It's rapidly changing as new forms of media is introduced and audiences start consuming media in new ways and forms.
As email marketing evolved more and more misconceptions seem to be formed by understaffed over stressed marketeers, who just don't have the time to explore the new media's and technology.
So result driven companies are forcing Marketeers to take leave of their senses, to compete in a market that has changed and they don't understand, just so they can increase inbound traffic.
I've been responsible for email branding and email marketing for a number of years. With every campaign or branding exercise, I always find the same misconceptions. I have listed a few common ones in regards to email branding and email marketing that I want to address.
1. Disclaimers are not legally binding.
It has never been proven in a court of law that email disclaimers will protect you from liability for the content of an email.
It merely attempts to limit the liability of the senders company.
However this does not mean having an email disclaimer won’t help. If in doubt, include one.
2. People will not click on your links just because the email is from you.
This is a very big misconception especially from higher up in the business, If anything, business email branding has an even worst click through rate than eblasts.
Primarily this has to do with relevance of the branding, when you receive an eblast you know from the subject line, topline message and content exactly what you are getting.
When it comes to email stationery, 99.9% of the time your branding has no relevance to the content. So unless you actually reference the branding item in your email you have virtually no chance of having someone click through.
So when doing email branding don’t be unrealistic in your expectations, don’t think it’s a quick win lead generation tool.However, do use it to reinforce your brand. Showcase you awards and achievements, your events, your press. Just because someone doesn’t click through does not mean they don’t visual consume your brand.
3. Impressive graphics does not increases open and click through rates.
I recently received, probably the worst formatted and visually disturbing email. Yet, I read it and I picked up the phone and eventually entered into commercial relationship with the sender…. Why?
The message and content was relevant to what my needs were at that particular stage.
This does not mean I would not have gone with a competitor if their email’s looked slicker. It just means that:
RELEVANCE & CONTENT trumps design.I cannot stress this point enough. In today's world we are bombarded by information and if something is not relevant or lacks decent content. It will be dismissed and ignored.
4. Measuring open rates is the most important.
Marketeers are quite concerned by the open rate and number of views. Yes this might be a very important metric, however its terribly flawed.
There is not 100% accurate way of measuring open or view rates.This measurement is solely based on the recipient ignoring a security warning and selecting "Download images" in their email client. Yes some clients do have this automatically set up, but the moment you doing serious B2B emarketing most companies will have much stricter security policies.
What about mobile users? Images are never displayed on my iphone and by the time I get to the office, I will be ignoring the image laden email because I already read it on the train.Unless.... I found the content relevant (see point 3)
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