I received a marketing email earlier, which contained a serious error. This error will have dramatically reduced its conversion rate. Here’s what happened, so you can avoid it from happening to you.
The email copy started with the following 4 words: “Sorry to disturb you”.
There’s a lot of information packed into those 4 words. Enough for the vast majority of those who received it, to form an opinion on the sender.
The sender knew what they were doing was wrong, which is why they opened with an apology.
The sender also knew that their email was a disturbance. An unrequested interruption from someone I’ve never heard of.
Knowing all this, they still decided to send it anyway.
Like others who received that email, I stopped reading after the opening sentence. After all, a stranger had interrupted us, without our consent, to tell us that what we were about to read is just spam. It’s an instant delete.
What if the email had been valuable?
That email may have contained a useful message. It might have offered an outstanding deal. It could have provided details of a wonderful opportunity. But their email marketing let them down. So no one will know. The copy they used, the list they used and the tone of their opening line destroyed their email campaign.
Oblivious to this, the sender will be wondering why they received no positive response. Especially if they genuinely had something valuable to share. They’ll perhaps be pondering whether they need to lower their prices, or if email marketing is a waste of time, or if their great offer isn’t actually great.
If we consider this to be merely an example of ineffective email marketing, we totally miss the point!
It’s way, way bigger than that.
This example provides us with a powerful insight into how easy it is, for a business owner to offer an amazing product or service, only for ineffective marketing to let them down. It’s the difference between being inundated with sales and enquiries or being greeted with silence.
The great news
Thankfully, it also gives you an insight into how quickly you can massively increase your sales, when you decide to improve just one area of your marketing.
Now multiply that potential by every other marketing activity you’re doing, and 2024 can easily be your most successful year ever. This is true, no matter how challenging things have been for you.
People’s attention spans have never been shorter. This includes your prospective clients or customers, which is why your writing needs to get to the point. Fast. This is something known as, writing short.
Writing short
As you’ll know if you’ve followed my work for a while, I’m an advocate of learning how to write short. (Roy Peter Clark introduced the phrase to me). It’s not for everything you write. Just for those times when space is limited or you want to get an extremely focused message across.
Here are some specific examples, where writing short is essential.
Email subject lines.
Tweets.
Event hand-outs.
Advertising copy.
Store signs.
Elevator pitches.
Messaging on products / packaging.
Political slogans.
Headlines.
Banners.
Social media profiles.
Flyers.
Vehicle signage.
Website buttons.
Calls to action.
That kind of thing.
So, what’s the problem?
By default, most business owners write long and see no reason to write short. And it’s perfectly understandable why this happens.
Think about it.
The internet provides you with endless writing space. You can add an unlimited number of pages to a website, with an unlimited number of words on each page. Your newsletter or marketing emails can be as long as you wish. In other words, you have far more space than you need.
So on the face of it, you have very little motivation to use fewer words than you currently do.
Except you really have.
Write short: The rewards are huge
That’s why I strongly recommend you learn to write with as few words as necessary. It’s a great way to improve your email open rates, get better advertising results, improve your click through rates, get prospects to take action and lots, lots more.
A reader shared an interesting observation with me. She told me she had “found out the hard way that email marketing doesn’t work“.
She asked me for my thoughts on why email is so ineffective. I said I’d share them here, as I’m sure some of you will find it useful.
Email marketing works
Email marketing works. In fact, email marketing works extremely well. Better than ever.
Just ask any business owner who’s using it correctly. Whether it’s used for newsletters or promotions, the return on investment is off the charts.
Email marketing also works more predictably than just about any other form of marketing. And the tiny financial investment required for email marketing makes it the most cost effective form of marketing out there.
Email marketing doesn’t work when…
What doesn’t work is ineffective emailmarketing. Just ask anyone who’s doing it incorrectly.
Here’s the thing: ineffective email marketing can’t work.
Here are just a few, very common examples of how small business owners get email marketing wrong.
A poorly writtenemailwon’t work. It will fail to motivate the reader to take action; to call you, email you, visit your website, make a purchase from you, whatever.
A professionally written email, sent to the wrong people, won’t work. It will fail to reach those with a want or need for your services.
A well written email, sent to the right people, with a dull subject line, won’t work. That’s because no one will open it. The subject line has to be compelling or no matter what your message is, it will literally be ignored.
A well written email, sent to the right people, with a compelling subject line, offering a generic product or service, won’t work. No one wants to switch to a service that’s no better then their current service.
A well written email, sent to the right people, with a compelling subject line, but sent on the wrong day of the week, won’t work. At least, it won’t be anything like as effective as it would be, if you research the best time of day and best day of the week, to send it.
Oh, and if you send your emails frequently, or not frequently enough… that’s right, your email marketing won’t work.
You get the idea.
In short, before you reject any form of marketing as ineffective, make sure you’re using it correctly.
So, instead of telling yourself that email marketing doesn’t work, ask yourself why YOUR email marketing doesn’t work. Otherwise, you’ll needlessly miss out on one of the most powerful forms of marketing on the planet!
One area I often get asked about, is how to improve email marketing open rates. So, I thought I’d share 10 of the most common reasons why emails remain unopened.
In no particular order.
