Supplier to Distributor Ad Development--Make them Unforgettable

Drive Results with Unforgettable Email Marketing The Second of Six Courses in Supplier to Distributor Emailing Marketing developed by Identityedge.net

Summary: The products sold in the promotional products industry are for the most part unexciting. Therefore, making your products “memorable” is quite difficult. Even after all is said and done a t-shirt is a t-shirt…a lapel pin is a lapel pin…and a water bottle is a water bottle. This Course is designed to change the Supplier’s mindset about what their ads should say and look like in order to make them UNFORGETTABLE and DELIVERABLE. Connecting with Distributors is getting harder and harder not only because of the volume of emails they get, but the lack of exciting content that they see. There are a few Suppliers that believe and practice their emailed ads should be memorable…but many Suppliers still believe Distributors want the old fashioned ASI-style ads. That’s really wrong and here’s why. Suppliers need to start treating Distributors as more mainstream consumers when they think about their ad designs.

Well there are several things—big ones—that we can say about that.

First, when you send emails employing the old fashioned ASI style layout they are likely to be treated as spam. Ask and we will explain, there are several lengthy components to this overview.

Second, many Supplier ads look the same because the layouts are “fitting the ASI industry motif” created so many years ago. In addition, Distributors do not want to forward Supplier email ads to their End Users if it’s NOT memorable; think about it, would you? That Supplier email is not going any further than staying on the Distributor’s desktop which costs you sales.

Third, getting your email ad forwarded from the Distributor’s desktop to their End User is one of your ultimate goals and so few Suppliers pursue this. The more your products get in front of End Users the higher your percentage of sales will be…and yes End Users do save the Distributor’s ads in their “promotional product folder” for future reference.

Email Templates—Use them or Fall By the Wayside But let’s start with a gentle awakening…Email Templates are now driving emails to get the highest deliverability, ALONG WITH the ad style. So your email template MUST be a very good one…and THEN your content must be memorable. We will cover emailing templates after the course since there is so much to talk about and these templates must be custom developed for each Supplier. But for a fact using similar email templates that the promo products industry has and still does for sending emails is not working anymore. Your emails will go into spam folders…

In other words Suppliers still using the email header: Send Safe Version to End User Visit Website Download Distributor Ad Version Request a Quote Download Catalog …will cause the Supplier email to go spam folders. There are many reasons why, but it’s due in part due to the number of hyperlinks in the email. For the record, five hyperlinks is about the right number in an entire html document or ad or your emails will be headed into spam folders.

As you can imagine in the above style of email campaign there are additional links in the body of the Supplier ad. We count the average Supplier email has between 15-25 hyperlinks in it. This is a great contributor to cause your emails to go into spam. However, there are many other factors why this style of email template fails. Ask us, its technical and its about how the servers perceive your email.

Think About Ad Layout A LOT The layout of an HTML email is as critical as the email template that you choose; they go hand in hand. Let’s look at where your Distributors direct

their focus: human brains are wired to process visual information 60k times faster than text. As a result, pictures are key to your ad success. You can also use layout design to guide your Distributor’s eye to the information you want them to see first. A study by the Nielsen Norman Group revealed that people tend to read in an “F” pattern, moving from left to right, and focusing heavily on the first few lines they read.

The same study also found that people skim the rest of the content they read, looking for keywords, and picking up bits of information rather than reading everything on the page. Take this into account when crafting visually appealing emails and always make two versions of the same ad, one for the Distributor and another for the Distributor’s End User.

A best practice is to keep your HTML or jpeg email layouts within 800 (pixels) in height and 600 (pixels) wide. Anything larger than that (or longer) and you run the risk of your content getting lost and unread. Plus, having too wide of a layout results in needing to scroll from side to side. Doing so requires extra effort and can make the email appear ill-formatted, or worse, like your company is inexperienced.

