Are we stepping back in design?
| Following on from my last post and a post I read on Mark Brownlow’s blog, I’ve started to wonder if we really are going to step back in terms of design and content, and do what we want again.Certainly, the idea of it seems to be very plausible. We’re getting to a stage where spamming is getting clamped down on, with some success it seems. Now the sender has to have authentication and a good sending reputation to hit the inboxes whilst the rest of them languish in the spam box. I now rarely get an email I haven’t asked for in my inbox.
So I’m going to say something crazy here….I like all-image emails. In fact I’m all for them in B2C email marketing. Here’s an example… |
The campaign puts some reliance on the subscriber having them whitelisted. But they managed to do this with me by swiftly responding to my purchase from them with an opening campaign. I was pleased with what I bought, so added them. Okay, so the first time I opened the email it was a blank page as it was one block image with clickable links within it; so had been blocked from showing. But is that really a bad thing? I don’t know about you but when I open an email that has text and images in (which have been blocked) I’m considerably less likely to actually unblock the images as I can get the general gist of the email without doing it. But this will actually harm the email viewing experience that I was intended to receive from the sender. Now take the whole block image email into consideration. The subject line has drawn me in with a promise of some offer (probably) so I’m already committed to seeing what’s on offer. I see a blank email with an option to unblock the image, so I just click the button and there it is; the full email with no rendering problems, and without any fiddly restrictions that come from creating html newsletters. I bet this email doesn’t have rendering problems in gmail either. But being able to send out image rich emails isn’t something that every company can enjoy. Chemical Records did a lot of groundwork to start with. Firstly, they’ve set up a decent autoresponder campaign that contacts new subscribers quite quickly after signing up; when the recipients interest in the company is still at a high. Secondly, they have paid attention to the first hurdle that so many email marketers fall at; they’ve actually put some decent effort into their subject line. They also managed to deliver what they promised in the subject line, meaning that I was happy to open any future mailings from them. If you would like to be in a position where you could send out an email like this, follow the proposal that Mark Brownlow has outlined in his blog, and adopt the work ethic that Chemical Records put into their campaign. |