Some assert that younger consumers are eschewing email, but Pew Internet research shows that’s not the case. No matter which generation your customers are, 80-90% of the ones using the Internet are using email. Considering that Older Boomers spend more than their younger counterparts, this knowledge could be particularly profitable.

Since email marketing is such an important marketing tool, I want to give you some tips for doing it right. Businesses can’t just blast coupons to all their past customers and expect success. Let’s use this Pillar to Post marketing email I received as an example of how to run a successful email marketing campaign:

See the full size Pillar to Post email here.

Pillar to Post is a home inspection company. Home inspection not a service customers often need to purchase. The company’s email marketing strategy does a great job of keeping in touch with past customers and helping them remember who to call if they (or their friends and family) need a home inspection.

I’ve analyzed the Pillar to Post email to help you learn how they did it. Following are some email marketing tips you can start using today in your own marketing:

Send emails that fortify your brand and your customers will care about. Share information that will be useful, interesting or funny. Coupons or other promotions can be great, but they can’t be your sole strategy. For customers to be eager to open your emails, you need to give them something to be excited about.

The first day of summer was June 21, and most homeowners perform their home maintenance on a seasonal schedule. Knowing this, Pillar to Post shared a fairly thorough Summer Maintenance Checklist with their customers. This information is not only helpful to homeowners, but it establishes Pillar to Post as an expert in the field of home maintenance as well.

Mind your timing. Communicate with customers too often, and they will unsubscribe from your list or mark your emails as spam. Pillar to Post sends quarterly emails, each with season-specific advice. They recognized their customers’ natural home maintenance patterns and customized their approach for them.

Keep your content fresh. Avoid sending duplicate emails, even if they are months apart. Customers have a knack for remembering when they’ve read something before and will unsubscribe if they believe a company is putting forth a lackluster effort to engage them.

Design a clean, easy-to-use template. The Pillar to Post example email isn’t the most beautiful or effective design the company could have developed, but it is simple and easy to read. It has the added benefit of using as few images as necessary- images don’t always load in your customers’ email inboxes, so avoid placing text in an image.

Depending on your type of business, your email marketing strategy could be markedly different from Pillar to Post’s. Pillar to Post has a long sales cycle- a customer likely will go years before needing a home inspection. A retailer, on the other hand, might expect customers to make purchases seasonally, monthly or even every single day. Your sales cycle determines your messages and frequency.

Take inspiration from this great email marketing example to refresh and revitalize your email marketing (or to start email marketing, if you haven’t already!).

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During the design process, I realized many small businesses could use some design tips for their logos. And since logos are, by definition, visual, the best way to give advice is to show you the good, the bad and the ugly.

Design Criteria 1 – Legibility

The most important aspect of logo design is legibility. Is your company’s name easy to read? It sounds like an overly simplistic criterion, but sometimes designers get caught up in exciting font choices and graphics, losing sight of a logo’s legibility.

The Good

This logo is very easy to read, and as a bonus includes a tagline explaining what you can expect of the CEO Club.

The Bad

This logo is a work of art – much too pretty to designate as ugly. It is also a failure. Could anyone glancing at it tell what those letters are? Even after studying it, are you certain what it’s supposed to communicate?

The Ugly

Those malformed polygons are supposed to spell out 2012, as in the 2012 Olympics in London. It’s clearly an example of a designer losing sight of a logo’s most basic goal – to communicate the brand clearly.

Design Criteria 2 - Color Palette

Your logo’s colors need to blend and contrast pleasantly. Color theory is science, but all too often amateur designers try to put the boldest colors together to make the highest impact. Hire a good designer, or Google search for a color wheel, but don’t put blue letters on a red background.

The Good

Brown is an unusual color to use in a logo, but combined with the taupe and cranberry red, it blends to show an image of folksy charm and wisdom. Scott Hogue writes a blog and books providing life advice, so it fits.

The Bad

Combining bright red with bright blue confuses the eye, because your eyes can’t focus on certain shades of red and blue at the same time. You may see the logo vibrate or feel the need to blink. These are not the reactions you want when people look at your logo.

The Ugly

Many times, I’ve been requested to create, “Just a simple graphic of red text on a plain white background.” Many people assume that if it’s simple, it can’t be bad. Unfortunately, red text on a white background is not just bad – it’s ugly. The colors you choose influence how customers feel about your business. Do you want them to feel like your logo is like a stop sign?

