Email Marketing The Right Way

Posted on 24. Mar, 2010 by Matthew Toren in Business

email_the_right_way This might be our last post for a while, as I’ve just won the U.K. lottery. And if that wasn’t enough, a relative I didn’t even know I had (from Zimbabwe of all places) died and left me US$52 million! Okay, not really. But if you believe the emails you get, practically on a daily basis, you’d think this could be the case. The point is, no one falls for this stuff – do they? At least not serious business people. Why not? Because it’s not credible. They come from someone you’ve never heard of, they make outrageous claims, and half the time – if you read them – you can barely make out what they’re trying to say because of the poor grammar, spelling, and sentence flow.

Now, of course you’re not sending this kind of junk to your email list. You’re not out to rip anybody off or perpetrate some scam. But you might be making some of the same mistakes as these jokers, to a lesser degree. Your email marketing can be a fantastic tool to connect with your customers, readers, and prospects, but only if it’s done right. With latest statistics showing that up to 65% of all email is spam, we’ve all become leery of our inboxes, so you’ve got to send value, or your message will be missed.

Where to start

Before you send a single email (or if you’re already using email marketing, before you send another email), have a plan. Effective email marketing is about having an effective strategy. You’ve got to know what you want to get out of it and how you’ll accomplish that objective. Part of your plan will include your goals and how you’ll track your progress so you know if what you’re doing is working. It should also detail how often you’ll send to your database and the form your emails will take (newsletter, blog compilations, sale copy, etc.). Be sure to keep a close eye on your campaigns to make sure you’re on-plan. Any good email marketing provider, like iContact, MailChimp, or Constant Contact, will give you robust analytics and other tools to help you keep track of your campaigns. Use these resources to follow your campaigns and tweak as necessary.

Once you have a plan, and you’re ready to start marketing to your database, your next concern is what to send them. The content of your emails will be dictated by your plan. In other words, you want to make sure your content is helping you accomplish your goals.

Subject lines

Your first concern is your email’s subject line. Think of this as a sales message in itself. Its job is to get the recipient to open the email. There’s more to it than just being interesting though. Yes, you want it to grab your reader’s attention, but your ultimate goal is to have them click through to your site, so the subject should follow some rules to help make that happen:

It must be true – your credibility depends on it.
It should specify the subject of the email. Seems like a no-brainer, but it’s often not followed.
It should not contain any “spammy” words, like “FREE”, “discount”, or “you’ve won!”
Don’t reveal the whole story. Tease the reader, but give enough information to make them want to open it.

Especially when you’re first starting out, (but even if you’re seasoned) it’s a great idea to “split test” various subject lines to get a feel for the types that work best with your audience.

The guts

In your plan, you decided what types of emails you would be sending. Regardless of the overall theme, there are some things you’ll want to keep in mind so your readers continue to open your emails, and click through to your site. A good way to look at your marketing – any marketing – is to step back and look at it from your customer’s point of view. In email marketing, step into your reader’s shoes, and ask these questions:

Who is sending this to me?
What do they want?
Why should I care? (What’s in it for me?)
What do I do now?

Your email body needs to clearly answer these questions. One of the quickest ways to get people to unsubscribe is to send emails that are confusing or pointless. Tell your readers what you want them to know, and more importantly, what you want them to do. If you want them to click through, tell them, “Click here.” If you’re detailing a new product, service, or blog post, let them know how they can get it. Last, but certainly not least, follow these rules every time you send and email:

Use personalization – but not too much. Use the reader’s name rather than, “everyone” or “my list” but don’t overdo it. You don’t want to be like one of those high-pressure, cheesy salespeople.
Check your grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Your credibility suffers when you send emails filled with errors. If you need to have someone else edit before your emails go out, do it.
Keep the tone conversational. You’re going for a professional tone, but not too technical. You want to strike a balance between friendly and business-like.
Have some PUNCH – keep it intriguing – exciting even. Remember, your readers get a lot of email, so you have to give them a reason to keep opening yours.

Obviously a lot more could be written about email marketing. In fact there are entire books and websites devoted to it. This should be a good start for you though. If you’re an email pro and you have other tips that have worked well for you, don’t be shy. Share your experience in the comments below. We’d love to hear your story.

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19 Responses to “Email Marketing The Right Way”

Keith

24. Mar, 2010

I am still working on my email marketing, I use mailchimp right now because they allow you to build up 500 people on your list for free.

The biggest thing for me is making sure when I do start sending out my newsletters or marketing emails, that I have made them valuable….

