VIEW: E-mail Marketing 101

What It Does
E-mail marketing is an effective and efficient way to promote your organization and lands you directly in your prospect's in-box. This marketing method offers a high return on investment (ROI), and is highly measurable because of the statistics that are available when using it. While I wouldn't recommend e-mail marketing as your only effort, it can surely reinforce the rest of your strategy. And because you can carry your organization's brand image through to HTML e-newsletters, your message stays consistent—a key ingredient to successful marketing materials.

Why It Works
Have time-sensitive information you'd like to get out? E-mail marketing is the way to go. On a tight marketing budget this quarter? Try an e-mail campaign and avoid printing costs. Need to reliably track results? Do it in real-time with an e-campaign.

Demonstrate your expertise, publicize your current offer, establish your brand — these are all things that can be accomplished with e-mail marketing.

As I've written before, it often takes multiple contacts to bring in a new prospect. With e-mail campaigns, your organization can make several connections at a relatively low cost. Keeping your brand in front of your current and prospective clients increases the chance that they will call you when they are in a time of need.

NEWS: Studio 22 Adds a New Service
We've added a full-service E-News System to our list of offerings. E-mail marketing can help disseminate press releases, keep members informed, increase sales, announce events, raise brand visibility—all with a great return on investment.

Whether you want to produce a weekly, monthly or quarterly campaign, the system can help you:

> manage your audience lists
> send branded e-mail campaigns
> deliver with success
> track your results in real-time

All by logging into your private account on our website!

This service includes everything you need to manage your email marketing and communications from start to finish. It's a unique platform that combines easy self-serve features, a custom-designed brand template, and personal assistance whenever you need it.

E-mail us or call us today at (301) 696-5731 for pricing and a full list of features.

NEWS: Don't Forget...
The deadline for the Studio 22 Design Grant for Non-Profits is due on January 30, 2007! Click here to download an application.

VIEW: Comparing Apples to Apples
In the spirit of Seth Stevenson's Ad Report Card on Slate, I thought I'd do a little advertising critique of my own. While looking through my local paper a few days ago, I found these two ads — conveniently placed side-by-side in an advertising section.


I initially assessed the two ads strictly as the average newspaper reader (I swear). The ads are selling the same service. I determined that if I were to choose between the two schools based solely on these ads, I would pick the one on the right. You can probably guess the reason...

Here's where I switch to graphic-designer-as-newspaper-reader. The advertiser on the right is portraying a more professional (read: reputable) image than the advertiser on the left. The ad on the right conveys a good amount of information to the reader, while maintaining a clean look with simplistic fonts in varying sizes to guide the eye around the ad. The use of a single, strong image creates impact in a small space.

The photos and fonts in the ad on the left are a bit too crowded, leaving no room to direct the viewer around the ad. While the company logo is one of the most important pieces to the puzzle, some valuable real estate could have been saved by reducing its size in this case—providing more room to explain why their school is the choice for you, for example.

Here's a test for you to try at home:
Cut out ads of your organization's competitors.
Place them along with your own advertisement in a mock magazine/newspaper layout.
Does your ad stand out above the rest?
If not, contact us for a consultation!

*Note: Studio 22 did not create either ad featured in this post.