De-tox your marketing… email
Last week I appealed to small business owners to look at upping marketing effectiveness by making a lifestyle change, rather than going for a burst of energy in the form of a New Year’s resolution. To continue the New Year theme, I’m kicking off a series to help you think about de-toxing marketing by weeding out some poor practice.
Poor marketing has a tendency to creep in, either because people just don’t realise that what they’re doing irritates people, or because you’re in a hurry to secure some sales and think that the ends justify the means. If you shift your thinking to see that your company’s reputation is built over time and through every little thing you do – then your marketing activity needs to be spotless every time.
That person you irritated in hunt of a quick sale could just have the ear of your next big prospect. With social media having opened companies up to deeper and faster scrutiny, and oiled the wheels of the word-of-mouth machine – you just can’t afford to use quick and dirty marketing tactics anymore.
Three toxic marketing practices to avoid… in email.
The best approach to marketing your business is to be genuinely helpful and polite to everybody, all of the time. Think about the world from their perspective and remove those things that are likely to get their backs up. When it comes to email marketing, here are my top three de-tox tips:
1. Assumed email marketing permission
Treat email permission as a right that you earn and have a duty to use responsibly. Specifically it means not adding people to your list in the following ways:
- If you’re handed a business card, don’t just add the email to your list. Either ask the person at the time of receiving the card, or drop them an email follow-up with a sample of what they might receive and an invitation to opt-in.
- Bought lists, however much the salesperson tells you, is not a great source of email data. The people on that list may well have got on there legitimately, but they certainly are not warm to your approach – because they’ve not asked you to get in touch. If you feel you really have to use bought email lists, then go gently. Use an offer – like a useful download – to encourage people to opt-in to ongoing communication. This is a longer term approach than emailing everyone with a sales offer, but will build the relationship up slowly such that a sales approach is more likely to succeed.
- Don’t add people to your email list simply because they entered a prize draw at an exhibition or trade show. You should only do this if you make it abundantly clear that this is the ‘price’ of entering the draw. Tucking this away in the T&Cs is just annoying. And, what’s more, your newsletter should be interesting and helpful – so why trick people into subscribing?
For more on email opt-in, check out the pros and cons of assumed email marketing permission, and a run down of why you need to ask for permission.
2. No way out
However someone got onto your list, you must make it easy for them to take themselves off it. People should stay on your list because what you send them is useful and/or interesting. Not because they can’t stop the email coming. It’s standard practice to have an ‘unsubscribe’ link at the top or bottom of your email. You can reduce unsubscribes by allowing people to set and change preferences. So, let’s say they initially wanted to hear from you weekly, but this is now a bit too frequent… without an option to update, they’d typically unsubscribe altogether. The better email systems allow subscribers to do all of this, and also collect a reason for unsubscription to help you understand what you might change to keep people interested.
3. A boring sales pitch
That’s enough about getting on and off the list… what about the content? A good marketing email is one that draws people into further conversation. Unless you’re in the business of impulse purchases, it’s highly unlikely that someone will read an email and sign on the dotted line that day. Accept this. Embrace it. Make your emails helpful, interesting and characterful – with signposts rather than klaxons signaling the sales information. The best email marketing I’ve seen tends to provide tips, tools and templates – these can be in article, video or downloadable formats. The sales conversation comes later.
There are loads more I could add. But, these are definitely my top three. Please do use the comment function below to share your email marketing gripes – so that we can all learn from other people’s mistakes.
Next one in the series will be on social media… do Tweet me your personal pet hates for consideration.
By Bryony Thomas | Chief Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | @bryonythomas | www.clear-thought.co.uk
You may also be interested in:
- Blog: One piece of content; 20 ways to use it
- Blog: Reduce, re-use, recycle – a small business marketing philosophy
- Blog: Cheaper marketing alternatives for small businesses
Clear Thought Consulting works with small businesses, equipping them with the marketing strategies, suppliers, skills and set-up that they need to become bigger businesses. We do this by planning and delivering 12-month marketing transformation programmes – supporting a small business through a step-by-step process to making marketing pay. We firmly believe that when you can’t out-spend your competition, you have to out-think them.
Published on 17 January 2012