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Andrew@BloggingGuide

24. Mar, 2010

Thanks for sharing these great tips on how your email would really be read and not ignored. I am receiving many emails such as the ones you’ve mentioned. But it seems absurd to be winning a car or a huge amount of money when you’ve never even joined a contest or something! So, let’s not believe everything and just trust emails that are from those we know if not, from credible sources.

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Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)

24. Mar, 2010

Great tips Matthew.

Another big thing to consider before even crafting an email subject or message is the opt-in form on your site. Before someone signs up you should be setting expectations for what type of content they are going to receive and how frequently they are going to receive it. Use those expectations to then over deliver value with every email sent and you are on your way to a successful email marketing campaign.

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Web Design Beach

24. Mar, 2010

Email marketing can be the best and most profitable tool for promotion, but as you have said it must be done correctly and ethically. The best way to do it is by using professional services from email marketing providers. I would like to add verticalresponse.com to your list, and aweber.com for managing autoresponders.
The biggest problem of email is spam, as it takes 80% of all email traffic on internet.

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Credit Girl

24. Mar, 2010

Email marketing is a great strategy when done correctly! You made some great point. I think ultimately you have to make your email short and straight to the point because people don’t want to go through an entire email and still not know what in the world they were saying.

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wall stickers

26. Mar, 2010

That great you won the lottery! I as well have won the lottery several times in places all around the world without having to do anything.

Thanks for the great post and reminder of some proper ways to do email marketing.

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used tires

27. Mar, 2010

For email marketers, one area of important change is at the recipient end of the email marketing chain. Barely a day passes without an email heavyweight or software vendor announcing some new tool or feature to improve the functionality of the inbox.

There’s so much going on, it’s impractical to keep up. But I’m not sure you have to.

Till then,

Jean

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tattoo kits

28. Mar, 2010

Some great tips there

I like matt furey’s newsletters – full of made up words and typing mistakes but very powerful and effective

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DotCom Note

29. Mar, 2010

It’s wrong to say that no one falls for those emails. People do certainly fall for traps. What do you think about financially challenged people buying scientifically unproven clean colon or similar products at an extremely high price when you can buy the same type of product from Walmart for $4?

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Payday Loan Lenders

04. Apr, 2010

I liked the article though not sure because all such mails go to my spam so if i do the marketing may be my mails would also go to spam

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CameraBags

05. Apr, 2010

I would agree if you can’t create a an interesting subject line it will get deleted, I subscribe to about a hundred blogs, companies for a lot of different reasons but I only read about 25 articles a day and that is determined by the subject line. also, if I get crap from them for a week, then I delete them.

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Ballet Moves

07. Apr, 2010

It can be a tricky process, and being creative can be great, but especially with subject lines, being “all-hype” can reak of spam also.

I’ve had a few people mention that their success email marketing campaigns hinged on two main factors: only give the reader one thing to do from the body of the email, and writing the email (including the subject line), as if they were writing to their best friend – this helped foster the relationship even further, and wasn’t confusing the recipient of the email at the same time.

Some excellent tips in the article to add in to the mix though. Greatly appreciated.

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Romantic Room

08. Apr, 2010

It depends on your company, but unless you are giving away promotional Victoria’s Secret codes every week, you might want to add “Keem them FUN!” to the list. Everyone needs a pick-me-up, especially since reading email is usually not the most exciting activity.

Bryan

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ultrasound technician

13. Apr, 2010

found your site on del.icio.us today and really liked it.. i bookmarked it and will be back to check it out some more later

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Josh

15. Apr, 2010

Email marketing is an important aspect of making progress in your online business. Many small business owners do a very poor job at this and don’t understand an effective approach that will get them the click they desire.

Thanks for sharing these tips Matt.

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chalikovas

20. Apr, 2010

Sure email marketing is the best way. and it is useful information . Thanks for sharing

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pandora jewelry

22. Apr, 2010

I think iContact company is good. I have used their trial program and is great. Actually reports and analysis is very important. Otherwise you wont know that either any of your emails is read by the receivers or simply going into spam and trash folders.

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Rick

01. Oct, 2011

I want to think you Matt for all the great tips. I am some what new to all of this I have a sweeze page and AR, but I have to step back and see what i need to change because I send out about 1000 emails per week but I don’t seem to get any thing back. maybe you have some help you can offer me. I have tried to setup MailChinp but I’m not good at it so I still have to get that going. if you or any one has any help for me you can email me. please if you do email me put help for Rick because I too delete most of my junk mail. thank you very much

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Email Marketing The Right Way

19 Responses to “Email Marketing The Right Way”

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