You just spent a couple of hours composing an email to send to your subscribers and you’re pretty pleased with it.
It’s engaging, informative and witty (well, you thought so anyway). It’s even got a call-to-action and frankly, you’d be surprised if the replies don’t start flooding in.
You load it up to your email provider and click ‘send’. It’s gone.
And now for the flood gates to open.
You wait 30 mins. Nothing is happening.
No replies, but you tell yourself that 30 mins is nothing and you need to wait a lot longer before people start responding to your mind-blowingly fabulous email that you’ve crafted from the creative depths of your inner being.
A couple of hours go by and still nothing.
Someone just unsubscribed.
What’s going on? You check your open email rates and frankly it’s pretty poor.
No one is reading your emails.
This scenario is unfortunately all too common. With the multitude of email lists that each of us sign up to, your email needs to stand out above all others, otherwise it is going to die into the depths of email oblivion, never to be seen again.
You may think that people just ignore email, but that simply isn’t the case. People are creatures of habit. They look at their emails periodically and often habitually at certain times of the day – so for instance, on the way to work, at lunchtime or just before bed.
So they’re not ignoring their email – they’re just choosing which ones mean something to them and as such, these are the ones they’ll open.
The people on your list need to see you as a relevant staple in their lives.
If you’re not providing something of relevance, why should they open your emails?
If someone signs up to your food blog thinking they’ll be getting consistent emails about food, recipes and delicious foodie offers, but instead you’re only providing that 50% of the time, with the other emails unexpectedly talking about your worldly travels, you’re going to lose people’s interest.
You’ve become 50% irrelevant.
Soon people will stop opening your emails and that 50% will turn into an ‘unsubscribe’.
But being relevant isn’t just about sending useful content to your list. If you send out different emails to the same people but keep on chatting about your ‘special offer’ again and again and again, urgency drops, usefulness wanes and relevance dies.
When you started to email your subscriber list you were all gung-ho.
Several emails a week and things were good.
But work and life commitments got in the way and that soon turned into once a week and then once a month and then… when did you send out your last email? Er…?
If you’re not regularly sending emails to your list, people will forget who you are. And so when the big offer reveal comes around with the brilliantly worded email that you even got a pro copywriter to craft for you, open rates are likely to be low.
Most of your list will be thinking “Who is this guy? I can’t even remember who he is, what he does or even if I subscribed to his list”. Delete!
Consistency is key. Stay in the minds of your readers, but just be careful not to overload them so much that you just get on their nerves!
As an entrepreneur or solopreneur, you’re probably juggling multiple things at once.
Sending out your email highlighting your latest blog post is unlikely to be top of your list of to-dos and so it gets ignored until publishing day comes around.
But that’s okay, because you can knock out an email in no time, right?
It may not be great, but once you hit send it will be a relief – job done and you can get back to your much more important tasks.
That is until the same time next week when suddenly the scenario repeats itself.
Unfortunately, there are consequences if your email is poorly written, or potentially even worse, if serves no or little purpose.
The whole point of sending out marketing emails is to increase awareness in you and your business so that when you reach out to them, or they get in contact with you, they’re fully primed and on board.
A poorly scripted subject headline and/or a hastily worded email will do the opposite and drive your potential clients away. And if there’s no point to the email in the first place – if you’re not providing any value or insight, what’s the point of someone opening that email or reading any future ones?
Don’t think of your marketing emails as a chore; it could be the gateway to landing your next client.
Getting the right people on your list through your marketing efforts is key. If they aren’t decision makers, there’s little reason for them to respond to you or be able to purchase your products anyway. So, your list should be full of the right people who are making decisions for the business they run or work for.
And they deserve respect for the time they are taking to read and give attention to your email. So, you should be writing engaging emails in the right format, with the correct grammar and in line with your brand voice.
The more you can personalise them too, the better.
If your reader is in a position of influence, they will respect you for that and hence be much more likely to respond favourably to your email. Conversely, if your email is hard to read, the message you’re attempting to get across will also fall by the wayside.
If you’re finding it difficult to crank out the right marketing emails that get your audience to respond, just get in contact to see how I can help.
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