Last week I mentioned a Smith-Harmon report about how to handle email when going out of business. I mentioned at the end of the post that I was pleasantly surprised at how well done their email program was. Let’s walk through the process.
1) The download process. Clicking on the “download report” page popped up a signup window. They ask for first name, last name, company and and email address, but only require an email address. There is a link to their privacy policy and two unchecked boxes. The first is “I would like to subscribe to Smith-Harmon’s monthly newsletter, which is full of email marketing tips, news and research.” The second is “Please have a representative contact me to discuss how Smith-Harmon can help my company with its email program.”
How does their process incorporate best practices?
- They don’t require full personalization information during signup
- They provide a choice for users to subscribe to their newsletter (unchecked box)
- They provide information about frequency of email (monthly newsletter)
- They provide information about the content (email marketing tips, news and research)
- They provide an opportunity to opt-out of sales contact
- They link to their privacy policy
- The page is well branded, but not cluttered.
2) The welcome message. Less than 5 minutes after providing information on the download form, there was a welcome message in my mailbox. The welcome message hit all the high points.
- Good use of header space
- Clear welcome message on left and in main image
- Provides useful content (10 ways to improve your creative)
- Links to books
- Good use of images, not too cluttered.
Even better, for people like me who keep image rendering off, the email worked with images off:
- Important information is in plain text
- Alt tags in use
- Format still looks good when images are off
Clearly, Smith-Harmon have spent a lot of time on their email marketing program. Kudos to them for a well designed, well implemented email program. With such care given to the parts that many marketers overlook, I can only imagine how useful the content is going to be.
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