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Don't let plain text email destroy your brand presence
Online Marketing, Brand Marketing Add commentsGuest post by Bron Taplin - Graphic Designer
I tend to fall in love with particular brands; and remain a loyal, if not fanatic fan. The brands I most admire are those that have set themselves apart on quality, innovation and most importantly for me presentation. A well-designed brand that puts its best foot forward in advertising and marketing enhances the enjoyment of purchasing and using a companies product or services.
I had an experience the other day that highlighted to me how easy it can be for a business owner to slip up and undermine the integrity of their brand perception, even if on a small scale.
This particular day, I received an email from a brand I hold in high regard, so much so that I even have a piece of their packaging sitting on my desk as inspiration. Of course my interest was peaked when this email arrived and I clicked into it straightaway. Once opened I paused momentarily as I considered the word document attached. I was a little taken aback that the email from this well-known international brand was not an HTML template - even if the email was sent by a local franchisee. Curiosity overtook caution and I eagerly clicked to open the attachment. I know I blinked a few times when I viewed the document; I just hadn't expected what I was confronted with. Ok, admittedly I'm a graphic designer, so I am probably a bit more critical - but I was really amazed at the flyer sent to me and how in no way it represented the brand I admired. I wondered how other people viewing this document felt? Inspired to buy? I’m not so sure.
The author of the email had the right idea in utilising his database to send a well-timed campaign aimed to maximize Mothers Day sales. And I empathise with business owners today, as its challenging enough to meet the day to day demands of running a business, let alone needing to put on that marketing hat and create a compelling promotion to entice your customers to buy. But the message this company was sending didn’t represent the reputation the brand had built based on its quality design and craftsmanship. There was no logo anywhere on the document, no product suggestions to help me see how purchasing their product could solve my Mothers Day gift dilemma, and no tempting images enticing me to buy.
When it comes to marketing you absolutely should dazzle and delight your customers - good design and brand unity is of utmost importance, your customers expect it - and deserve it. Your customers have invested and are loyal to your brand and shouldn’t be let down.
So what are the most basic ingredients needed to send the right message to your customers - one that will keep them interested in your brand, or even better reaching for that credit card? At the very least use your logo; it’s a no-brainer. Keep the design of all your media consistent – with colour, font and layout. This helps to build recognition and trust with customers. It’s really important to use images of your product to help customers visualise how they could be used. Content wise, always add value, how could your product be useful or solve a problem for your customer?
If you don't feel you have the necessary marketing expertise, it’s worth utilising the skills of a good design or advertising agency. Effective design doesn't have to cost the earth; a well-designed email template can be used again and again, and gives you the flexibility to focus on coming up with quality content while knowing that you are not diluting the brand identity your company has worked hard to build up.
So what about the company that sent me the dreaded flyer? I immediately emailed through my unsolicited feedback, and offered my services. The company was open to my approach, and who knows – a new business relationship may come of it. I would certainly relish the opportunity to work with a brand that I love.
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I think the other thing here is that the writer has looked at the email from his perspective, not the clients. Designers will always look at the ''look of the piece, rather than the content, similarly with printers who examine the paper and quality, but not the message and copywriters similarly look at the words, not so much the graphics. As marketers we must accept we all view the world from different perspectives and through our own tinted glasses.
Back to the delivery issue - Every graphic or link added, reduces the odds of it getting through. Unless huge amounts of care, effort and expense are put into the campaign to ensure optimised content and email validation to avoid both ISP and outlook/desktop spam filters, then the majority of branded graphical campaign messages will remain undelivered or unopened.
It's well known that plain text emails generally have much higher odds of getting through which is still why they are used far more often by direct response marketers. The math indicates that plain text emails get them more sales to established clients.
Technically, sending out a plain text email with a single attachment, say a pdf brochure, does produce surprising results in terms of ROI. Studies in the uk by major utilities indicated they got a 20-30% higher response (sales) by doing this over html emails. If those pdfs are personalised, and tracked (yes it's possible to track distributed pdf files now through analytics), then we have the best of both worlds. Good delivery and a professional document and, hopefully, good branding within.
If all this seems too hard, at some point in the cost equation, it could conceivably end up more cost-effective to use direct mail, especially with key clients who should always be segmented out anyway for special treatment. Better still, use both channels... In the retail space, it gets around 15% more bottom-line sales.
Of course 'open rate' can be effected by so many factors, such as quality and relevance of the subject line, whether their is a recognizable and accepted company or individuals name in the subject line etc. I think that if you actually get the email delivered to an inbox, plain text or html, then 'open rate' is dependent on subject line, time of day etc.
One of the risks of plain text email with an attachment, is that many junk mail settings will filter out or block emails with attachments, if the settings are too conservative. The other issue is that typically it is the end-user generating and sending plain text emails via Outlook on their desktop. Once your list gets to a reasonable size you do run the risk of your ISP blocking you as a poptential spammer, whereas with a dedicated email hosted system, the sending servers are generally well known and accepted as bonafide maling servers, so are much less likely to be blocked (provided you8 host and send with a reputable provider).
Typically we get less than 0.3% 'blocked' for our html emails, so delivery doesn't appear to be an issue. What does cause more non-delivery issues are mailboxes that are full, DNS failures, invalid email addresses etc, which would affect plain text emails to the same extent.