E-newsletters
Cultivate and then deepen a relationship with your fan base.
Why E-newsletters?
The long and short of email newsletters, articles, offers, specials and sneak peeks is that YOU have something to say and someone ELSE wants to know about it. Regularly.
Otherwise there is that pesky unsubscribe button.
How to walk the fine line of being adored versus being tossed is where we come in. Face it, every day you open your email and a handful of the items you see are from organizations who’s list you became a part of, intentionally or naively.
When you decide whether to do one of these three things, what is your reason:
1. Open and read (and maybe even click further down the rabbit hole?) check out some links, admire the new product and even buy in! Kapow!
2. Note who it’s from, read the subject message and lazily delete (but stay with them)
3. See the same darn sender Uh-Gen for the hundredth time and angrily open the email, scroll to the bottom and search the fine print for the unsubscribe button
That’s pretty much it folks. You want to stay in audience 1 or 2.
And there IS a method to that madness.
Nobody gives you their email unless they are remotely interested in something you’re doing, saying or selling. Whether it’s your political alliance, your sales on shoes or your sneak peeks to the NFL draft… if you have what they want, you’re going to have a fan. NOW DON’T BORE THEM!
So, we don’t know how often you need to buy a new pair of shoes but even if the shoe store emails you every week with a new special, you’re not going to be buying every time methinks… You only need so many shoes (or so we’ve heard). But you’re not unsubscribing, you’re just nodding to yourself ‘wish I needed those shoes right now’ and deleting the email – but you’re still a FAN right? And there will be a day when your best friends neighbor is having an impromptu wedding with a purple theme and you WILL be looking for that email with the shoe sale.
So, here’s a sniff at the secret sauce.
Know your fans and what they want, and give it to them!
Include a few words of brilliance – if they only take one thing away from the email, it should hopefully give them pause to think.
Offer them something they can ONLY get through your email (sale, tip etc).
The great thing about emails and newsletters is we can measure it!
Send out 1000 emails, we can tell you how many read it, or opened it, or deleted it, or unsubscribed! We can tell you a great deal more – like which ones are the winners and what the click through rate is.
A couple of last points.
DON’T just patch together an email and send it out. It should always, always, always reflect your brand and be recognizable even if not opened (you get the nod to your brand even if they don’t engage).
DO collect emails every which way you can from interested folks. We can help you with that! It is NOT legal to ‘buy’ a list of names and use them. Don’t do it. Your account will get locked due to the high unsubscription rate.
DON’T be afraid to send emails 2-3 times per week! We think we are going to bug the crap out of someone but there is a science behind this.
DO be bold, brave and interesting! The takeaway should always be ‘there was value in reading that’ otherwise you are training folks not to even bother opening next time.
