Successful Marketing Tools Blog

The Content of Your Emails

The Content of Your Loyal Customer Emails

What should be the content of your loyal customer emails? No matter what I say. No matter what you think. If you want to get your customers to read your emails, you must give customers what they want, not what you want.

Every business is different. Every group of customers has their own set of wants in relationship to products and services. Go back to step one where you identified your customers wants and use this as the guideline for the content of your emails.

Here are some content categories of emails others have successfully used.

Helpful Tips

Do “how to do it” tips or suggestions in your emails. These can focus on your product or other related products. You are providing helpful advice to your customers. This advice lets you become a trusted advisor for them.

These do not have to be fancy or sophisticated tips and suggestions. I once provided customers with a simple tip on how to remove red wine from carpets when holiday spills occur. Customers talked about this tip for years.

You can create these tips yourself or you can find articles from Google or you can have other related businesses supply their advice. “Five ways to maintain your tile floor.” “7 ways to get your lawn ready in the spring.” This does not have to involve a lot of time.

Entertain and Humor

Let some of your emails be entertaining for your customers. Put some humor in your emails. You have a relationship with your customers. Relationships are not all heavy stuff. Have some humor, provide a good joke. If you are worried about using a particular joke, this is a good sign that it should not be used. Even professional comedians fail at jokes. Share a special recipe. All work and no play makes Jonny a dull boy

Customer Stories

People love stories. Make the story about the customer, not about your company. Make it a story where the reader can see themselves in the same role as the story. Having a quotation from a customer makes it even more powerful. People love to read about success stories; these are like testimonials. People relate to stories and they put themselves in the action, achieving the same results. This is very powerful stuff.

Selling

It’s your emails and your customers will expect to hear something about new products, specific sales, etc. This is part of the purpose for keeping in touch with your customers. You are treating your customers as special and giving them an advantage over the person who just walks in off the street.

Like other good ads, put a time limit on the sale, or urgency about buying the sale item. Using coupons may give you a good idea on how well your email is being read by your customers.

Do not make all of your loyal customer emails about selling. They will get sick of it. Sprinkle special sale offers in and among your other emails.

Trends and Developments

You can use your emails to loyal customers to show them trends and developments in and around your product or service. The key for these types of emails is to ask the question, “So what?” The customer is not interested in industry trends and developments. They are interested in how these trends affect their life. Ask the so what question and answer it before you send out this type of email.

Feedback

Like every marketing strategy, it is important to get feedback. Share your emails with friends or others before you send it out. Make sure they have been proof read. Occasionally, call or talk with customers about your email to get ideas on what they like and don’t like. Ask for suggestions on what they would like in the emails.

You can also use your customer emails in a survey form to get customer input A subject line like “I need your help…” Then ask them to choose from several survey options to give you their input on a particular subject.

You can choose all types of content for loyal customer emails. If it is relevant and useful for your customer, they will continue to read your emails.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed...

Getting Your Emails Read

Getting Your Email Read

You have got your email delivered. Your Subject Line enticed your customer to click on your email. Now you want to get them to read the email. What can you do to get your emails read?

Relevancy

If your prior involvement with the customer reading your email has been good, you will get a “limited benefit” of the doubt. They will read your email once, maybe twice. They will not continue to open and read your emails unless you provide these customers with what they want.

Do you remember the first step in our email marketing campaign was identifying what your customers want? To get your emails read consistently, you must give relevant, timely, and useful information to the customer. Do you read emails that do not interest you? Of course not! Don’t expect even your most loyal customers to read your emails if you do not provide them with what they want.

Don’t give them junk. Don’t insult their intelligence. Give them good relevant information on a consistent basis. What you give them should match what they want from your business.

A way to keep your emails focused is to state in one sentence what you want to accomplish with the email. Condense into one sentence the purpose of the email. Here are some samples:

I want to share a success story to instruct my customers
I want to compliment and thank my customers for XYZ
I want to inform my customers about XZY
I want to entertain my customers with XYZ
I want to sell my customers on XYZ
I want to provide tips and techniques about using my product
I want to provide instructions to my customer
I want to survey my customers about XYZ in order to XYZ

The clearer you are about the purpose of your emails the clearer will be the content of those emails and the better chance of staying relevant to your customers.

Consistency

A second quality to get your emails read is consistency. You want a regular pattern of sending emails to your customers in a consistent format. Set up a three month schedule and send an email on the same day every two weeks. When you send your emails in a hit miss fashion, you get more misses than hits. Tuesdays, Thursday and Friday morning are some of the best times to send emails to get read.

