I recently received an email from a company and the subject line was ‘newsletter #1’. The email came from a person’s name, that I didn’t know, so there wasn’t a lot of instant appeal to open it, but my curiosity got the better of me and I did open it, simply to see if it was spam, as it appeared, or a misguided attempt at connecting with their mailing list. In fact, it was the latter. Now don’t think I am criticising them, in fact, good on them for making the effort to connect with their clients. I do think a few little tweaks might have been more effective for them though.
So it prompted me to write a few thoughts down about connecting with your email list.
1
There’s a few different kinds of emails to send clients.
- Emails to ‘nurture’ their relationship with your business, add value, share information, stay in touch, that kind of thing.
- Sales campaigns where you offer a product or service to them.
Make sure you are sending both kinds of emails, because one email after another selling something might become a bit tiresome for your target market after a while.
2
Your subject line can, and will, make or break the effectiveness of your email. Hint – ‘newsletter’ in the subject line probably isn’t going to cut it these days. Try something more appealing like ‘Melody have you heard about the new (insert brand new product name) or ‘Five ways to keep your horse cool this summer’ or that kind of thing. Be creative!
3
Who the email comes from is also important. Make sure there is a connection. So if you are sending an email from your business, make sure the senders name email reflects that. For instance, it might say ‘Melody Semmler – Equine Entrepreneurs’. Not just one, or the other, some may know the person’s name not the business name, some the other way around.
4
You are totally mad if you are using your own email account to send multiple emails. There’s a few very good reasons for this.
- You have no way to track who got your email, and whether they opened it, or clicked on your links in it (if you have them). So you are making decisions on the next one completely blind as to the result of the last one!
- You will eventually get marked for spam if you regularly send group emails to more than 10 people. All ISP’s have different settings, but once you are marked for spam, it’s very hard to go back.
- People’s spam filters look for emails coming in that are sent to a lot of people at once and will often block them
For those three reasons alone, using a third party option like MailChimp (there are many out there, that is a free and simple one) to handle the emails is a very sensible approach!
5
Regularity of emails is a hotly debated subject. Me personally, if I sign up to something or buy something online and the company starts emailing me every second day, they are gone… I hit that unsubscribe button faster than a cheetah jumps on it’s dinner. And I have no idea why the ones that email and text twice every day think that’s a good strategy, because it just pi**es me off, and again, I unsubscribe. My personal opinion is just send an email when you have something impactful to say or offer, rather than necessarily sticking to a schedule of ‘every Monday’ or ‘the first day of the month’. I can’t speak for everyone but I never, ever look at the calendar and say ‘oh, it’s the second of the month, where was my email from xyz company’?
In truth, you need to know a fair bit about what your ideal client would like, and contact the at a regularity that suits them and works for your particular market. I don’t think there is one set formula of how often you should email your mailing list myself, others may not agree and say a certain timeframe. Each to their own, but I can’t imagine many people saying daily emails is something they want!
You might hear people talking about email marketing dying. I don’t agree, though I do think it is evolving dramatically! It pays to be very targeted these days, or people will ruthlessly delete your message before they even know what it is.
I hope that gives you a little insight into email marketing, and points you in the right direction for yours.
If you need a hand with email marketing specifically suited to your business, drop me a line!