HTML emails are not always the right thing

You shouldn't use rich HTML emails for your important marketing communications with key clients?

Where you have a key communication with an individual who knows you by name, it is well worth the effort of going the personal route, either by sending emails out of your mailbox, or by making it look like you have.

There is plenty of evidence that email marketing campaigns done using well designed html emails ("rich HTML") get better response rates. If you are putting your marketing message in front of a large audience, you need to grab their attention and get the offer in front of them quickly. Images and design help to do this.

But when you are communicating on a one-to-one basis, it is more valuable to emphasise that the communication is a personal message. Rich HTML emails immediately identifies a message as "marketing" material, which allows people to filter it out easily. As does the use of a company mailbox address.

On the contrary, a message that looks like you have sent it from you personal mail box (or which is actually sent from you personal mail box) will go through that filter. The recipeint will need to read the content to before they can make a decision whether to reject the email. They also tend to feel that the email merits a response.

We have examples of 2 clients organising key seminars which they wanted certain people to attend. Their comment on the most recent one was, "Sending the personalised email made a massive difference!! I received over 25 responses to say that people couldn't make it - I didn't get any with the graphical version - and within an hour I received 6 more registrations - these were in dribs and drabs with the graphical version."

Beware, however, you must not over do this. If your marketing and business messages become confused, you run the risk of the marketing filter being applied to your business emails.

The rule to remember is to make sure that the method of communication is appropriate to the response that you want to achieve. And if it's really important to get you message across, why don't you phone instead!