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.

The post Make Your Marketing Emails Deliver appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Let’s explore the fascinating scientific phenomena that make emails practically delete themselves. It still seems to befuddle a lot of marketers out there.

One of the easiest things to do is make people delete your email immediately, with or without opening it. Simply disappoint them with irrelevant content. That’s all. There’s literally nothing to it… nothing worthwhile in the content that genuinely relates to audience needs.

I’m a big fan of email newsletters. Can you tell? I like reading or skimming newsletters from companies I follow in my network. I’ve learned quite a lot from some of them and done business with a few. I’m never annoyed when people who’ve snagged my email address add me to their email lists. I always take a look if I know who the sender is. You can never predict what legitimate organizations might inform you of, and it’s easy to unsubscribe from any email service provider if you don’t want more to come.

The YOU Attitude or the US Attitude?

A couple of recent emails from familiar firms hit my inbox last week. The subject lines were “Big News from…” and “News from…” Upon opening the “Big News…” one, I found that the news was really very small and mundane from my vantage point. The “News” could only be “Big” from an internal standpoint – to the owners and managers of the company. It was really just an announcement of something you would expect to hear from this company in any given month. They reported that they just accomplished something that they’re in business to do anyway, so the content was a bit of a letdown.

The “News from” email was mostly a long list of things this company would be expected to do. I’m sure there’s some value in the brand impressions, but how much engagement or response do newsletters like this generate? The answer is less than they could if they were instead using an audience-centered approach – taking on the “YOU Attitude.”

With an audience-centered approach, your subject line will resonate with relevance and more likely get an email opened. With a company-centered approach, your subject line will have little or nothing of value to the recipient. There’s really nothing in it for them. So take on the YOU Attitude and give your audience a compelling reason to engage! Instead of talking about YOUR accomplishments, talk about THEIR opportunities and what THEY value.

Relevance and Congruence

Your subject lines and content must not only be relevant, they must align so that your audience gets rewarded for opening your email. The reward can be as basic as breaking industry news, new & innovative technology or a simple solution to a nagging problem. It could even be a call for expertise – giving members of your audience a chance at being recognized for their professional knowledge, offering space in your newsletter or blog to give them direct access to your newsletter/blog community. Whatever it is, be relevant and relatable. Your audience should at least be able to identify with keywords in your subject lines and the general themes of your articles or promotions.

It’ fine to sprinkle employee and company news updates into your newsletters as long as that isn’t the main thrust of the content. In fact, people will be more likely to pay attention to your internal news once they see that you are a purveyor of worthwhile information.

The last thing you want your subject lines to do is promise “Big News” when upon opening your email, the recipient thinks “fake news” or “no news is good news.” When that happens, the unsubscribe link will be the most relevant section of your email.

The post Big news to whom? What do your emails really say? appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

My recent experience with a few service related businesses is that making a massive shift away from traditional kinds of sales work over to inbound marketing and marketing automation does not always pay off. Too sudden of a change and too much change is not only time consuming, but also detrimental to sales. There is just too much anecdotal, yet reliable evidence of this issue for me to ignore it.

Double the Irony

Very ironically, I just got off the phone with a persistent, cold calling sales rep for a… marketing automation company!

After her 5th or 6th call, I made an appointment with her to learn a few things about how their product could be useful to my clients and my business. I never received one email solicitation and never saw nor clicked a single ad for this company. Yet, their sales rep found my website and cold called me on the phone – several times.

Now here’s a marketing automation company using cold calling as its number one prospecting tactic! The other half of the double irony is that she called me as I was composing the first paragraph of this article! It was Mariah’s spoken words, not a strategic bombardment of digital messages, that was my call to action.

In the beginning I was slightly annoyed by Mariah’s call interruptions but she never gave up asking for another chance to try at a better time. With that I kept the door open. By the end of today’s unexpected phone call, Mariah and I connected as human beings and we chatted briefly about a couple of unrelated things. Her company is now top of mind in an important service sector for my business. Nothing but the telephone made it happen. Of course I will thoroughly examine their website – which better be damn good!

Thanks Mariah, for your persistence and the extra article fodder! 🙂

By the way, just before posting this on my blog, I got a cold call from an email marketing company directly competing with Constant Contact. I didn’t have time for the call and asked him to put my email on their mailing list. “We don’t have one…” was the reply. I am telling you the truth!

Trying and Failing

One of my clients, after about 3 years of building an inbound marketing program with fully integrated website, landing pages, social media channels, email, auto-response feedback, etc., is shifting back to traditional selling. They are having fine results working with a sales trainer on targeted sales calls. Unfortunately, the significant investment in their robust inbound marketing program proved to show little or no return.

If you examine your current customer list, perhaps you’ll find as I did that the majority of your business originated from word-of-mouth, a previous sales call or business networking – all live human interactions. In my case I discovered that about 70% of sales came from those traditional selling approaches and 30% came from this newsletter combined with social media marketing.

Of course every business will get different results from inbound marketing programs and some are better able to harness it than others.

