<p>We’ve been creating emails for clients for years now, and the need for speed and low price have never been more important. Depending on the client, the process can be laborious, long-winded and non-fruitful – statistics show that traditionally, 53% of brands will take over two weeks to produce just one email!</p>
<h2><strong>Speed and timing</strong></h2>
<p>Emails should be perfectly timed to be in line with wider marketing campaigns, or responsive to something that should be shared as quickly as possible. Think about it… the brands that were ready to start promoting their Face Masks the day that Boris announced they were a requirement were 10 steps ahead of the game. By standardising your emails with templated designs, you can speed up the entire process and send out emails that look great with a very short turn-around time.</p>
<h2><strong>Audience</strong></h2>
<p>Know your audience. What do they want from you? What do you have to offer them? How do you get them to engage with you and your brand? Be clear and succinct and relevant in your message and use actionable language to achieve audience engagement – ‘Sign Up for…’, ‘Learn more…’. There’s nothing more frustrating than receiving an email but being unable to understand the CTA.</p>
<h2><strong>Stand out – get personal</strong></h2>
<p>It is estimated that in 2022, 347.3 billion emails will be sent and received every day. Personalise where possible – 70% of brands do not use personalisation so you’ll stand out if you do. Don’t use a generic email address to send your emails – you’re more likely to be deleted. Send them from a real person and add a real email signature – it’s far more personal and helps build relationships.</p>
<h2><strong>Stand out – subject line</strong></h2>
<p>Almost 50% of emails are opened because of the subject line alone.  For many people, this is your one and only chance to grab their attention, to compel them to open and read your email – miss it, and they’re gone.</p>
<p>Your subject line should be clear and strong. Statistics show that subject lines with less than 50 characters achieve a 12% higher open rate and a 75% higher click through rate than longer ones; and bear in mind that on a mobile, only approx. 25-30 characters are displayed.</p>
<p>In addition, just under 70% of email recipients report emails as spam based purely on the subject line so remember to avoid spam trigger words in your subject lines at all costs. Here are some examples:</p>
<ul>
<li>Final</li>
<li>Reminder</li>
<li>Sale</li>
<li>Tempting</li>
<li>Specials</li>
<li>Complimentary</li>
<li>Help</li>
<li>Donation</li>
<li>Don't</li>
<li>Unique</li>
<li>State-of-the-art</li>
<li>Discount</li>
<li>Partner</li>
</ul>
<h2><strong>Stand out – content</strong></h2>
<p>When writing copy for your email, it’s similar to writing copy for a website.  Stick to a logical structure; keep your paragraphs short; include one topic per paragraph. Map out exactly what you want to say and what you want to achieve. Think about what would entice you to open an email – what would you want to see and what would frustrate/annoy you.</p>
<p>Keep your content clear and concise and make sure your focus is obvious. Include compelling benefits and features that relate to your audience but avoid sending too much information that will overwhelm or disengage your readers (this will also act as a red flag for spam filters). Ensure your call to action is very clear and easy to see – remember many people scan-read emails at speed. Remember you want to drive the reader to your website landing page for more information, so your copy needs to be short and enticing.</p>
<p>Email marketing continues to deliver results, but it is constantly evolving and in order to keep up, you need to trial and test new ways; send targeted messages, personalised messages, and understand that what has worked previously, may not work today.</p>
<p>Embracing change in your email marketing strategy can improve campaign performance, make your customers more responsive, and help your business to grow.</p>
<p>Is it time to update your email marketing techniques?</p>


Become super-efficient at sending compelling emails that really work!