Getting Your Emails Previewed in Email Clients Many Suppliers we talk to don’t understand the vast importance of designing ads that will fit in ALL email clients. What’s an email client? An

email client is a place (or software application you install on the computer to manage the emails you send and receive) where Distributors go to read their emails. Some commonly known email clients are: Microsoft Outlook; Google; Thunderbird; Mailbird; eM Client; Windows Mail; Kiwi for Gmail; The Bat!; Yahoo! Mail; Hotmail: AOL; iCloud; Yandex Mail; Zoho Mail; Pronton Mail’ GMX Mail’ Trustifi; Mailfence…there are many more.

So what’s the big deal? This is a big one…when you send your email ads to Distributors who employ any of those email clients your email ads will appear differently on each one.

Some will translate perfectly as you designed the ads, some will not. We will say it again in a different way: Each of these email providers will render your emails differently. As you can imagine it can wreak havoc on your design. Add to that many more mobile devices are being used for emails and they have different email client needs.

Apple devices account for 45% of all the emails opened so you have to consider that when developing your emails too, because many of them are mobile devices.

When was the last time you sent an email and looked at it other than in your own email client or on a mobile device? The answer for most Suppliers is never.

Below is a graph of the market share in email clients. By the way, here’s a little segue. Apple controls about 45% of the email client marketplace. In September 2021 Apple introduced software that causes email campaigners emails to be perceived as “opened” WHETHER OR NOT THE EMAIL WAS OPENED. Think how this has affected your open rate. If you are still counting and viewing how many “opens” your email ad campaign got you are working on false reports. That’s why we focus on DELIVERABILITY. So imagine…about 45% of your email reports could contain tainted reported and you’ve been working/counting on that data (opens/clicks) to determine your emailing success. These types of changes in the emailing industry are constant and sometimes earth shattering, like the Apple

software. That’s why you need a company like us that will consult with you on email industry changes and keep you up-to-date.

Now let’s talk about what actually should be in the ad.

Please, forget putting ASI styled pricing grids on the page. No more six columns of coded pricing. That STILL works perfectly on paper printed sell sheets and printed catalogs but not on email ads. There are many reasons why.

When you put pricing on Supplier sell sheets allows your Supplier competitors to come back and under-price you for the same item later in the day...Distributor’s will blow you off for being a penny higher. In addition, most of the time the price grids take up a lot of space on the ad yet cannot be read because the numbers are too small.

Instead, we suggest--IF YOU HAVE TO--put one price that seems almost impossible to beat and then using a lot of creativity in designing the ad. So big images…that show the product well and not too many on each page with catchy copy.

Next, your logo is super important and will tell your Distributor who the email is coming from plus this builds your brand recognition! And this includes the “preview” link or area of the email clients previously discussed.

Use lots of white space…

The proper percentage of product images to the amount of copy is 20%-80%. Why? Because that’s how the receiving servers will want to judge your emails. You can go ahead and ignore this ratio but it will only serve to cause your emails to go into spam. This is an industry emailing practice now…please abide by it.

Additionally, so few Suppliers put a Call to Action (CTA) or Limited Time Offer (LTO) in their emails.

That’s liken to this mindset…”If I, as a Supplier, just make an ad that talks and shows our products, Distributors will read it and buy it just because I am a Supplier.” That’s not so anymore. Because Distributors (who are just like mainstream consumers) are getting millions of emails a week.

Suppliers have to make their ads jump out and say something that will get the Distributor’s fingers to click on your ad. A CTA or LTO are two very strong devices to do just that.

Above the Fold, An Old Concept That Still Works Keep your content above “the fold”. It’s an often-used strategy in print journalism where, you want to keep essential information front, center, and above the fold of the newspaper. It’s the space most Distributors consult before deciding if they’re going to fully open and read the email in their email client.

According to an expert study on eye tracking, it’s also where 80 percent of internet users spend their time reading and that applies to email marketing, too.

Here, “the fold” on the newspaper gets replaced with the content visible to the reader without them having to scroll to view it in their email clients.

