You should know by now that the email style I teach is heavily reliant on a plain-text strategy. I rail hard against HTML elements and graphics because they’re mostly a waste of space, a waste of time, a waste of good deliverability, and most important, they sever the connective tissue between you and your list.
That said, I’m not 100% opposed to using graphics or images.
In fact, some of the strongest emails I’ve sent for my clients included before and after pics (the holy grail of “graphics” because of the social proof embedded within).
But I just had a situation where I’m rethinking my leniency towards using graphics.
Here’s what happened:
One of my clients is a Canadian “franchise” of sorts of a U.S. brand. One of the problems this causes is that the U.S. brand doesn't always keep us in the know. Yesterday, we all woke up to an email announcement from the U.S. brand that they’re having a spring equinox sale. And while I train my clients not to have too many promos, when the U.S. brand decides to have one, we have to follow suit.
No big deal (besides the fact that I had just written an email without any discounts that would’ve probably outperformed the sales announcement).
So, yesterday morning, I whipped up a couple sales emails, so our Canadian list knows that this sale also applies to them. (The nature of the businesses is that there’s some overlap between our audiences.)
It took me a good 20 minutes tops to write the first email. Meaning, we could’ve sent it almost directly after the U.S. brand did (even though we had just learned about it).
But we had to wait until today (a full 24 hours later) to actually send it.
Why?
Graphics.
In sale announcements, we like to include a sales graphic in the first email. But we also put some graphics up on the site. And we need to make sure the discount code works correctly.
Since we’re a small team, these other parts of the promo took much longer than it took me to write a quick email.
Which brings me to the point:
Money is attracted to speed.
And there’s nothing “faster” than having a mostly plain-text marketing strategy (extending beyond just an email marketing strategy).
When there are too many graphics in your marketing strategy (email graphics, above the fold graphics, etc.), it takes longer to go from A to B. And that delay, even if it’s not terribly long in the grand scheme of things, not only halts momentum, but it could even interfere with your total sales.
Just another reason in a long list of reasons why plain-text emails reign supreme.
Wanna call my bluff and see how much more profitable a plain-text strategy can be for your business?
Hit reply and let’s chat.
John
Comments