically correct and will result in someone deleting your email while cursing you to hell.
• Some keywords pop up in so many spam emails that even if your email isn't spam, it will be ignored. Keywords like: free, unlimited, sign up now, limited offer, and hi (Tom) long time no see from unknown emails, are noticeable to the customer, and some of these will be automatically filtered out.
• The email will have to be displayable and readable with disabled images. Many email clients block images, and if the images have been disabled, an email will be unintelligble at a first glance, and very few people will take the time to dig in further
• In order for an email to be seen as being real as well, the header should be short and direct. No one really spends the time to write out several sentences in a header, as most of the information will be in the body of the text. Spam tries to catch a user when they are browsing through their emails.
• Websites can be used to preview how an email will look in different email clients before being sent out. This can ensure that information will be clear the receiver.
• If an email has been ignored, which is quite likely, send a follow up email with reference to the first one, and maybe gain their attention. If you never get a reply, take this as a subtle hint that not everyone wants their mailbox to be filled with messages from randoms!