Designing Custom Email Templates

Here at Indiemark, we design a lot of custom email templates all of which are intended to fit neatly within the boundaries of the client’s brand, render beautifully across devices, as well as ensnare the reader and draw them towards the desired action.

Sometimes we work with fairly conservative brands. So the final product is what you might expect, well, conservative.

But every once in a while we get the chance to flex our creative muscles and push the look, feel, and personality of the email template quite a bit further.

Project Background

Recently KIXEYE, the kickass social gaming company, approached us with the redesign of their newsletter template. They’re a pretty rad group so they wanted their emails to follow suit. For creative sprints like us this is always a welcome opportunity.

But rather than follow our established design process for this project (which includes reviewing the client’s style guide) we broke our own rules and started work on their newsletter template, sans style guide.

This was somewhat intentional, because it’s easier to be creative without restrictions but also because we were anxious to get funky.

Step One: Getting to Know KIXEYE

We learned about KIXEYE’s offerings as well as the demographics, behaviors and attributes of their players and fans. We learned about KIXEYE’s corporate culture and the typical type/volume of content their team will ultimately populate into their email template.

Step Two: Presenting Multiple Concepts

As we often do, we’ll put two or more designers on the early stage mock-ups. This helps to align a particular email designer’s style (and take on the project) with the client’s expectations.

Here are a few of the email designs we came back with initially:

Step Three: Thinning the Herd

Although there were winning elements, none of the designs truly tickled the client’s fancy.  We then brainstormed internally and pitched a couple of concepts to KIXEYE.

Once the concept was approved, we presented a single, focused design:

Step Four: Refining the Design

The client loved it. But they did ask that we ‘harden it up’ a bit.

Keep in mind, that the plan all along was to animate the email, in this case we would make the animals blink/move, the liquor bottle drip, and flicker the flames of Hell. (In case you didn’t already know, we really love email animations.)

Step Five: Taking a New Direction?

Because we didn’t wait on the, now finalized, style guide we were ready to present another variation which used the proper color scheme.

But upper-management at KIXEYE had second-thoughts about using cartoon-style imagery. Unknown to all of us, one of their competitors uses a similar style, so we came back with this:

Step Six: Animating, Coding and Testing

They really, really loved it now. So did we! The personality was completely on point.

We were now locked and loaded so we created the email animations:

(Can you find all four animated elements?)

We then proceeded to code the email, load it into their Email Service Provider and then test for proper rendering and functionality.

I’m happy to report that that the final product was bullet-proof,  on-brand, and easy to publish.

And that, my friends, is the true story of how we designed one custom email template.

About the Author: Scott Hardigree is founder of Indiemark and curator of Email Critic. He can be reached at scott@indiemark.com.

Email is not the be all and end all as a marketing tool.

It is only part of the sales funnel. We don’t send our campaign and then wipe our hands of the whole process. No, we email marketers play a vital role in moving people through the sales process, so they either end up at a website buying from you or in a sales person’s inbox as a warm lead.

For that reason, it’s imperative that we maximize every bit of attention we get when in front of a subscriber, prospect or customer. Email marketing can do a lot to nurture people along from email to sale.

You only have a few short seconds to get someone’s attention once you get into the inbox. Make the most of those seconds to turn them into minutes—and maybe sales—with these email marketing tips.

1. Be clear with words.

Do not assume. Anything. In as few words as you can manage, be sure to spell out what you’re offering and why they should want it, whether it’s a new wallpaper or a new whitepaper. Be customer-centric, clearly speaking in terms they understand and using pain points they can relate to. Also be clear about next steps, guiding them to the call to action and nurturing them to act.

2. Be clear with design.

Your email design must be as clear as your email message. Avoid clutter or a design that works against rather than supports your message. Make the design as easy and clear to read as the words, especially any buttons or links. Use the design to guide the recipient to the call to action and to encourage them to click on it.

3. Be strong in language.

Don’t be wishy washy in your words. Use strong language instead. Skip any use of “you might” or “you can” and jump right ahead to “you will.” Also skip the bold type and exclamation points. Instead be confident in your language, so that confidence carries over to the recipient and they feel more comfortable reading your email and possibly clicking your link.