(Isn’t it funny that a business named Piece of Cake chose a gift box for their logo instead of, say, a slice of cake?)

Design Criteria 3 - Visual Interest

A logo should never be boring. A logo communicates a vibe to your customers and should have visual interest. Often in small businesses, design-by-committee impulses take over, resulting in a logo that everyone can live with but no one is excited about. If you and your employees aren’t excited, your customers certainly won’t be.

The Good

Yes, this is our logo. But it has very good visual interest. It communicates that we think outside the box (or zoo, as it were), are creative and have a little bit of fun. The logo directly ties to the name of the business and draws customers’ attention to what we do – MARKETING.

The Bad

They’ve tried to spruce up the plain, boring wordmark with spacing, but it doesn’t work. Does seeing this logo make you want to learn more about these lawyers? Probably not. Many small businesses fall prey to boring visuals like this because good design requires a talented designer who costs money. But a good logo is the cornerstone of your visual communication. It appears everywhere your business is mentioned in print and on the web.

The Ugly

When you think of bars, do you immediately imagine a hummingbird? No? This logo demonstrates that even if your business name is your own name, the visual interest needs to focus on what you sell. For instance, this business would have been better off depicting a tough blue jay or even an eagle.

Design Criteria 4 - Scalability

Many small business marketing designers don’t consider how a logo will scale for different uses. Your logo needs to be scalable for every intended use – small for business cards and online banner ads, medium for letterhead and print ads, and large for building signs, billboards or vehicle graphics.

The Good

This logo is built of modular pieces that can be arranged according to where and how it will be displayed. For a long, narrow space, such as a sign on a car wash, the lighthouse graphic can be removed. For a square space, like in the corner of a website, the text graphics can be stacked. Your logo doesn’t have to be identical in every place it appears as long as it uses the same components.

The Bad

This logo is interesting, but it’s certainly not scalable. If I shrink it another 30%, the text becomes very hard to read, and the graphics begin to be indiscernible. This problem exists with most circular logos that have text around the circumference. Consider the smallest size you will need if designing a logo like this – if it needs to be on a business card, you will likely have issues.

The Ugly

I enlarged this logo, so you would be able to read the text. In its original state, the text was impossible to read. When your lion is roughly five times the size of your text, you have an ugly scalability problem.

Using the criteria of Legibility, Color Palette, Visual Interest and Scalability, rate your own small business’s logo. Is it good, bad or ugly? Need some help judging? Send it to me at amanda@zooinajungle.com, and I’ll give you an analysis.

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In any marketing venture, disregarding details will often result in a marketing disaster. Advertising and direct mail are by their very nature public, so marketing mistakes in these areas are very visible. So learn from this company’s mistakes before you launch your next small business marketing initiative.

Furniture Row, a retailer with 330 stores in 31 states, apparently put a lot of thought (and resources) into developing a system for sending direct mail to people who recently moved into a new home. Here is a mailer recently sent to a resident in Cincinnati, OH:

It’s a shame they didn’t put as much thought into getting customers to their stores. The mailer doesn’t include a phone number or website address, just cryptic directions to go “N. of the Florence Mall” and an address in Denver. Observe:

Without any directions or way to contact the company, this direct mail piece is a failure. Surely Furniture Row doesn’t expect new homeowners to drive around Florence, KY looking for their store.

In your marketing efforts, pay attention to the details (unless you like wasting your marketing budget on mistakes).

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The possibilities for the design were endless, ranging from representing a pointillist painting to depicting the employees of a company seamlessly working together. We finally settled on the violin motif because of its beautiful simplicity – which is just what a small business’ brand should be. (Accomplished photographer Laura Poland found just the right angle to capture the cover image.)

Brand Harmony is an exceptionally good book for the small business owner or marketing professional because of its radical ideas on marketing such as:

• How to cut your advertising budget and make more money.
• Brute force branding – why it doesn’t work.
• Clear action steps about connecting with your customers and finding out what is truly important to them.
• How to create your “Picture of Success” and develop a path to reach it.

After all this to-do, I’m sure you’d like to see the cover, eh? Here are the front and back covers:

And if you’d like to buy the book, it’s only $10 at yastrow.com.

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I thought I would share, because everybody could use a reminder to both pursue knowledge and exercise creativity. And, it’s not every day you get to draw brains.

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