You want to develop an expectation or anticipation from your customers about your sequence of emails. Advertisers talk about repeat exposures as being the key to advertising. Your emails are a form of advertising to your customers. Develop a consistent pattern of sending the emails to your customers and they are more likely to be read.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Templates of Power Subject Lines

Successful Email Marketing Subject Lines

Here is a list of email Subject Lines that have proved to be winners. They are templates of successful Subject Lines. You can simply substitute your content in the appropriate spaces.

You’ve got to see this…
I goofted…
Special Pre-release Announcement
You’re going to love this one
Here’s the answer you been looking for
-3 minutes to greater X, Y and Z
Discover the secret to X
Still skeptical? Here’s why you should be
How I did XYZ
I need your help…
Important notice from the company
Something that might interest you…
Open this before 7 p.m.
, seen this product yet?
Sneak Peer at (name>.com

Using one or more of these templates and adapting them to your situation will save you a great deal of time and still produce power Subject Lines that get your customers to open your email.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

The Email Subject Line

Your Subject Line

Think of your Subject Line as a newspaper heading. You read the specific articles in a newspaper because your find the heading relevant or intriguing to you. People do the same when they scan a website. A heading or a picture will catch their attention and they will then focus and read the materials under the heading or picture.

We look for Subject Lines that are interesting, intriguing or relevant to our situation. (Situations for customers are always changing and that is why consistent emails have such power).

In the three seconds the reader uses to scan the Subject Line, they should be able to tell exactly the results they can expect to achieve when they open and read the email. What’s in the email for them? Will it be useful information? A special offer? Or something that if they miss, there will be bad consequences?

In short, when you construct your Subject Line, start with the end results you are offering in the email. Try and get these results condensed into 6-8 words. Start with the results you are promising.

Creating the Subject Line should get the bulk of your efforts, because if the Subject Line does not get the reader’s attention, your email never gets read. Make at least 10 versions of a potential Subject Line and choose the best. If you have the opportunity, check out the Subject Line with others who will be your typical reader and see if it attracts them.

In the next blog, I will give you some Subject Line templates. These have been successfully used by others to get emails opened. You can use them and adapt them to your situation.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Getting Your Emails Opened

Getting Emails Opened

After the “From” line, the most important line in your email marketing process is the “Subject Line”. Your customer already knows you. You have credibility with them. Now you must get their attention with your Subject Line.

I have not found studies that focus on email marketing to existing customers—so few businesses are using this strategy. However, tests have been done on opening emails in general. Here are some of the statistics.

You have approximately 3 seconds, 40 characters or 6-8 words to catch the attention of your reader. After that, the delete key swings into action. Three second is not a lot of time. (Make sure your Subject Line is not too long for your reader to view it in their viewing box.)

Those same studies show that 55% of the people delete emails because they judge them to be irrelevant to them and delete them. The email open rate is 27%.

We need to take these statistics with a grain of salt. They were done on general emails, not emails to loyal customers. However, they were also done several years ago before email spamming became a large issue.

I would guess that depending upon the relationship you have with your loyal customers, you should expect at least a 25% opening rate on your emails. (You will want to test your own emails). In a recent test, I did with a client here is what she found with the third email she sent over a six week period of time.

Recent Test Case

Mona is an interior decorator with a customer base of 250. She has 75 email addresses of her clients (getting more email addresses every day). She sent a short email announcing the hot colors for 2008. In the email she had a link back to a webpage she created with the 2008 hot color information.

Looking at her web statistics, we saw that 39 clients click on the link in the email and went to her webpage. From this activity, she received three new client appointments.

Now three appointments aren’t a lot. But consider, it took her about 1.5 hours to create the webpage and the email. (She copied an article she found on Google). It cost her nothing to send the email. How about the other 36 clients who viewed the webpage? Don’t you think Mona’s status with them increased because of the useful information she provided? Who will they call when they are in need of her services?

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

2. Getting Your Emails Opened

2. Getting Customers to Open Your Emails

You have used a variety of techniques to get your emails delivered to your customers. Now you must get those same customers to open your emails.

In the next section, I will concentrate my comments on the “Subject Line” of your emails. The Subject Line is the key to getting emails opened. Your customers recognize you as the Sender of the email. This gives you credibility. Now you must you construct the Subject Line of your emails to get customers to open them?

Before we dig into the Subject Line, let me focus your attention on the overall tone and results you want from your emails. I do this by sharing with you my experience receiving emails from internet businesses from whom I have bought products. I believe my experience is similar to customers who have bought products from your businesses.

