Once upon a time email marketers sent out long emails that told stories, revealed how to do stuff, and sold products.
Then the problems came: Emails being sent to the promotions folder. IP addresses blocked. Spam filters remove emails from existence. Domain names need to be verified. Apple opens all emails and scans them so that you have no idea how many real people opened your emails.
Does email marketing still work? You bet it does. Email marketing is still the most cost-effective method to reach your audience and make sales.
But times change and the way we do email marketing needs to change as well.
When you send out that email that took you hours to write, it evaporates into the mists of time within a day or so. It’s like you never wrote it at all.
Place that same content on your website, and you can spark conversations while you cut your workload in half. Instead of writing an email and an article, you focus your efforts on just the article. Now you can send social media traffic to your article and also continue to refer back to it in future pieces of content and future emails, too.
I’m not saying you should stop emailing. Not at all. Instead, you might update your email process so that it looks like this:
1: Send out short emails. When you write to a friend, are you usually sending them a thousand words? Not likely. Google likes to decide what emails get through and which are relegated to the promotions bin.
By sending out a short, catchy email that directs your subscriber back to your website, you’re increasing the odds the email will land in their personal folder. And you’re also going to increase your open rate as well.
Place your real message on your blog. Then send your readers a super short, catchy email that lets them know if they want to continue reading, here’s the link to do just that.
2: Place your real effort into creating a database of content. Instead of having to write articles and posts in addition to your emails, you get to focus your efforts just on the website content.
When you create something, you want it to be seen and accessible for longer than 10 minutes in someone’s inbox. Placing your content on your site instead of in emails allows new visitors to binge read your stuff and get to know you. And it has SEO benefits as well.
3: Encourage discussions on your site. Some of your best ideas for future content and products won’t be your ideas at all. Instead, they’ll come from your readers if you give them the chance to interact with you and your content.
Encourage their feedback. Ask them questions. See what they have to say. And make new contacts and friends while you’re at it.
4. Use the ‘to continue reading’ phrase to boost clicks. Using this method you’ll likely see your clickthrough rate greatly increase over time.
First, you’re sending out a SHORT email of just a few lines. Make no mistake, you still need to put effort into this email to get the click.
Entice them with the solution to a problem or with a great story. Then let them know that to read more, they simply need to click. This works like magic once you master the technique.
5: Continue to segment your lists. When you send them to an article about driving targeted traffic, offer them a cheat sheet or list of resources to get their email address.
Yes, you already have them on your primary email list, but now you also know they are specifically interested in driving traffic, too.
5.5: Whenever possible, use storytelling. Storytelling is pure magic for capturing attention, removing barriers, and even making sales. Start many of your emails with a story and let them click the link to find out how the story turns out.
Test this method of emailing by sending one short email every day for a month. Pay attention to your click-through rate and see how it improves over the course of the month. And then decide if this method is right for you.
I think you’re going to be impressed with the results.
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