I gave some good thought before writing this post. However, the reason I decided to continue with it was to educate anyone reading this post and hopefully this company too.
This is not a personal attack towards Z2A Village, but the way this campaign has been executed showed me that they didn't do a lot of homework or perhaps their team lacks the necessary skills to successfully launch an Email Marketing campaign.
Allow to me to point out their errors and show you how they could have made this campaign really great.
Strategy
It's clear to see that they wanted to promote the "2010 Green Fest". The strategy was probably that one would forward this email to 10 of your friends and provide them your friend's name and email addresses. This way they could build an in-house database. And in return you could win a meal voucher. So the WII-FM (What's It In For Me) factor was covered here.
What Went Wrong Here?
Design
As you can see from the image their footer (signature) is showing in the main body of the email. This shows that the designer/developer doesn't know his /her HTML or about email client compatibility.
Personalization
I'm dumb founded that a company like Z2A Village didn't even get the introduction text right. Quite sad.
A great way they could have done this was by doing the following ...
Good day {My Name}. You are receiving this email because one of your friends, {Name Of Your Friend} thought that you may benefit from this great offer.Or better yet, an approach like this would have been awesome!
Hello, this is {Name} from {Company Name}. I would like to invite you to the {Name Of Event} as I believe that your company could learn/benefit from this event. Find below the details regarding this event. To thank you for your time reading this email we would like to reward you with a chance to win a meal voucher. All you have to do to qualify for this great offer is to ...
But instead, they used a cheesy marketing approach. The introduction paragraph is so important (almost as much as the subject line of the email).
SPAM!
Yes, this email is SPAM, without a doubt! There is no "unsubscribe" link found anywhere in this email. And according to the CAN-SPAM Act this email is seen as SPAM. Nowhere does this company tell me where they have gotten my email address from or where I opt-in for this service they offer.
Proper Email Marketing Software
It looks like this company simply used Outlook to send out their 'campaign'. As seen below, it's clear that the email came from this company, but that they have CCed themselves and just BCC everyone else. Well, at least they got that right. But how would they go about now to monitor the success rate of the campaign? How do they even know who opened their email? And if they clicked through to a website etc.
What is the use of sending out a campaign if you can't monitor it? If they only invested in a good email marketing system they could have gain a lot of quality leads and would surely have built an unique in house database. Instead, they preferred to save a couple of Rands and do it themselves.
Conclusion
This company could have sent out a very successful campaign if only they did the following:
- Used proper email marketing software that can send an monitor the success of an campaign
- Used personalization to gain the trust of the recipient and increase opening-rates
- Double check layout in different email clients (Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail etc)
- Placed an unsubscribed link at the bottom of the email
- Inform the recipient how they managed to get hold of his/her email address
If your company is still trying to send out email campaigns like this, it might be a good idea to start calling in the professionals! Or continue this way and break down your own brand!
