September 2007

Creative Ideas that inspire

Personal Note

Summer Transitions

Here in Orange, over the three days preceding Labor Day, people celebrate the last days of summer at the annual Orange International Street Fair. This year, we volunteered for an evening shift in a local charity's booth—on surely the hottest weekend of the entire summer! But we had fun.

As summer ends, students return to school, employee vacations wind down—and businesses jumpstart their marketing activities. In this issue of CreatiVerve, we talk about one very effective way of reaching out to customers, prospects, and colleagues—e-mail, but not just any e-mail!

Enjoy!

Project Focus

Directed Direct Mail

This parking-insurance specialist wanted a brochure that would attract its audience immediately—standing out from the mail pile, not hiding in an envelope. AdvantGroup designed a piece that spoke to parking companies in a way they understood.

See this solution and more. >>

Debi Calvet
Principal

Chris Calvet
Principal

Feature Article

Relationships: What's E-mail Got to Do With It?

E-mail marketing done right can be very effective. Doing it "right" means using best practices, as Ralph Wilson (Wilson Internet) says, "to develop long-term relationships with customers..." and other recipients.

Best practices can't exist without full legal compliance. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires that in commercial e-mail

• header and subject information be accurate and truthful,
• advertising be identified as such,
• the seller's valid physical postal address be included, and
• an opt-out method be provided with opt-out requests honored in 10 business days.

However, the best e-mail marketing practices go beyond mere legal compliance. They create credibility and trust and establish rapport with recipients.

• Get permission. To earn trust and develop interest in your e-mail marketing campaigns, request permission from prospective recipients to add them to your subscription list. Although current customers who've willingly provided their e-mail addresses within the customer relationship expect to receive commercial e-mail from you, no one else does—so ask. They'll appreciate your courtesy and be looking for your campaigns.

• Get worthwhile content. To attract and retain interest in your campaigns, create up-to-date content that is valuable to your audience. E-mail newsletters should provide information that's useful to the reader and only a brief, restrained sales pitch (if any). If the e-mail is an advertisement, make sure it's a special offer, a notice of an upcoming sale, or perhaps an announcement of a brand-new product. Your audience will look forward to seeing what's next.

• Get a quality service provider. To demonstrate your trustworthiness and good will to recipients of your e-mail marketing campaigns, use a reputable Web-based e-mail marketing service (EMS). A good EMS makes campaign management much easier than do-it-yourself methods and provides online tools for analyzing campaign effectiveness (opens, links followed, etc.). Plus, such services make complying with CAN-SPAM's opt-out rules easy by including reliable, instant opt-out functionality in every campaign. Your audience will appreciate that, even though they want to keeping receiving your e-mail.

These e-mail marketing best practices foster good business relationships. As Wilson said, "Your goal...is top-of-mind recognition. Recipients may not need your product now; they may not need [it] tomorrow, but...when they're ready to purchase, they'll think of you"—as long as you've done your e-mail marketing right!

(AdvantGroup offers design, development, and management services for clients' e-mail marketing campaigns.)