In general, if your business is service intensive, you need to talk with prospects – a lot. You need to have a 2-way conversation from the very beginning and that often means actually calling them up. Too much focus on the program can take valuable time away from the people whom you need to be talking with today.

The post People sell better than programs appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Considering all of the messages bombarding you today, which ones will get you to stop and consider reading or watching to further investigate?

The answer is unarguable: Those with headlines containing key words that are relevant to you right now.

Publishing anything on the internet (or anywhere else) without first developing a great subject line or headline is a tragic mistake. Thanks to good headlines past, I’m better at my job and much happier in my work today. Wow!

Can a great headline do all that? Yes, and a lot more! But for those headlines that made me read further and discover opportunities and solutions, I would not even be writing this Newsletter nor have my own business.

What do you see first in your online & mobile notifications? What determines what you will you read or save? What will you delete? What will your notice or not? What important articles will you never see because nobody in your network bothered to share them?

If you’re like me, you can spot a time-wasting solicitation or marketing pitch immediately, no matter how sophisticated or cleverly clothed. You have no time to entertain salespeople who promise every ideal solution (all of them specifically tailored to your needs) under the sun. You have a business to run, problems to solve and opportunities to pursue – now! So who actually gets your attention – now?

The one who communicates what you need – now!

Now is only a spit second. It’s all the time you have to further consider or ignore the multiple messages bombarding you.

The key words, the perfect turn of phrase; that ideal relevancy to your current concern summed up in 2 or 3 words makes you stop and view a LinkedIn update, an email, a blog post, and yes, even an advertisement!
Your subject line or headline occupies golden real estate that you must revere if you want to engage any target audience. Do not allow verbal freeloaders to invade that space! Reserve your subject line or headline space only for the words that will determine: open & read or delete & forget.

With a great subject line, you will have much higher response rates by people who need a solution – now.

Busy executives open messages with subject lines relevant to their current issues. That’s one of the main reasons they’re executives. They know what’s important – now. Your only hope of engaging and selling to lucrative prospects is to get their attention first. Don’t blow it! Ask for help if you need it.

To convey the true importance of your Subject Line, aka Headline, we’ll offer a practical definition.

Subject line: Your first impression and your only hope of engaging an audience who is sifting through the clutter and noise of the global marketplace.

The post Wait, you better look at this! appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Engaging your audience is easy when you know what motivates them. You can grab their attention, hold it and then persuade them to take action with more ease if you use one or more of The Six E’s of Audience Action.

Way back during the dawn of social media marketing development (like around 2010) I worked for a marketing agency that talked about the “3 E’s of social media engagement.” They were Ego, Entertainment and Education. I knew there was more to it than those 3 things so I’ve been striving to come up with a short yet comprehensive list of motivators that would cover all or most of what moves us humans to take action, and maybe even buy things.

Striving for simplicity, so I can understand my own concepts, I wanted a simple guide or formula that could make business communications resonate with target audiences. I wanted a set of guiding principles which work across a broad spectrum of constituencies and media. Serendipitously, the 6 best keywords I considered happened to start with E. Therein is the simplicity of my new guide to audience engagement.

When you examine each of the motivating factors that move people to action, you’ll see that each one fulfills a strong human desire or need. Beyond basic survival (food, clothing, shelter) these motivators are all part of our instinctual nature. In a manner of speaking, we were born to respond to them, and so they are very effective when used for strategic communications. Let’s take a look at the 6 E’s:

Ego

Empathy

Education

Enrichment

Enthusiasm

Entertainment

These are not in any particular order other than making a word pyramid, but Ego being at the top is actually quite helpful. We all have an ego! To discount it’s power over the individual would be remiss. Everyone loves to be recognized and we love hearing our own name called out in a positive way.

So, let’s look briefly at all 6E’s of Audience Action:

1. Ego – You make it happen. Thank you!
2. Empathy – I totally identify with you and know exactly how you feel.
3. Education – Understanding this material is the key to your success.
4. Enrichment – This will bring you security, comfort, fun and enjoyment.
5. Enthusiasm – You are delighted by my energy and excitement.
6. Entertainment – You will enjoy passing the time this way for hours.

• Egos aren’t stroked by manipulation.
• Empathy can’t be faked. You have it or you don’t.
• Education should edify or it’s meaningless.
• Enrichment can’t be given if you don’t have value to offer.
• Enthusiasm can’t be put on or faked because it’s an internal gift.
• Entertainment is the result of real talent, creativity and skill.

The post Motivate Your Audience with E’s appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

While analyzing the reports from our first round of email newsletters, my client instinctively knew where to focus on improving open rates and conversion results. Before I could begin to demonstrate my experience in this area, the client was already talking about the subject line and the newsletter content itself. The other part of our discussion concerned the mailing list – how it was gathered and the company’s relationship with the contacts on the list.

Noted in the previous paragraph are the three things on which you must focus for your email marketing to be successful.

• List
• Content
• Subject Line

We’ll offer a succinct overview of each email marketing success component. The technique I will mostly use here is to ask questions. The answer machine in your head will guide you toward improving your email marketing.

