Five Ways to Make Your Email Marketing Work Better

Five Ways to Make Your Email Marketing Work Better

Reader Comments (48)

  1. This is better than Brian’s article on how Leo got 100,000 followers in two years, plus you don’t have to download anything. Er, no dig about Brian what I meant is that this short article is just as relevant as the Zen Habits ebook, and it contains somewhat more porn, uh, no, um, well I don’t know it’s just better, so I’m going to have more coffee now.

  2. Rock on. I was just writing on this topic and it got me thinking about how to get going with emails. Thanks so much. Sonia, you never disappoint!

  3. Thanks for the tips, Sonia!

    I’d like to ask a question about point #1, when you talk about building trust and friendship in the first 10-15 messages, do you mean we should we avoid any promotions for the first 10-15 messages?

    I know there is no fixed formula and being sincere about it is more important, but what is a rough guide as to how many “cookie content” emails should we send before the reader starts trusting you?

  4. Charles, as you say, there’s not hard & fast formula, but I’d generally recommend keeping a pitch pretty soft in the first 10 emails. But within those, it’s perfectly acceptable (and smart) to provide full contact information and say something along the lines of, “If you need help with any of this, I do take clients/offer a product/offer a service/etc. that may be useful to you.” Then click them off to a landing page with more details.

    Laughing, Mike. You might want to make it a triple-shot.

  5. Great content!
    Is it just me or are companies executing terrible email marketing on a more frequent basis?

    I will put a link to this content on my blog post: It’s an Epidemic! …Poorly executed Email Marketing Campaigns, http://nosmokeandmirrors.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/its-an-epidemic-poorly-executed-email-marketing-campaigns/ as you do a great job of telling companies the right way to drive business.

    I share some emails I received lately that not only not make me want to buy, but they challenge me to believe the people who sent them have a competency in what they are selling.

    Thank you for this content as I needed a thought leader in this space to help chime in.

    Mark Allen Roberts

  6. Hi even better post than the last one. Can u add a few really good autoresponder and email provider as well? That would be great.

    Thx

  7. Sonia:

    Thanks for the great reminder!

    Along with #2 – I think its important to also keep the human voice to your emails. So many times, I come across emails that sound, well… generic. Like the author put all his best stuff in what I already received & forgot how unique they were in the email. Continuity is key and the old adage that you can create a really great free product then the rest of your stuff can be less-than-stellar no longer works.

    Well, you can do it – but I wouldn’t…

  8. I’ve been following Jeremey’s Xtreme Marketing Training Course within the past few weeks. I guess it all boils down to keep your goal in line with your subscriber’s needs. That way, it wouldn’t be too hard to even go through with persuasion. Still of course, there’s a long list of lessons to be learned before one can attain this.

  9. Thanks for this post Sonia. I think it is definitely important to ensure a personal message is included within any email. Whether this is a response to an enquiry, a promotional email or just to get back in touch with your customers.
    I think it’s aspects like this that people really take notice of and respect.

  10. @Rob, overall I still think Aweber is the best. Have also heard good things about iContact but haven’t used them myself.

    @Mark and @Jenny, I agree, email is personal by nature, and it just makes sense to capitalize on that. Even email from a bigger company can still have a very human voice and tone.

  11. According to Website magazine iContact is the most popular. Aweeber.com is number 8 on the top 50 list. –Just sayin’

  12. Hey,

    Awesome post! I use GetResponse for my emails, and although they went completely off the rails when they upgraded their platform recently, things do seem to be back on track pretty much. If I was starting out though, I think I would go Aweber just because of the lack of testing from GetResponse when putting such a crucial system live!

    Sorry for the rant…now that’s off my chest…:-)

    There are some great tips in here for email marketing, it has inspired me to change a few of my emails in my sequence 🙂

    Talk soon,

    Paul

  13. This is a great post. I emailed it to some of my clients because it is so succinct and covers some tactics I have trouble getting them to buy into. Plus it’s a bit of a ‘I told you so’ for them to.

  14. Nice tips! I liked point no:3. When I did a similar newsletter thingy some time ago, I never even thought about mentioning this. Result..all my mails ended up in spam folders, only to be trashed later 🙁

  15. @NarenUBI, yep, that’s very common. Even if you write on a “safe” topic, many of the spam filters will trap your messages simply because they’re sent to so many recipients.

  16. So glad to see such a great article about email marketing. There are so many marketers out there that have completely forgotten that fact that they need to be having a conversation, not a one way broadcast. I receiver countless messages each day from marketers trying to sell me stuff.

  17. Thanks especially for “conversations have two sides.”

    It’s so rare and wonderful when someone does respond; to treat that like another “incoming lead” is tragic. Often these folks end up being your biggest fans, and all you have to do is be a human being!

    Amazing how hard “being human” can be sometimes.

  18. “Just click reply to ask me a question, your message will come directly to my personal in-box” — this is an excellent tip I’m going to use immediately.

    It’s amazing how many people create e-mail campaigns that are only focused on pitching products. The e-mails I remember are the ones from people who attempt to development relationships by addressing my needs and encourage interaction.

    For those who are interested, I have a free autoresponder writing crash course at http://www.autoresponderwritergetsleads.com.

    Thank you for the great post, Sonia.

  19. Very practical tips for even the most seasoned campaigns. Early in the article you mentioned building trust and credibility. I think this gets overlooked by many marketers. This is huge when it comes to businesses using Twitter as well. You can’t always be selling.

  20. This was really timely. I had just finished segmenting my list, developing copy for the 1st email and was working on a tie-in blog post when I came across this. Good advice. My task is to convert my online sales customers into blog subscribers and purchasers of my affiliate products. Back to the copy table for some revisions. Thx.

  21. Another thing you could do is be sure to use your real name as your From Address.

    I believe people are more likely to read your email when they see that it is coming from someone who is actually using a name versus using names like: “Members Download” or “Free Access” and things like that

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