Afer Europe (Association Francaise d'Epargne et de Retraite) is a group of savers specialized in Life Insurance. Afer is mainly present in France, but also in Belgium. It is to one of its Email Marketing campaign in Belgium that we will be interested in.
The context
In its mailing, Afer proposes ten dates to try to meet potential clients. This is the main purpose of the e-mailThe goal is to attract as many people as possible to its meetings.
With what means
As an opening, let's see the subjectline AFER EUROPE comes to your region!
It is not bad the subject of the email, it is short and direct which is usually a good omen. On the other hand, it is a pity to have put the name of the company in the subjectline when it was already present in the From. This would have been the opportunity to introduce the mail subject using for example "Our savings are moving to your area".
Even more interesting, by knowing the place of residence of the recipients, it would have been possible to include the nearest meeting place directly in the subjectline. For example: "Our savings are moving to Liege". This could have had a great impact on the opening rate of emailing.
Let's now look at the content of the newsletter.
First notice, text! Apart from the logo at the very top of the e-mail, there is only text. But fortunately, this one is written in a very clear manner.
Need help?
Reading content isn't everything. The best way is to talk to us.
Second remark, no links or call-to-actions ! It is not possible to click on the logo and only one link leads to the Afer Europe homepage, and this is present in the footer of the email. The text of the e-mail invites you to call or send an e-mail to get more information. But it would probably have been better toadd a button in the email pointing to a page with more information and a contact form.
We can also point out the use of the font Comic Sans MS which is far from being unanimous and which does not have a very professional look either!
Among the missing things, we can mention the absence of a link in the header of the mail to a web version of the newsletter. We could also talk about the absence of text version of the email (no multipart), because the logo is an attachment and not hosted on a web server. No SPF (Sender Policy Framework). No customization. Etc ...
Conclusion
This is certainly Afer Europe's first approach to email marketing. The association (company?) would undoubtedly have benefited from better support. In particular, it could have asked its router (which is Sarbacane) or a specialized agency for advice.
Unless they ask the participants of their meetings, Afer Europe will probably have a hard time measuring the effectiveness of their email marketing campaign, since the Internet users were not redirected to their website. So no click-through rate in sight.
See you at the next mailing to see if there is any improvement!
