Tag: email

Engage Your Subscribers & Watch Your Results Soar

Jon Olson Leave a comment

Last week we talked about the indoctrination email. How important it was to start the relationship with your subscribers on the right foot and let them know what they can expect and look forward to.

However, the question pops up from time to time….What do I send next?

How do you keep the conversation going and continue to ‘PULL’ subscribers to you and have them actually looking forward to receiving your email.

What I have done for years after sending the indoctrination email is that I continue to engage them and request continued ‘action’.

Now an ‘action’ can be the following;

– A small sale

– A ‘follow’ on social media

– A response to the email

Or any way that the subscriber takes ACTION on what you are engaging them with.

It’s important not to throw a big ticket item in their face on the second email you send. Remember, you are trying to build a life time customers and relationship, however it’s a good idea to not shy away from a smaller sale / giveaway.

The big point and main aspect of your second email though is to get your subscribe to engage with you.

Remember that in every campaign you begin…

The first email is to get your new subscriber familiar with you and what your list will offer them…

The second email is to pull them in to you even more, engage and set up more lines of communication.

I personally, wouldn’t start the ‘pitch’ here. I would still attempt to drive value to your subscribers and get them to respond to you in others ways.

A great tip I use, is to ask for a follow on Twitter or a ‘like’ on Facebook. I’m trying to get them into the habit of not only getting emails from me, but taking action on them when they get them.

Some people call it ‘training your list to take action’, I just simply want to attract action takers!

Whatever route you decide to take, just remember…ENGAGEMENT!

Words To Include Vs. Words To Exclude In Your Emails

Jon Olson Leave a comment

Writing emails can be a huge task for even the more seasoned email marketer. Creating great copy and messages that not only get opened but acted on is crucial for email marketing success.

And while there are a million and one words that seem to ‘trigger’ spam filters, what I wanted to focus on today was more of the format within the emails, rather than listing the 1001 words that MIGHT trigger a spam filter.

Over the past decade I’ve been writing emails for clients as well as my websites and have found obviously that we want to write as if we are talking to an individual, so that right there is the first piece of advice. Like I mentioned in previous blog pot, try to avoid big words and ‘corporate’ talk…But here are a few words you can use to get higher click throughs and some that might scare your readers away…

Words To Include:

Demo – This is great if you are promoting a specific tool or service that your readers can test drive. The word ‘demo’ is an action word that creates curiosity. I love putting this in my copy because there is no risk to the reader. It’s not asking them to ‘pay’ for anything, it’s asking them to try something out…And people LOVE to give things a test drive.

Opportunity – This word has to be used ethically. Without sounding like a pitch man, the word opportunity actually helps your reader see potential in what you are writing about. This pulls at their curiosity and is a very effective word to get action with your emails.

Connect – This should be used in your indoctrination emails (aka the first emails you send to your subscribers) We are always ‘pushing’ emails to people, this word helps PULL people back to us. Connecting with your readers is critical and using the word ‘connect’ helps bridge the communication gap between reader and sender.

Thanks – A simple but very effective words to use. And well, it’s the right thing to do. Remember to always thank your readers for their subscription, their business and their attention. In fact, I would argue that you can’t say ‘Thanks’ enough.

Words To Exclude:

Free – Not only is this one of the most spam filter happy words in history, you can find more creative ways to say ‘free’. Use words like ‘no cost’ or ‘doesn’t cost a dime’…Use some creativity because ‘free’ is just used so much your readers may become blind to it. And oh yeah, like I mentioned, spam filters LOVE to zap emails with ‘free’ pasted in the message. Not always, but it’s becoming harder for this word to be effectively used in your copy.

Confirm – Remember when we recommended that you use ‘Demo’ as a word to use in your emails, this is the opposite of that. Confirm might be a bold action word, but in an email it can look pushy. Remember, we want to PULL people to us not push them away.

Cash – This is another spam filter trigger but also, it just sounds…Kinda scammy! Anything that screams scam usually has something to do with ‘cash’ in the email copy. Avoid this word and while there is nothing wrong with letting your subscribers know that you might be offering them some kind of cash incentive, there are other ways to go about it. Remember, PULL people to you and continue the communication. Perhaps creating curiosity and getting them to connect with you first would be a better plan than throwing ‘cash’ at them right away…

These are just a few of the words we try to include and exclude in the emails we send and believe me, there are thousands of words that seem to trigger spam filters these days.

