E-mail Applied: Effective E-mails That Sell

* Keep Images Visible

In the fine print in red below the body of the e-mail, Coldwater Creek includes a coupon code recipients can use during checkout on the site. Brooks Brothers has tested various iterations of sale e-mails.

Based on the e-mails I receive from the company (below), it appears to have settled on an HTML-lite version that includes its header with links to major departments. With image blocking, the e-mail’s content clearly is visible.

4. Experiment with animation.

Many marketers try this technique. One small but defined area of the e-mail contains animation, which is an excellent way to capture attention and engage readers. Usability studies have shown that the eye naturally is attracted to movement.

In the Coldwater Creek example, it might animate the word “everything” below “50% off” and intersperse it with “until Thursday.”

Staples was promoting calendars and planners and pictured a month-at-a-glance appointment book in its e-mail. The pages of the planner were animated so that several months cycled through. It was subtle but eye-catching.

Lake Champlain Chocolates has tested animation on one of several products featured in its e-mails. A promotion for its hot chocolate mix, for example, might show the drink being poured into a cup. Marketing Sherpa reported that Lake Champlain’s sales increased 49 percent from this. It also tested a static image vs. the animated image and saw clickthroughs increase by more than 200 percent with animation.

I’ve only scratched the surface on ways to increase the effectiveness of your e-mail campaigns. E-mail service provider Silver-pop offers a whitepaper titled “Email Creative That Works.” In it, Silverpop collected and analyzed more than 600 e-mails from more than 400 companies, and reports on aggregate results for a variety of different creative approaches.

The free report is available on Silverpop’s Web site under Best Practices/Industry Studies (www.silverpop.com/practices/ studies/email_creative/index.html).