I purchased a number of internet marketing products from businesses as well as opted in to receive weekly email newsletters. These emails are part of the ongoing relationship with these businesses.

If I am happy with the product or email newsletter, I open their emails. I may not do these immediately. Like most people, I have a busy schedule and it is not always convenient to open an email immediately. I save them. Some I open later; others never get opened because of time constraints.

My criteria are simple. As long as the business continues to supply me with relevant information, I open their emails. I have my favorites—businesses that always seem to supply me with new and useful information.

At times I find certain businesses simply recycle old materials. Eventually I stop opening their emails and worse, choose the Unsubscribe button.

At times, I find certain businesses start to sell products with every email. This over emphasis on selling products gets tiring. Eventually I stop looking at their emails.

I subscribe to the acquaintance model. From a broad group of acquaintances, some become close friends. Some are just acquiesces. Others become annoying and I try to drop them.

My experience with emails is same. Some are very good and I wouldn’t miss an email. Others are ok and they get their emails opened sometimes. Others become annoying and I avoid them.

My guess is that most of your customers sort their emails in the same fashion.

The job of your email marketing is to build a relationship with your existing customers that are useful and helpful to them. You should never send an email that does not have value for your customer. Repeated emails of this kind will brand you as a business out only for you. People will begin avoiding you land stop opening your emails.

The purpose of the emails is to add value to what the customer wants. Give them that value and they will reward you by opening your emails.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Getting Your Emails Delivered

Dear Attraction Strategists,

We are more attractive when we create attractive correspondence

Take a moment to consider this:

• How does the way you sign your e-mails reflect what you are seeking to attract?
• How often do you intend to check and respond to e-mail?
• Do you want customers to e-mail you first or call you first?
• Are the fonts and colors you use in your e-mails easy for your most perfect customers to read?
• Do you want to send and receive e-mail file attachments?

If you are going to make e-mail a significant part of your communication plan, then be sure your company responds in a timely manner to the e-mails it receives.

Then, periodically, check with your perfect customers to make sure that your e-mails are getting through and being received as expected. Inquire as to how quickly they are receiving the e-mails your company sends.

In this high tech world, it may be a good practice to pick up the phone and 'reach out and touch someone'.
Now that's attractive!

Wishing us all a very attractive day,

CustomerService@PerfectCustomers.com

Delivering Your Customer Emails

Email Deliveries

You face three tasks with email marketing to your existing customers.

1. Get your emails delivered to your customers
2. Get your emails open by your customers
3. Get your emails read by your customers.

Each of these three tasks is easier with existing customers than sending emails to total strangers. You still must focus on each tasks and make sure you do the right things.

1. Getting Your Emails Delivered

There are things you can do to ensure more of your emails get delivered. An undelivered email does your business no good.

Permission

First, you need to get permission from your customers to keep sending emails to them after the sale. You may have gotten their email as part of the selling process. Now that they have become a customer, ask them “Is it ok for me to send you emails about updates on the product, helpful tips for using the product and other information? Which email address works best for you?” (Most people now have a work and home email address).

Customers appreciate this extra courtesy you provide by asking permission. Their permission helps ensure delivery and getting your read.

White List

If you have problem with delivering your emails it may be because some customers have spam filters that screen emails very narrowly. This is especially true at many work places where the business sets up tight spam filters for all employees. If you find customers are not getting your emails, ask them to “white list” your name. This is a simple process with all email servers where you can add the name of a sender to a “white list” which allows it to get through spam filters.

Spam Filter Software

Everyone hates spam, internet junk mail. So people employ spam filters to screen out junk emails. There are software programs you can buy to help pass through spam filters. With this software you paste your email into the program and it will indicate which words trigger the spam filters. You can then changes these words so your email is not trapped by the spam filter.

Some of the more obvious rules are ALL CAPS, excessive punctuation ?????, words like “free”, “credit cards”, “guarantees” and others. If you are using longer emails, this can be beneficial software. As spammers get more sophisticated in their craft, spam filters must become more sophisticated. It’s a constant game. You want to avoid your customer emails getting caught in the game.

Mailing Services

Want someone else to do all the heavy lifting for your email marketing? You can hire a service to do the mailings for you. The advantages of such services are getting your emails delivered. Delivering email is their specialty. They know what works and what doesn’t work. They have special relationships with the biggest ISP’s so they know the rules and know how to get emails delivered. You will need to decide whether such a service is cost effective for your business. Bottom line, if emails are not delivered to your customers, they do your business no good.

