What are EDM’s and should your company be using them?

Email Direct Marketing (or EDM’s) campaigns are one of the best tools for creating customer awareness and converting advertising into sales. EDM’s divert traffic to your website and conveniently convince your customer that you are offering them a personal experience.

EDM’s take shape in many forms and are generally cost effective. At POD, we believe EDM’s should reflect your band as much as they attract your customer. If you check through your junk inbox, you are bound to find the many brands you give your email to, directly targeting sales, offering specials or discounts or introducing you to new products and services.

Whether we care to admit it or not, we are often tempted to opening these clever little emails and perusing Country Road’s latest collection or Apple’s latest product. It doesn’t mean we are necessarily buying into the marketers strategy, but that we are among the 20-30% of customers who open these emails (http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/email-communications-strategy/statistics-sources-for-email-marketing/#q1) our of sheer interest in what are beloved brands are doing.

EDM’s are a responsive way to continue engaging past and potential customers and allow you to directly target them in your marketing campaign. Social media, whilst a great free platform, does not guarantee how many followers will see your post, but EDM’s are not exposed to social media’s algorithms and will be delivered regardless of time of day or the content they contain.

If you think about your own experiences, the best EDM’s (regardless of what they are advertising) are those that don’t push a sale or a product on you, but that instead showcase what they’ve got and what we can do with it. Design in keeping with brand guidelines means your customer will align a feeling with the experience and this feeling should continue across all digital platforms.

The versatility of EDM’s allows for businesses to alter their message and deliver unique content time and time again. Unlike social media, EDM’s traditionally contain a fair bit more information than a post or a Tweet and incorporate the kind of persuasive language that makes customers want to explore further.

Ultimately, an EDM is only as good as the website behind it; lucky for you, POD can design your EDM’s and refresh your website!