Email Marketing solutions

Email Marketing - Science or Art?

Email marketing - is creating an effective offer a science or an art?

The list is a significant component of promotional success, but where many marketers go wrong is failing to make an appropriate "offer" to the list. They may create a beautiful and clever email, they may send it to a well-qualified email list, but they fail to offer the prospective viewer any reason to act. In effect, an email marketing program without an offer is like me introducing myself to someone I've been dying to meet, and then saying only "Hi, my name is Sean" and then walking away. What's the point?

An offer is an invitation to act -- a call to action. An offer can be as simple as "Buy GeeWhiz today!" or as complex as "Buy GeeWhiz at 20% off, while supplies last, one to a customer; offer expires September 30, 2007". Some offers work better than others but any offer works better than none at all.

There is both science and art to making a compelling offer that will evoke a good response from a list of prospects. The science of good offers has been developed through years of empirical testing -- principally through "split-testing" of different offers (sending one offer to group A and another to group B and statistically comparing results). Testing in this way has proven that different offers have different strengths. For example, a sample list of offers is shown below, in order, from strongest to weakest:

• "Sweepstakes" or contests (e.g. "Win $2,500 cash and a trip to Costa Rica...")
• FREE!
• 25% Off!
• No Risk, Money Back Guarantee
• Limited time or quantity (e.g. "Offer good only until ..." or "Only 100 available!"
• Send for information
• Have a salesperson call

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