graduation assignment

HANOI UNIVERSITY OF BUSSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY
FACULTY OF ENGLISH
--------------------------

Graduation Assignment
SOME RECOMMENDATION ON IMPROVING
EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY AT DAMEN SONG CAM SHIPYARDS COMPANY

Supervisor:

Dinh Thi Phuong Anh, M.A

Name of student: Nguyen Thi Huyen
Class: English 17.03- Course: 2012-2016
Student’s Code: 12104673

HANOI, 2016


Supervisor: Dinh Thi Phuong Anh M.A

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This graduation assignment could not have completed without the
help, encouragement and support from a number of people who all deserve
my sincerest gratitude and appreciation.
First of all, I am heartily thankful to Mr. Tran Anh Tho for his
encouragement and support. He is like a guide, who helps the students in each
and every sphere of life by giving the right advice.
I am also deeply indebted to my supervisor, Dinh Thi Phuong Anh,
M.A, whose encouragement, guidance and support from the initial to the final
level helped me to finish this graduation assignment.

I would like to give my thanks to the librarians, and the administrative
staff of the Hanoi university of Business and Technology for their help and
advice without these this assignment still is far from finished.
Finally, my deepest gratitude and appreciation go to my family, my
friends and my classmates. Their love, support and constant encouragement
gave me a great deal of strength and determination that help me during the
stressful time of writing this graduation assignment.

Student: Nguyen Thi Huyen

Class: English 17.03


Supervisor: Dinh Thi Phuong Anh M.A

TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................1
CHAPTER 1. THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK....................................3
CHAPTER 2. INTRODUCTION ABOUT DAMEN - SONG CAM...............6
SHIPYARDS COMPANY................................................................................6
CHAPTER 3. ANALYSIS OF FINDINGS AND..........................................11
RECOMMENDATIONS................................................................................11
CONCLUSION...............................................................................................23

Student: Nguyen Thi Huyen

Class: English 17.03


Supervisor: Dinh Thi Phuong Anh M.A

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
DSCS : Damen-Song Cam Shipyards
LCD : Liquid Crystal Display
HDD : Hard Disk Drive
HP : Final Fantasy
IBM : International Bussiness Machines

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Firgure 1: Company’s Organization. (Page 10)
Table 1: Damen - Song Cam Shipyards Company’s trading results in recent
year. (Page 13)
Table 2 : Survey on responses on email marketing from Damen-Song Cam
Shipyards Comp any’sclient. (Page 24)

Student: Nguyen Thi Huyen

Class: English 17.03


Supervisor: Dinh Thi Phuong Anh M.A

INTRODUCTION
Marketing has always played an essential role in the success of a
company. Though marketing does not mean selling of products and services,
it helps in increasing the awareness of consumers toward brand names of
companies. When general public is conscious to the products, services and
goods under the brands will have the power to pursuit people towards brands
and make them have the purchasing decision.
Seeing the booming in online marketing tools, particularly emailmarketing in today business, the Damen - Song Cam Shipyards

Companywondering if it should use this tool for improving the efficiency of
its marketing activities. This is a relatively controversial question which
requires the corporation of the whole management team of the company.
Therefore, a study related to email-marketing was carried out in order to find
out the answer to this question.
The purpose of this research is to study how the Damen - Song Cam
Shipyards Company could use email marketing effectively. The research
firstly will study the current using of email marketing in other companies to
get general understanding of this marketing method. Then, it will determine
features of a good marketing email in sense of content, design and frequency
of sending. Besides, the costs of carrying out the email- marketing project
will be considered also.
The data for this research were collected mainly through the contact
with the customers of the Damen - Song Cam Shipyards Company. A set of
interview questions and/or questionnaires were sent to about 20 clients of the
company through email. This is for getting to know about these company’s
preferences, or which information they expect to receive from a marketing
email. Besides, sample marketing emails in the Internet was collected for
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analyzing also. This helps the author have an insight look of how email
marketing is using currently. And this is also the reason for the author’s
investigation into the topic entitled: “ Some recommendation on improving email

