Not many things divide opinion in the print world quite like the net and email. They're deemed useful tools, but there's the perception it's still part of the enemy camp, taking valuable dollars away from print. However as Dr Joe Webb has so often said, take a reality check, then join in. Make it work for you.

Done correctly, email is one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing available to your clients. This in turn makes it a very profitable service designers can add to their portfolio. Why get into email marketing?

Reason 1: You can already do it - Sure, there are differences, but if you're good with words and can design a printed page, you've got the skills required.

• And it's also true that because of your skills, you'll do a far better job than your client can themselves, which is the real secret to your success.
• Providing you get the creative right and have a professional subscription-delivery mechanism in place, you can start offering email marketing as a service in no time.
• You can start extending your knowledge. Learn more about growing your customer's subscriber lists, avoiding spam filters, designing effective response methods etc.

Reason 2: It complements your current services. - Email marketing is the perfect add-on product to package with your existing print design services.

• Once you provided a printed newsletter for a client, why not re-purpose the material for an email campaign? Once the templates are built, if much easier than creating web pages.
  
• Perhaps branch into fully integrated, cross-media campaigns using print + internet marketing that really boosts response rates. (Click here).
• Provide newsletter subscription forms for their web site and start helping them build client lists.
• Design and print paper-based sign up forms for retailers or other business providers!

All good chargeable work that provides real value and returns.

• Do everything you can to encourage interested customers and subscribers to join your client's database for both printed and email newsletters.
• In a few months you've (hopefully) started growing a decent mailing list for your client, designing and sending monthly newsletters, which leads us to the next point...

Reason 3: It's a new and recurring revenue stream - A good marketing program is an organic thing that changes over time. Each issue needs to include new content or a new offer, there might be a design tweak you need to make or a new email client to test in.

• As well as improving your clients relationship with their customers or driving sales, a regular marketing program can also provide a great cashflow injection each month. The good news doesn't stop there.
• A recent survey of 1,500 marketing professionals not only found that 72% planned to increase their spending on email marketing in 2007, but more than half were outsourcing their email marketing to designers and creative agencies.

Reason 4: It works - Actually, works is an understatement. Based on research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing is predicted to return over $30 for every dollar spent in 2007.

• To put this in perspective, that's more than double the average return for other forms of online marketing, being a reliance upon websites, search engines and Google advertising.

So what's the catch?

Effective distribution and delivery mainly - Just a few years ago it was SO easy. Anyone could use standard, free email software like outlook express and send copies to as many clients as they desired, using the bcc function. With extra software, even add in colour and images. Local eMail marketing evangelists like Debbie Mayo-Smith made it look easy too, providing superb hints and tips for an effective campaign.

• Email marketing was easy before SPAM took over email systems and filtering started to block up to 80% of client promotional emails.
• Sending out multiple emails is becoming far more difficult today. Using normal desktop email software to deliver more than a few dozen emails simply doesn't work. Most ISPs like Xtra, iHug etc, will quickly assume you're a spammer and block it - Perhaps threaten you with disconnection. N.B. This has nothing to do with the actual content of your emails, just the fact that you 're trying to send too many at once.
• If you can overcome the above, then the receiving party's ISP will likely do the job instead with their filters and you could get on the dreaded 'email blacklist' worldwide! Even worst.

Plus there's Mac-PC issues, graphic layout nightmares, etc...

• There's also the ever-worsening issue of the email content you've expertly generated may not look the same for each recipient. This is especially the case for graphical emails designed on Mac  and received on Windows clients - MS Outlook 2007 being the worst offender.
• Images may be blocked and/or trigger filters. Much as we all like to add images, their inclusion brings it's own set of problems. 
• Bloated, poorly designed graphical (html) emails generated mainly from desktop email software slow delivery and often cause multiple errors. 

• It's not so much the graphic design or message that's going wrong here, it's simply the formating and delivery mechanisms that need sorting out. Fortunately the solution is both simple and inexpensive.
• We cover this in detail next month, with a new PrintNet service offering for Graphic Designers, Printers and their clients...

or phone me on 03-669 0181 or 09-889 0480 

Comments (0)