Email Marketing: What’s Working Today Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools you can put in your marketing arsenal. It has the ability to increase your conversions, automate your marketing so you can spend your time elsewhere, create increased stability in your leads and sales, build rock-solid relationships with your customers, and more. Email marketing is alive and well When was the last time you checked your email? Was it within the last 24 hours? The last 8 hours? My guess is that it was within the last hour. If you’re like a lot of us, you check your email before you get out of bed — on your smartphone. The rules have changed. The reason email marketing isn’t as effective for some is that they haven’t adapted. They’re using outdated strategies, ancient tactics and lousy copy. I’ve seen the campaigns these same people run, and they’re pathetic. So let me give you a quick history on what used to work, and what’s working now. What Used To Work When email marketing was first introduced, it was like finding a vein of gold in your backyard. All you had to do was “something” and you would instantly profit. Many businesses quadrupled or more… overnight. Unfortunately, the strategy that worked back then (i.e. send offers everyday), doesn’t work anymore. The reason people claim that “email is dead” is simply because they aren’t using updated tactics and strategies. So what does work? What Works Today What works today is what we’ll be covering over the next 7 articles in this series. But I don’t want to make you wait, so here are a few pointers. 1. Show Some Personality – People don’t respond to boring emails. If your writing is so boring and dry peoples eyes begin to bleed while reading it, you won’t be able to craft effective email marketing messages. We’ll go into much more detail in article #5. Here’s a little snippet of an email I wrote to my audience in 2012, the day before Hurricane Sandy was about to hit. We were supposed to get hit pretty hard so I shared that with my list by creating a topical email about the hurricane. It opened like this… - – - – - – - – - – - – - - Last year towards the end of September, Hurricane Irene absolutely decimated the town I used to live in (which is about 2.5 miles from where I am now). The water levels hit record-breaking heights. Our house got flooded (thankfully our basement only – we were lucky) and my old town is still recovering. … and it’s happening again. Hurricane Sandy is about to PUMMEL us, yet again. Yikes. Apparently we’ll be facing a true hurricane. Considering I live in Pennsylvania, as far as I know that’s never happened before. We always get the outskirts of hurricanes which send us some pretty good storms, but this time we’ll be caught right in the eye of the storm. I’m actually spending today (Sunday) working and preparing to battle this thing out. I have FOUR major projects with deadlines, and I don’t miss deadlines. That’s why I’m working all day to get prepared for this storm and finish those projects, just in case we lose power for a few days. - – - – - – - – - – - – - - In this example, I was telling a story of my own personal life. My readers are used to this and have come to enjoy them. I get people asking about my family, house, etc. all the time! This creates a great bond with your audience. 2. Content – We’re in the midst of an information age. People are starving for more information, and its your job to give it to them. In short, you want to mix great, unique content with a soft pitch to your main call to action. Again, this will be covered in-depth in article #5. Sticking with the previous example, let me show you how I transitioned into a soft pitch in that email. - – - – - – - – - – - – - - Which brings me to my point. Sometimes your business gets caught in the eye of the storm. You’re scrambling around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying your hardest to figure out what to do… where to go next. This shows you how
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 22:08:44 +0000
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