Email marketing is a great way to build up your client base, keep your fans informed on your business’s latest news, and ensure that you stay front of mind for top customers.

This holds true for both local and international markets. In fact, when it comes to global marketing, email campaigns can be even more effective given that they allow you to easily reach customers throughout the world with just the click of a button.

But don’t mistake the ease of sending an email with the complexity of tailoring your campaign for global buyers. There is an enormous amount of small, but very significant details that go into launching an international email campaign. When translating and adopting your emails, you’ll need to factor in language, culture, and geographic location.

If you want your global email marketing efforts to be a success, consider the following three major aspects of marketing translation.

1. Translating with Marketing Flair

Highly stylized documents — such as those used in marketing efforts — often require more than simple word-for-word translation. Certain content, such as idioms, just don’t make sense when translated directly for another culture. With a word-for-word translation, you run the risk of confusing, offending, or alienating your intended market.

When localizing marketing emails targeted at international audiences, this is especially important. You want to retain the flavor and emotion behind your original content without sacrificing clarity.

Thus it’s key that you work with marketing localization professionals who have experience not only in translating content, but also in translating brand voice and identity.

2. Cultural Considerations

Cultural localization is extremely important when targeting international audiences via email marketing. This covers a number of small but important details, such as using appropriate greetings and sign-offs conforming to local norms.

Color choice is another vital consideration. You may think that using white as your main color theme is a good idea because you’re advertising cleaning services and in the US the color white is often associated with cleanliness. However, if you’re target audience is in China, they probably won’t have the same reaction since in China the color white is associated with mourning.

The formatting of the message itself also needs to be addressed. If you’re marketing to an Asian market that reads top to bottom, or to an Arabic market which reads right to left, you may have to reformat some of your content and images.

Speaking of images, they are another important cultural consideration since images and symbols as basic as emojis can be very differently understood. A professional translation company will be able to help you navigate these waters and select only the colors, images, format, and content that will most resonate with your target audience.

3. Geographic Location Counts

In addition to language and culture, it’s important to take geography into account when translating international marketing emails.

Two important aspects to consider are dialects and country-specific lexicons.

The dialect and vocabulary of Spanish spoken in Spain varies from that of Mexico, for example. For this reason, odds are that an international marketing email translation targeted at a Mexican audience will not be identical to one targeted at a Spanish audience.

Another geographic aspect to keep in mind is time difference. When sending global marketing emails, the goal — on its most basic level — is to reach a foreign audience. The first thing most people do when they get to the office is clear out the spam in their mailbox — you don’t want your international marketing email to be one of the many “junk” emails automatically deleted at the start of the work day.

Sending emails at appropriate times can make a big difference.

The Bottom Line: Localization is Essential

It’s obvious that just translating the words isn’t enough — localization services that consider everything from the design to the content are a must when it comes to effective translation in the field of international email marketing.

Ultimately, an in-depth knowledge of the target language, culture, and design is necessary to make a campaign successful. That’s why it’s best to trust the translation of your marketing emails to translators with expertise in these areas.

Specialized attention to these little details will prevent a global email marketing campaign from becoming nothing more than junk mail.

If you’re looking to launch an international marketing campaign via email and require assistance with your translation and localization efforts, contact Accredited Language today.