marketing strategy at Damen - Song Cam Shipyards Company ” . The research is

divided into three main parts as the following order: The first part is the
introduction of the research. The second part covers the main chapters
including: (1) Theoretical framework of this report, (2) Company
introduction, (3) Analysis of findings, and Recommendations. The final part
comprises Conclusion. Appendix and References of the report are enclosed
as well.
This assignment includes 3 chapters:
Chapter 1: Theoretical Framework.
Chapter 2: Overview of Damen - Song Cam Shipyards Company.
Chapter 3: Analysis of Findings and Recommendations.

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CHAPTER 1. THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
1.1. The concept of marketing.
The marketing concept continues to be at the root of most marketing
efforts. It is a controversial topic which has gained attention of many
economics analysts. There are many definitions of marketing. Among them,
the theory by Philip Kotler is probably one of the most popular ones.
“Marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals
and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and

exchanging products and value with others.”
(Philip Kotler, Gary Armstrong Principles of Marketing, Northwestern
University, 1996 ;.
Peter Drucker, a world’s famous modem marketing author, has also
differentiated marketing from selling. He said:
“Marketing is not only much broader than selling, it is not a
specialized activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole
business seen from the point of view of the final result, that is, from the
customer's point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must
therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise. ”
( Peter F. Drucker, The practice of management, 2007 )
Actually, the 4Ps in marketing: product, price, place and promotion, is
the verification of the vast in marketing term.
For a brief explanation, marketing focuses on the satisfaction of
customer needs, wants and requirements. The philosophy of marketing needs
to be owned by everyone from within the organization. Future needs have to
be identified and anticipated. There is normally a focus upon profitability,
especially in the corporate sector. However, as public sector organizations
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and not-for-profit organizations adopt the concept of marketing, this need not
always be the case. More recent definitions recognize the influence of
marketing upon society.

1.2. Promotion.
Promotion generally is communicating with the public in an attempt to
influence them toward buying your products and/or services. It includes all
the ways available to make a product and/or service known to and purchased
by customers and clients. The word promotion is also used specifically to
refer to a particular activity that is intended to promote the business, product
or service. A store might advertise that it's having a big promotion on certain
items, for instance, or a business person may refer to an ad as a promotion.
(Philip Kotler, 2006).
According to Philip Kotler, a famous marketing expert, there are three
major promotion tools. The first is advertising. It is the action of making a
particular product or service known widely by the public with the aim of
persuading them to buy. Everyday, thousands of advertisement are shown on
television as one of the most popular promotion tools. The second type is
sales promotion. This is short term incentives for attracting customers to buy.
The final one is public relation. This is for building a favorable company
image through doing various activities such as donating for a public event,
doing charity, raising fund, etc. In conclusion, these three types of promotion
tools are all important to a successful marketing plan, but it does not mean
that marketers have to use all of them. Deciding which to be used depends
greatly on each company’s circumstances.

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1.3. Considerations of selecting advertising tools: reach, frequency and
media impact.
According to Philip Kotler, there are three things marketers must
consider carefully when choosing an advertising tool: reach, frequency, and
media impact. Reach is a calculating of the percentage of people in the
targeted market who are expected to see or receive the advertisement during
a given period of time. The more an advertisement could reach its targeted
audience, the more successful it will be. The second element is frequency. It
is a measure of how many times the advertisement are repeated in a certain
period of time, for example, three or four times a week. Determining a
suitable frequency for an advertisement is very important, which mainly
depends on the advertising budget. The last element is media impact. It is
'the qualitative value of a message exposure through a given medium.
’( Philip Kotler, Gary Armstrong , Principles of Marketing, page 510 ). For

example, a television advertisement will probably have more impact than the
one on radio because television uses both sight and sound whereas radio uses
sound only.

