We’d just like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

We’re very excited about 2010 here at mailingmanager – with a new site and later on in the year a brand new system being released; 2010 is looking like it’s going to be a big one for us.  Keep in touch with us on Twitter to be kept up to date with our progress.

Our offices are closing on the 23rd December and will open again on the 4th January.  During this period there will be no phone support but you can still submit support tickets by emailing support@mailingmanager.co.uk if you have any problems that need answering.

Otherwise, we will see you all in the New Year when we have all gone up a belt notch on our trousers.

In the build up to our new website design, we’ve now got our blog redesigned and in my opinion, looking great.

To celebrate, we’ve decided to do a double blog post series with our IHM web design team.

This series is a look from two different angles of the email marketing world.  My posts will be based upon the fundamentals of email marketing whilst Chris’s (one of our designers) posts will be based purely on the design aspects of the campaign.

First up is Chris’s choice of email – One from Font Shop Digest.

The subject line is a bit of a tame affair (Digest | FontShop News | October 27, 2009).  It repeats the send from name in the Subject Line which is never impressive and it doesn’t really entice me into opening the email. 

In terms of offering some improvement of the subject line; it’s a bit tough as I know virtually nothing about the font industry (about the last 10 minutes looking on their site) but if they could mention what the main feature of the email is in the subject line, that may see an increase in interested openers.

My Suggestion: “This months new and exclusive fonts plus all the latest news”

Okay so onto the actual email itself.  The first thing you nice is the date – I mean, there’s no way to miss it; it’s huge. I eventually decided though, this isn’t a bad thing. 

The logo is near by so that the branding is still coming across and it gives the beginning of the email a quirk to it – something I’m sure the design community love.  The addition of a link to the font that has been used to create the date is something which I quite liked as well; the large date initially draws the eye and then there is a clear call-to-action to satisfy any further interest.

The email itself is nicely put together – the obvious gripe I’m going to have with it is due to the overuse of images in the email – the ratio is in the favour of the images far too much.  Understandably, it is going to be an uphill struggle for a font company to advertise their fonts without having them as images and in there defence, they have made use of text wherever possible so I can’t really make improvements on what they have done.

They do get minus points for the use of the search function in the email – nice idea, if it worked in most email clients.  As it doesn’t, it’s a bit of a waste.

In terms of the campaign on a whole, it has more than just a sales pitch which means that even if the recipient isn’t interested in purchasing at the time of the email, there is still interesting content for them to read through; meaning the recipients interest is maintained throughout.

You can view Chris’ take on this email here

In my previous post I looked at varying the type of email you send out to keep your campaigns from becoming stagnant. 

The reason I like this kind of planning is that it keeps the creator engaged in what they’re doing, which in turn keeps the recipients engaged.  This post is along the same lines again with another way to keep yourself engaged in the email marketing you’re carrying out.

If you haven’t got a dedicated email marketing employee in your business you may find that email marketing is still a bit of a side thought.  The structure will remain the same for a long time until it is blatantly obvious that it isn’t performing how it used to and then a big overhaul ensues.

By this point though, many subscribers have switched off and the effectiveness of your campaign has weakened.

So to combat disengagement from both the subscriber and from yourself, try adopting campaign life cycles.

By email campaign life cycles, I mean have clearly set out dates for the campaign to start and finish.  This can mean a certain theme, a layout strategy, content additions or anything else you think you can alter and see if it affects the success of your campaign.  Once the cycle has finished, move onto another theme or concept and run with that for a set time. 

Having this set period of time for your campaign to run in a certain format will not only keep you thinking of fresh ideas but also will have you looking onto the next idea and concept.  You’ll be taking more attention of what competitors are doing or how the emails you’re subscribed to are being created.

I believe that keeping your campaigns consistently fresh and never resting on a certain format for too long can play a large part in maintaining subscriber engagement levels.

It will also allow you to also test out different strategies on your subscribers.  Take into account which ideas worked and note them for future reference and then adapt the successful ones in your future campaign.

In doing this you are moving away from the reactionary approach to email marketing that would be commonplace in most campaigns that wait until they’re falling behind competitors until they start changing their campaigns.  With the results that can be collected, you won’t need to take inspiration from competitors but will be able to evolve your own findings further.

Read a great post on Mark Brownlow’s page the other day – The slow death of your email (and how to stop it)

For me, it raised something which I had been thinking about recently and even wrote briefly about in a previous post re-activating inactive subscribers.

In Mark’s post, he raised the issue that throughout time the response rate declined for his subscribers.  He mentioned many factors which may have caused this steady decline with the two most prominent being:

• Increased competition for attention in the inbox from competitors.
• Subcribers becoming less engaged as time passes by

The first of these points is one which should shake up anyone who has moved into a comfortable zone in their email marketing campaign.  More and more companies are moving into email marketing and though they might not be your actual competitors in terms of sector, they are now competitors in your recipients’ inbox.

Couple this with subscribers becoming less engaged over time and you could become old news with your subscribers compared to a new, fresh company.

I personally know what it’s like to be that recipient, as outlined in my inactive subscribers post.  The problem I had with that email was that it hasn’t actually changed over the past 4 years – it was the same thing each week and eventually I became disinterested and stopped opening.

In that post I mention that I had moved away from the main purpose of their emails but still remained subscribed as I may be interested in the future.  The fact of the matter was, I still love music, and though my interest in records had passed, the company wasn’t just a record shop – it sells dj equipment, music production equipment, and music cd’s amongst other things.

The reason my interest had passed in these emails is because I had moved from playing records and decided to catch up with the digital times and now use cd and mp3 emulation software instead.  Essentially my tastes had changed slightly but the campaigns hadn’t changed to match this.

They had lost a subscriber who was still interested in what they had to offer.

In this case, I think that the targeting and segmenting they had carried out actually negatively affected them as I’m sure I’m not the only one who has moved that way with my tastes.

So what could they have done?

I offered some pretty standard suggestions in my previous post as to what you could do to re-ignite interest but after reading Mark’s post I have started to think a bit more behind the scenes.

Alternative Email Budgeting

I didn’t really know what to name it but this seems to describe it the best.  Take your campaign and look at it in yearly/semi-annually/quarterly phases.  Then look at allocating different email campaign types for that period.

For instance, budget yourself to have a couple of emails that offer some big discounts for your subscribers even if it does end up making a loss in the short term – the engagement level will be increased from such offers which in the long term will produce better returns.

Okay, so there’s nothing new in that suggestion but the thinking behind it is different from how this type of campaign is predominantly carried out.  The fact that you have allocated yourself a certain amount for the year means that you can be proactive about your campaigns and gives you a plan for the year.  Instead of being reactive to maybe a recent dip in open rates or responses, you could actually plan it before a dip even occurs.  Also, by having allocated yourself a certain amount for say, a year, you can control the amount of these emails you use – the last thing you want is for your subscribers to become accustomed to these emails and only switch on when a discount offer drops in.

Another variant on your usual campaign could be to look at using cross-selling emails throughout the set period.  Though the subscriber primarily asked to receive information on a certain area of your company, that doesn’t mean that their tastes don’t change and evolve over time.  It can’t hurt to plan out emails that offer them the chance to view and subscribe to other products/services that you offer.

Just by planning your campaign in this way will stave off the monotony that can sometimes creep into a campaign after a certain amount of time.  It also allows you to try and adapt to your older subscribers changes in tastes and wants – keeping them just as engaged as the day they signed up.

More on engagement strategies in my next post….