If you have attended any conference or trade show on Email Marketing over the last few years, you’ve most likely attended sessions entitled something like: ‘Deliverabilty’, ‘Getting in the Inbox’, and the like. Deliverability, the ability to get your message through the often byzantine gantlet of rules and regulations constructed by the ISPs to keep your message out of the inbox, is a very hot topic.

Why? Because it is a solvable problem. There are vendors out there with a SOLUTION to that problem. And vendors sponsor trade shows. And so we have a disproportionate amount of conversations about reaching incremental groups of customers, but almost no conversation about what you send to the people you do reach to make your message more compelling. And that is because technical problems are relatively easy. Creative problems are much more difficult to solve.

The real secret to email marketing has nothing to do with deliverability, rendering, or any number of other technical issues we discuss to take our minds off our dwindling response rates. The real secret has to do with Creative. What are you sending to the customers that you reach to make them want your message in the first place? Not only want it, but desire it?

Key to a successful email marketing campaign is providing something unique through the email channel, something that the customer can’t get any other way. Everyone wants to be an insider. Everyone wants to be part of an exclusive club, to get the deal before anyone else hears about it, to be in the know before the masses. Leveraging the inbox to create that exclusive insiders club is the key to a successful email marketing programme.

A great place to start creating that ‘insiders’ relationship with your clients is in your welcome letter. Welcome letters have the highest open rates of any email you will send. People are expecting it. They just signed up for your programme. And yet it is amazing how many marketers throw this opportunity away.

Below are some examples of companies that are doing it right by leveraging the welcome letter to develop a strong relationship with their clients:

Audi: Audi’s welcome letter is a beautifully designed email with the following messaging: “You Will Have Exclusive access to Once-in-a-lifetime experiences, downloads, invitations to events and previews, Only available to the Year of Audi members.” Notice the use of the words ‘Exclusive’ ‘invitations to events only available to members’. This is the way you start to build excitement around your email marketing channel. In addition, Audi provides links to screen savers and a link to the Audi SuperBowl ad.

Harley-Davidson: How is this for an idea: make your email marketing channel a mini-series. That is exactly what Harley-Davidson did in a recent campaign: “You’ve signed up for a six-part e-mail program that will take you through the five H-D motorcycle families, demo rides, customization, and even show you how to take care of the financing.” A six email marketing mini-campaign. What a great way to keep clients glued to their inbox with a guarantee open. Why aren’t more companies more creative with their creative?

And, as a final example, a look at the innovative campaign from the vodka brand Stoli:

From the Stoli Hotel email campaign: “Stoli Hotel is an ultra-luxurious and exclusive hotel event that will only be open here for a few weeks. Guests will be invited to check in to the Stoli Hotel for an evening event featuring live music, signature Stoli cocktails, custom-designed Suites, complimentary spa services, and more
The only way to receive your invitation to a Stoli Hotel New York event is to register in advance.”

The Stoli Hotel concept is the ultimate in ‘insider’s club’ marketing. The hotel opens in special cities at special times and only those registered and who receive the emails get to go to the exclusive event.

Here is how Stoli used the Stoli Hotel concept to introduce a new brand: “Our newest flavor, Stoli’s Blakberi, is coming to a Stoli Hotel NY fresh from the Motherland, and you have exclusive access. Enjoy the fresh flavor of Stoli Blakberi with New York’s social and cultural elite and watch the Blakberi revolution begin. Stoli Hotel NY starts tonight, so sign up below for your chance to be invited to one of the Stoli Hotel events.”

And the invitation is only available through your inbox.

Exclusive, invitation only, insiders club: make them not only want to read your email. Make them desire it. Remember: being on your email list should be a privilege

Bill McCloskey
Founder of Email Data Source
Email Data Source