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CHAPTER 2. INTRODUCTION ABOUT DAMEN - SONG CAM

SHIPYARDS COMPANY

2.1. Overview of the company
Damen - Song Cam Shipyards Company was founded on August 2010
with primary construction complete , it is the latest addition to the Damen
Shipyards Group. The yard is Damen’s first formal Joint Venture yard in
Vietnam and will be the preferred production location for Damen tug and
workboats up to 60 meters long. Damen Song Cam Shipyard is a joint venture
between Damen in the Netherlands (70%) and Song Cam Shipyard, member
of SBIC (30%) and based in Haiphong.
Since the introduction of the modular shipbuilding concept, Damen has
delivered more than 6,000 vessels. Today, Damen Shipyards Group operates
in many shipbuilding sectors and has gained a prominent and trusted standing
throughout the world. With a global workforce numbering more than 9,000 ,
Damen builds a wide variety of standard hulls for stock at dedicated shipyards
in strategic locations. Production capacity is up to 180 vessels per year.
Damen - Song Cam Shipyards Company delivers up to 40 workboats
per year. In fact, they have built more than 6000 ships since 1969 . And
because they maintain an average stock of 200 hulls, some already with basic
outfitting, they can guarantee quick delivery times .
2.2. Company’s Organization.

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Firgure 1: Company’s Organization.

2.2.1. Board of Directors.
Damen - Song Cam shipyards company’s Board of Directors includes a
Director General and 2 Deputy Directors General.
• Director General: Leading the company’s board of management is

the Director General who is responsible for managing the use of capital,
human and other resources.
• Two Deputy Directors General. These people provide assistance to

the Director General. They would sometimes act on behalf of the Director
General in his absence. One of them is responsible for the trading, planning,
financial and accounting matters and the other is in charge of technical and
research and development aspects in the company.

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2.2.2. The departments.
There are five departments, each of which is responsible for a certain
part of the company’s activities.
• Trading department: this department helps the Board of Directors

with trading activities. These include organizing both domestic and
international business. The trading department is also responsible for:
- Doing marketing researches on products.
-

Promoting the company’s products through advertisements.

-

Holding negotiations and getting contracts for the company.

- Organizing distribution channel for the company’s products.
• Planning department: this department is in charge of marketing

plans on importing, material providing and preceding the contracts.
Organizing the sales of products is another main task of the department.
• Financial and Accounting department: this department deals with

all financial and accounting matters. Another main function id to manage the
use of capital to the right purpose, right policies and regulations, and to assist
business activities.
• Technical department: this department is in charge of technical and

technological matters. The staff of this department also works closely with the
factories to do researching and applying the modem equipment and technical
advance to their manufacturing and processing. This department is for the
purpose of the company’s business development tales all the adjustments or
improvement to the technology.
• Quality control department: this department takes control over the

quality of the products. This is for the purpose of assuring that all the products

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will meet customers’ requirements.
2.3. Customer base
Damen’s unique shipbuilding concept is based on what customer want:
the best quality , proven designs , short delivery times , low maintenance and
excellent resale value . The result is a work method with the ideal balance
between standardization and custom-built vessels. And of course they offer a
board range of customer services .
We deliver well-proven and thoroughly tested design and technology in
competitively priced and innovative vessels. Client feedback is vital - it’s how
we can standardize our hulls for each niche market.
Our standardized shipbuilding approach , known as the Damen
standard, has become one of our fundamental core values. By building a wide
variety of standard hulls for stock purposes, we can substantially reduce
delivery times. However, these standardized vessels can be tailor-made with a
wide variety of options. We fine -tune every Damen ship down to the last
detail to meet specific customer requirements.
Therefore, building a firm the connection between Damen - Song Cam
Shipyards Company and its clients is one of the most important task of the
company managers. They also directly distributes the company products to

end-users. The contribution of this type of customer to the company’s revenue
is very limited. According to the companies sales statistics, only 10% of the
company turnover in 2013 comes from this channel of distribution. However,
Damen - Song Cam Shipyards Company are planning to increase the sales in
this market segment as a part of its production expanding plan in long term.
2.3.1 Company trading results.