4. Be bold in imagery.

Use images to reinforce your message by portraying the end result the prospect will enjoy if they buy from you. If you’re selling diet pills, show a skinny person. If you’re selling a webinar, show happy attendees. Also make sure images reinforce the branding you’re conveying. Use quality images to promote high-end products, for example, or formal poses if those are appropriate to marketing your business. Make the images tell a story without any words at all. People will “read” those images as surely as they read the email…or it might be the images alone they see, meaning the images are the only story you’ll have to tell!

5. Be seamless in transition.

Make sure the transition from email to landing page is seamless as can be. Any friction at all gives a prospect a reason to stop heading down the path you’d laid out. Avoid friction at all costs! Have a consistent language, message, design and use of images from email to landing page. Make the landing page as clearly related to the email as can be so there’s no break between clicking on the call to action in the email to filling out the form in the web page.

Implement one, some or all of these tips, for incremental improvements that will help your email marketing program become a more valued part of the whole sales process, nurturing people from inbox to Buy button.

About the Author: Marco Marini is the CEO of ClickMail Marketing and an acknowledged expert in email marketing with over a decade of experience in the field. Follow ClickMail on Twitter: @ClickMail

Some email marketing tactics stay tried-and-true, however. And email newsletter marketing is near the top of that list.

If email newsletter marketing has fallen out of favor at your organization, overshadowed by other marketing initiatives, here are seven reasons to give email marketing newsletters another look.

1. Different People, Different Channels

Some portion of your audience will turn to Twitter for your latest. Some will check in on your Facebook page. Still others will want your info delivered to their inbox because email newsletters remains their first choice for communications from you. Email newsletters keep you communicating with different people via different channels. In fact, your newsletter can be sent out via email, then archived on your website with tweets and Facebook links pointing to it. That approach meets everyone’s need!

2. Nurturing From Prospect to Customer

The email newsletter remains an effective way to build a relationship with a prospect, nurturing them along until they become a customer. They obviously like you enough to sign up for your marketing newsletter. Now keep moving things along in the inbox, kindly and noncommittally, in a way only the soft approach of a newsletter can do.

3. Staying Top of Mind

When someone buys from you, that’s only the beginning of the potential purchases that lie ahead, as long as you keep nurturing the relationship along. Email marketing newsletters can do that, nonchalantly keeping you top of mind until it’s time for another—or different—purchase.

4. Social Media Sharing

What do people share? Content! Whether they tweet it, link to it , blog on it or share it, people spread the word about content they like, whether it’s your writing, pictures or video. And your newsletter can be a mix of all three. As long as it’s great content people will want to share, the format matters less than the share-ability.

5. Serving an SEO Purpose

Even in an age dominated by Facebook, the search engines are still major players in any online marketing efforts. Getting found by people who don’t yet know about you is key, and, in many cases, SEO is how that happens. You give your SEO a boost every time you add content to your website…which archiving your newsletter automatically does. Easy to do, easy to benefit from.

6. Content Marketing

Content marketing is still a hot topic, and an easy one for you to address if an email newsletter is already part of your marketing arsenal. After all, what is a newsletter but content?

7. Repurposing Content

Content has value. And the more use you can get out of it, the more value it has. A newsletter can be repurposed content from your blog, whitepaper or Facebook commentary. Or it can be the fodder for any of those. Think “write once, use repeatedly,” and you’ll find your newsletter content is both fed by and feeds several other sources.

There you have it. Seven reasons why newsletters are still newsworthy…and still have a place in your online marketing strategy.

About the Author: Marco Marini is the CEO of ClickMail Marketing and an acknowledged expert in email marketing with over a decade of experience in the field. Follow ClickMail on Twitter: @ClickMail

I’m a huge advocate for promoting email on social channels and vice versa, so this email really caught my eye. I wanted to see how a larger company did it, perhaps learn a couple of things. I was eager to open this email,but my excitement quickly faded when I didn’t see a call to action above the fold; in fact, I had to scroll through SIX paragraphs just to find the call to action and a payoff!

It got me thinking that if a company as large as Kiss My Face can make these mistakes, so can other businesses. So here’s my analysis of this email and improvements that can easily be made.

Let’s start at the top, shall we?

Subject line: Let’s be friends

I loved this. I knew exactly what to expect when I opened the email.