<p>One great result from the last few years, is the time and inclination that it has given us to reflect upon and look at things from a different angle (and we don’t just mean from our kitchen table via a zoom link!). Not only as individuals, but also as a collective agency. For many businesses, it was the ideal/essential time to realign goals, plans and ways of working, but mostly to be reactive, responsive and creative in order to keep their business afloat, and possibly even to thrive.</p>
<p>For us, the important next step is to embed these new processes and ways of thinking so that we can not only adapt to the ‘new-normal’ but grow stronger and have a greater impact in an increasingly competitive space.</p>
<p>We’ve pulled together a list of the things that we believe businesses should be focusing on now to really drive their brand and business forward:</p>
<h2>1.   <strong>Revitalise and clarify your brand message</strong></h2>
<p>We at Design One have taken the opportunity to finally revamp our website in the last few weeks and in doing so, to remind existing and new clients (along with ourselves) what we are really all about. It’s all too easy (guilty as charged) to spend all of your time working on client’s brands, future projects, quick-wins or just the daily grind of what needs to be done, but you can’t underestimate the power of taking the time to step back and review your core values, principles and what drives you as a business. Remind yourself and your customers why you exist, where you excel, why they should work/interact/ spend their money with you and make sure you integrate this into every piece of content that you push out.</p>
<h2>2.   <strong>Get your creative juices flowing</strong></h2>
<p>You can’t get more creative than an artist right? Well, one of our ‘lockdown’ clients Jill Jeffrey, is just that; an award-winning contemporary landscape artist with paintings that are held in private collections all over the World. Faced with the reality of gallery closures, we worked with Jill to create a website on which to promote and sell her paintings. A simple and obvious solution you might say, but more difficult than it sounds for many businesses who are set in their ways and don’t have the knowledge or expertise to do things differently.
It’s the ideal time to try new things, new routes to market, and new ways to reach and engage your customers! It could be as simple as introducing a relevant (that’s an important point) new social media channel, launching a series of webinars or podcasts, or simply tapping into the changes in the market with your design, copy or pricing strategy.</p>
<p>Just make sure you pay attention to the results and tweak/ re-route accordingly along the way.</p>
<p>(Oh and if you need help with any of this, you know who to call… (that’s us in case you hadn’t realised…)</p>
<h2>3.   <strong>Think 360</strong></h2>
<p>More than ever, your brand needs to be represented consistently across all touchpoints. A digital-first approach is essential, but your wider marketing comms should live and breathe your messaging too. The point is that the customer experience should be seamless and fully integrated. That’s why we like to work with our clients on all aspects of their marketing activity, from developing their strategy right through to their website and promotional materials. Consistency is our thing, and making sure we keep the style and tone of voice whilst changing the message to fit the communication is a skill we’ve been honing over the years.</p>
<p>Saying that, we do love it when we get to work with other specialist agencies on projects, because, let’s be honest it’s always good to watch and learn from how others do it too.</p>
<h2>4.   <strong>Rethink customer journeys and the integration of digital solutions</strong></h2>
<p>The landscape for PPC and Social is already different to what is was 6 months ago and online competition has increased as more brick-and-mortar businesses have moved online.  According to Unbounce, 77% of marketers see landing pages as an essential part of their post-click strategy, AND they are doing a whole lot more with them too. Lead-gen activities are the top of the list, such as downloading an e-book, but many are also using them to schedule appointments and phone calls and of course to drive newsletter subscriptions. These days, a conversion can look very different depending on your business, your customers and your goals.  The journey should be relevant, compelling and always simple for your customer.</p>
<h2>5.	  <strong>Online networking and remote selling is more important than ever</strong></h2>
<p>The growth in webinars and digital conferences has meant networking doesn’t need to come to a halt, but there are now loads of new and creative ways to do it! Embrace these opportunities, whether it be podcasts, webinars, or using TikTok, there are numerous engaging and easy ways to reach your audience.</p>
<p>Video calls are now more common than face to face meetings where previously most of us would have opted for the opposite. Many have embraced remote working and shown that it can in fact be incredibly productive, effective and obviously have huge cost-saving benefits. If you see this as a long-term solution for your business, the key is to ensure you have all of the right systems in place for it to continue to work, rather than it being seen as a temporary necessity.  Do you need daily motivation check-ins for staff?, or if you’re using video calls for networking how can you bring to life your personality and brand in the same way as you would in person? Could you send follow-up content, could the invitation to the call be more creative, funny, interesting? What would showcase your brand to the best it can be? Make the most of these opportunities and embrace the creativity that you’ve adopted from point 2 above!</p>
<h2>To summarise…</h2>
<p>Ok, so we may be a little biased because creativity is one of our founding principles and at the heart of what we do! But our point is that it applies to everything, not just great design. And we truly believe that if you get creative with your thinking across all aspects of your business, then it can be a real game-changer for the here-and-now, but most importantly for the future. We’ve even set a weekly timer for a ‘creative hour’ in the office (or over zoom) to refresh, refocus and ensure that our creative muscles in the brain are never getting lax!
If you do ever need to borrow one of our creative brains to help you get to the bottom of a business problem or simply to run something by us, feel free to give us a call, send us a video link, or pop in for a socially distanced coffee in the barn. Whatever you prefer!</p>
<p>P.S. In the meantime please let us know what you think of our brand-spanking new website!</p>


Should lockdown have changed your marketing approach?