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Table 1: Damen - Song Cam Shipyards Company’s trading results in
recent years.
Unit: Million VND

Total sales
Net profit

2012

2013

2014

2015

2.527

3.035

5.783

8.579

295

350

527

950

(Sources: Financial and Accounting department)

2.3.2. Statement of the problem.
Since the early days of launching the market, Damen - Song Cam
Shipyards Company has mostly used its staff to go to partner companies to
market its products. However, this method seems insufficient now since the
number of its customers is growing quickly while both the human resource
and company’s budget is limited. This practice requires the company to find
some additional way to do marketing activities besides the traditional one.

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Supervisor: Dinh Thi Phuong Anh M.A

CHAPTER 3. ANALYSIS OF FINDINGS AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
3.1. Analysis of Findings.
3.1.1. Growing use of email.
Together with the development of the Internet in all over the world in recent
years, email has become an important medium of communication. In the research
called Topline Summary Media Consumption carried out by Online Publisher
Association (OPA), it is found that email is currently a dominant/top mean of media
to people on work who spend 34% of their time for media on emailing. The media
here includes television, magazine, radio, and newspaper. TNS, a market research
company in Vietnam has also studied the using of the Internet in Vietnam. They
find that one-third of the Vietnamese families in cities are using email and this trend
seems to grow more strongly in next years. Nokia, a world’s famous mobile phone
manufacturer has already pointed out that the young are increasingly in fond of
sending emails through their phone. This example once again shows the
increasingly important role of email in today’s life
3.1.2. Using email for marketing purposes.
Since email is used more and more widely, it is definitely
understandable why many businessman are trying to make full use of email
for their business purposes. This is the reason why email-marketing was bom.
So what is email-marketing, and how it is used currently? These are two
questions needed to be answer before we could go further into this topic.
Basically, email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses
electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fund-raising

messages to an audience’. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential
or current customer could be considered email marketing. Sending mail to a
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targeted group of audience with the purposes of promoting a product or
service, enhancing the relationship with both current and potential customers,
encouraging customer to be loyal and repeat business, etc.
Depending on the criteria of permission, there are two types of
marketing emails:
• Solicited Commercial Email ( SCE) : with the permission of

receivers. Email marketers try to produce this type of mail.
• Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) : without the permission of

receivers. This type of mail is considered as spam.
The content of a marketing email could be: an advertisement for
introducing a product or service; information about a promotion campaign of
companies; newsletter which provides updated information on products,
services, markets; after-sales information for customer care services: giving
customers useful information such as users’ guides, important notices,
instruction videos; e-cards for special occasion such as Christmas , New Year,
birthdays, etc. (Mark Brownlow, what is email marketing, 2008)
Then, email marketing is not just sending advertisement of a product,

service, or brand through electronic mail. It can also be sending newsletters,
congratulations, cards, wishes and so on to customers. This is all for building a
good relationship with customers and making company’s brand known by them.
A large number of marketing emails are mass-produced, which means that
emails are sent to hundreds, thousands or even millions of recipients at once.
The problem with this type of marketing is the potential for having
your emails viewed as spam. This is likely to occur if you send your emails to
recipients who have no interest in your products or services and have not
expressed interest in receiving emails from you.
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E-newsletters are also becoming increasingly popular as a form of email
marketing. E-newsletters can be a simple or as complex as it may include text,
graphics, advertisements, links or any combination of these elements.
3.1.3. Reasons for increasing use of email marketing.
Email marketing is a time and cost saving channel of advertising. There
are no postage or printing expenses as well as the fee pay for media
advertising on television or radio, etc. These types of advertising is effective
at some extent, but it is quite expensive and normally cost a big sum of the
company’s budget. Now if using the email for marketing, the fee that
companies have to pay is just a few cents per mail. Therefore, in term of
expense, it is not difficult to launch a email marketing campaign since a large
volume of emails can be sent with very low cost. Further more, email

