E-mail Marketing: Make Your E-mail Campaigns More Effective

“E-mails are just like direct mail pieces with a really short shelf life,” noted Neal Patrick, director of marketing for Lerner Direct, during the session “Sowing Seeds of Change: Getting and Tracking Online Results” at the spring conference of the New England Mail Order Association held in Cambridge, Mass., last week.

So how can you improve the performance of a medium that drives three-quarters of its sales within the first 48 hours of its existence? Patrick, along with Nancy Reiser, vice president at list company Mokrynskidirect, offered the following tips in their joint session:

* E-mails need a reason to exist. “Don’t just send e-mails to send them,” said Patrick. “Make sure to create copy that not only drives demand, but develops the customer’s relationship to the brand.”

* Build e-mails around catalog mailings. By sending an e-mail a few days after the expected in-home date of the catalog, you both reinforce the catalog in customers’ minds and give them an additional ordering channel, said Reiser.

* Test different subject lines. Check the open rates associated with each subject line you use, said Reiser. Noted Patrick, “The word ‘free’ generates response and increases open rates, but will also cause your e-mails to get caught in spam filters. Figure out what else will generate that response for your customers.”

* Test resending e-mails within 48 hours. Reiser pointed to a case while she was director of marketing for Brylane Home, a home furnishings catalog. “Brylane resent e-mails to customers who didn’t respond within 48 hours and saw an increase in response of 50 percent to 80 percent,” she said.