Lesson Learned

During the well-attended workshop called ‘Get a grip on your e-mail marketing’ the participants were given many tips and tricks – and food for thought. I regularly send out e-newsletters and events announcements into the big wide world, so I already knew all there was to know. At least, that’s what I thought. How wrong I was! One of my e-newsletters was used as a case study during the workshop. Being confronted with your mistakes is certainly a wake-up call! Luckily most of what I’d done was OK, but I’d also missed out on a couple of opportunities.

In brief: when you feature a news item, include a ‘Read more’ button or a link to your website for the rest of the article. Check. Include an image to attract attention or add visual appeal. Check. Ensure that you also include the hyperlink to the full article behind the photo and not just by ‘Read more’. Oops, I hadn’t done that – my first mistake! People tend to click on an image, and if nothing happens you’re asking them to take a second step – to search for the ‘Read more’ link – and then you risk losing them, because they soon decide that it’s taking too long to achieve the desired result and they give up.

I use an e-mail program which includes a so-called ‘heat map’, which allows you to see which parts of your e-mail generate the most clicks. In my next e-newsletter, I did things exactly as I’d been told during the workshop. The photos received so many clicks that they were almost red on the heat map, but the ‘Read more’ link was hardly clicked on at all. Lesson learned! And that was just one of the many tips that we received.

I’m already looking forward to the follow-up workshop on lead nurturing – because I’m sure I still have plenty to learn about that too!

Saskia Stender