The best advice is to always talk as if you are talking to ONE person. And when you do that, you seem more human and that’s always the safest way to try to reach your readers.

Email Marketing 101: Use Lots Of Space

Jon Olson 2 Comments

Email marketing is not an exact science.

Sure there are plenty of stats and analytics that get thrown at you from every angle on what works and what doesn’t. So you have to always remind yourself this…Everything you learn and read about, take it as an example of something that MIGHT work for you.

The beauty of email marketing is that you can literally test things on the go and if something doesn’t work right away you can change it and see if it improves your results.

Writing emails isn’t an exact science either. A huge chunk of effective email marketing is yes, writing better emails for your readers so in this short blog post, we hope to give you some tips that has helped us over the years but should never be taken as gospel.

This works for us, and the only way you will find out if it works for you is to roll up your sleeves and press ‘Broadcast!’

When you are writing an email to your list, use lots of space!

And what we mean by that is….

“Don’t just write a huge block of text like I’m about to do here. Sure it might be proper formatting and proper english or whatever. But effective email copy breaks things up into easy to digest sentences and paragraphs. We are not trying to bore our readers and make them stop reading what we send. And unfortunately when we just use run on sentences and massive paragraphs, again like this example, you will bore your readers and it will not grab their attention at all. Are you getting tired of reading this paragraph yet? I know I would be if it was in an email. So please, don’t write to your lists using huge massive paragraphs like this. It’s the quickest way to get your email deleted….”

Phewwwwww….I’m glad that is over!

Do you see how that could just bore your readers to death? But how about using lots of space and breaking up your email into simple sentences and paragraphs like this!

– Use bullet points as well!

  1. Or maybe use numbered lists like this.
  2. This is very effective at grabbing attention in the body of your email.

Those examples above really help and the most important thing to remember is that…

People will scan emails, they won’t spend 15 minutes reading them.

So make your most important facts and messages stick out and easily found. You do this by using lots of space, new sentences, bullet points, numbered lists and simple short paragraphs.

Try this out in your broadcasts and see if it gets better results 🙂

What Is An Email List?

Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

What Is An Email List?

When it comes to communicating with groups of people via email, then you will constantly hear people talking about their email lists.

But what is an email list, where does it come from and why do you want one?

So let’s break this down and look at each question in turn.

What is an email list?

According to Wikipedia: “A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as “the mailing list”, or simply “the list”.

That is factually correct but it misses one very vital element which you will need to understand if you are going to get the best out of the interactions you have with your list.

Never overlook the fact that your list is made up by individual people and it is the individuals on the list with whom you are communicating when you send out emails.

This may seem like an obvious point but it is something you should have at the forefront of your mind every time you communicate with your list, so that your messages are always personal and relevant.

So while you will be sending emails to multiple recipients, the trick is to make each recipient feel as though the email was written just for them. Achieve that and you will have a really wonderful relationship with your list.

Where does my email list come from?

When you use automated email software like RocketResponder for the first time, you don’t have a list at all to begin with.

What happens is people subscribe, or sign up, to be added to your list. If you have a website or blog you can invite people to sign up to your list in order to receive relevant information from you about their particular area of interest.

It can be quite common to give subscribers an incentive to join your list, such as a free report, a discount on their first order from you or some other offer which may encourage them to trust you with their email address.

It should go without saying that you will get the best response from your list of people if you actually deliver what you said you would when people granted you permission to email them.

For example if you promised to give people your ‘insider secrets’ to getting upgraded by the major airlines as an incentive to join your list then this should be the first thing they receive.

Be upfront and honest with your subscribers and you can have people on your email list for many years.

Why do I want an email list?

No matter what industry or niche you find yourself in, you will want an email list is there is a group of people with whom you would like to communicate via email.

You might want to promote your latest offers to potential customers, inform people about your specialist area of expertise, get a message out to supporters, inform, entertain or raise awareness for a cause.

If you have something to say and there is an audience which wants to hear your message then the email list is a way of bringing you and your audience together and a service like RocketResponder is the tool which manages every aspect of this communication.