marketing also help save time in transfer messages to targeted audience. With
just a click, thousands of emails could be sent exactly to the targeted
addresses. And almost right after that, customers will receive the emails with
sufficient content. There is almost no way marketers could assess customers
as quickly as email marketing.
Besides, email marketing allows marketers to reach a very specific kind
of customers that they want to focus on. While mass media has a general
audience, email marketing makes it possible to focus exclusively on people
that might be interested in the services or products you advertise. It is obvious
that an advertising campaign with highly targeted audience will gain attention
from right people, therefore the possibility customers decide to purchase is
higher. In addition, the efficiency of email marketing has been proved to be
high according to many surveys.
Furthermore, after launching an email marketing campaign, marketers
could measure the effectiveness of the campaign, which other types of
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marketing tools such as television and radio marketing almost can not do.
With an email tracking report software, marketers will be provided with data
about who opened emails, what links were clicked, who unsubscribed from
emails and who forwarded emails. Knowing all of this can help marketers
make intime adjustments to improve their marketing effectiveness.
With such excellent advantages, email marketing continues to gain

attention of businesses. The results of many surveys have showed that
managers of many companies are full of confidence in this marketing tool, and
therefore, it is highly possible that they will put it in their marketing plans.
BtoB, a famous business magazine in Chicago has done a survey on the trend
of using email marketing in 2011, and they found that 63% of respondents
likely to increase spending on email in 2011 (second only to websites) with
29% keeping spend constant (reference). Another survey by The Digital
Marketing Outlook Survey from the Society of Digital Agencies also revealed
that 70% of brand marketers planned to invest in email marketing in 2011.
In conclusion, marketing through email is of many good points. Its
main advantages include low cost, time-saving, easy to reach targeted
customers and measurable results. However, this marketing tool also contains
some disadvantages which will be discussed in the next part of the report.
3.1.4. Drawbacks of email marketing.
The most obvious disadvantage to email marketing is the possibility of
having marketing emails viewed as spam. This is a very important problem because
it could lead an email marketing campaign to nothing since email recipients do not
pay any attention to the marketing email at all. Each day Internet users are fed up
with receiving unsolicited emails serving as advertisements. The appearance of
these mails in their mail box really irritate them since it makes the mail box become
unclear and confusing. This problem has reached epic proportions and the
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abundance of spam infiltrating the email boxes of innocent Internet users has to be
cautious and suspicious about any email they receive which is unsolicited and
appears to be promoting a particular product or service. As a result, they may liken
all sorts of marketing mails to be spam, and do not pay any attention to a real
marketing mail, which may be useful to them in some extend.
Marketing by email also contains legal risks. If marketers send mails
without the permission of the recipients, they will be fined by the authority.
This is a serious problem, therefore being careful in building the recipient list
and asking for their subscription is really important.
Furthermore, the delivery of emails is also an issue. In many cases, it is
hard to deliver marketing emails successfully because of technical problems.
Emails which contain subject lines or content which appear to be similar to spam
may be automatically transferred to a spam email folder by the email system.
3.1.4.1. Responses on email marketing from Damen-Song Cam Shipyards
Company’s clients.
Email marketing is definitely no longer a new term in Vietnam. When
being asked, all of the survey participants expressed quite properly about this
term, which proves that they have certain understanding about this. They said
they receive emails quite frequently, the frequency of receiving these mails
ranges from several times a week to several times a day. Some are from the
people they know, others from strangers.. Below is a list of the most
important/major findings in the survey.

