[Your Questions, Our Answers] How to make email content more effective?

Starting today, once every week YourStory will answer questions that our readers have on different aspects of a startup business. So if something has been bugging you and you could need help, then write to us at [email protected]

Question of the week:

Content is said to be very important in email marketing. Any tips in terms of what a marketer can generally do to make effective email content?

Asked by: Marketing Manager of an ecommerce startup

Answered By: Branding and Digital Consultant, Saurabh Parmar.

Answer:

Content is definitely king when it comes to email marketing & though any tips will completely depend on your brand, segmentation, analytic results but there a few mistakes which are common from an Indian scenario which I will discuss here.

• Content & Images-the balance: Nearly all email clients-webmail or otherwise, block images by default. If a person has to enable images to even understand your email you end up losing a large number of them initially itself. Make sure your content explains the point of the email & images supplement the primary content, never depend on them.
• Timing of Content & being nimble: With more ecommerce start-ups & a lot of them selling the same thing, emails from a lot of these tend to be increasingly less relevant for the TG. You can be interesting & relevant by working on trends when possible. Get your mail content to be in sync with current trends -current events, shift in cultural trends or even something which is trending on twitter!
• Avoid shouting out ‘spam’: In today’s age of spam filters & priority inboxes this is most important but often ignored element. Don’t spam & make sure you don’t appear to be spamming. Spam filters look for certain words, phrases, or spelling, such as words spelled out in all capital letters. Embedded images, especially those retrieved from a Web server, or large files sometime trigger spam filters. So does the use of carbon copy or blind carbon copy. Keep a check on this.

Here’s an interesting inforgraphic on ‘email today’:

Drop in a comment if you need more information...

About the author:

Saurabh is the founder & CEO of Brandlogist- a premium boutique consultancy into branding & digital media. Prior to Brandlogist, Saurabh was heading the digital operations for Ogilvy Delhi & prior to that Drizzlin Media Delhi. He has been a visiting faculty at IIMC,9.9 SOC,PRCIMS (Perfect Relations Centre for Image Management Studies) & also takes guest lectures/workshops for B-schools & corporates. You could reach out to him @saurabhparmar