Are your email marketing results not what they used to be? Perhaps they’ve never been what you really need. Maybe what you are doing is wearing out your welcome shortly after your opt-in introduction. Perhaps in your effort to squeeze every bit of sales juice out of your list, what you are doing is too much hard selling.
WIIFM
Remember WIIFM? (What’s in it for me?) If you are continually pitch, pitch, pitching without giving the user anything else but ads, you are starting to fall on deaf ears much like a 24-hour infomercial channel. Would you tune into a radio station that plays ads 24 hours a day? Or enjoy reading a book that is nothing but ads? I doubt it. If your emails are only ads – how quick is that going to wear thin?
Offer Value in return for Engagement
You have to offer your list something of value or interest to your subscribers to keep them plugged into and engaging with your list. Inform them. Intrigue them. Make them laugh. Make them believe you are just as interested in them as you wish them to be in your offers. You don’t have to sell in every email you send. Or at least, you could have an email that offers really good information with a soft sell at the end.
Retention
Not only will offering interesting reading keep your subscribers engaged, it will keep them from unsubscribing. A lot of readers will quickly abandon ship when every email is nothing but ads. There will be no perceived value in their minds. The subscribers that remain may either: not put in the effort to unsubscribe, so they look and delete or delete without opening. What you end up with is a weak list of non-clickers. Does that do your business any good? I think not.
Other Strategies
Here’s an idea … Give an excerpt of a great article that you know readers will find value in and will want to read. This excerpt should clearly dangle a question you know they want answered out there. End the excerpt just before answering it. Now they are hooked. The “read more” link takes them to the full article. At the bottom of that article, now you make your sales pitch. You still pitched your product, but what you did was offer them something of interest and you answered their question first. This is value. Now, with your ad right below (or in-between or slightly above) where the article ends, they are more likely to view your ad. Not only that, they feel less pressured by your ad – because it wasn’t the only thing you gave them.
What to Avoid
When your email marketing habits and strategies have trained your list to anticipate every email in their inbox from you is going to be another ad, they may never open the email and you’ve lost an opportunity. Using methods such as those mentioned above can prevent your list from expecting ads, and instead, train them to expect every email is going to offer them something of interest. If you’ve done this well, you should expect to see increased open rates, more clicks and fewer unsubscribes. That’s the point where your email list starts turning into the cash machine it should be.
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