5 Pointers to Email Marketing Success |
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By: Trevor Taylor Posted: 2008-02-26 06:46:29 |
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Last week I decided to clean up my email inbox which I have to admit was getting a little crammed with hundreds of messages mainly from lists I've joined in the past, and much of it I had not even opened. Well I ended up un-subscribing from at least ten lists half of them because I have no strong interest in the subject matter, and the others I quit purely because they were emailing me far too often. What surprised me was that three of these nuisance type lists were well known 'internet marketing gurus', who really should know better. One of them had posted me five emails in a single day!The spam filter designed to prevent me from receiving unsolicited mail in my inbox, had diverted approximately 33% of my mail to the trash folder and I had a quick glance through it before I deleted. I was horrified to note that there was a number of legitimate messages in there which should not have been trashed, and in fact two were from friends unconnected with my email marketing business, and the messages were personal. I had a quick look through the legitimate email marketing messages and was able to identify immediately why the spam filter would have considered them as spam.All this left me with the realization that many email marketing list owners were not having their messages read by me for one reason or another and I decided to look closely at the causes. I then spent the rest of that day reading through a random selection of autoresponder mail, and came up with 5 important guidelines that really should be taken into consideration when organizing your email marketing campaigns, because after all, if your messages are not being read by your prospects, then your whole email marketing agenda is rendered futile.So here are my five pointers, which if implemented in your own campaigns will be sure to result in a larger percentage of mail being read by your prospects and give your email marketing efforts a higher chance of being successful.Time Intervals Between Outgoing Messages.Once a new prospect or customer has filled in their details and become a member of your list you cannot just leave it at that! It is important to constantly remind the prospect of your website and the facilities it offers, whether products or services. Just one email a week sent automatically from your autoresponder is all it needs. Never leave it longer than one week interval between your messages but on the other hand do not inundate your prospects with too much mail. This is not good email marketing practice and will often be seen as annoying by your prospects and you will risk the chance of them requesting to be removed from your list.Be Sure Your Messages Will Bypass Spam FiltersIt can be infuriating when you have put in a lot of time and effort in crafting what you consider to be a powerful email message to your list membership, only to have half of them trashed by spam filters giving no opportunity of any feedback from those members. There are certain words which are taboo in email marketing practice which will trigger spam filters immediately. The more serious email marketing entrepreneurs will invest in software which will auto-edit, test and make sure their messages are delivered to the recipients inbox ready to be read. Whitelisting is another way of making sure your mail is delivered and you would do well to research that topic.The Subject Box ContentI personally will only open mail in my inbox if the subject of the mail demands that I do! A high percentage of my mail will go unopened purely because the message in the subject box does not sufficiently arouse my interest, and I have to admit that a staggering 75% of the mail that reached my inbox was still trashed before I read it! You must realize the importance of your subject lines if your email marketing campaigns are really going to kick into gear. I often laugh at some of the so called gurus subject lines and can't believe they spent more than a nanosecond thinking about it. Gurus just have bigger lists I guess... but hey I digress.. Give a lot of thought to your subject lines. Keep them short but relevant and make them demand that your email message is opened and read.One Promotion Per EmailA good few of the email messages I opened purely for my research purpose, had several promotions offered and with limited information about any one of them. Your email marketing campaigns will bare more fruit if you keep the content of each email focused, and preferably on just one promotion per email. Information overload serves only to confuse and remember that a reader has only so much attention to offer to your message. Do not dilute that attention by spreading it over several promotions all in the same message.Never.. Ever.. Procrastinate!This is my favorite.. or shall I say my least favorite and the one thing that makes me sack an email and move on. If you get to the point where your prospect has actually opened your message and is reading it, don't bore him/her silly by keep repeating the same information over and over. Keep every sentence offering fresh information and try to hold that prospects attention right through to the end, or at least as far as the link to the product or service you are promoting.So that's it! Five very simple guidelines for you to consider. And when you have finished your email message, just ask yourself if its general content would interest you. Would it intrigue you enough to take a closer look? In these times when an average inbox will receive 30 to 40 email marketing messages a day, it is your duty to do your utmost to make sure your message is amongst the three or four that will actually be absorbed.Trevor Taylor writes of his experiences in the Internet Marketing arenas.
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