Given a list, there are a few things to know to make your broadcast work.
This is Email Marketing 101 – very basic – but we still see these points violated every day. So I thought it worth repeating (I’ve said all this before).
1. The subject line is critical. It has to start to interest the person, just as the headline in an ad. Put yourself in their shoes.
Realize that they probably receive a zillion emails every day. If it isn’t a personal email from someone they know, chances are it has quite a wall to overcome to get them to stop and look at it, not just delete.
2. Your email needs to be mostly text. Fancy emails largely or completely in images don’t work. These days hardly anyone will see your message without clicking to download pictures.
So you can use pictures but you have to interest them enough with the text FIRST so that they DO click to download them.
3. Realize the purpose of your email is to get people to click through to your website. Don’t try and do too much with it. Get them interested and give them links to click through to a page on your website (a landing page) that continues the message of your email.
4. Make the email something they want to read. It could be a short, straight sales pitch about something new, a special sale or the like. That’s fine for a very targeted mailing list. I’m always happy to receive Tiger Direct’s latest “what’s on sale” emails.
Most of the time you want informative, interesting content that will keep them reading – not a sales pitch at all. Keep them interested enough to perhaps open the NEXT email you send. Don’t make them decide to unsubscribe or just to ignore all future emails from you.
Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing is a great book on this. You can’t make people receive or read your emails. You are going for their cooperation, willingness and interest.
Your email list may be your most valuable marketing resource. Take good care of it. It took a certain amount of trust and a certain amount of hope for someone to give you their email address. Don’t violate that trust, and don’t bore them to death.
Email Broadcasting – What Works
