Direct Email Marketing – DEM

Direct Email Marketing

The E-mail marketing is a type of marketing that uses the e-mail as a way of communicating commercial and non-commercial messages to the public.

// Essential pre-requisite: the quality of contacts database to which the email are sent.

Before thinking about realizing a DEM campaign, it is necessary to evaluate the database of contacts to which we want to point our communication. Nowadays our mailboxes are full of messages every day. And even if SPAM has not been and will never be eradicated, the quality of the most common and best email systems (Google Apps for business or Gmail just to mention the most popular system) allows us to read messages specifically addressed only by known senders. Maybe we have quickly signed up for a classifieds site, and after few days we might find messages that mention our name, but this messages are basically unwanted.

A user who reads emails from smartphones as it is from desktop, generally picks up the message only if the object is of his/her interest, and the sender who sends the email is credible or known to him. Therefore, if we decide to implement a Direct Email Marketing campaign, it is crucial to be worried about the quality of the database available or acquired.

The flags that are below the registration forms often hide the possibility that a given website may sell the data to databases or companies that provide mailing lists as a service.

Hence, it can happen that a user is overwhelmed by email messages, which, although less annoying than SMS or phone calls, can still be left unread by the user if they have no apparent interest or appeal.

It is important to solve in advance the possible issues. 

// End of introduction

Having identified the goal of DEM communication and considering that the database available (created internally or acquired) is suitable for receiving messages, here begins the hard work of the direct email marketing strategist.

The popular belief is that it is enough to create an email and send it to everyone! It doesn’t work like that, in quality projects with deep relationships, we don’t limit ourselves to this.

Similar to an efficient production line, here the copywriter will have the task of develop the content in textual form, which contains the essential information. In this scenario the graphic designer will not only have to transform the content and the call-to-action into images, but he/she will also have to produce the html to be included in the newsletter’s creation software, to be sent along with the mailing list.

Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing else to be added, but when there is nothing more to take away.

Before being sent, the message passes through the expert hands of the supervisor (marketing manager, company manager or whoever covers its place), that amends and sends to a small group of users. Yes, you read that right, a SMALL group of users. To test the effectiveness and responsiveness but also other small and crucial aspects. It is even better if you have internal resources to perform A / B tests, or if the system used provides this service. Well, now we can send the message. (STOP! Did we check how it appears on smartphones? 37% of emails in Italy in May 2013 – * Source Nielsen – were opened by a smartphone. Did we enter the tracking codes ??!). At this point we can finish the assembly and quality control process and send it over!

After few years and hundreds of thousands of emails sent, these procedures and many others, are in the DNA of an agency that makes DEM and value-added services for its customers.

Our work does not end here: we must focus on the analysis of the email, and we have to verify its correspondence to the objectives. In addition to the behavior of the users on the landing pages we are going to check the real effectiveness with respect to the forecasted action / objective.

HT&T Consulting profiles target users for its Clients, through several management activities of old and new contacts, in order to implement and plan the Direct Email Marketing campaigns, which are aimed to achieve the projected goals.

For the Direct Email Marketing campaigns that implements and manages, HT&T aims to have a high quality flow and volume of visits from the messages sent.

HT&T is MailUp reseller but we can also use other softwares, which are more or less known in relation to specific needs requested by our Clients.

No spam, No towards confused internet surfers who end up on the website by mistake, Yes to users who are already qualified and potentially interested to the brand and receptive to the messages sent.