For the past couple weeks in Internet Marketing we have had a few guest speakers come in and talk about their expertise. About two weeks ago we had the lovely D’nelle Thorneberry come in and talk to us about the basics of e-mail marketing. Also how important it is to correctly market yourself through e-mail and how it can help you in the long run if you can do it right.
So why e-mail marketing? Especially in the days of social media, cell phones and other things that can keep you updated constantly on everything you need to know. Clearly e-mail isn’t used for instant contact anymore, now it is used for:
- long-term projects
- non-urgent communication
- passive communication
- storage
People are using their e-mail addresses for an external hard drive these days instead of a way for immediate communication. So when you are sending out things like newsletters every month or whenever you want to make sure that people are going to open it, and want to read it.
The first thing that is very important is how to get people to trust you and your newsletters, and the way to do that is:
- Be honest
- Be organized
- Be polite
Make sure you have a clear from address, you don’t want to be sending out newsletters for you website and it looks like someone is getting an email from eljk3478579@fake.com. Also make sure to have a clear subject line, something that will make them want to open the e-mail but something not too vague either, simple and to the point. Also have an unsubscribe button that actually takes the people who click it off the list of getting any e-mails from you. Don’t put them into the unsubscribe category and still send them a separate e-mail every month.
This graphic was taken from a presentation done by D’nelle Thorneberry of Berry Interesting Productions. http://berry-interesting.com/
What to e-mail and what not to e-mail, these are key things that you want to do in your newsletters or whatever you are sending out to your list of people who have signed up for updates on your website/product.
What not to e-mail.
- Number one, do not write a novel, meaning do not write a million words in your newsletter hoping that everyone reads it. No one is going to read all of it if it is really long. Just keep is short simple and to the point, it’s the best way to get people to keep opening your e-mails that you’re sending them.
- Number two; do not repeat yourself, pretty simple right? Not only do you not want to repeat yourself in the newsletter itself but don’t keep the same information in the next one you send out because then people are just not going to want to read them anymore.
- Number three, do not fancy yourself as a graphic designer, not to hurt anyone’s feelings but there are professional graphic designers out there that you can hire to make it look nice. If you can’t afford one keep everything simple, don’t try to make the text different colors because then you’re going to make it look messy, also don’t overload your newsletter with a lot of graphics because then people are going to get distracted by the graphics and not read what your trying to update them about.
- Last but not least, do not plagiarize; plagiarism is something that you just don’t do. Copying some article you thought was useful and putting it on your site and teasing them in your newsletter to go to your site to read the rest of it, even if you link to the original article it is still plagiarizing. You want original content that draws people in, not something that someone else wrote.
What to e-mail.
- Number one be concise, a.k.a. be clear on what you want your reader to read, do not be to wordy just be straight-forward and to the point.
- Number two, make good suggestions to your reader, such as teasing them to a blog post you have written on your site about a new product you have coming out. Don’t lead your reader astray, and then they will stray away from your e-mail list.
- Number three, hire a graphic designer, like I stated up above in the “do not’s” if you want your newsletter to look nice and you have to money to hire a graphic designer then do so. If you newsletter is a bit of eye candy what does that hurt? Nothing.
- And finally number four, get to know your audience, listen to what they have to say when you send out the newsletters. Ask them questions, use some sort of tracking to see who/how many people open the e-mail and how many people go to the site because of it which is also responsive stats, and be willing to change the newsletter around a little bit if it isn’t appealing to your audience then who is going to go to your site and who is going to buy your product?
These are the basics of e-mail marketing, though there is a lot more to it, it has opened my eyes to a different kind of marketing that I thought was dead a long time ago. Just keep these helpful hints in the back of your head next time you are going to run an e-mail marketing campaign and I bet that you see a difference.