From line: Kiss My Face

Again, great. I know who it’s coming from. I know I have opted-in to get their emails.

Design:

In Gmail at least, the background isn’t appearing and the top navigation — Choosing Natural, Our Ingredients, Olive Oil, Our Story, Seeds of Peace — is not stylized at all. In the ‘view in browser’ version they work fine.

This is where the testing conversation starts. You can never test too many times. You can never test in too many browsers. You can never test in too many email clients. In fact, if you use a tool like Litmus [link: litmus.com], then all your tests are in one place. If you can’t afford Litmus, at least hit the major browsers and email clients before you send your email.

I’m not sure what the bunny photo has to do with their brand. It’s cute, sure, and I get that the bunnies are “friends,” but that’s where the relationship ends for me.

Also, the logos on the top and bottom are in different colors. Is there a reason for that? I am a stickler for consistency, and I don’t see the point in having one blue and one mustard.

The call-to-action area (above the Facebook logo) is the same color. Change the colors and fonts so that my eye is drawn to the giveaway promotion and the founder’s Twitter handle.

Content:

This is where I have the biggest beef. There is just SO MUCH content; pare it down. The email starts out with a quote from an employee.That’s fine; it’s a cute intro and draws us in. Next is a history of the company — um, isn’t that on your website? Push me over there to read about it if I’m interested.

The third paragraph talks about how much they love interacting on Facebook. Okay, this is the perfect opportunity to put a link to the Facebook page here, but wait! If that happened, then I would have missed the fourth paragraph. This is where things get interesting.

The fourth paragraph talks about a promotion they are running: If you become friends with them on Facebook AND guess how many employees they have, you can win a gift basket of products. It’s a cute concept, but I would have missed it if I hadn’t read the entire email.

Takeaway:

I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of email. So reading more than a couple of paragraphs is enough. If you do your job well, your content teasers will be so well-written I will want more information and will click to your site to learn more.

The biggest takeaway from this analysis: Don’t make the payoff so hard. Make your call-to-action easy to find, above the fold. Your readers will thank you for it.

About the Author: Monica Sims is the Senior Manager of Social Media and Email Marketing at iContact, a division of Vocus. She can be reached on Twitter at @photosims

Same old. Same old. Same old.

That’s what some subscribers see in their email inboxes on a daily basis. How about the people on your list? Are your subscribers suffering from the dreaded disease we call Special Offer Overload?

They might be if that’s all they get from you.

If your email marketing program is based on sending out special offers, you’re not alone. That’s a typical focus because the goal of the email marketing program is ROI, after all.

However, there’s much to be said for not selling, but telling instead…telling stories, that is. Stories avoid the same old, same old syndrome, and give people a reason to look forward to receiving your emails.

Stories engage. Stories compel. Stories entertain. And in their own, indirect way, stories sell. A story doesn’t have to be of the fairy tale kind, with three bears and bowls of porridge. A story can be anything that isn’t directly selling. Think of this kind of content as articles you might read in a magazine, or case studies, or testimonials even. Stories can be employee profiles, company history or something totally unrelated to your business, like a holiday-themed piece. You might be surprised what kinds of content engage people once you move away from the special offer overload approach.

You’re still selling, but in an indirect way. You’re creating content people look forward to receiving. You’re creating good feelings about your company and brand. You are creating warm fuzzies and strengthening their loyalty to you, perhaps before they are even a buying customer.

You might not think your team is afflicted with Special Offer Overload. However, it’s a matter of perception. You might consider each message sent to be uniquely different, but it’s the subscriber’s perception that matters. If one special offer looks like the next to them, it doesn’t matter how different they are in your eyes.

If you’re not interested in engaging your subscribers by curing your team of Special Offer Overload syndrome, think about the effect on your email deliverability rate if the same old, same old continues. People will tune you out, ignoring your email messages, thereby indirectly telling their ISPs that your email is not email they want. Then what? Then the ISP makes sure they won’t get any from you by blocking you.

Maybe a cure for Special Offer Overload is in order after all?

About the Author: Marco Marini is the CEO of ClickMail Marketing and an acknowledged expert in email marketing with over a decade of experience in the field. Follow ClickMail on Twitter: @ClickMail

What is the open rate and click-through rate?