Analyze Your Results

Most email functions on ISP’s have a bounce back feature to bounce back invalid emails. Often this may be a simple misspelling of the email address. You email mailing list should be periodically cleaned for wrong or outdated email addresses.

More sophisticated ISP servers can tell you how many of your emails were received and opened. Use this and other analytical tools from your domain server to keep your email marketing on target.

Unsubscribe Feature

Always have an unsubscribe button your customers can use to stop receiving your emails. It’s the law! More than legal reasons, customers want the option to opt out of your mailings. Respect their wishes and remove them before your next mailing.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

What Do Your Customers Want?

What Do Your Customers Want?

All selling comes down to one principle—give people what they want, when they want it and how they want it. Do this and you will get the sale.

Email marketing to strangers involves guess work. You make an educated guess on what your prospects want; their buying preferences, demographics, etc. The better you profile your target prospects, the more likely you are to achieve a responsive cord and generate sales.

The process is easier when you use emails to your existing customers. You know them. Perhaps you have met them in person. They may have indicated why they bought from you instead of your competitors. You’ve had at least one experience with them on what they want, when they want it and how they want it.

Never assume you know your customers! Businesses succeed when they are relevant to their customers. You need to ask them. Here are two simple exercises you can use that will produce multiple levels of results.

Call Customers

Pick ten of your best customers and call them. Pick up the phone and call them. Ask them what they would like to see on your website and receive in emails from you. What type of things would make your website a wonderful resource for them? Do they want special offers? Would they like helpful tips on how to use your product? What problems or frustrations did they experience with your products? Do they want tips and suggestions about related products? Do they want help in maintaining your product? Do they want warranty information? What product instructions would be helpful? Do they want links to other businesses? Do they have frequent questions they want answered?

You may need to help them with suggestions about the possibilities for your website. You tell them, “I want to make this website a valuable resource for you to use. Please help me do this.” They will tell you want is important to them.

The ten phone calls may take you a max of two hours. Their input will be invaluable for the content of your emails and the content on your website.

Second, they will appreciate the call. You will make them feel very special. What other business is taking the time to do this?

Third, I know of several businesses that have used this simple technique and made actual appointments from these phone calls.

Send an Email

A complimentary strategy is to send your existing customers an email with a quick survey. The subject line could be something like this: “I need your help…”

In the email ask them which of the following items would be most beneficial to them. Give them five choices. Tell them to hit the reply button and enter their top three choices. This will be easy for the customer to complete and will give you a snap shot of what they want from you.

Do these exercises periodically and you will have all the material you need to get your emails opened and read by your customers.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Email Marketing to Build Loyal Customers

After a brief holiday break, I resume my blog entries with a series of blogs focusing on using emails to your existing customers.

Fatal Flaws

If you have read previous blogs, I hope you are now convinced that the best use of a website is to build strong and loyal customers. Instead of spending your internet dollars chasing strangers, you will be more productive to put those same dollars catering to your existing customers. With competition from four billion websites, you have zero chance of attractive strangers to your business.

Your existing customers know you, like you and trust you. They have already purchased from you and will do so again if you keep in regular contact with them. They already know about your website! Your existing customers are your richest source of new sales and referrals to your business.

Most small business owners recognize the importance of loyal customers for the future of their business. However, they also find it difficult to maintain the type of contacts loyal customers want. Keeping in contact with customers is expensive and time consuming. It cost money to do mailings. It costs even more time to produce off line contacts. Most small business owners spend the bulk of their time operating their business not catering to existing customers.

A website gives these same small business owners the tool they need to build strong and loyal customers. Using the speed, the efficiency and the 24/7 access of the internet, small business owners now have a tool they can easily use to build customer loyalty.

Beyond the fatal flaw of chasing strangers on the internet, many see internet marketing to be about their website, web copy, search engine placements, etc. While these are important, the heart internet marketing is emails.

Experts demonstrate that rarely does a visitor buy a product from a website on their first visit. The business needs to establish a relationship if the prospect is to return often to the website and eventually purchase. This is the job of email marketing.

Email Marketing to Existing Customers

The focus of these blog entries will on how to use emails to enhance the relationship with your existing customers. You can purchase many fine email marketing programs. However, they focus on marketing to strangers. The focus of my blog entries will be on email marketing to your existing customers to build the loyalty that will increase your sales and referrals.

How do you get customers to open your emails? What should be the content of your emails? What are their frequencies? What are the tips and tricks you can use with emails that build loyalty with your existing customers? Let’s begin.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…