With a newsletter subscriber list of over 8,000 people, I'm periodically
asked what it takes to launch a successful e-newsletter campaign. Rather than
explain my techniques over and over again, I decided to teach my techniques in
videos which I created and posted on MikePollock.com. Here is an excerpt from my
video "The 10 Critical Marketing Strategies of the Rich."
Respecting the Privacy of Your Subscribers
The first step in a successful campaign is to respect the privacy of your
subscribers. Only send your newsletters to people who have asked to be on your
list - and only send your newsletters as frequently as you say you will. If you
send more than people expect, they'll start unsubscribing.
When it comes to privacy, you want to also stress your privacy policy right on
your email signup form. This way people know that you will never rent, sell, or
share their email address with anyone.
One of the biggest mistakes I see people make (and you've seen it!) is that they
try to use their everyday email program to send their email newsletters. This is
a huge mistake on a lot of levels including privacy. When you try to send your
newsletters out with your day-to-day email program, everyone on your list will
see everyone elses email address in the TO line. An alternative would be to put
their addresses in the BCC line, but that's really a band-aid fix. I talk more
about why this is in my 10 Critical Marketing Strategies video.
The HTML / Plain Text Myth
Most people think you can only send your email newsletters out in one of two
formats: HTML or Plain Text. With HTML you can include pictures, colors, and
text enhancements and with Plain Text your emails only include, well, plain old
text. Your recipients email program will only display one or the other. So which
format do you choose?
If you use HTML, the people on your list who can only see plain text will not be
able to see your emails. If you send out plain text everyone will see your
emails, but you will lose out on the benefits of HTML like colors, pictures, and
text enhancements. Choosing which format to use is a big dilemma for most email
marketers starting out.
Professional email marketers understand that there's a third option called
Multipart which sends your emails out in both HTML and Plain Text formats. With
Multipart, you send one email with both the HTML and the plain text in it, and
your recipients email program will choose which format to display.
So how do you send your emails out in Multipart? Well if you're trying to send
your emails out with your day-to-day email program you're out of luck. Most
regular email programs like Outlook, Yahoo, GMail, etc. do not allow you to send
Multipart emails. To send Multipart, you need a more sophisticated system. I use
what's called an Application Service Provider which I talk more about in my 10
Critical Marketing Strategies of the Rich video.
Forget Trying to Sell to Strangers
If you've ever taken a business course you've probably heard something like
"People buy from people they know." In my experience in business, I have found
this to be absolutely true. People do buy from people they know. It's generally
very difficult to get a complete stranger to buy from you.
When you take out an ad with traditional media like TV, radio, and newspapers,
you have to turn strangers into customers. This is very difficult to do -
especially when your message is only seen by the stranger for a few seconds.
Email is different. In Seth Godin's book Permission Marketing, Seth says that
instead of trying to turn strangers into customers, you can use email to turn
strangers into friends first and then turn those friends into customers. I
completely agree with him - remember, it's easier to make a customer out of a
friend than it is to make a customer out of a stranger.
Get Personal with Your Email Newsletters
Sending out an email newsletter will help you turn strangers into friends who
will eventually buy from you. I have found a way to make this process go even
quicker - I personalize each email I send out to each individual person on my
list. I do this because I want to build a one-on-one relationship with each
recipient.
But how do you do that when you have a few hundred or several thousand
subscribers? If you try to send your newsletters out with your day-to-day email
program, chances are you would have to send your newsletters out one by one to
each recipient. This would take days to do. There is an easier way and that's to
do a mail merge.
The service I use to send my newsletters has a mail merge function. When I
create my newsletter I simply put [fname] where I want the recipients' first
name to appear. The service will pull the first name of each recipient from my
database and input it right where I want it - for each of the 8,000+ people on
my list. When I hit send, it does all the work automatically for me!
How powerful is personalization? It is one of the most powerful tools I have to
build relationships with my subscribers. I routinely get emails from people who
speak to me as if we were old High School buddies - they know me because they
receive personalized email messages from me addressed to them specifically.
Another technique is to put the recipients first name in the subject line. This
is very powerful. In the past I have used this technique and have seen that the
number of people who have opened my emails has increased by as much as 30%.
Keep Learning More Techniques
The secret to my email marketing success so far has been education. I am
constantly learning new techniques. I'm finding what doesn't work, what works,
and what works extremely well. I tell people all the time - success comes to
those who know the most strategies (and implement them).
