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Email marketing services like Constant Contact offer a number of useful features – tracking, contact management, list segmentation, and design templates, just to name a few. These are all great features. But that’s all they are – features. They don’t help you with marketing strategy or messaging. And their design templates can only take you so far toward ensuring that your company’s visual brand is reflected in your email messages.

First let’s talk strategy.

You’re a small business. Most likely you have better things to do than think about the marketing buzz word, “strategy”. Yes, you want to do email marketing. Maybe you’ve even tried it. But when you sit down in front of the computer you’re faced with quandaries like “what?”, “who?”, “how-often?”, “when?”, “what should it look like?” and “what happens if?” (Yikes! Right now you’re probably thinking “I’d rather be at the dentist.” ) This is where professional marketing brains can help. Solving these marketing quandaries is what we do. A marketing professional can take your email marketing to a whole new level of effectiveness.

On to messaging.

You’re a restaurateur, or an interior designer. Or maybe a professional hit man. (Good. You’re paying attention.) Yes, you’re articulate and a good writer, but you’re not a copywriter. Marketing copy is a special breed of language. Good marketing writing knows what’s in the mind of the reader. It anticipates needs and questions. It always asks for action and it has a voice that reflects your company’s personality. My favorite analogy is “Yeah, I can cook. But when I want a superb meal, I go to a restaurant.” A professionally written email message will polish your reputation, increase open rates, and get more people to your web site. Not to mention give you more time focus on running your business.

Aesthetics is just a fancy word for “really nice email!”

I’m a designer by training. And I’m a self-proclaimed design snob. I’m also a geek, therefore I divide email aesthetics into two categories: The first, and most obvious is visual design. Email marketing services have templates and “Wizards” you can use to build your email. In my experience these tools focus solely on making design easy, but fall down on making design good. Yes, you can get it done, but there are many time-sucking obstacles like fighting with your service’s poorly designed user interface, and making design decisions that – please excuse me for being blunt – are too often, well, they stink – and don’t look as good as they really could. Like good copywriting, good design provides polish that will make your email blasts more effective.

The second aspect of email aesthetics is one you don’t see. It’s the code. The guts of a fancy HTML email are complex – more complex than a standard web page because of the wild diversity of email client software. Even the best email marketing services’ “Design Wizards” do a C+ job of making emails look good. But a web design professional with email coding experience will make your email beautifully detailed, completely customized with your company’s visual brand, and it will look as intended in all email software versions.

Gee, this all sounds expensive.

Yes, hiring a professional is more expensive than the $15 a month you’re spending on an email marketing service. Most of the expense will be in the upfront cost of setting up your email marketing strategy and developing your custom HTML. But once you’re up and running there’s a lot you’ll be able to do yourself.

Step away from the computer.

You know that email blasts are a powerful marketing tool. You can do it yourself and get results. Or you can go back to running your business, hire us, and watch your emails resonate.

The other day John and I had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory in Chestnut Hill. If you’ve ever eaten at one of these cookie-cutter chain restaurants you’ve probably noticed that they run ads in their menus. It’s actually a good business practice because the revenue gained from ad sales is used to offset the costs of these full-color, ring-bound, laminated, 30-page extravaganzas. Most of the menu ads are mundane and uninspired, but that day, one ad caught my creative director eye.

The ad was for Coke and my immediate, out-loud reaction was “This is a wonderful example of contextual messaging!” Disinterested, my non-marketer, psychotherapist partner looked up from his own menu and suggested that I “Put in the blog.” I got the hint, shut up, and ordered my meal.

What the heck is “contextual messaging?”

There are many aspects to good creative. The most obvious being well-crafted strategy, copy, design, and high-quality production. One way good creative can become great creative is by employing what I call contextual messaging. Basically, it’s a technique that understands, and takes advantage of, the viewer’s surroundings at the moment they experience the message. When used skillfully, the technique combines marketing goals, media selection, and creative to produce a message that not only sells the product, but also entertains by recognizing aspects of the viewer’s surroundings. This ad for Coke is a perfect example of contextual messaging.

Coke ad in the Cheesecake Factory menu.

First off, the ad is completely Coke – It truly supports the brand with its clean, white and red design. The main image is a fire extinguisher with the Coke logo on it. The only copy is a headline – “Hot Cajun Jambalaya. Cool Coke.” (I’ll ignore the fact that the headline is in all lower case letters and followed by an “ah-duh” parenthetical statement. Hey, nobody’s perfect.) This ad refuses to be just another pretty lump of words and pictures. It actually becomes a partner in my dining experience, and in the process, inspired a smile.