The open rate is the ratio of the number of unique people in the email campaign who opened your email to those it was delivered to. Click rate is the same but for clicks. Open and click rate definitions do vary between email service providers so check the definition of your system. See also the S.A.M.E project definitions.

- Tim Watson, Founder at Zettasphere (@tawatson)

How are opens and clicks tracked?

Opens (rendered opens) are tracked by an invisible pixel that is loaded when the email is opened with images on. That pixel is given a unique identifier which is tied to the recipient.  When that person opens their email it is tracked to them. Opens can happen either in the preview pane, when an email is fully-loaded or even when the web version is visited.

Clicks are tracked by a URL redirect process; each link in an email is given a redirect with a unique tracking token that is tied to each individual recipient.  So they click a link, that link is logged in the database and then redirected to the final URL destination.  Each link is tracked separately.

So let’s say you receive an email and open it with images on, you then forward that email to five friends and they open it with images on and click on a few links. All of those opens/clicks will be attributed to you, as you were the first recipient. Even though others clicked and opened, the email still thinks you are the one making those actions.

Also, if you forward the email to a friend and they click the unsubscribe link, they will actually be unsubscribing you, as the email is tracked by recipient which was you.

- Chris Donald, Chief Strategist at Inbox Group (@inboxgroup)

What is an email bounce?

A bounce can be hard or soft. A hard bounce is a permanent bounce where the email address is not valid, for instance. A soft bounce is temporary like when a receiving server is down and you can continue to retry the sending with a higher success of reaching the subscriber.

- Kelly Lorenz, Marketing Strategist at Apsis (@KNLorenz)

What does previewing an email mean?

Broadly speaking, ‘previewing an email’ refers to anything that the user might see before fully opening an email campaign. This can include the preview pane in email clients, and additional preview text that is shown alongside the subject line in the inbox. As users often evaluate whether they should open the email based on these previews, it’s worth thinking about how to make these engaging and intriguing.

- Elliot Ross, Freelance Senior Creative Designer at elliot-ross.co.uk (@iamelliot)

Can I retract a sent email campaign?

Some ISPs, such as Gmail, provide an option to “undo” the sending of an email. However, this feature is rare and not a 100% guarantee. Most email marketing companies do not provide this option. You will want to check ahead of time if this feature is offered. Better yet, take a few moments to look over your email before you click “Send” to verify its accuracy.

-  Andy Shore, Social Networking Manager at Benchmark Email (@benchmarkemail)

What does CAN-SPAM really restrict me from doing, or require me to do?

Don’t send stuff to people who said they don’t want it. Being decent, honest and transparent is a good start to conforming to CAN-SPAM. It’s the minimum legal standard rather than best practice. Offering opt-out, processing promptly and reliably is a key requirement. Here’s a good check list summary.

- Tim Watson, Founder at Zettasphere (@tawatson)

What email metrics are the most important?

Contrary to popular belief, standard email metrics like open, click and conversion rates don’t reveal the true impact of your email marketing program. At best these “process metrics” are diagnostic in nature. In my book, the most important email metrics – the ones that provide a true picture of email contribution – are ROI (return on investment), RPE (revenue per email address) and EAOV (average order value directly attributable to an email response).

- Karen Talavera, President Synchronicity Marketing (@SyncMarketing)

About the Author: I’m Scott Hardigree founder of Indiemark and curator of Email Critic. I can be reached at scott@indiemark.com

First you’ll see the campaign details as well as screen captures of the creative, then you’ll find the critiques. Finally, did we miss anything? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Guitar Center Email Critique

Subject Line: Private Email Coupon

Friendly From: Guitar Center

Received: Tuesday, January 24th at 5:07am EST

Inbox Preview (Gmail):

With “Images Off”:

With “Images On”:

The Animation:

Mobile View (iPhone):

Tim Watson, Founder at Zettasphere (@tawatson)

Subject line – I find the subject line is too short, it doesn’t give me enough information about value, too non-specific. I like the use of private as opposed to the often used exclusive word. Do people really believe exclusive anymore? However body copy is inconsistent and switches back and forth between exclusive and private. Should be more consistent message.

