Aloha and a Happy 2015!
Thinking of a little email marketing for your 2015 resolution to bolster business? Well if your new years resolution is to get your neglected newsletter off the ground, there are some things worth considering. I am sure you have heard of many email campaign management systems: Constant Contact, Vertical Response, MailChimp, Bronto, and the list goes on… Are they all created equal? No. Ok, stop reading, you have your answer.
Still here? Ok then: The more important thing to consider is your email goals. Do you need to automate followup emails? How often? Do you have a series of emails that you want to send to a user before funneling them into your general email list? If so, you may benefit from a system that can do drip campaigns. Bronto and MailChimp (with some customization) can do this. Constant Contact? Well, not really (but you can do it manually via their tools). Bronto costs around $10k for 4 million emails/mo – ouch, but worth it if you need an enterprise mail tool. At this volume, you’ll want the advanced reporting tools so you can track A/B tests with various design and copy changes. However, Constant Contact is an amazing system that has a lot of great templates that we often customize for Clients – and this system is easy enough for our anyone to edit the content in a browser (not unlike creating a blog post). Plus is it very affordable. While there are numerous pros and cons of each, our team can help you pick the right system for your company.
So what about the actual e-blast? There are pretty much 3 kinds of e-blasts that we primarily work with…
E-Blast Creation Methods:
#1 HTML – This is the standard, run-of-the mill editable template where the html will flow to fit the available space, within limits. However, the columns do not re-flow when your window is resized to be smaller – unlike the fully responsive (#2) below. This is the typical custom template that we can build within an email program that clients can easily edit.
#2 Fully Responsive – This method uses coding and design techniques to resize and re-flow content (to a single column) for mobile devices. It is the most dynamic and therefore requires the most time to code, and it comes with it’s own set of design limitations that our designers know to design around.
#3 Image-Based – This type of design is more of a “flyer” based design where the only editable file is a source file (Photoshop PSD), therefore, it’s not really an editable email template, but it allows us to send out more freeform artful messages (without all the programming and template limitations).
While each type of e-bast has it’s place, by understanding your needs and budget, we can make recommendations. We typically charge for design and coding of a custom-e-blast (plus stock images); other advanced options are also available i.e. Animation, multiple design options etc.
For samples of each type of e-blast, please feel free to call us at 561-594-7336 and we can show you the options on how you can improve your online marketing and customer engagement.
In future posts, we will go over tracking clicks to understand your customer’s interests, and setting up interest lists (how they can help you reduce your unsubscribes) as well as exploring email frequency options and pros/cons.
Until next time,
Allen
