You just clicked ‘Send’ on your latest newsletter.
The layout was clean. The design was impeccable. The content was error-free.
Instead of leaving your desk to enjoy the rest of your day, or move on to the next item on your To Do list, you find yourself still in the dashboard area of your email service. You hit refresh once. I wonder how many opens there are. You hit refresh again. I hope no one unsubscribes. Maybe I should have written a better intro. The cycle goes on and on until you force yourself to log out.
It is just an email. We send emails all the time. If it’s just email, why do we get so nervous about sending messages to our subscribers? Most of us don’t make a huge fuss when we are unfriended or unfollowed on social media platforms. (Honestly, most of the time we don’t even realize we have been unfriended.)
What makes us so afraid of this type of interaction with people who follow our brand? What makes email marketing so different? It is because email is personal. It is a lot of pressure to make an email that’s worth opening.
Email marketing is the best way to grab your clients’ or potential clients’ attention. With a simple click, you can tell everyone on your email list about sales, events or updates from your company or brand. Utilizing email marketing puts your brand directly onto the screens of your potential customers (your subscribers), which is what makes it so important to your business.
Wikipedia says email marketing “usually involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations, and is meant to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness.” Emails are such a powerful tool in business, which is why most businesses use it in some form. However, you must use it with caution.
We log onto more than 20 sites each day, all asking us to “Subscribe” or “Join In” to get special deals and updates. If you are like me, most of the time you either:
A) Ignore the pop-up offer because your inbox does not deserve the frequency of abuse you know large corporations can put it through, or
B) Subscribe to grab the coupon or free ebook, then quickly unsubscribe once you have it.
C) Allow promotional emails to crowd your inbox, reading only a handful then deleting all the rest out of frustration.
Knowing this, it is no wonder writing an email marketing message worth reading feels difficult. There are a few ways you can keep your subscribers engaged. I will tell you more about them, but these will help you feel less stress about sending email marketing messages.
Here are 4 ways you can keep your subscribers engaged
Impress your new subscribers.
People who decided to give you their email address should feel good about making that choice. If you have offered an ebook or some other kind of freebie, make sure it is the kind of quality a person would spend at least $10 to purchase.
Make your subscribers feel like VIPs
Adding a little something nice once in a while doesn’t hurt. A treat for your audience could be a discount code, exclusive videos or even smartphone wallpaper. If you think of your newsletter subscribers as VIPs, you won’t go wrong.
Quality over quantity
Although you want to stick to a regular schedule for sending your emails, you don’t want to overdo it. Getting too many irrelevant emails is frustrating. Limit how many emails you send per month to your audience. When you do send them, your content should be interesting. It should focus on an important idea, even, promotion or announcement. Remember: the quality of your message is more important than the number of emails you send.
Offer a clear call-to-action
Make it clear whether they should respond to you with an email, click a button to go to your website or simply to ‘stay tuned for more.’ In any case, your potential clients and subscribers should know what you want them to do after reading your email.
When you write emails that your subscribers and potential clients feel are tailored just for them, you will start to see more opens on the dashboard of your email service provider. Content that engages your audiences means better overall stats for you, the potential to make more money and a day spent being productive rather than agonizing over email stats.
