Make Your Marketing Emails Deliver

Authentic marketing emails are becoming rarer and rarer.

I’d like to acknowledge the many fine emailers out there. I remain subscribed to a good number of newsletters and promotional emails I don’t ever remember subscribing to because I get value or interesting ideas from them. To you I say keep it up!

Then there are the spammy types. If you’ve used the same business email address daily for a long time, it’s likely that address has made it onto plenty of lists that are bought and sold, and you get your share of cold emails and spam. They tend to be automated, bot-written marketing emails using spurious, sequential Subject Lines such as these:

Cold outreach – “Quick question, Sam…”
Follow up – “Sam, I know you’re busy but you’ll love this…”
Second follow up – “Hey Sam, you there???”
Third follow up – “I get it, Sam, we all get sidetracked…”
Fourth follow up – “Are you slow or just a Neanderthal? LOL…”
Fifth follow up – “Sam, your lack of response tells me you’re okay being stuck…”
And so on…

Does any of this sound familiar to those of you who are longtime business email accountholders? This kind of adolescent style approach places some “marketers” into the abyss of unprofessionalism and sleaze.

I’ve been stalked by some of the players. They market their overpromised hype to me as “white label” (opaque and undisclosed) agency services that do all the work while I just schmooze and “grow at scale.” No thanks! That model is no fit for me. My clients aren’t for sale!

Drip Marketing or Drip Torture?

The above “sales funnel” illustration is like drip torture, especially when you’re afraid to click and opt out of an email because of phishing dangers.

You cannot win a business prospect’s attention by pretending to be cordial up front and then ultimately devolving into insult, which I see all the time in these sleazy email campaigns. Unfortunately, these tactics work sometimes, either on witless victims or people who believe in fast fixes. I guess that’s why they continue.

The good news is that email marketing is still a great value that delivers easy to measure results.

Heart to Heart Beats

How would you like to be approached by a potential supplier? What gets you to click a link or reply to an email? Let your own experience and a deeper understanding of your customers guide you in how to strategize your email marketing campaigns.

The motive starts with relevance, ideally emotional relevance, and is reinforced with meaningful or valuable information. Let your audience know they are in control of their conversation with your company and make calls to action transparent.

Sales Funnel or Sales Force?

The moment I realize I’m being dragged into a sales funnel I begin losing interest in taking the next step because I know the game is on. There are requirements coming. When I open a cold email, I’m only there to observe and learn, not play… yet. Let your calls to action be invitational and voluntary, not transactional.

Now here’s the hidden gem: Consider generating phone calls as well as form submissions! That actually puts you more in the driver’s seat of the discussion. You can better qualify your prospects and still gather their data if your sales team is well trained. You might even close on the first call. Happens all the time.

Let me repeat one of my old email marketing pearls: “Email marketing is a privilege.” Treat your audience with the respect they deserve. After all, that’s what you would expect from your own associates and colleagues.