HTML Email Newsletter Marketing
I’ve spent the last month doing contract work with some great people at Build-A-Bear Workshop® putting together HTML email newsletters. It’s been a good experience for several reasons. After seeing how a large retailer does things, I’m more equipped to help other clients off the ground with their marketing. I’ve been fortunate to work with some of the best in the business there and I’m soaking up all I can. Like any other company, there are plenty of improvements to be made but I never doubt the talent that surrounds me there. And they are all so friendly and kind.
I’ll give you some useful high level information on HTML newsletters so you know how it (mostly) works. For starters, most companies are using service providers such as Constant Contact, Vertical Response, or Responsys for helping to manage the mailing lists and newsletter content to an extent. There are many companies, more every day who are providing these services. I can’t tell you who’s the best, but given the competition that’s out there, I am certain you’ll find one at your price point with plenty of tools that will help you immensely. I recommend using a provider if you are wanting to create a newsletter to send frequently to a large list. Don’t send from your personal email account, because you risk getting flagged as spam and compromising your other individual sent email messages. You also want the join and unsubscribe process to be easy and obvious. This isn’t so with your contacts in your address book.
Next you have your newsletter email content. Basically newsletters need to be created using completely old school web design methods. Table-based layouts with minimal CSS for text styling. Graphics are good, but you’ll want to keep the size minimal so the email loads quickly. We use GIF files exclusively, but GIF and JPEG should be fine, best format for the graphics you’re using. Photoshop has a decent slicing and HTML export process so you can cut up portions of a graphic and export it as a layout. I’m talking about this as if you’ll be generating your own designs. But you’ll find plenty of premade templates from your service provider, or online. What’s nice about designing your own is obvious. Your marketing should look like you, not like a generic template. If you can get the information across with a template so it’s compelling and you get the outcome you want, then who’s going to argue with you.
If you want to send a test graphical email in your personal account, giver it a shot. Copy directly from a webpage and paste into a composed message, making sure the message is in rich text mode. That should copy the content mostly accurately. There are a lot of tips out there.
My suggestions for getting things off the ground:
Subscribe to 5-10 email newsletters by online and brick and mortar retailers. Your university alumni association and financial advisor and a local community center or museum will provide plenty of diverse content. See what they are doing, look at the similarities, use of subject lines, and headline text. Look at what providers they are using. You’ll often see it in the unsubscribe url links or just in the footer somewhere. Are they focusing on one CTA (Call to Action) in their emails or providing a lot of click-thrus? What sort of information do they have prominent above the fold, and what is their email’s footer used for?
After you’ve absorbed from these newsletters, then find a way to use these proven methods available, but setting your newsletter apart from them. Newsletters are big right now. Everyone is trying to capitalize on them. Unfortunately most recipients don’t want to receive hundreds of newsletters from everywhere, so you want to be interesting and create value with it. Basically have something great to say. Are you saving people money, providing good industry information or making them aware of products and services they might not know about? Maybe you’re just entertaining people or keeping them up to date with the company or service they already are using.
I don’t claim to have any kind of statistics on email newsletter profitability. I know that they have been very successful in the company I’m working with. They are reaching out to a lot of people with sales, events, new products and more. But they have a big list to work from though. These communications are helping them because of all the work they’ve done beforehand generating interest. And I think given the size lists that you can acquire over time, you will be getting a lot of bang out of the work you do on your newsletters.
Do you have to send frequently? Not necessarily. I believe you should send at the very least, once every two months for informational type content and updates. I personally like getting newsletters once in a while from my webhosts and my real estate agent friends. Your biggest fans and consumers might want to have information on sales from you quite frequently, maybe even more than once a week, but others might be turned off on having so much unread junk mail in their box when they were kind of luke warm about the newsletter to begin with. But then again, you might as well take the attitude of marketing your tail off and see how people respond to it after a while. You’re going to be using a list service so you’ll gain a lot of insight on how people react to your messages, where they click the most, who’s leaving and finding out why and how often.
