I was recently reading a blog about email marketing and branding. It was, as you might well imagine, written by a designer. The crux of the blog was that if your email newsletter was not carefully designed and branded it would not get read and would summarily be dismissed to the delete folder.

A rather bold statement to make and it made me wonder upon what foundation these claims were being made.

I say this because, while email marketinging can be very effective, there are a number of challenges that the email marketer faces, and the branding/design is but but one. I might even be bold enough to say that design and branding might even be a minor consideration. This is because for most email clients you have to actively turn images on to view the branding and design of an email, and if people are anything like me (read: lazy) they won’t necessarily turn images on the read the email.

If you are relying on the branding and design of your email to achieve the objectives of your email, then you may as well pack your bags and go home.

Before we move on let’s get it clear what I am saying. I am not saying that all email marketing should be plain text. What I am saying is that wrong to suggest only emails with images and branding will achieve the goals of the email. There are many examples of email marketing that are only in plain text/simple html that generate for their owners a healthy revenue and achieve their conversion targets.

I think this should bring up a note of caution for those involved in or considering email as a marketing and sales strategy. You need to be cautious about engaging the services of designers who have little understanding about email marketing. we should call these people “little picture” designers. This is opposed to the “big picture” designers who understand that their’s is just one part in a much bigger game.

Email marketing carries with it a number of challenges if it is to be an effective comunications and marketing tool. The first challenge that it faces is being opened by the recipient, this means that the enevelope details (subject and from fields) need to be used creatively and in a way that is specific to the subject of the email.

Once you’ve got through that challenge, it comes down to the message you are delivering. If the message you are delivering has very little to do with the envelope details, there’s a high probability that you will severly irritate your reader and the message will be deleted. The content of the email must be specific with a single call to action.

As an email marketer, you will be interested in three main statistics:

1. Open rate
2. Click through rate
3. Conversion rate

There are a number of tools and services you can use, but you might like to look at messageMaker as an email marketing application. This tool can be either self managed or managed on your behalf.