Top 10 High-Tech E-Mail Marketing Mistakes

Top 10 High-Tech
E-Mail Marketing Mistakes
A Connect Direct White PaperTop 10 High-Tech E-Mail Marketing Mistakes
Introduction
Everyone knows e-mail is faster and cheaper than direct mail. But now that response rateshave fallen dramatically from their highs of just a few years ago, the cost/performance benefitsof e-mail are also less dramatic. At the same time, the continuing onslaught of spam and themass adoption of e-mail-compatible mobile devices means that legitimate marketers have atougher and tougher time making their message stand out from the crowd.
No matter how simple or inexpensive e-mail is in theory, the days are long gone when acompany can throw together some HTML, rent a list, hit "send", and expect instant success. More than ever, planning, strategy, and technique make a significant difference. In practice,e-mail campaigns are fraught with pitfalls that, if not heeded, can result in spectacularfailures.
If your most recent e-mail campaign died an ugly death, here's a list of the main suspects toconsider:
1. You forgot the offer.
No matter how enticing your product or service sounds, you won't generateleads unless people want what you're offering to send them. Don't rattle onabout how wonderful your product is, followed by "For more information,click here ..." What exactly is it that you're offering? Be specific. Sell thebenefits of your product in the context of the offer: "In a free Web seminar,you'll learn how to ..."
Another tip: If your offer is free information, include a photo. Photos makeeven a simple white paper seem more tangible and "real" and thus, morelikely to generate a response.
2. You asked too much of the reader.
If you're like most high-tech marketers and the objective of your e-mailcampaign is to generate leads, it's important to structure your offer in such away that you avoid asking too much of the prospect.
An offer like a free product trial or an "onsite ROI analysis" may sound like agreat way to generate highly qualified leads, but in the process, you may besetting the proverbial bar too high. Offers like these tend to eliminate thosegenuine prospects who, despite suffering from the issue or challenge thatyour product or service can solve, don't respond simply because they don'tfeel they can commit the time or resources necessary.
Make your campaign easy to respond to by creating an offer - say, a freeinformation kit - that generates not only hot leads but also attracts thoseprospects who recognize the problem you highlight and want to solve it.
©2008 Connect Direct Inc. All rights reserved. 2Top 10 High-Tech E-Mail Marketing Mistakes
3. Your call to action (or other key information) appearstoo far down the page.
There's an important dividing line in every e-mail campaign - it's the pointin your creative at which the average reader will have to scroll down thescreen in order to read further. If you suspect that many of your recipientsmay be reading your e-mail on their smartphone or PDA, that dividing lineis even higher than you think, since the amount of text a phone can display ismuch less than even the typical preview pane in a desktop e-mail client.
However your e-mail is being received, it's critical that you include key componentsof your message "above the fold." Those components are:
. key selling benefits - why the reader should care. the offer - why the reader should respond. the call to action - how to respond
If you delay any one of these components until later in the copy, therebyforcing the reader to scroll, you'll lose a large percentage of those who mightotherwise respond.
Also: be cautious about wanting your headline to do all the work for you. For one, most current e-mail readers are set by default not to display images. If your headline was built as an image, the result is a huge white gap whereyour most important message should be. Here are two potential solutions:
. Have your art director or designer build the headline aspure HTML, rather than an image. You might not be ableto use your favorite font for the headline, but at least youraudience will be able to read it.
. In a small (but legible) font, include a line of "optimizationcopy" before the headline, for example: "[Headline messagehere.] If you can't read the rest of... [download for more]