Email Marketing Tips - No.5: Maximizer Software

Initial impressions

Good points:

The first text I see is their name and what they so it’s nice to know who I’m getting email from. I’m also being challenged which is so appealing to the ego you just have to read on and find out how you can overcome it.

Bad points:

The top section of the email, which is what you’d see in a preview pane, is just one sentence in very large font and an equally large square box. If you have images off (which many people do) – you’re missing out on any key messaging until you switch them on.  

Also none of the call to actions particularly stand out to me, links could have been made into buttons (and less of them would help focus the recipient) and for the ‘call now’ call to action it would help to have the telephone number next to it and for it to look more button-like so it stands out from the rest of the plain text.

Content

Good points:

I like the fun element of the quiz and how relatable the 80s are with their target audience. The right hand column is telling me the benefits of their software, with a clear title – slightly less text and clear subheadings would make it even easier to read however.

It’s certainly eye-catching! The use of red in the design grabs your eye and is used for the main message and two call to actions but be careful of overuse, and they look more like section headings than clickable buttons.

Bad points:

There’s no personalisation which is a shame especially without any trust-earning text at the top of the email to tell me why I’m receiving the email making me less likely to mark it spam. When I clicked through to the site, the use of red in the email totally disappeared making it feel a disjointed brand experience – although in this case that could be a good thing, the web design is much less dated than the email, which seemed to be channelling the 80s in more than topic.

Technical aspects

Good points:

The email ‘from’ address is from marketing@max.com which is an email address the recipient will feel they can certainly reply to if they need.

Bad points:

There is no tracking on this email, this means that they’ll only know if someone bounces or they unsubscribe – hardly the marketing insight you’d expect from a CRM provider...If their ESP doesn’t provide them with tracking then they could use Google’s URL Builder which is a free tool that allows you to track post click in your Google Analytics account.

Also if you are using images in your email make sure you give them descriptive alt tags such as ‘The 80s, birth of Dallas and Maximizer software’, with a link through to your website (which Maximizer didn’t do).

Summary

For me the email is trying to do too much and combined with a hectic design and lots of text, it’s just a confusing recipient experience that is unlikely to get me to convert on their site. Kudos for trying to combine a fun element of the quiz with a software launch but it just doesn’t quite work sorry.

two out of ten