by Wikus Engelbrecht - GraphicMail Marketing Team
26. agosto 2010 03:12
When I’m at a party and tell people I work in email marketing, I’m immediately labeled the “spam devil”. You see, even though email marketing has a sterling reputation among marketers as an effective marketing channel, the average Joe (even though he subscribes to a number of newsletters himself) associates email marketing with those countless “120% OFF!”, “Get a FREE iPad” and “Urgent: Get your 80% DISCOUNT NOW” emails cluttering up his inbox.
It’s the sales push. Email marketing is definitely there to promote your product or service, but the fact of the matter is that no one constantly wants a sales pitch shoved down their inbox every five minutes. I recently had to answer the question “What is an email newsletter?”, and while answering I realized again how much more there is to a newsletter than people expect. An email newsletter is so much more than a promotion call-out.
Successful newsletters offer something of value to its subscribers; whether it’s product information, industry insights, or relevant news, updates or events regarding your business or product. See, sales emails don’t build customer relationships. Yes, they do drive sales; but a customer relationship ensures long term sales, rather than a once-off sale. And your newsletter can build that relationship – by adding value to your recipient.
Yes, a promotion is always a good way to boost your newsletter response (and sales) – but not if you use the same cheap trick every time. If you offer subscribers a 50% discount week after week, doesn’t that mean that the product is actually priced 50% higher than it should be, and that you’re simply selling it at “discount” to generate more sales? Similarly, if you punt a promotion on a particular product once a week, and it’s not a product your recipients need on a weekly basis, they might get fed up and unsubscribe. At the very least they’ll begin to ignore your emails.
Promotions are more effective when sent occasionally. So, by all means, intersperse your newsletters with the occasional sale, promotion or discount – everyone loves a freebie! – but make sure you also offer something more. Push your sales in your newsletter, but try do it more subtly, or at least ensure that there is a balance between your sales push and some valuable content that will be of interest to your subscribers.
Sending quality newsletters will ensure that your recipients come to trust your emails, making them even more receptive to your occasional sales pitches. In our own GraphicMail newsletter we do sometimes call out promotions, deals or competitions, but the newsletter primarily consists of tips on how our readers can improve their campaigns or updates on new features or changes that’s important for our clients to know. (If you don’t subscribe to our newsletter yet, by the way, you can subscribe by scrolling right down to the bottom of this page and entering your email address in the subscribe field.)
If you’re not sure whether the content in your campaign is too salesy, why not sign up to a few good campaigns to view examples of impressive, well-received newsletters. Also, think about which newsletters you subscribe to yourself, and why it is that you never unsubscribe from them.
All in all, the key is to keep your content balanced and think about what you can offer your subscribers that will keep them coming back for more.