Pre-header – Good to see use is made of the pre-header. It starts by talking about the coupon code before talking about the offer and urgency. I don’t need the coupon code until I’m hooked on the deal. The messaging order is wrong. Is whitelisting request really the best use of pre-header space. Time to re-think this?

Clock graphic? – This is weak and doesn’t add to the messaging. If its supposed to give time urgency it should be much clearer, may be a calendar highlighting the next two days.

Design overall – Its way too busy with too many angles, fonts and styles. I simply didn’t know where I was supposed to look at first.

Copy paragraph – The paragraph of copy starting “Don’t worry. You’re on the list…” begins well and should be shorter and above the fold, or a least the first couple of lines of it, so its seen with images off and there is something to engage with when no images shown.

Call to action buttons – Good to see use of buttons with high contrast and that work with images off.

Urgency – More should have been made of the urgency factor, including it in the subject line.

Specific single products – Given its 13% off single item over $99 deal then the most popular two or three items that qualify might have been included to whet the appetite. Though I’d split test this as it might serve to distract from getting to the website.

Rendering – Kudos for a design that rendered and translated well on the mobile screen.

Chris Donald, Chief Strategist at Inbox Group (@inboxgroup)

Real-time Content – A perfect example of an email that would benefit from time-based and location-based email content.  If the email had a countdown clock letting me know exactly how much time was left on the sale as well as the nearest location to me when I opened the email that would have rocked.

Animation – The current animation although it catches the eye, seems a bit strange.

Personalization – The personalization in the pre-header was probably enough and not needed in the body.

Rich Barrett, Creative Director at Mass Transmit (@richcbarrett)

Design – As far as an email design that works for both mobile and desktop, I think this is a nice looking example. The bold “13% OFF” and the contrast of the “48hr Sale” and the blue buttons on the dark gray background are very effective.

Animation – I was thrown by the back and forth clock animation to the point where I wasn’t sure it was supposed to be a clock and wondered if it was supposed to be a dial on an amp or something? I’m still not sure. Either way, I applaud the subtle use of animation but there was probably a better way to handle it.

Below-the-fold – A lot of the bottom half of the email seems to be an after-thought. The layout of the blue buttons with the “Now Thru 1/25″ graphic seems a little unbalanced. The large block of text below it could have used more attention style-wise. And the bent-paper shadow graphic at the bottom is unnecessary and seems at odds with the rigid rectangle it is meant to be cast from.

Samantha Iodice, Email Marketing Manager at Aspen Marketing Services (@e_maven)

Offer - Perhaps the 13% is supposed to be intriguing and fails; but perhaps if it was deployed for a sale on Friday the 13th it would have worked brilliantly.

Buttons – The buttons are great, except I wonder if they’re too close for mobile usage and would suffer fat-finger syndrome? Hard to tell.

Subject Line – I agree that “private” would have been the preferred term, and would add only potentially personalizing the SL “Scott, a private sale – 2 days only” or “Scott, a private sale – act fast!” or some iteration.

Takeaway – What’s so funny to me is that it’s Guitar Center – how easy is it to build excitement with guitars and rock n roll? Big fail.

Evan Diaz, VP of Creative Services at Inbox Group (@evandiaz)

Subject Line – It’s a little bland in my opinion (“email coupon” zzzZZ), but overall it’s saved by the word “Private” I would have used the great line they had in the body of the email as the subject “Don’t worry. You’re on the list” It has the same feeling of exclusivity but it also creates a bit of curiosity.

Offer - 13% Simply great. It feels much more substantial than the typical 10% to the customer, but doesn’t cut margins too much for the retailer; a nice balance.

Hidden Gem – One thing I almost missed the first time I looked at the email was that basically everything in the email is clickable. The buttons are of course, but they also took the time to make sure all the images and headlines were as well, and they even made all of the body text clickable! That’s pretty slick in my book :)

Scott Hardigree, CEO at Indiemark (@indiescott)

Subject Line – Exclusivity meets brevity. I love it. However it could use a a sense of urgency, after all this is a 48-hour sale.

Pre-header – The first name personalization and sense of urgency really stood out in my Gmail inbox lineup.

Header – The first name personalization in the header copy (on the black background) looks and feels unnatural.

Rendering – On or off….who cares?! This email is understandable and actionable, in either state.

