Effective E-Mail Marketing: The Complete Guide to Creating Successful Campaigns [Paperback]

Herschell Gordon Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 2002

E-mail is today's most powerful marketing medium. It is also the most misunderstood. This dynamic book dispenses with incomprehensible theories and conflicting rules to explore real-life examples of e-mail campaign successes and failures -- explaining exactly why each soared or sank. Over-mailing * Under-testing * Poorly constructed messages * Effective E-Mail Marketing shows marketers how to avoid these and hundreds of other problems, and how to craft messages that build rapport -- and sales -- to consumers worldwide. All marketers using the Web will want to look here first to learn the truth about: * Adapting mass-market messages to this one-to-one medium * Strategies for increasing mailing frequency without increasing ""opt-outs"" * Techniques that reach through the screen to grab the reader * Words and phrases that drive response -- and those that guarantee rejection At last, a book full of hard-boiled e-marketing tips to replace unproven theories!

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Just what we need: a book encouraging "junk" e-mail. But not all e-mail marketing is "spam," as many businesses with good client relationships use this medium to market sales promotions to eager customers. Like it or not, this form of communication is a quantum leap from snail mail, and it is an effective, ultra-low-cost way to reach millions. Lewis shows how to customize the message to this fast-paced medium, where you need to grab attention fast or be dumped. He also shows how to obtain quality e-mail lists, explains what really is and isn't considered "spam," and gives many attention-grabbing tips tailored to e-mail. The sample section contains many familiar messages, because he uses the real thing in all his examples. And it's all from the Godfather of Gore! That's right. This is the same H.G. Lewis who directed such 1960s low-budget gore classics as Blood Feast and 2,000 Maniacs. These days he happens to be one of the top direct-marketing experts around. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"...this practice-oriented book is well worth the price and should be placed next to the PC as a reference.." -- Journal of Consumer Marketing

"A treasure-trove of resources and tailored advice." -- The Midwest Book Review

"What makes it stand out is the author's focus on showing readers what works and what doesn't". -- Morning News, August 18, 2002

A goldmine of quick and easy rules that have already been proven to maximize results.. -- Money Maker's Monthly, Jan. 2003

If you are so inclined to conduct an e-mail marketing campaign, this book is invaluable. -- Miami Herald July 29, 2002

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 17 and up
  
• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: AMACOM; 1st edition (June 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814471471
• ISBN-13: 978-0814471470
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #288,220 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What is that smell???, November 26, 2004

By 

Thomas Lundin (Lakeville, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Effective E-Mail Marketing: The Complete Guide to Creating Successful Campaigns (Paperback)

An e-mail appears in your Inbox. The subject says: "$5,000 Diet Challenge!" The message body starts out, "Hi! My name is Betty Wilson. I got your e-mail address off a post." The message is bulk-addressed to a group of 10 AOL recipients (of which you are one) that appears to have been harvested. And it seems that "Betty Wilson's" e-mail address is [e-mail].

Is there any computer user on the face of the planet whose brain isn't screaming "SPAM!!" right now and mentally reaching for the Delete key?

And yet, author Lewis holds up this flatulent piece of dreck as an exemplary e-mail that "has good text, excellent rapport, and a strong one-to-one approach." Umm...okayyyyy...and I'll bet that same excellent rapport helps if you want to sell V 1 A G R A Cheap, No Prescription Needed!!!!!!

At first, I thought he was joking when he highlighted examples like this as the type of e-mail marketing messages we should be emulating. But he's quite serious. Unfortunately, such lapses of discernment send his credibility plummeting and make it hard to separate his good advice from his bad.

He does have good advice to give, too, such as his admonition to carefully test different versions of an e-mail before blasting it out to a large list of recipients, and to measure the response and tweak the final production message accordingly.

Lewis cut his teeth on print-media direct mail marketing and a lot of the writing techniques and triggers that worked in print can be used effectively in e-mail. But today's e-mail marketing messages need to be composed much more carefully to avoid being automatically filtered out as spam -- by machine or human -- and Lewis doesn't convince me that he Gets It. His stuff doesn't pass the smell test.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Custom-tailored Comments from an Industry Guru, February 23, 2003

By 

Roger E. Herman (Greensboro, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Effective E-Mail Marketing: The Complete Guide to Creating Successful Campaigns (Paperback)

Lewis is a copywriting and marketing guru with over 25 books under his belt. This book is designed for the times, when so many marketers are concerned about how to get their message out by electronic mail--a lot cheaper than the alternative offered by the United States Postal Service. Benefit: at least e-mail gets through; unfortunately, a lot of bulk mail has not made it to addressees over the years.

So what's different about the electronic approach, other than the method of distribution? Don't you still need great copy and an effective target list of potential buyers?

There are a lot of similarities between electronic and postal direct mail, so you'll read chapters on words and phrases that work and don't work. You'll still get the advice on how to construct your message to grab the attention of the recipient. This immediate attention issue is even more acute with e-mail: hitting the DELETE button is a lot quicker than handling a piece of mail, opening it or not, and tossing it in the trash.

Lewis has tailored this book nicely to this new medium, exploring how to adapt to this communications vehicle without getting burned. Chapters discuss opt-ins, avoiding the "spam" accusation, and how to use the e-mail subject line most effectively. He explores how to establish rapport through e-mail, using personalization and psychology to elicit the desired response. The chapter on rich media and viral mail is certainly something you won't find in a typical marketing book.

This book is filled with medium-specific information, quelling my fear that this would be just another marketing book with "E-Mail" dropped in the front of the title. These pages are a treasure-trove of resources and tailored advice. The ten pages of tips at the end of the book supplement the tips that appear on the pages throughout the text. An abundance of examples illustrate the author's points. Indexed.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Using techniques that grab reader attention, August 8, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Effective E-Mail Marketing: The Complete Guide to Creating Successful Campaigns (Paperback)

Herschell Gordon Lewis' Effective Email Marketing tells how to avoid the common pitfalls of the typical email marketing program to focus on massmarket messages which get results. Individualization and customization are part of the keys, as well as using techniques that grab reader attention.