Email Design & Marketing : Frequently Asked questions (and Answers!)

Do I need a someone to create my Email newsletter for me? Can't I do it myself?

Maybe you can do it yourself. After all, marketing e-mails use HTML, just like website's do.

Unfortunately though, there are some differences and quirks which must be taken into account. Email readers (and there are dozens of them, all of which behave slightly differently & have their own peculiarities), do not render HTML the same as your web browser would. Firstly, you should be using CSS to style the HTML code if you are writing for the web. However, CSS support in email readers is extremely poor. Many simple CSS properties do not work as expected, or at all! In many cases, all CSS code in the HEAD section of your HTML document will be stripped out completely. If you were to send an email out in this state, it would at best look extremely untidy, and at worst be totally unreadable!

Writing HTML/CSS for email requires some strange approaches. Inline CSS is essential, tables for layout are considered acceptable, and some depreciated HTML attributes must to used to provide layout. All practices that would make a modern web developer shudder!

If none of the above makes much sense to you, or you are simply 'designing' your emails in Outlook, then you really should consider using an Email Marketing professional to create your emails.

How much do you charge to design a marketing email?

Our prices start at £30 for a tailor-made design.

Will there be any ongoing or monthly fees for our email marketing campaign?

No. We only charge you for the emails that you send, so you can send your email campaigns as frequently (or infrequently) as you like.

How much do you charge to import our existing email clients in to the new system?

It just depends how long it takes us - our basic rate of £12 per hour would apply. If you can provide us with your existing email data in our preferred format (CSV or MS Excel), and you only wish us to set up a database of email addresses, then this process can take less than one hour.

If you would like us to import other details of your clients, such as names, gender, address, or other variables which would allow you to target a specific group of customers, then this can take several hours but we would always provide a quote before starting any work.

What do you require from me, before you can start our email marketing campaign?

If you wish us to design your emails, we would need to establish what 'look' and 'feel' you wish them to have. Maybe you have a company image or colour scheme, and would like your emails to represent this. We would like to known if there are any designs that you particularly like, or any that you dislike.

An email news letter, or any other mail out, is only any good if the content that it contains is interesting & relevant to the reader. We would require that you type up the text for inclusion in your emails, and provide us with good quality images, logos or anything else that you may wish to display.

What if I do not have any decent pictures, or I am not very good at writing textual content?

We can help! - We can purchase images for practically anything from a variety of online image banks - prices are quite reasonable. Of course if we can find appropriate copyright-free images for no charge, we will use these, but note however that we will not knowingly infringe on someone's copyright or use images off the internet without permission.

We can provide a proof reading service, and will be happy to re-work your textual content for you if you are unsure that it reads correctly. All our emails campaigns are spell checked prior to sending.

How can people SUBSCRIBE or JOIN my Email list?

There are two ways...
• You can add them manually to the subscriber database at any time. This is what we would do when importing any existing Email subscribers that you may have. You could add people singly, or in bulk uploads.
• You would have a simple form on your Web site which would allow users to join your Email list. This is the preferred method, as it is all automated. The user would enter their email address (and any other information you may wish to collect about them) and our Email Marketing system would add them to your mailing list automatically. We can quote for installing this simple form on your existing website if necessary.

How can people UNSUBSCRIBE or LEAVE my Email list?

There are two ways...
• You can remove them manually. Simply log in to our Email Marketing system and remove them from the mailing list.
• They can unsubscribe themselves at any time. This is the preferred method, as it is all automated. Upon receiving one of your email outs, the user can simply click an unsubscribe button at the bottom of the email, to remove themselves from your mailing list.

What about SPAM? Is Email Marketing not spamming?

No, not at all. Subscribers who sign up to through a form on your website will have decided themselves that they wish to receive emails from you. In the cases where you have existing email subscribers, and want to import them in to our new system, you must state that these members have freely opted-in to receiving emails from you.

In all cases, members of your email lists can unsubscribe at any time with ease.

I've still got some more questions.

Simply contact us and we will answer them.

I've made my decision - I want you to design my marketing Emails, or provide a complete Email Marketing solution for me. Now what do I do?

Simply fill out our Email Marketing request form to start the process.