Offer – I suppose that the odd discount of 13% is intended to peak my interest but all it does it make my calculations all the more difficult.

Animation – It’s just odd. I assume it’s supposed to be a clock. If so, I feel like I’m traveling back and forth through time, not racing toward a quickly approaching cut-off date.

About the Author: Yo! I’m Scott Hardigree founder of, super cool email marketing agency, Indiemark and curator of Email Critic. I can be reached at scott@indiemark.com.

If you’re like some companies, your response might be a dry form letter confirmation…or no confirmation at all. And that, dear colleagues, is akin to a cold shoulder and missed opportunity.

If you’re still on the fence and thinking a welcome email is an unnecessary step in the email marketing process or one not worth your effort, here are 12 reasons to persuade you to think otherwise:

1. You’ll engage: It is the age of engagement and ISPs now look at how much interaction your emails generate. A good welcome email gets you off to good start by engaging that new subscriber or customer right away.
2. You’ll enjoy a higher open rate: Studies have shown that welcome emails have higher open rates than marketing emails. That alone should be reason enough to make them part of your email marketing program
3. You start building that relationship: The person who signs up for your email has already raised their hand and said “yes, I want to hear from you.” Who better to extend a warm welcome to?
4. You don’t have to do a thing: Welcome emails couldn’t be any easier to do. Set them up to be triggered automatically based on an action like subscribing or purchasing.
5. You get a chance to upsell: And a chance to cross sell. With the higher open rates garnered by welcome emails, what better time to offer sweet deal on a doohickey or give them another guide?
6. You build trust: When someone gives you email address, they are trusting you with a personal piece of information that has value in their eyes. They give this to you in exchange for something you have of value, whether that’s your email newsletter, special pricing or technical library. Reassure them with your welcome email, to let them know they made a smart decision they won’t regret, and to show them you are in fact trustworthy.
7. You show appreciation: Who doesn’t like a “thank you”? Thank them for subscribing, buying or downloading, whatever that action might be. Those two little words go a long ways and carry a lot of weight.
8. You set expectations…again: The quality of your email messages will be judged by the recipients and how well they think you’re serving them. To keep them happy, make sure to be clear on what they should expect a second time. Maybe even remind them of the frequency. Make them feel good about the choice and confident in what to expect.
9. You build brand: Done well, the email design and content of your welcome email will subtly reinforce your brand, whether it’s wildly whimsical or fastidiously formal.
10. You improve deliverability: When you ask recipients to add you to their address book upon receipt of the welcome email, you improve your chances of making it into their inbox when the marketing emails start.
11. You gain a competitive edge: Despite the many advantages of welcome emails, not every business uses them. For those that do, you’ll gain a competitive edge by standing out in the crowd. Send a welcome email to an oft-neglected consumer, and they’ll notice.
12. You get to reward them: Give them a coupon or discount or some other special offer. They will get warm fuzzies about your brand for sure. And boy will they “welcome” that next email from you!

If welcome emails are either not used or poorly used as part of your email marketing program, here’s hoping these 12 reasons make 2012 the year you turn that chance for a first impression into a chance for higher ROI.

About the Author: Marco Marini is the CEO of ClickMail Marketing and an acknowledged expert in email marketing with over a decade of experience in the field. Follow ClickMail on Twitter: @ClickMail

Mark my words. We have crossed the threshold – there are just about 11 months left until it all goes up in smoke.

The Mayan Calendar predicts the end of days arriving promptly in December 2012. This is quite a big deal to many people, for obvious reasons, and will affect your decisions on choices such as whether to pay off your debts, buy a sports car, quit your job to spend your final months on a beach, etc.

So amid all the end cometh prophecies, thought I’d share some ideas on how to run a successful email campaign even if it all does go up in smithereens.  Here are 5 emailing tips to prepare you for the end of the world as we know it:

1)    Have a Contingency Plan

No matter how experienced or professional you are, the day will come when the sky turns dark, the earth trembles, and the four horsemen of the apocalypse descend on the world around you. In other words; an email marketing campaign will go bad. Way bad.

What’s your worst case scenario strategy? How will you be reacting in the event of the unthinkable? What will you do if someone presses the “=” button on the sum of all fears and, in an instant, it suddenly all adds up?

