| Creating E-mails that Customers Want to Read |
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Ten proven tips and suggestions.
In today’s business environment, keeping in touch is the key to keeping customers. And while many franchise owners incorrectly might equate e-mail marketing with spam and dismiss it, e-mail is actually a highly-effective marketing tool that provides an incredible return on investment. According to a Direct Marketing Association survey, e-mail returns an impressive $57.25 for every dollar spent, while driving $7.7 billion in consumer sales and $8.8 billion in business-to-business sales. When done properly, e-mail can be a crucial part of a franchise’s overall marketing strategy.
E-mail also has a number of advantages over traditional marketing methods. Companies can precisely target and personalize messages to recipients, as well as track such detailed results as open rates, click rates and conversion rates. And best of all, e-mail marketing is incredibly low-cost when compared to such traditional one-to-one messaging as direct mail.
The trick, of course, is discovering how a franchise can create e-mail that people actually want to receive and to learn how to avoid getting banished to the spam folder or deleted. Here are 10 proven tips and suggestions:
1. Personalize and localize
The more personally the e-mails are crafted, the more likely a positive outcome will result. An effective e-mail message will address the recipient by first name. More importantly, make sure that the e-mails come from an individual or appear that way. The franchise corporate office should have the ability to send e-mails to employees, where the “from” contains the name and the message might include a photo and contact information. No one wants to feel like they are on a list of thousands of people copied on a mass e-mail; make it personal.
2. Review opt-in procedures
Franchises thrive on local customer relationships. Unsolicited corporate e-mail can break down customer trust and loyalty. First and foremost, make sure the company has permission to send the e-mail in the first place. Avoid pre-checked opt-in boxes, which can result in a list of subscribers who aren’t aware that they’ve opted in. Allowing subscribers to manually check a box ensures that the company is only sending e-mail to those who’ve actively requested it. Make sure the procedures for unsubscribing, changing an e-mail address and maintaining a user profile are readily accessible and user-friendly.
As part of getting permission, provide registrants with an expectation as to the frequency and content of e-mails. If people sign up for a monthly newsletter, don’t assume they want weekly sales offers as well. Set an e-mail marketing calendar for the entire company, and stick to it.
3. Be clear who you are
No matter the e-mail sender, whether it’s the corporate office or a local franchisee, a short and recognizable “from” address will increase open rates. Allow the “from” address to remain consistent from mailing to mailing so that customers can recognize it and hopefully add it to their address book. Make sure the message very clearly comes from the company, and that the address and subject line work together to indicate and promote the brand.
4. Grab their attention
The average person decides what to do with an e-mail in just eight seconds. E-mail recipients can open it, read it, delete it or mark it as spam. To make the most of those eight seconds, be sure that the subject line delivers the biggest bang it can. The subject line should always honestly represent the content of the e-mail (not doing so violates the CAN-SPAM Act.) Be sure to keep it concise and include a call to action or brand name that customers will recognize. A good rule of thumb is that a subject line should be no more than about 50 characters long to avoid being truncated by the most popular e-mail clients. Follow through the subject line with a “hook” or purpose for the e-mail within the first sentence or two.
5. Provide valuable content
With every e-mail sent, think about the audience the company wants to reach and why it would want to receive messages from the franchise. What sort of specials are being offered that people will want to receive, again and again? Think about using e-mail to deliver account updates, new product information, service notifications, relevant news and events regarding the franchise company or industry, promotional offers and money-saving coupons. Make sure every message includes something valuable. It’s always better to err on the side of not sending, as customers have limited patience with overflowing inboxes.
6. Steer clear of looking like spam
Nothing turns customers off more than the constant influx of “spammy” offers and get-rich-quick scams. To evade content filters that relegate messages to the same junk heap, avoid words and phrases associated with spam. While there’s no master list of spam phrases, take a look through your own bulk folder and stay away from any words and phrases seen repeatedly. Anything overly promotional, including such words as “free,” “opportunity,” “sweepstakes” or “amazing,” can set off content filters, as can excessive punctuation, as well as the use of all capitals. Be wary of spam formatting, such as imbedding text within images and making the background and text colors too similar. Never explicitly state that a message is not spam; ironically, doing so actually makes it appear even more like spam.
7. Don’t forget the fundamentals
This might seem like a no-brainer, but far too many e-mails are sent with grammatical, spelling and usage errors. Typically this happens because franchise owners are simply in a rush to get something out when they should be more concerned with quality and remember that every e-mail is a reflection of the company’s image. Typos and misspellings can also land an e-mail quickly in spam filters.
8. Words can be worth a thousand (blocked) pictures
In today’s online environment, image suppression can be a major stumbling block to creating effective, readable e-mails. Image suppression is a safety net used by e-mail clients to protect recipients from unknown senders. In practical terms, image suppression can render a well-crafted e-mail into nothing but the dreaded big red “X” that the reader will quickly pass over. If a company is relying too heavily on images in its e-mail efforts, chances are the message isn’t getting across. In other words, put down the pictures and pick up a pen (or, in this case, the keyboard). Boiling down the message into a few key words and phrases can actually be a useful exercise. In places in which may traditionally use graphics—headlines, titles, calls to action, and links—use HTML text instead. In a similar vein, avoid relying on too many sound or video files, all of which may be unreadable on recipients’ computers.
9. It’s all about timing
Often the last thing a potential customer wants to read on a Monday morning is a marketing e-mail. Same goes for Friday afternoons, when most people have begun to retreat into weekend mode. Industry research indicates that Tuesday and Thursday mornings—roughly between 10 o’clock and noon—is the best time to send e-mails, but that doesn’t mean that it will necessarily work best for a particular audience. Test different times to find out when an audience is most responsive and what best suits the franchise system’s specific needs. If it is a business-to-business franchise, for example, first thing Monday mornings can actually be a great time to send e-mails. If the company doesn’t get the response it’s expecting, it might try experimenting with Tuesday or Thursday.
10. If all else fails, ask!
If a company wants to know whether customers are finding its content valuable and useful, why not ask them? While this approach might seem far too simple, it actually works. Companies can include one simple survey question at the end of each e-mail and let the results dictate future content decisions.
Michael Teitelbaum is president of TruePresence, LLC. He can be reached at michael@truepresence.com.
