At one time, bloggers thought email was dead. It’s old! It’s boring! RSS is new, its high-tech. It turns out that’s not true. People who let you into their email boxes trust you more than people who add you to their blog readers. In fact, you can even forget about RSS and focus on these steps for email marketing instead.
Easy Steps For Email Marketing
Here are seven steps to getting email marketing right.
- Write a subject line that gets noticed
- Paint pictures
- Prove your solution works
- Easy to read
- Stay focused
- Ask for the sale
- Use a landing page
Write a subject line that gets noticed
Email subject lines are like headlines in advertisements or magazines. Write a good one and readers will want to read more. Write a poor one, and they’ll hit the delete key.
Ask a question that the reader can’t easily answer, such as What is the Best Day to Send Emails? Or, make a big promise, like “Network your way to top bloggers”.
They’ll be curious, and more likely to click.
Keep your subject lines fairly short, under 55 characters. Some email software cuts off longer messages. Put the name of your newsletter (if that’s what you’re sending) in square brackets at the beginning – so people recognize it quickly.
Paint pictures
No actual paint or artistic talent required. Make emotional appeals (wow, I can get to top bloggers, all I have to do is…). The appeal is that you can hang out/network/learn from superstars, and maybe you’ll be a superstar too.
You might write something like, “Think what it would mean if you could hang out with top bloggers. The exposure you could get, the secrets you could learn. All without spamming or being obnoxious…”
Prove your solution works
Include testimonials, from real people with full names, photos, professions, and titles. In their own words, let them describe how your product solved their problem. Ask them to be very specific about what you did (wrote copy, optimized their web site for more traffic, etc.) and how well it worked.
Easy to read
The debate over long vs. short copy has been going on for nearly a century. The truth is that people will read – if what they’re reading is of interest. If it’s dull, or hard to get through, they’ll abandon it.
They do skim, though. So, keep your paragraphs short. Use bullets or asterisks to emphasize your points. If you use HTML make it easy to read, with light background and dark text. Check it in several browsers and email software packages to make sure it looks right.
Stay focused
If it’s a newsletter, concentrate on two or three topics. Don’t try to cram everything in there from the last six weeks.
If you cover widely different topics, you may want to use multiple lists. For example, if you blog about parenting, new parents will want different information than parents of teens. So, create different lists, with different newsletters and products, for each.
If it’s a sales email, stick to sales. Don’t ask for twitter followers or facebook posting of your blog.
Ask for the sale
Many people forget this step. If you want someone to do something, come right out and ask them to “click here” or “call now.” The length of your copy may dictate how many call to action links you should use. One after the first paragraph, one in the middle and one at the end. Check which one does best by tracking the clicks.
Use a landing page
Instead of sending the traffic to your home page, send it all to a landing page. A landing page is just a standalone web page designed especially to make a sale, generate a lead, or get a newsletter signup.
It’s the online version of a sales letter. Repeat the beginning of your email, and use the same design, so people know where they’ve landed. The landing page expands on your sales email, with more details about the product.
Use more than one link here too. Some will be ready to buy right away, others will need more information to make a decision.
