Tips on effective email marketing from Christianity Today
Jun 18, 2008 eMail Marketing
I get a periodic email from the folks at Christianity Today that has a marketing focus. I was just looking over the email that I received yesterday and I thought I would talk a little bit about marketing with email. Despite all the talk of email being dead or on it’s way out as a hot marketing technique, you are still crazy not to build an opt-in list if you are a serious marketer.
I personally recommend using a tool like AWeber to handle the list management and delivery of your emails for you. They specialize in running email campaigns for businesses and have great relationships with ISP’s and spam blacklists that insure high delivery rates. They are able to do this because they are strict with their users, requiring a “double opt-in” to add subscribers to your lists, and really strict when it comes to uploading existing lists to make sure that a solid opt-in relationship exists with your list through testing before allowing full upload.
Once you have a list subscribed and permission to contact them, what are some best practices? According to Nancy Flynn, author of The ePolicy Handbook and Writing Effective E-Mail, there are 9 tips you should keep in mind. Some of my favorites include:
1. Write a subject line with “oomph.” A small but powerful weapon in the battle to capture reader attention, the subject line should reveal what the e-message is about before it’s opened. “Attracting and Retaining Top Performers,” for example, says more than “Employee Benefits.”
2. Never begin with thank you. You only have a few seconds to grab the reader’s attention. Start strong. Make your point in the first few words of your e-mail, then repeat, rephrase, and reiterate.
5. Remain gender neutral. Your intended reader may be male, but the ultimate decision-maker could be a woman. Avoid masculine pronouns and other “turn-off” language.
7. Resist the urge to CAPITALIZE!!! The eye is accustomed to reading a mix of upper and lowercase letters, so stick with standard style. And don’t slap exclamation points on the end of sentences!!! Instead, pump up your writing with descriptive language and well-crafted sentences.
I think that the bottom line on communicating with and marketing with email is that we have to remember that email is forever. If we make a mistake and send out badly worded messages, or we get carried away with something negative in an email, it is going to find it’s way into hundred or thousands of inboxes.
As Christians, we are called to encourage others and be beacons of light to all we interact with. Let’s make sure we do this in our email marketing and communications with clients and prospects.
You can check the rest of the tips at CTI Advertising
They have a pretty cool article on Lessons on Leadership from Moses - the First CEO as well.
God Bless,
Wade