Now for the icing on the cheesecake. It’s clear to me that the creative and media teams actually worked together to place the ad opposite Cajun Jambalaya listed in the menu – Freekin’ brilliant. Ok, maybe overstated, but I get excited about this stuff. You have to understand that in this age of glamorous broadcast and online media, innovative and thoughtful print creative is going the way of the dinosaur.
My hat is off to the team at Coke for creating such a great print ad. (And thank you for giving me a really good blog topic!) Oh yeah – Guess what I ordered? Yup. Cajun Jambalaya and a [Diet] Coke. Yum.

I just hate it when good marketing makes me do bad things. Like buy candy bars that I have no interest in. Case in point: Snickers’ recent “Snacklish” ad campaign.

A little background

TBWA/Chiat/Day New York, famous for promoting Absolut vodka, Michelin tires and numerous now-iconic consumer products, is the creative force behind the recent “Snickers Speak” media blitz. Focused on customer satisfaction (presumably, satisfying hunger), it has invented a new vocabulary of words, presented within the familiar Snickers visual brand. Words such as “Nougetaboutit” and phrases like “Get a degree in Snackanomics” appear on buses, in internet and TV ads, and in point of purchase displays. I’ve been aware of these nonsensical expressions for several months, and while I find them pretentious and dumb, they have succeeded in making me wonder, “what is this Snacklish irreverence all about?”

Candy with an attitude.

A quick Google search enlightened me. Well, kind of. Mars Snackfood’s VP of integrated marketing communications, Carole Walker, had some pretty confusing things to say in plain English: “By taking Snickers’ core equities like its unique ingredients and satisfaction, we are reminding our consumers why they love Snickers so much.” (Core equities? What is this, candy banking?) The new language is everywhere, even infiltrating text messaging and blogging. You can post your own Snacklish phrase on Facebook. And while most aren’t exactly AdWeek material, some of these terms are topical and funny. One fave: “Don’t catch the swine chew.”

Discovery

Last week in the grocery store checkout line, I looked down and felt an odd rush. There was a tray of Snickers bars. Unmistakable from their billboard kin, they lay in two neat rows: dark brown wrappers, red-rimmed white fields, energetic blue italic fonts. I picked one up and flipped it over. On the back it read “Hungerectomy.” I overturned another. This one said “Substantialiscious.” In all, I looked at the back of some 20 odd bars, taking verbal inventory. I found “Peanutopolis” and “Nougeticity.” What now? Buy them of course, all four unique ones. It frightened me to know that I was putty in the hands of marketing brilliance, pure and simple.

Delivery on the promise

I ripped into one. The taste was nothing new – still the tooth-achingly sweet, salty and chewy prize of trick-or-treating days. If not in the bar, where was the satisfaction exactly? Inside the wrapper were printed the word and its faux definition, “Substantialiscious: The weight of something when you weigh it with your tongue.” Unbelievable! An adjective flaunting itself as a noun. And the meaning? Absurd! Who are these copywriters, five-year-old spelling bee dropouts? Bad candy!

The agency had grabbed me. They had engaged my attention – or should I say, obsession – and then reinforced my growing interest with each encounter. When I finally discovered Snickers for real, now THAT was satisfying. What’s more, they were there for the taking.

Everything this campaign made me do:

(1) NOTICE the billboard ads.

(2) RECOGNIZE the brand. “It’s a Milky Way.” (close, but wrong.)

(3) GOOGLE “candy bar ads.” Learn the campaign was for Snickers.

(4) BOOKMARK the imbecilic quote from Mars Snackfood.

(5) RESEARCH web sites and blog entries praising and parodying the campaign.

(6) IDENTIFY Snickers at my local grocery store.

(7) PURCHASE several, just for the “Snacklish” words.

(8) SAVE THE WRAPPER to photograph for this blog post.

(9) WRITE this blog entry.

I love a well-crafted ad

This experience reinforced my admiration for viral marketing and ingenious creative. I had been the unwitting subject of a highly effective “call to action.” Like a good divorce lawyer, the campaign used dubious tactics, but it won the case. I will never again look at a Snickers with neutrality. Curiosity, attraction, obsession, consumption – it’s what makes great marketing remarkable.