I have always been fascinated by the nice emails one would get from companies with images, videos, nice fonts etc., so when I found out MJML, a tool from Mailjet to create responsive emails, I jumped into the wagon.
But why do we need fancy responsive emails as businesses? Emails are one of the best ways to engage your users and potential users. More emails these days are being read on mobile phones more than ever. However, if you want to stand out, no matter how beautiful your emails are, they need to render correctly, no matter which email client is being used. BANanoMJML gives you exactly that, the tools you need to create the email marketing you need for your business.
By using responsive design techniques, one is able to create better experiences for subscribers and in many instances increase the click and engagement rates. 80% of users delete emails if they don’t look good on their mobile devices. Studies show that people look at their phones an average of 150 times per day. This means that one needs to ensure that they put their points across quickly.
Creating responsive emails is not an easy task, and there are various reasons for that. For example, there is no standard in the way email clients render HTML. This is true for email clients from different companies, such as Outlook and Apple Mail, but not only. Even different versions of Outlook, such as Outlook 2003, Outlook 2013 and Outlook.com, render HTML differently – source Smashing Magazine.
Email marketing is personal, immediate and easily tailored to what makes your business unique. Above all else, its practical. An email marketing strategy is part of your overall marketing strategy and business plan. It helps you market your products and services with the use of the email channel with the best chances for making a profit and reaching your goals. That is because an effective email marketing strategy takes into consideration what your target customers are, their preferences and benefits they are looking for, as well as your products services and industry and which email marketing messages are most effective.
Here are six reasons why email marketing can work for your business:
- Effective
According to the Direct Marketing Association, $1 spent on email advertising was shown to return between $45 and $51 — and despite what you might think, email gets read. Open rates for email often approach 40 percent.
- Affordable
Industry estimates say online campaigns are 20 times more cost-effective than other marketing channels, with individual email messages often costing just fractions of a penny. As a result, email makes it practical to communicate more often with customers.
- Easy
Sending out professional-quality email campaigns is now a do-it-yourself project.
- Quick and Effective
Need to boost revenue right away? Email marketing allows you to broadcast to everyone at Internet speed. Initial campaign response generally occurs within 48 hours of launch
- Grows Relationships
Emailing personalized deals or your inside scoop is an efficient way to make customers feel important. If a customer feels appreciated and finds value in your message, you gain their loyalty while offering the perfect word-of-mouth opportunity.
- Measurable
A great advantage of email is that everything can be tracked. From the moment you send an email, you can see how many people opened it, clicked on certain links, and forwarded it to others and much more! – source Experian.com
Transforming ideas into action
If you happen to have purchased B4i, you are bound to receive notifications of the latest updates, case in point Figure 1 example below.
The example of the email above is received by all B4X members who have procured B4i. This contains information about the latest release using buttons and other information for downloading the IDE and the Mac Builder. The email is focused and straight to the point.
To demonstrate what BANanoMJML does, I took it upon me, without diluting the purpose of this email, as an example, to “bling” it a little bit. The best way to do this was to understand what Anywhere Software is about, so I headed up to the site and looked for something I could use. I noted the company logo, the company tag, the social network links, the color coding and, whala!!
Moving away from “text based” emails
When you open the b4x.com website and compare it with the email in Figure 2 above, you will notice that the email in Figure 2 has an “identity” of Anywhere Software. BANanoMJML helps you achieve that. By creating the responsive emails for your marketing campaign, you are able to use your creative juices to bring the 6 reasons and more to your business.
How does BANanoMJML work?
The recommended method of using BANanoMJML is via the abstract designer. Custom Views have been created inside a BANano library to make the transition smooth. In figure 3 below, I dragged and dropped some views like sections (rows) and columns, text, images and set their attributes to make this example work.
BANanoMJML, besides the ability to preview the final output of your layout to a browser, you are able to save the generated HTML as a file that you can send with any email client. You are also able to send the email directly with BANAnoMJML using any PHP enabled web-server.
BANanoMJML uses the BANano library as a dependency.
For more details on using BANanoMJML, follow this thread.
PS: Now, before I start a company that will render email development services for other companies using BANanoMJML, let me gift this layout to Erel. 😉