<p>Do you form an immediate impression of a restaurant the minute you walk through the door? From how you are greeted by the staff, through to the décor, the menu, the toilets, even the beermats?! (though I think Covid 19 might have dispelled this one).  Our brains are wired to form instant impressions and perceptions, whether we try to or not, so it goes without saying how important your branding is. But perhaps even more important to remember the small details matter more than you think too. Every little touchpoint your customer has with your brand needs to be considered.</p>
<p>From your logo, website, and your social media accounts, print advertisements, packaging, even your invoice slip, the list is endless. It’s clear that good design can be the difference between closing a sale or losing a potential customer.</p>
<p>Good design creates a connection with your customers and when you create a visually impactful, memorable and emotional connection, your customer can really understand who you are and why they like you!</p>
<p>According to a survey by Tyton Media, 48% of people said that a company’s website design was their number one determining factor of its credibility. So basically, almost half of your potential customers make a judgement call on whether to work with you based on your company website. Food for thought when you’re assessing the importance of your channels (we’re just pleased that we recently refreshed our own website…)</p>
<p>If you haven’t already done it, it’s a good idea to create a style guide or playbook with design rules for applying your branding to different assets. This might be colour palettes to use, style of photography, or even sample images that are definitely not suitable for your brand. This will not only help to ensure consistency to everything you apply your branding to but it also helps to keep things on track when you have different designers handling different projects and materials.</p>
<p>Good design plays such an important role in creating strong marketing strategies.</p>
<p>Which brings us nicely onto our next topic….</p>
<p>Read our blog on <a href="https://d1.staging.designone.co.uk/blog/posts/should-you-use-one-agency-to-do-all-of-your-marketing-work">whether it’s better to use a full-service agency or specialist agencies</a></p>


The Power of Great Design

<p>This question has been doing the rounds for years now, and for many, the jury is still out…but in case you’re interested, here’s our two penn’orth on the subject…. (the fact that we’re a 360 agency might give you a bit of a clue)</p>
<p>In essence, the argument tends to lean towards the idea that working with specialists is potentially the right way to go. Why?  Because they are experts who focus on one area and therefore have a deeper level of knowledge, insights and execution.  On the other side of the coin is the full-service agency who could potentially be deemed a jack of all trades and thus a master of none.</p>
<p>But for us, the benefits of having everything done under one roof far outweigh the negatives. Here’s why:
Clients get a holistic strategy in which all touchpoints work better together, and there’s a consistency and user-journey that might otherwise be a little fragmented and not quite meeting the customer needs. As a customer it’s never a great experience to be hooked in by a leaflet or social media ad, only to go to the organic feed to find that the look and style is totally different, they can’t find what they are  looking for, or worse, a promotion isn’t active or looks nothing like the first piece of communication you saw. This more often than not, happens because there’s been a communication breakdown between agencies along the way.</p>
<p>When we first integrated digital marketing into our business, many brands didn’t even have a website, nevermind a social media strategy (and we’re not even THAT old…well maybe some of us are). At this point everyone was intent on seeking help from experts in the field and very clearly defined ‘digital agencies’. However, now digital is not only an essential part of every strategy, but usually the driving force and core of it’s entire approach, which is why 360 agencies like us have completely integrated it into our thinking, our team skillset and the essence of what we do. We know how important it is to give you all of the support you need whilst not losing any of the consistency and brilliant design that you get from the expert creative team.</p>
<p>We also need to consider the fragmentation of the marketplace. Consumers have shorter attention spans than ever before, and they are usually using multiple devices at any one time. Which means to be successful, you have to put your brand in front of them multiple times, in multiple ways before any kind of recognition happens. This is why brand consistency is absolutely critical. And surely consistency is easier to achieve through a single agency approach?</p>
<p>The team who work at Design One are not simply a jack of all trades bunch, but a group of individual specialists who apply their expert knowledge to everything they do - all whilst sitting side by side and sharing exactly what they are doing with their respective counterparts. That’s why you get the best of both worlds; they each get to be involved in the overall strategy, objectives and plan, whilst applying their own specialist skillset to make sure it’s going to be successful. Clients also benefit from getting one point of contact who has the all-seeing eye over a project and can make sure that every area is connecting effectively and efficiently (although we’re also totally happy for you to talk to anyone and everyone in the team if you so wish!)</p>
<p>So, it’s pretty obvious what we believe is the stronger option, but equally we do have many happy clients who work with us on a singular part of their marketing strategy too. This can work just as well with the right ingredients; Communication and clarity.  If a client has someone at the helm who is coordinating everything brilliantly and aligning agencies as they go, a campaign using a multitude of agencies can be a resounding success, and equally, if the communication falls down, it can be an epic failure. So, it really depends on your set up, your internal priorities, and what you want your agencies to deliver.</p>
<p>We’re a team who love to communicate, so feel free to give us a call and we can have a chat about how we can help you.</p>
