Are your promotional emailers easily actionable?

We’ve all received promotional emailers that leave us scratching our heads. They’re all about the brand and what the marketer wants to say about it, but there is no indication how the brand and marketer are going to help you. The best way to build brand loyalty is to understand what the customer/consumer is looking for and delivering that in the most direct, expedient, and friendly manner.

So many emailers contain multiple messages and potential actions, with lots of copy about brand and product attributes … new products,  product features, discount offers, and so on. The first task is identify the objective of the emailer and focus the message. Here are some tips to develop an effective and easily actionable emailer.

1. Define the objective:  What is this emailer intended to accomplish…build brand awareness, introduce a new product, remind customers/consumers of the value proposition? While a well crafted emailer may meet more than one objective, it should be designed to focus on the most important one.

2. Define the target audience:  Who is being targeted…new customers/consumers, current loyal and active customers/consumers, past customers/consumers who have been inactive for awhile? The message and offer to each of these audiences would be different. One size does not fit all, and email lists should be segmented so that audiences can be appropriately targeted with separate promotional messages.

3. Define the action:  What is the target audience supposed to do…click through for a coupon, recipe and menu ideas, product specific information, online purchase? Once the objective and the target audience are defined, the desired action is easier to define. If the target audience is new customers/consumers, an incentive to try the brand and product would be an appropriate action. If, on the other hand, the audience is current loyal and active customers/consumers, an invitation to view recipe and menu ideas to discover new ways to use the product would be an appropriate action.  While multiple actions may be appropriate, such as offering coupons to current customers/consumers, there should be one action in the emailer content that is clear and relates to the defined objective and target audience.

4. Make it easy: How does the target audience get from the emailer to the offer…preferably with one click to the appropriate website page. This seems so obvious, but yet so many emailers do not provide a direct actionable link. The more circuitous the route, the more time it takes, and the more frustrated the target audience becomes. Make it easy, direct, and quick.

Food marketers need to step out of their marketing box and think like their customers and consumers. What would you want to know about your product, what would motivate you to try it, how easy is it for you to get from the emailer to the website to get to the information you’re looking for? The answers may generate more easily actionable emailers and improved email campaign results.