E-mail Marketing

Experience

At Aptera, we use e-mail to promote awareness rather than just advertise our services or post alerts. Our e-mails generally fall into three categories: the Aptera quarterly newsletter, the Scorecard monthly newsletter, and upcoming event announcements.

Aptera sends out a company newsletter each quarter with a focus on current or recent happenings at our company. These e-mails tend to consist of case studies about recent work or articles about the company's recent events.

Scorecard is a web-based project management application built by Aptera specifically for architecture and engineering firms. Every month, we send out a Scorecard newsletter to current and prospective Scorecard users. The newsletter contains articles on project and employee management, trends in the architecture industry, and other related topics.

The final category includes all the other announcements, and these are not regularly scheduled items. For instance Aptera hosts a large open house event each October. We find it beneficial to send supplemental invitations and reminder e-mails as the time of the event approaches.

Occasionally, Aptera also offers discounted services and we announce these discounts through e-mail; this is the closest we come to using e-mail as pure advertising.

Format

Because Aptera is a software and web design firm specializing in custom web applications, we choose to build all of our e-mails with custom HTML code rather than using a template provided by our e-mail marketing service. We send a wide variety of e-mails, so writing our own HTML gives us the freedom to design unique and creative layouts.

Aptera uses the same approach with our clients, giving them the custom treatment. We do market research and meet with each of our clients to determine an overall vision for their e-mail marketing campaign. Then, we design a mock-up of the e-mail template, which can be edited and reused for different campaigns. Our clients have a chance to join in on the creative process by requesting revisions to our design.

Once the client is satisfied with the visual layout, Aptera constructs the e-mail. Rigorous testing is done to ensure compatibility with multiple e-mail clients and browser platforms. Test e-mails are sent internally and to a designated client contact. By the time Aptera delivers the e-mail we've constructed, it is custom-designed to look great and tested to perform exactly as intended.

Challenges

Aptera is continually learning how to design, build, and send better e-mails, but there are some key lessons we've picked up along the way.

First, designing an e-mail is only half the battle. Once it is designed and constructed in HTML, an e-mail must be tested within various e-mail clients. After all, it might look great in Outlook, but that doesn't mean it will function properly in Hotmail while using Internet Explorer. An e-mail that looks brilliant in Yahoo when using Firefox might display very differently in Gmail. Testing is a crucial step that many companies neglect. If a company's customers receive an e-mail that isn't up to par, it may tarnish the company's image.

Another challenge of e-mail marketing is making sure that content is free of spelling or grammatical errors. Many companies make the mistake of not proofreading web material as thoroughly as print material. The general misconception is that electronic content is much easier to change. E-mail content must be treated equal to print in this regard, because once the "Send" button is clicked, there is no turning back!

Cost

The cost of e-mail marketing varies widely; however, it is consistently much less expensive than direct mail. Costs range anywhere from $15 per month for a bottom-line e-mail marketing service to several hundred dollars a month at a high-end service. Aptera uses ExactTarget, an e-mail marketing service based in Indianapolis, Indiana that is quickly gaining a positive reputation as a reliable and high-quality provider for e-mail services. However, we do occasionally recommend other e-mail marketing services to our clients depending on their needs, budget, and any other important considerations.