More Effective Electronic Mail

It’s been a long time since electronic mail (email) was created, and only a slightly shorter time that electronic mail marketing began. And just a slightly SHORTER time before people started getting pissed that they were being sold stuff they did not want through their electronic mail addresses.

So for those of us with a very solid product who use electronic mail to communicate with our target clients, here are some tips to help you stand out from the crowd.

• • Frankly, you are competing with a lot of crap. Seriously, if you take a look at your spam filters, there are thousands of email marketers who are making you look bad. Keeping this in mind, how do you fight it? Well…

• • Have a truly solid product or service. Let’s be honest with ourselves here.  If you do not offer something really great, then all email marketing is going to do is hurt your image.  We do not send out emails for promotional products when they are at regular price, but when I find, for example, an incredible sale or a closeout, I will send it out.  But…

• • I only send it to a proper target market. If the closeout on that promotional product is for, say, beach umbrellas, I would only send that email to clients who could use that product to their best interest.  This is the concept of Proper Segmentation.  We do not want to send our emails to everyone once a week.  You simply cannot expect that a One Message for Everyone will work.  We have to fine tune our lists and send correct messages to the proper audience.  We do this by….

• Demographically and Psychographically segmenting our email lists. When someone goes into your CRM, or however you keep your list of people, set up ways (in Infusionsoft, for example, they are called TAGS, in SendOutCards they are called Groups) to easily keep them segmented.  But just because they are split up, does not mean you should not….

• Personalize your message even within groups. Sending generic, To Whom It May Concern copy does not show you care.  This is one of the great things about using email services like Constant Contact or MailChimp.  Personalization gets you a much higher response rate, even with today’s more sophisticated shoppers.  And speaking of personalization, you should also use…

• Amusing copy, localized information, compelling headlines and frankly non-boring messages to help your response rate, too. Make your email interesting to read.  And don’t forget to …

• Be interesting! Be helpful. Give your audience information which will make them look forward to receiving your email.  This is not to say, don’t sell.  You HAVE to sell.  But when we send out our sales messages, we also give useful and needed information so that if they do not buy, we have helped them out and they might buy some other time.

• Don’t do stupid S***. Subject lines make a difference.  So does making sure that your sender name is familiar to the recipient.  Have a clear and specific Call to Action because if you do not tell them what to do, they will do nothing.  Here is an example:  If you are in Los Angeles, as soon as you are done reading this blog, I would love to have you sign up for our next Los Angeles marketing bootcamp at SedonaOMG.com . And for goodness sake, use your spell check tool.

• Make sure you check the statistics on your emails. Only 3 out of 10 ever look at their ROI Metrics, so if you want to jump ahead of your competitors, look at your numbers and test different parts of your content.

(Remember I told you in number 8 to have a Call to Action, here is the CTA for this blog)

So there are some tips on making your electronic mail solicitations more effective.  Remember that electronic mail is probably going to be a part of your marketing plan, but heading down the proper path is important.

If you would like help in making more money from your efforts, you should call us at 800-705-4265.  We will help you create solid and successful details like messaging, conversions, headlines, subject lines and everything which can keep your emails from being a useless exercise in futility.