Email Marketing Will They Read What You Say?

In amongst the hoards of email messages your customers and prospects receive on a daily basis, there are those that stand out as ones that are very likely to be read.

What are they?

They’re the ones that are personal to the recipient. If I am your friend, or your colleague, your parent or your boss and I send you an email that is a direct one on one communication, how likely are you to open it? Unless you delete it by mistake, I’d say you’re almost certain to open it.

You’ll be slightly less likely to read an email from someone you know, that has been sent to numerous people such as a chain email or one that has obviously been forwarded by a number of people before it reaches you. Further down the list of email priorities are those from people you know of, but have not met, such as companies you’ve asked to receive communications from, and lists that you’ve subscribed to, such as a headline roundup sent by a newspaper.

Of course, right at the bottom of the list is spam, which most savvy computer users can now recognise without opening. They see that it’s from someone they don’t know, and has a subject title that is completely irrelevant to them. Of course the spammers have long since been wise to this and that’s why you’ll receive something that says “Just one more thing…” in its subject header only to try to sell you cheap Viagra when you click onto it.

Familiarity

The more familiar we are with the person who has sent us an email, the more likely we are to open it. We human beings take comfort in familiarity. Things and people that are familiar to us make us feel safe; McDonalds, soap operas, brands, and favourite items of clothing – are some such examples. A successful email marketing campaign creates an air of familiarity between you, your customers and prospects, so how do you go about achieving this status?

Personalising Emails

People are getting wise to their name being used in a subject header, so it’s important to make the rest of the subject line both interesting and relevant to them.

The best way to achieve this is to ask yourself what it is that they would want to read, and tailor your communication around the answer to this one question. Once you’ve mastered this and people have opened your email, don’t disappoint them. Deliver. Work on building rapport with the people on your list. Remember that they are individuals who, if you give them something that they value, will trust you and grow to like you/your brand/your communications -but this takes time to establish and has to be done skillfully.

Remember that relevance and persistence are vital: the longer someone stays on your mailing list, the more likely they are to come to you when they are ready to buy.

Let’s hear your comments and questions below!

Email Marketing When and How Often?

You may have slaved for hours over your email campaign, and your copy could sell snow to the Eskimos, but there’s one problem: if your intended recipient doesn’t open your email and read it then all your efforts have gone to waste. So how do you ensure that your emails are opened? The reality is that you can’t, but timing and frequency are both important factors to take into account when it comes to giving yourself the best chance of reaching your customers.

Who Are You Mailing?

There is no absolute timescale or frequency, because when and how often you send emails will depend not only on who you are targeting, but also your reason for getting in touch with them. Rather than concentrating solely on when you think you are most likely to get your message across, put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Target business people during the day, between 11am and 3pm, on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Consumers are most likely to be at their computers between 5pm and 8pm during the week, and during the day on Saturday and Sunday.

When Isn’t A Good Time?

Clearly, three AM on a Tuesday is hardly likely to be a good time to catch people alert and ready to read your emails, but sending at 9am during the week might not be either. You are the expert at your business, and you (presumably) know your customers, what they want and the solutions you are selling to them. It follows, therefore, that every email you send them must be relevant to them. If it doesn’t look interesting, by which I mean relevant, they’ll drag it straight to the trash. Make it too gimmicky or sales oriented and you could do your reputation harm. Your targets receive so much junk in their email folders each day that your communication needs to have as good a chance as possible of being read.

So How Often Should You Send Them?

Again, this varies depending on what you are trying to achieve. Send your communications too infrequently and people will forget to contact you when they’re ready to become a customer. However, if you’re the really annoying person who sends mindless, irrelevant emails to them twice a day then they’re very likely to get fed up and unsubscribe. If you send them information that is interesting to them, relevant to their wants or needs, and is well written – the chances are they will read them. If they don’t have time on one or more occasions, at least they’ll want you to keep them coming.

