Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘list building’

31
Aug

5 Ways To Bore Your Email Marketing Subscribers


Admittedly, the best way for small businesses to connect with clients is not always the most exciting. So, it is especially important for email marketers to know their audience in order to effectively connect with subscribers in a profitable way.

Make sure to stick to an agenda of quality content catered to demographic interests, and aesthetics that are modern yet crafted for familiarity.

Keep in mind that the average attention span is shorter than the amount of time your content has to inspire a transaction.

The following are 5 common errors marketers should avoid before they bore their audience to sleep.

1. Selling hard, all the time

Bombarding subscribers with newsletters that persistently try to sell to clients is the fastest way to bore your audience into eventually neglecting all of your emails. Always ensure that quality content outweighs sales gimmicks.

Subscribers signup for newsletters for content that caters to their personalized needs, not to have their inboxes cluttered with advertisements. Build a relationship and establish trust based on genuine interest to keep your subscribers interested.

2. Stuffing in copy

First write out your entire copy, then go back and cut the excess. Combat reading fatigue by using streamlined sentences in each paragraph and providing access to a director’s cut with links for more in depth coverage if necessary.

The email template should convey the message of your content efficiently and effectively. Focus on essentials. Create content that showcases quality, not quantity.

3. Talking tech-y

Break down complicated concepts so that the average reader can learn and benefit from your content. Topical references can always provide insight in an exciting way for those readers who are less familiar with the field.

Remember that the familiarity you have with highly technical content is fundamentally more advanced in comparison to the typical readers.

Even the simplest concepts should be broken down and explained thoroughly with the audience’s perspective in mind. Readers are likely to rely on the newsletter as their only source for this particular type of information.

4. Writing big, blocky paragraphs

Create departments within the template of your emails to organize and simplify its content. Every email should have a number of segments that are featured each time to create a consistency that an audience can return to with familiarity for the concepts.

These can be company news, new products, social media buzz, etc. The point is to create departments that best showcase your content in an easily consumable format. Your audience will grow to appreciate the familiarity and professional look.

5. Using old-school fonts

Is there a consistency in the kind of fonts you use for each post and is it consistently boring? Are you sure you are creating the right aesthetic for content that also appeals to subscribers’ interests?

Make the extra effort to fine-tune the aesthetic elements of your template to appeal to your particular audience. Remember that even minor adjustments to the type of font you use are instrumental to engaging an audience.

Your subscribers will appreciate a style of font they find easy to read but the right one can help create a brand.

Your primary responsibility is to educate clients but a well-crafted email can supplement your services with a personalized touch to establish a real bond with your clientele.

About the Author:Yo Noguchi is an experienced freelancer, guest blogger, and frequent contributor to a blog hosted by Benchmark Email, one of the world’s global email marketing services.

Want to be our next guest author? Click here for details…

9
Jul

5 Reasons Why Your Email Marketing Is Not Working

Email MarketingAs Smallbizbee.com has grown over the past 10 months, so has the number of emails in my inbox.

A good number of those emails are forms of marketing, and almost all of them miss the mark with me.

Email marketing can be an extremely powerful and effective way to reach your customers – if done correctly.

Reasons Your Email Marketing Isn’t Working

Now, while I’m not claiming to be an email marketing expert, I can tell you why those who have marketed to me have nothing to show for their efforts. Here are the top five mistakes I see them making

1. No Relationship Built

Email marketing works best when the person recieving the email feels like they know you, trust you, and you have a relationship built with them to some degree

We read email from people we know, and skim or delete email from people we don’t. Simple as that.

Business is built around relationships, with relationships come trust, and with trust comes sales. For some reason email marketers, and business using email to communicate with their target market forget this.

2. No “Pull”

There has to be a reason to keep reading, a pull for the reader to continue.

Unless you are sending me an email at the exact moment I am looking to buy what you’re selling, just saying “Hey you – buy my stuff”, isn’t going to work. There’s no pull.

The worst offenders will not only be lacking a pull, but will go on for 1000 words without one, essentially repeating over and over again why I should buy their stuff.

Give me a reason to keep reading, tell me a story, give me value, show me how you’ll solve my problems, keep me interested in what you have to say.

3. Unclear Call to Action

Okay, I’m still reading but have no idea what you want me to do. Maybe you don’t want me to do anything, possibly this is only an informational, trust building email, and that’s okay. But, if you want me to “buy your stuff”, there better be a clear signal as to what you want me to do next, or I will take the easiest route possible and do nothing.

4. Poorly Written

It doesn’t have to be Hemingway, but it does have to be spelled correctly and use decent grammar. I cannot count how many times I’ve received a poorly written, mistake filled email where the person was asking me to buy their $299 info product. Why would I spend $299 on an info product that will be as poorly written/designed/produced as your email?

5. Low Correlation

For email marketing to work their needs to be a high correlation between why I signed up to receive information from you, and what you send me.

If I’m on your “Wine of the Month” newsletter list, your emails to me should be mostly, more or less, related to wine. If I signed up for your “Become a Better Blogger” emails, don’t try to sell me on Hawaii vacations. I may be interested, but when I signed up with you I had no intention of buying a Hawaii vacation. Keep it on point, and relevant to see the most success.

Conclusion

You don’t have much time in an email to grab the reader, and any of the above mistakes will have them clicking the delete button without thinking twice. Use this as a checklist the next time your business begins an email marketing campaign. If done correctly it will be a very efficient and cost effective way to reach your target market.

Can’t visit Small Biz Bee on a regular basis? You can stay up to date by having the latest Small Biz Bee news delivered to you for free via RSS or Email.

For exclusive Small Biz Bee content and offers, sign up for our free newsletter: