Marketing, telesales, call centre, demand generation, internet, sales

Marketing Programmes

Know How

Tools

Email us

Refer this site to a colleague

eMarket2's FREE eNewsletter:
innovative How2Guides, lead
generation & eMarketing ideas
you need to come out on top.


View Sample

View sample How2Guides

Top 20 tips for eMarketers

12 Tips for Targeting Inactive Subscribers

Clients & Awards


	Join me on Linked-In Norman Campbell Managing Director eMarket2

Refer to a colleague |

Print this How2Guide article | Back to resources

Design Innovation, Not Safety, Pays Big Dividends with eMail Templates

We rightly worry about how our eMails might look when viewed in Outlook 2007, Gmail, or Lotus Notes. That concern leads to eMail templates that fall back on dour, "safe", eMail designs and layouts.

There’s nothing wrong with that approach - it gets results. But "safe design" and creativity need not be mutually exclusive. It's always worth testing an idea or two to see if you can lift responses.

Bookmark with

What are these?

Need help? Enter details below & we'll contact you within 24 hours.

Name*

Job Title*

eMail*

Phone*

Test different approaches

My agency recently tested a standard client eMail template against a new customised design that we created and found the latter generated 29% more unique clickthroughs

eMail marketing templates can be easy, fast and cheap. But are they always optimal? Recently we tested an eMail template against a customised graphic design approach for a business-to-business client in the IT sector.

We used the same offer -- and even the same concept -- on both sides of the split-run test. The only element we varied was graphic design.

The result was that the fresh design approach pulled 29% more unique click-throughs over a period of four months, with a monthly broadcast schedule.

We believed the existing template design was keeping this global B2B IT brand from using interesting concepts.

The client was having problems getting more budget for creative design, so we agreed to reduce our standard fees for the first design to prove the concept, and it worked.

On the back of the first success, we then did the same for another five of its standard templates for three different promotions, covering seminars, products and training courses. Four out of the five newly-designed templates generated, on average, 26% more unique click-throughs, with the fifth pulling the same as the previous standard template.

On average, the client’s eMail list ranges between 7,000 to 16,000 eMails at a 7% unique click before the re-design, so this now means they are getting an extra 1.82% unique click throughs, (8.82% in total) which equates to between 127 to 291 extra unique clicks per broadcast.

The client has now secured the budget to update its whole range of eMail templates and to continue testing by creating a new design for a number of new templates every six months, to make sure it doesn’t fall into the same trap again.

Clearly, this client will continue testing but there's a lesson here for eMail advocates: never rely on speculation, opinions or biases. Run your own A/B tests. And always be sceptical of approaches that lock out innovation and never accept that what you’re doing now is necessarily the best way.