THIS IS CRITICAL. It’s the vital information your Distributor uses to decide whether they will continue to read or click the Call to Action button and visit your site. What you really want the Distributor to do at this point is after viewing your ad is to click the “Send Safe Version to End User…”

To have a visually appealing email, you also have to consider the content your Distributor reads as soon as they click on your email. Distributors don’t care what they sell…so if the product even has a slight chance of fitting their End Users promo project they will click on your ad…but if you keep the really important visuals strategically placed near the top of the “Fold” they will want to continue reading.

Design Your Ads with LOTS of Color There is a tremendous amount of research on how colors effect email ads.

Generally most Suppliers we know don’t use this methodology to design their ads. But if you use logic you’ll see how strong this concept is, especially in the promotional products industry. The use of color is a powerful tool when creating visually appealing emails that will cause your Distributors to read your emails.

Each color has an association and can be used to drive home a message, convey a feeling, or a mood. For example, the color purple often suggests creativity, wisdom, and imagination, whereas green is often associated with the environment, peace, or health. When relating to seasons, use colors that are appropriate for each season. Bright colors and soft pastels usually evoke the feeling of summer. If you think this is fluff, do some study on it… and you’ll see how important color is to your emailed ads.

Keeping Your Ads Simple and Use Web Safe Fonts Look here’s the simple truth…we all know that each email Suppliers send costs them money and with most Suppliers they have many products in their line. Most Suppliers have the mindset to put many products into one ad to see which one they get the most product views from it. They end up advertising lots of products on one page. That leads to visual crowding… honestly that actually works against the Supplier.

Supplier ads that we see that are very dark do not get opened much either.

Dark backgrounds inhibit Distributors to open your emails…we know they get many fewer opens from history. Bright cheerful emails that are funny do so much better.

Let’s talk about sex appeal. Let’s talk about using people in your ads as “recommenders”. Let’s talk about funny ads.

It’s pretty hard to talk about sex appeal in the promotional products but the question is why would you even think about sex appeal when selling promo products? Well, like any product that’s got some sex appeal people are going to be more interested in it than not. So having a t-shirt on a manakin is not going to do the same job as a good looking sexy woman or man modeling the shirt. That applies to every product that is worn from lapel pins to belts. We see a ton of wearables companies posting ads with their shirts on dummies…bad. Taking the extra step and having an employee that can act as your in-house model to take real photos is an answer.

Using people in your ads is one of the best things you do. People buy from people…so putting one of your customer service agents in the ad can only help the sale. It’s a personal one on one interaction that happens. We highly recommend using people in Supplier ads. And people end up acting as “recommenders” of your products when you do that. Seriously, having a credible face to represent you will make more sales.

Funny ads—no matter what the product line—get better open rates than most other ads. That’s especially true these days as covid has certainly depressed a lot of people. So funny ads, even with a serious product—can

get more opens and that equates to more business. Just keep thinking the more emails I get delivered the more orders we will get. Try new things that are out of your box.

Web Fonts Although there are a lot of fonts that are creative and stand out, it can cause issues in your email marketing campaigns. This decreases deliverability. Such problems include affecting rendering speed, formatting issues on mobile, or fonts not displaying correctly--if at all--should the font’s hosting site go down. These hiccups in your design cause your emails to be less appealing if the type does not translate properly and you will lose that much sought-after engagement. It’s best to stick with tried and true fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, Open Sans and Georgia when designing your ads.

Animation—Try It You Might Like It We advise our Suppliers to try many things but adding animation is a sure-fire way to get better Deliverability. Animations command your Distributor’s attention and based on what we’ve seen the open rates are mostly always higher than without animation. Use GIF’s and there are many premade ones that can get the job done. We can help you design GIF’s.

Successful Supplier Ads

Here are examples of ads we’ve run with high Deliverability, major style differences to what the industry is accustomed to, and what we now think works in the promo industry. You’ll notice they are highly styled and few contain pricing.

On our website we have many other Supplier ads you can view.

End User Version

Distributor Version

End of this Course. The next Course, a VERY IMPORTANT ONE, on Emailing Templates will be held this coming Thursday, February 24 at 11:30am. Please join us.

914-245-5115

www.identityedge.net