Expectation is the root of all heartache - William Shakespeare

Marketing emails are designed to engage the customers and generate sale leads, but annoying email formatting errors or inaccurate content can actually harm your brand reputation and sales. A successful marketing campaign delivers the most relevant message to the target audience at the right time. Know how to avoid some common errors so your emails don’t trigger spam filters or get misunderstood. Increase the readability and reach of your emails by following these 3 pointers: 

1.      Avoid using...

Often times, it isn't easy to distinguish between good and bad copywriting. But, as a very crucial part of any successful marketing strategy, you'll eventually have to come to terms with it. After all, you can only use the same basic copywriting strategy for so long until you start losing conversions. 

Engaging sales copy will not only improve your email click-through rates, but it will also help personalize your company brand. It gives your audience an honest look into your business culture,...

If you're doing email marketing, you should be thinking about your return on investment. 

This isn't particularly unique to email. It's not even unique to marketing. If you put money into some effort in your business, you want to figure out what that investment actually produces.

For example, we recently sent out a reactivation campaign for our ongoing business classes here in Indianapolis. (Is your email marketing agency doing reactivation campaigns?) Here's what it looked like:

This is a great...

As a graphic designer, I'm guilty of saying I'm part of the team that "makes things pretty." Really, though, design is much more than simply "making it pretty". Design is optimizing your message to visually convey its meaning in the clearest and most engaging way possible; we're copywriters of the visual form. Text and clarity are to a copywriter as color and composition are to a designer.

Wikipedia defines graphic design in a way I couldn't put into better words:

Graphic design is a creative...

I'm a brand manager.  I often wonder if that's an accurate representation of what a person "in charge" of a brand does.  Perhaps, more accurately, I'm a brand caretaker, a brand coordinator, or even a brandologist.  I spend much of my time observing and trying to better understand the company brand-in other words, I try to channel Jane Goodall.

Branding tends to be rather nebulous.  For some, a brand is the mark or logo. For others, it includes all of your marketing collateral, from your website...

The last entry for prepping your Holiday email campaign focuses on content and evaluating results. Choosing your content focus should be easy if you completed the tasks from week one and week two.

Test your subject lines and content. Can't decide on a subject line or where to place that "Buy Now" button? Email AB split testing takes the guess work out of it and shows you the results instead. Do not lean on just open or clickthrough numbers, instead keep the focus on conversion.

Keep your content...

How many times have you gone shopping for a trendy new gadget only to get home and spend the next hour fruitlessly trying to MacGyver your way into its plastic clamshell? You try scissors, a knife, the neighbor's blowtorch, even that rabid pit bull down the road - nothing is getting through. Your efforts turn into a Wile E. Coyote-esque attempt at catching Roadrunner. By some miracle of physics you finally manage to free the goods from their plastic tomb, only to be so wrought with rage you...

Queue epic movie trailer voice over: Since the dawn of fire, man has been gathering around its warm glow to share tales of adventure and disaster, love and heartache, beer and NASCAR, that hottie at the bar...

When (or perhaps more appropriately, why) did companies stop telling stories?  When did "Three easy payments of $19.95" replace "and they lived happily ever after"? People are, by nature, storytellers.  A kid on the playground tells another story of how strong and cool his dad is.  A coach...