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Table 2: Survey on responses on email marketing from Damen-Song Cam

Shipyards Company’sclients.
Have received marketing emails

100% survey participants (SP)

already

70% SP

Receive marketing emails everyday

2/3 of the marketing emails received

From strangers
Ignore marketing emails from

75% SP

strangers
Feel annoyed with receiving

80% SP

marketing emails from strangers

25% of the marketing emails received was read
Check mails on days from Tuesday to

80% SP

Thursday

17% of the marketing emails sent

Get replies

45% SP

Want to stop receiving these mails
Do not bother continuing to receive

35% SP

marketing emails

All of the survey applicants said they had received marketing emails, of
which 70% said they received this kind of mails almost everyday. This shows
that the number of marketing emails they received is quite large. However,
most of the email senders are unfamiliar to them. Many of them said up to 2/3
of the email authors they did not know. For this type of mails, 75 % of the
participants completely ignored them. This means that only 25% of the
strange

emails

were

read

by

the

Damen-Song

Cam

Shipyards

Companyclients. The comments for these mails are negative. 80% of the
people asked said they were annoyed with receiving mails from those who
they did not know because it makes their mailbox confusing, and wasting
their time also.
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About the habit of reading emails, it is noted the time from Tuesday to
Thursday is the time when emails are usually checked most. Title, length,
readability, and content of emails are the orders of their considering whether
to read an marketing email or not. On average, as the survey result shows, just
about 20% of the marketing mails were replied by recipients.

For general comments, a half of the people in the survey said they were
skeptical about the information given in marketing emails. A similar amount,
approximately 45% said they wanted to stop receiving these emails. Just 35%
were in opposite opinion.
3.1.4.2. Limited attention to marketing emails.
The survey on Damen-Song Cam Shipyards Companyclients has showed
that email marketing is currently receiving relatively limited attention among
these people. Everyday, 70% of the people asked receive at least one marketing
email, then the number of marketing emails they received is quite large, and the
frequency of receiving is quite often. This makes them more and more
uninterested in these mails, and paying little attention to them is an unavoidable
result. Too many mails mean more time needed for checking, and in rapidly
pacing economy, it is almost impossible to read all mails in the box.
Low cost, quick sending and high possibility of reaching a large
number of targeted customers make it very much easy for businesses to do
marketing via email. Many companies create an automatic sending emails
software, and let machine send mails automatically without considering if the
mail contents are suitable to recipients or not . The mass sending may skip the
specific features of each companies. As a result, many mails are sent to
addresses which do not really need them. This means these mails have no or
very little value to recipients. Because many businesses are careless in
building the send-list, they make this practice repeat many times, and
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gradually recipients do not pay any attention to marketing emails as a result.
Email marketers seem to be focusing on the quantity of the sending rather
than the quality.
3.1.5. Some positive signs of email marketing.
The key of this is the usefulness of the email itself. When being done
right, email marketing is a good way to construct relationships. It makes
recipients feel like they are being taken care of and they mean something to the
sender. Receiving an e-mail from a company seems like getting an e-mail from
a friend—inviting, warm and most importantly, informational. The mail shows
that the company appreciate the business between the two sides and want to
keep its customers informed about any company news. The second benefit is
providing information. About 40% of the survey participants agree that the
content of the marketing emails which they received is useful to them. In
comparison with 35% of the people willing to receive marketing emails again,
we can see that the rate is quite similar. Recipients will be very less likely to
report an email address as Spam if they would find useful information in the
email they received. Then, it is obvious that giving valuable information is key
to a worth-seeing email.
In conclusion, the clients of Damen-Song Cam Shipyards Companyare
all quite familiar with email marketing. They receive the mails with different
attitudes due to the different levels of these emails’ usefulness. This means
that for some mails, they are grateful to get, but for others they are not. Above
the reasons why recipients did ignore some marketing emails while for others
they themselves receive happily have been analyzed. Although the number of
people show their willingness to receive marketing emails is not very high,
just 35%, I do hope that with a carefully-designed email marketing campaign,
the Damen-Song Cam Shipyards Companywill make a difference. In the next
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part of the report, I will give some recommendations of how to create a good
marketing email basing on my study of the company’s circumstances .
3.2. Recommendations on a Good Email Marketing Strategy.
3.2.1. Building an email address list with permissions of recipients.
It is necessary to note that in this research only existing/ current
customers of the company were studied, not potential ones, therefore, with
such a relatively small company size, the number of these customers may be
not very large. Moreover, most of the customers of Damen-Song Cam
Shipyards Companyare businesses which have been in relationship with the
company for long. With these two reasons, it is highly recommended that the
company directly contact with its customers for info mail addresses, and also
permission for Damen-Song Cam Shipyards Companyto send emails to them.
Doing this is rather time- costing, however, the quality of email address list is
higher in return because the company can collect exactly targeted customers.
Then there will be more chance for Damen-Song Cam Shipyards
Company’semails to be noticed by its clients.
Moreover , it is obvious that a good email list must get permission of
recipients, otherwise the sent mails will be considered as spam which is
highly possible to be ignored, or even annoys recipients. Moreover, sending
spam emails is illegal to the law of Vietnam. The Government has already put
some law about this into reality. According to the Decree No. 90/2008/NDCP by the Government, individuals or organizations who break the law could
be fined up to VND 100 millions .Then asking for permission is not only
important to get attention of readers but also related to legislative field, so