Think Like Your Customer

Of course, you can’t possibly be expected to know exactly when all your recipients are having a good or bad day, are distracted by something exciting, are fuming about something at work, or are simply too busy to open any emails other than the ones that are flagged as urgent. Similarly, people’s buying decision are cyclical and broadly fall into three categories: they can be happy with the status quo, interested and looking around but not ready to part with any money, or red hot and ready to buy. Show a series of emails to people on different days and you can be sure that they won’t always respond the same way.

So each time you send an email during your campaign, monitor the responses you receive. See how many respond positively, and how many unsubscribe requests you get. Over a period of time you’ll establish the best timing for your marketing communications, at regular (and predictable) intervals – and if your emails are relevant and engaging, people will look forward to receiving them.

As always your comments and questions are appreciated

Dan Kennedy Event

As many of you know we recently attended the PHENOMENON Dan Kennedy Event in Orlando Florida.

We arrived back safely at 7.30 Tuesday morning with some fantastic new tips, tricks and marketing strategies to put to the test. As always we’ll keep you informed of the progress.

We had an amazing time catching up with some of our state side friends such as Derek Gehl, Bill Glazer and Dan Kennedy himself but listening to all the other speakers at the event was a real eye opener.

(Left: Dan Kennedy, Mark Bowden, Bill Glazer)
(Right: Derek Gehl, Mark Bowden)

Speakers at the Dan Kennedy Event included: Lee Milteer an amazingly successful Performance & Productivity Coach, Michael Cage the “go to guy” for teleseminar and webinar marketing, Ron Ipach the king of outsourcing, working less and getting things done, Andrew Lock with his innovative H3 system for legitimately diverting buyers from Ebay to your website, Steve Harrison PR master who explained all about acquiring free publicity and the amazing Scott Lewis (hypnotist) who headlined at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas for a record breaking 7 years. Plus many more!

We also met some fantastic people such as Conrad & Alicia (pictured left) who both have highly successful business in the USA. “Hi guy’s hope you enjoyed the Dan Kennedy Event just as much as we did”.

On a lighter note you’ll be pleased that we didn’t let the UK down and managed to clear the hotel out of Heineken on the first night.

Also I have to say one of the funniest things I have ever seen was Scott Lewis hypnotize members of the audience in a special Showtime evening.

Some attendees were made to believe that they had lost their “but” and couldn’t sit down, that they were Martians from Mars and only spoke “erpa looper” & “eeper oop” and also that they were famous singers performing and dancing on stage plus many other outrageously funny skits. Thanks Scott! (here’s a clip i found of scott on you tube)

Both myself and Jon had a great time and we will keep you updated with all the new strategise we are testing.

Probably one of the most misunderstood areas of marketing and internet marketing.

Pick up the local paper today and throughout it you’ll see plenty of expensive advertisements from all kinds of companies in varying industries.

Many of these, including the larger supposedly more experienced companies will simply feature their web address in small print at the bottom of the ad.

The one major problem with this is the only visitors your likely to get are the ones that we call “Hot for what you’ve got”. This will be a very tiny portion of your “Target audience” and your target audience, in turn, is probably only a small fraction of the readership of the publication.

Instead of copying what “the big boys do” try to be more imaginative.

For example:-

Let’s say I own a dog boarding kennels and I’ve been running a basic ad in some kind of dog owner magazine.

Now assuming I’ve not had much space to work with and I want people who are going on holiday “THIS YEAR” not next week, to take action and enter my marketing funnel.

Rather than run an ad simply stating Dog Boarding with a contact number address and website address, hoping to get those at the last minute trying to sort out somewhere to put the family pets, I’d get far better results asking those who are going on holiday this year to visit my website to claim a free DVD or CD showing & explaining exactly how I care and look after their pets.

At the very least I should be asking them to visit the site to claim a free broucher along with a pre booking discount.

This way not only will I attract more potential customers to visit my site, by collecting their details in exchange for the information, I can continue to build a relationship with them until they’re ready to go on holiday.

TIP) You must compel reader to visit the site, there has to be something in it for them and you must clearly state it within the ad.

TIP) Change the URL for each publication so that you can monitor results eg:-

www.mysite.com/freebrochure for one advertisement
www.mysite.com/freedvd for another advertisement etc…

Try changing some of your existing ads and I’m sure you’ll see far better results.