 “Why are your emails so plain?” It seemed like a simple question but from someone whose emails are pretty snazzy. Well, sort of. Their emails are a series of graphics and pictures. The question came in a few weeks ago in response to their having received my Monday Morning Marketing email.
Today you have to assume that a lot of people are using their phone to read emails. If they’re reading them at all. So what? Those fancy graphics and snazzy style that might look great on a computer monitor suddenly becomes unreadable on a smart phone screen and even some tablets.
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 Is email dying? Are you killing email? Why are people avoiding email nowadays? Perhaps it’s because of how people are using email. Hopefully this guide to using email will help keep that method of communication open and not be as horrible as it is now.
There are a lot of people who simply do not use email any longer. In fact a whole generation of people coming up are now either completely without email or just have an account because they have to to register a smart phone or register for school. But, other than that, they just don’t use it. What would cause someone to unsubscribe from your email list? We’ve shared on numerous occasions that you should have a mailing list in my Why bother with email marketing post and we have Eleven tips for successful email marketing as well. But what would cause a subscriber to throw up their hands and hit that “unsubscribe” button?
I have done this a lot lately. As part of paring down the number of emails I get I have taken a number of steps. The first is to establish an email account just for mailing lists. Period. That’s all it’s for. That way I can segregate all the things I’m interested in but don’t need to prioritize. The wonderful offers, info, mailers and more that may be relevant, but often aren’t. But what would cause me to just throw up my hands and unsubscribe altogether? I was working with someone recently on their social media campaigns and they were very stressed. They were absolutely killing it on Facebook with an engaged audience and strong return on their time investment. So what’s their issue? They weren’t on Instagram or Twitter or any other social network for that matter. And they had the Fear Of Missing Out, or FOMO.
(Insert dramatic musical effect here)  Why bother with email marketing?
Last week we talked about how to significantly increase the open rate on your emails with eleven tips for email marketing. I’ve also shared five ways to legitimately grow your email list. But isn’t just having a great social presence good enough - why do you need an email list?  One of the greatest assets you can have as a business is a really, really good email list. While there is a lot of hoopla about having a strong social media presence, and that is an effective component of your marketing arsenal, honing a great email list still can turn into real dollars for your business. But this can also be a way to lose customers too, so here are ten tips for email marketing that can help your business.
Like cans of gasoline in the hands of that “one uncle,” using automation to help spread your word can have unforeseen consequences. I don’t think automated marketing systems are necessarily a good thing, especially in some implementations. While there are great tools for helping to automate your marketing, great marketing still starts from a passion about your product or service. Period.
Now, do I use automated marketing tools? You betcha! You might be one of thousands of people who get my Monday Marketing newsletter delivered conveniently to your inbox through a mailing program. If not, you can remedy that here.  I get to manage a lot of calendars as part of my life and there’s something I see people doing consistently to really hurt attendance of their events. From car shows to community events, people are truly limiting how effective their messaging is to the people they’d like to attend those events. But how do you spread the word about community events so that people will find them in the first place?
Let’s face it - there are so many ways to deliver messaging nowadays that telling the world about your event is something that can very easily get lost. Even if you get to the right people, it’s still entirely possible that they will forget about your event when it rolls around.  As human beings our journeys around the sun on this big blue marble trigger all sorts of events. For example, many of us try to lose weight come January 1. Others place huge significance on the anniversary of our own arrival aboard this vehicle. In these United States we celebrate those who have passed away in active military service on this day. This can also be a trigger for our businesses.
Every day our customers and prospects are critiquing our advertising and messaging. Some are responding, others aren’t. For those who don’t it could be that what we have isn’t what they want or it could also be our messaging. So I propose that, at least twice a year, we look at what we’re doing to woo our customers and make adjustments. We all know that one guy who wonders why things aren’t going so well but tells us, “well, I’ve been doing it this way for 20 years!” Times change, customers change and, most importantly, competitors change.  I was recently in a restaurant that I really like locally that had undergone some ownership changes and observed a few differences in how things were working including something that made me hug the owner. What was that single thing? Fish bowling. Now if you look in the Urban Dictionary for fish bowling you’re going to see something quite different than what I’m referring to so first let’s define what fish bowling is.
Simply put, fish bowling came from business owners who have a retail location putting a fish bowl on their counters and asking for people to sign-up for their regular mailing. I remember in the olden days of marketing how we would treasure these names and would carefully create newsletters using a program like Aldus PageMaker to craft newsletters that would get printed and actually mailed to the recipients. Where are those PageMaker skills today? |
Tony BarthelTony Barthel is passionate about great marketing for small businesses Get Free Weekly Marketing TipsCategories
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