Whether you’ve sent your newsletter to the wrong list, had spammy words in your headline without checking your deliverability score, or whether you forgot to test for broken links – there’s a lot that can potentially go wrong in any email campaign.

When this happens, you need a back-up plan. So, for example, in case a faulty mailer ever reaches your subscribers’ inbox, it’s useful to have a brief, pre-written apology letter on hand to notify readers immediately that you are experiencing technical difficulties, that they should disregard your last send and wait for the corrected version…It may save your life.

2)    Don’t push the Red Button

In popular fiction, almost every end of the world type situation is inevitably averted with the use of some or other high-yield explosive.

When it comes to emailing however, bombing tactics have never solved anything. No matter how much you want your communication plan to succeed, blasting out emails to people that didn’t give you permission to do so is the fastest way to get blocked by spam filters.

Getting removed from a blacklist is a lot easier said than done, so email bombardment is one of the sure-fire ways to seal your own demise as a direct marketer.

If you want to have a critical impact on your target, make sure you are only sending to those who have made it onto your list via an opt-in (or better yet, double opt-in) procedure.

Email marketing is a business that is based on trust and the voluntary agreement of subscribers to get promotional emails, and building trust from the beginning means acquiring email addresses by legitimate means.

Once you have cleansed your list of those who have not expressly opted in for it, segmenting readers into groups of people with similar interests is the next step to ensure that you are only sending individually-targeted messages – which is vital to long term emailing survival.

Not everyone signs up to your newsletter for the same reasons; they live in different places, have different behavioral patterns and they like different products. Proper list segmentation will lead to explosion-free improved open rates and campaign ROI.

3)    Beware the Monkey

There is a school of thought which has proposed that with the pending doom of mankind, our primate cousins will see the gap in the market, stop aping around and begin running the show.

Yes indeed, the end of days might just be the perfect opportunity for planet Earth to come under new, banana-munching management.

But how will you know you can trust your new providers? What will tell you that they can give you everything you need and that they won’t go gorilla at the first sign of trouble?

If you ever have any doubts that all the monkey love they can give is not the best choice for your emailing prosperity, then it’s time to compare and seek alternatives.

Even when times are tough and ESPs are few, there will always be a number of them in operation, which will give you freedom of choice to find the best fit for your company as long as you are actively looking for a good deal.

There’s no better time than the complete annihilation of society to make some changes and get a fresh start. So shop around. Does your ESP give you all the features and integrations you need? Is their pricing structure the most affordable, their newsletter editor the most flexible and their support staff the most helpful? If not, then it’s time to ditch that monkey.

4)    Always Carry Your Zombie Spray

‘End of the World’ situations are usually when ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night tend to crop up.

Believe it or not, there are already some basic rules for surviving in the likely event of a post-apocalyptic zombified wasteland – as codified by undead maestro and the Founder of Email Critic himself, Scott Hardigree; where he shares a slightly modified version of typical zombie survival tips, making them applicable to email marketing.

Included are such golden guidelines like that it takes at least two gunshots to safely deal with a Zombie – which is the same when dealing with customers and prospects in that you’ve got to hit them again and again (and again) to demonstrate your value.

For more in-depth expertise about dealing with Zombies, see the full article.

5)    Embrace the End

As the great philosophers tell us, real happiness is within living every moment to the fullest, which is (of course) equally true for the passage of time after the final countdown.

But let’s face it, even if you have a flamethrower, food to last you through 50 years of nuclear winter and all the other essentials;with the surplus of hazards that will be accompanying the fall of man it won’t be that easy to stay alive and any given moment could still be your last.

However, just because it’s the apocalypse, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t stop to smell the roses, take joy in the little things or take time off for some R&R.

Life is short, so have fun creating your newsletters and send every email like it could be the final one you ever do.

About the Author: Wikus Engelbrecht is a marketing writer, journalist and media liaison at GraphicMail, an international email and mobile marketing service provider. Since 2003 his professional career in language and media has spanned the film, print advertising, magazine publishing, web development and online content industries. He is a fanatic blogger and is currently digging a hole in his back yard so that he too can survive the apocalypse. He can be contacted, until the clock strikes zero hour, at wikus@graphicmail.com