1. The recipient of your email uses Gmail
Gmail automatically dumps valid emails into the recipient’s promotions folder.This means they get no notification when your emails arrive. As such, open rates plummet. I know from personal experience that my Gmail newsletter subscribers miss over 90% of my emails, unless they’ve added my email address to their contacts list. This happens, even though they used Gmail to double opt-in to receive my stuff.
2. Your email subject line didn’t motivate the recipient to open it
Obviously, people only discover how valuable or interesting your email is, after they’ve read it. To read it they need to open it and to open it, the email subject line needs to motivate them. It needs to compel them to want to find out. Getting this right is trickier than it sounds. That’s because many of the words used to inspire people to open an email, are also triggers for junk mail filters.
3. You sent the email at the wrong time of day or on the wrong day
This can have a massive impact. Despite what some people say, there’s no universally ideal day or perfect time to optimize email open rates. For example, different timing is required for when you target consumers, compared to when you target businesses. Different times also work better for different industries. For example, hotels work completely different hours than accountants. They also have totally different peak times, when they’re unavailable to check email and are least likely to see your message. One time doesn’t work for all. Test and measure until you find your email open rate sweet-spot.
4. The recipient’s email address is on a list you bought
If you’re using a list you bought, rather than one you grew yourself, you’re emailing strangers. And to make things worse, the strangers on these ‘sold lists’ get bombarded with tons of marketing emails, from all the others who bought their email address. This means they’re far more likely to have very, very aggressive email filters.
5. Your list is out of date
Some people work so hard to build their list, that they very seldom remove inactive contacts from it. As a result their lists contain lots of addresses that no longer exist or are no longer monitored. Non-existent email addresses will register as ‘bounces’, and are easily cleaned with email marketing software. Unmonitored addresses, for example, when someone’s left a company, but their email hasn’t been deleted from the system, can still receive emails, so they don’t bounce. Most email marketing software will let you automatically delete contacts after ‘X’ number go unopened. Use it.
6. The content of a previous email didn’t engage the reader
Your next email campaign’s open rate will be impacted by how successful your last email campaign was. The people who failed to engage with your previous campaign, will be less motivated to open the next one. Remember: You never have ‘a list’. You need to earn and re-earn their permission. So stay useful.
7. You send marketing emails direct from your desktop email software
This is a universally terrible idea. Always use a trusted, commercial email marketing provider. These providers can deliver over 99% of your emails every time. By sending your marketing emails via your computer’s regular email program, even to a relatively small list, your IP address can get blacklisted for sending too many identical emails. Once blacklisted, your emails won’t even reach the recipient’s junk folder. Tip: You can check if your IP address is blocked, using Spamhaus.
8. The email content triggered email filters
One of the ways your email junk filter protects you from spam, is by checking the content of incoming emails. If an email contains certain words, this increases the likelihood of that email being junked. These words range from swear words, to words and phrases often used by spammers. Tip: Think hard about the wording you use in your calls-to-action.
9. The email contained too many links or images.
This is closely connected to the previous point. One of the tricks spammers use to bypass junk filters, is to hide their spammy words in images, rather than write the words in regular text. Another common factor in spam is the use of lots of links; certainly more than a regular email might have. So, go easy on the number of images and links.
10. You built your list by offering a freebie
Something internet marketing gurus often fail to mention, is that people seldom use their primary email addresses for give-aways. If your list was built on the back of offering lead magnets, be aware that a subset of the contacts on your list may not be regularly monitored.
Email is a spectacularly powerful marketing tool. And sometimes just a few improvements can lead to dramatically better results. So, take a look at the above points. See if you can identify anything you’re missing, which will improve your email marketing open rates.
Most of the written marketing I see is at least 75% too long. Overlong marketing lacks impact. It also lacks clarity and totally fails to motivate prospective customers or clients.
I want to help you avoid this expensive mistake.
And it starts with one of the best-known quotes on the subject.
Vigorous, written marketing
And it starts with one of the best-known quotes on the subject.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell.
The vigorous writing referred to here, is writing that is strong and full of energy. That’s the kind of writing that moves people to take action; to contact you, buy from you or hire you. It’s the kind of writing that gets the results you need.
How can you and your business benefit from the power of vigorous, written marketing?
The answer comes from understanding why the problem exists.
Google usually gets the blame
That’s because Google’s search algorithm needs overlong, written content. It prefers 2500 words to 250. So, for over 20 years, online marketing writers have been rewarded for high word counts. That’s certainly not what’s needed for vigorous, written marketing.
But Google isn’t responsible for the wider problem.
Email marketing and off-line media is just as ruined by overlong content. Neither of those formats have ever required the writer to dance the Google dance.
The problem exists because most written marketing is created by people who lack sufficient training. It’s either written by business owners who ‘dabble’ or by below-par marketing writers.
The solution?
The business owner wishing to switch to the vigorous, written marketing they need has two options.
Learn how to do it effectively.
Pay someone who already knows.
How to decide?
The cost (in time) of learning is considerable. It takes years of practice. However, you’ll start seeing improvements relatively quickly.
The cost of hiringan expert is lower. And it’s a lot faster.
The price you pay for starving your business of vigorous, written marketing is far higher than either of those options. So pick one of them and run with it.
