Email marketing has died and come back to life more often than Kenny from South Park.
We can't knock it for resilience and, the truth is, it's by far and away the most effective marketing method for several reasons:
you own your list so you're building goodwill and trust on your own property rather than the rented ground that is social media
we are all very ad-weary and easily distracted so anything that pulls in our audience’s undivided attention is of value
sent regularly, emails make it much easier to build personality and connection because you're not at the mercy of algorithms
That said, I do think there's a type of email marketing that may well have run its course.
I'm talking about mass-outreach, fully-automated email blasts to a cold audience.
These rely on numbers - big numbers - and the fact that if you throw enough of the proverbial at a wall something's got to stick.
The problem is your reputation sits behind whatever content you send out and there's no doubt most cold outreach tactics are highly unpopular.
You're likely to get a fistful of unsubscribes and you run the risk of damaging your credibility, and even your ability to continue emailing, if you violate compliance laws.
Finding those 5 good conversations
Let's think about what we're trying to do when we send an email. We want to engage our audience so that they read what we have to say. We want to sell something, either immediately or ultimately. And we want to communicate everything from empathy to credibility and trustworthiness without having to write for pages.
Simple eh?
Maybe not. But there is an approach that can make getting the right results easier.
Rather than spamming high numbers of recipients and hoping for the best, consider the return on investment that just one sale would bring.
Think about the value of your average sale, or the value of whatever it is you want to sell by email. Knowing this number helps gives perspective to what I’m about to suggest.
Now imagine you pick five ideal clients and spend half an hour on each researching their business, reading their social posts and gaining an understanding of their current challenges. You could then write an email to each of them covering all the points they need to hear and significantly increase your chances of converting them, even if just to a discovery call.
A quick calculation in your mind of the cost of that time versus the value of the potential orders can help you determine whether that would yield a good ROI. For most small businesses, the answer is likely to be yes.
The bonus is that you are simultaneously living your values and communicating to them, albeit subliminally, that you care. They are not just a number, they matter to your business and you want to work with them.
It's a powerful message.
Research shows:
72% of consumers are willing to engage in interactions only when messages feel personal
74% of marketers say targeted personalisation increases customer engagement
91% of consumers are more likely to purchase from brands that offer relevant recommendations
Better still, when you choose to engage and nurture your target audience there is much more opportunity to build in personality and a more storytelling-driven approach. Your email titles can move away from what works for SEO or is ‘clickable’, to those which intrigue or even make people laugh.
Which sort of e-mail are you more likely to open?
It's certainly not a strategy that fits today's all-or-nothing, 10X-your-business, automate everything model. But it's one I stand by as a professional writer and, of course, a consumer of all sorts of products and services.
The world feels very impersonal and my inbox is utterly inundated with just as many things I haven't signed up for as those that I have.
There's no space for lazy marketing and it's too easy to get irritated and click on unsubscribe. We only get one chance each time we send that email. If we get it right and somebody feels as though they're part of our world we have the potential to turn them into the most valuable asset our business can have: a loyal customer.
If you're relying on email purely for mass marketing, you're missing where the real value lies.
The right emails can help you get up close and personal with your clients, turning lurkers on LinkedIn into loyal customers, uncovering opportunities that are already bubbling beneath the surface, or even making your existing clients feel looked after and encouraging them to stay with you for longer.
Find out about our email bundles, four different packages that cover all aspects of email marketing, tailored to your business, your voice and your audience.
They're written to be evergreen so you pay once and use them forever.
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