Posts Tagged email marketing

Newt Barrett recently made a great post about a recent newsletter he received from a BMW dealer.

Germain BMW recently sent out a newsletter that highlights some common mistakes made by newsletter senders.  Some of the odd items found in this newsletter (in lieu of actually talking about BMWs):

What hits you in the face like a big wet fish are a big bunch of misguided elements which are made even worse when you add items from their table of contents:

• A giant RV–incase you’re tired of driving your BMW
• A big picture of watermelons that relates to keeping cool in Florida but has no car connection
• A treetop adventure story that doesn’t appear to involve any driving
• A feature on adopt a cat month(my baseless hunch is that BMW owners are dog people)
• More from the TOC
  • Lessons in longevity for the oldster demographic that BMW targets
  • Make your garden green–for the typical tree hugger BMW owner
  • A story on ice cream–who doesn’t associate BMWs and ice cream cones?

And then he gives five tips for better newsletters:

• Make sure that your regular communications with your target customers match your brand promise.  Don’t wander off the ranch like this enewsletter did.
• Make it clear to your target readers that you understand what is really important to them as it relates to the products and services you offer.
• Don’t squeeze so much content into an eNewsletter that nobody is likely to find the time to read it.
• If you feel that you want to combine both precisely targeted content with information that is less targeted, at least lead off with the stuff that aims directly at your ideal customers.
• If you have a strong local presence, don’t let your parent organization overwhelm what could be great local content with unfocused generic material.

Great post Newt and thanks for sharing others’ missteps