doing this is highly recommended.

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Supervisor: Dinh Thi Phuong Anh M.A

3.2.2. Sending informative emails.
Studying the customer base of the Damen-Song Cam Shipyards
Companyas well as its production, I find that there are basically three types of
information the company should include in their emails: introduction of new
products or updated information about its current ones, special promotion
events, and congratulations or wishes on special occasion in year. For the first
type, the company could advertise its new product directly to its aimed
customers who it knows that are interest of the company products. This is a
cheap way to advertise and still ensures that the company could reach its
customers effectively.
Besides, notes on product instruction is also valuable to the company’s
clients. Updated news on this are surely appreciated and valuable to the
recipients. For the second type, the survey among Damen-Song Cam
Shipyards Company’sclients shows that promotion news is one of the thing
they expect most in every news. This is surely a worth sending content.
However, there are not promotion all the time, so the number of these emails
will be quite limited. For the last type, although it is not very informative and
not including important information, it is still necessary for enhancing the
relationship between Damen-Song Cam Shipyards Companyand its clients.

This is an polite action and it shows that Viet Hop do care about its clients as
well as wish to in business with each other for long term.
3.2.3. Paying special attention to email design and frequency of sending.
3.2.3.1. Email design.
The email design is an important factor which will greatly affect if
receivers continue to read the email or not. Even though the content of the email
is useful to recipients, it still may be unopened due to a bad design and low
readability. To prevent this, the company should have its email designed by
Student: Nguyen Thi Huyen

20

Class: English 17.03


Supervisor: Dinh Thi Phuong Anh M.A

professional companies who are experts in this services. They will ensure that
the email is not only easy to read but also impressive. However, for short
messages, the company can make by itself to save the cost.
3.2.3.2. Frequency of sending.
In addition, the frequency of email delivery should also be paid
attention to. Sending emails too often or too rarely are both not good. So what
is the right line of this? Which of sending daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly
is good? My answer is sending by random. This means that the company may
send emails to its customers when it thinks it has something to communicate
with its customers. The reason of this is that sending emails regularly may
make receivers bored. When the company has nothing important to say to its
clients, but it is still keen on sending regularly, these mails just waste time of
readers, and next time they will find less interested in the mail from the

company as a result. Therefore, I suggest the company should send emails
only when it is necessary.
3.2.3.3. Time of sending.
The specific time of sending is also an important factor determining
whether an email will be read or not. Normally, people have a certain time in
a day or a week to check and read email, therefore it is vital for marketers to
know about the time when their customers check mail. According to the
survey results, up to 80% of the people joining the survey said they usually
checked mail on the days from Tuesday to Thursday, 70 % said they opened
emails at 9h30-15h30. Therefore, it is highly recommended to send mails in
this period of time since it is when recipients focus on checking emails and
thinking of them.
3.2.3.4. Personalizing the email content.

Student: Nguyen Thi Huyen

21

Class: English 17.03