Who is on your list? Who should be on your list? Who should NOT be on your list? Are your contacts signing up or opting in from online and offline marketing and events? Is your sales team gathering prospect contact info with each conversation and at every networking event? Simply mentioning that you have an informative newsletter and would like to send a free copy will add willing new recipients to your list. Include as many prospects or potential referral partners on your list(s) as you and your team can gather in your prospecting work.

Your content must be excellent. Your target audience is mostly indifferent regarding how successful your email will be, so how can you reward them for opening the email and reading it? Promise them something in the subject line and deliver it the content. Ask a compelling question that exposes pain in your customer’s or prospect’s business. Deliver solid recommendations and solutions. Include research, strategy and tactics when possible – provide meat for carnivorous consumption. You may also want to veer off topic with something of general or human interest as your audience grows to know you.

The subject line must arrest and attract. A good subject line will make any inquisitive professional pause and read an email now or mark it for an edificationbreak when they have time. Examine your own behavior when it comes to scanning through your emails. Which sources do you consider authoritative? What in a subject line makes you pause from the delete button and think: “I better have a look at this one…”?

To close this article, thank you!  I’m extremely grateful that you took a few minutes with me today to read this blog post. I hope that you find value, even if just reminders, in the 3 success drivers of email marketing.

The post Email marketing success – 3 things you must do well appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

The law of sowing and reaping is old, really old, and it won’t go away. The biblical metaphor of the farmer who persistently and patiently keeps sowing good seeds always reaps rewards, eventually, no matter what. The late Jim Rohn made a fortune telling this story many times as his own way of sowing, and his business grew internationally making him among the most respected (and richest) business motivators of the last century.

There are beaten paths, rocky roads, choking weeds and all manner of hazards, some of of our making, that interfere with the growth of the crop (business) we’re trying to plant and raise. It’s easy to plant the seeds of business development and then quit after the first few plantings fail to yield. We can easily be convinced the seeds are just no good or we’re not cut out for the business we happen to be in. Giving up too early is tragic when all that is needed for success is a patch of fertile soil, and the world is filled with such patches even if they’re temporarily hidden.

There is a lesson in persistence here but there is so much more to the parable – story – metaphor. There are many different kinds of thieves – some internal, some external – that rob us of faith and steal our motivation to press on. These thieves are cunning and baffling.

So often have I been experiencing direct success from a sales or marketing activity when at the same time someone is telling me they tried it and it doesn’t work. They signed up and made the team but quit when they missed their first shot on goal. It’s easy to be convinced it won’t work if it doesn’t succeed after one or two tries. Don’t fall for the lies of self deception and beware of the other naysayers out there!

The first quarter of 2014 is gone forever!

Now is the time! Spring is the season of rebirth and renewal, bla bla bla… See, there goes my little demon telling me that positive messages like this are trite; that I need toget my head out of the clouds and look more at scientific metrics. But you know what? I’m going to keep on keeping on: sowing seeds in the form of publishing newsletters, attending business events, public relations, sponsorships, social media networking, online marketing and, yes, even good old sales calls!

We have good seeds to sow and as we keep sowing, some is bound to land on fertile ground. If you know where that ground is, great! Stay there an nurture it. No matter what, keep sowing wherever you’re going. If you happen to find the seed of a good idea in any of our newsletter/blog content, would you please plant it in the mind of another?

The post The wealthy sower – so old he’s new! appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Business development is a hybrid profession that has evolved over the last couple of decades. The very term “business development” seems to me a response to a marketplace that became weary of so many salespeople parading through front doors, entering back doors and prying open every chink in the walls of companies with money to spend. “People love to buy but hate to be sold.” So measures have been put in place to make it hard for salespeople to simply call business people and sell their stuff.

Marketing and sales have become more interdependent and the trend is that these two functions are becoming intertwined. Sales is still where most of the glory is when it comes to impressing the boss. Sales rules business and always will because businesses live on cash flow and new business is lifeblood to organizations. But sales work has changed to business development (think relationships) and effective business development must utilize marketing principles and tactics to open doors to new business opportunities. Again, “people hate to be sold but they love to buy.” A salesperson must get his message out to prospects who are truly in the market to buy.

Every salesperson’s computer can now be a broadcasting and receiving station, i.e., a media outlet. And guess what? Airtime is free. Paying for a boost with advertising is always an option but one can reach thousands in a target audience by spending only time, learning and using the free tools: Social Media, email and networking. Many thriving businesses have been launched with no marketing budget. 

If you already have a computer, Internet connection, cell phone and car (and who doesn’t these days?) Then you have the infrastructure to effectively grow a business. The only thing else you need is time and willingness to work hard (Oh darn, we had to go there!). It’s really wonderful to implement an effective marketing campaign which makes business development efforts much easier (think warm inbound leads), all with no need to spend media dollars. Those dollars can be invested instead toward product and service improvements which will make your customers the best sales force you could want.

Do you or people you know want to learn how to build a brand, market a company and increase sales using totally free tools and methods? Come to the hands-on single day course: Social Media & Free Online Marketing at Manchester Community College on March 20th! Register with CRN # 20774 and Course # NCTD055.

If you have questions about how to register, simply reply to this email or call me at 603-345-7223

The post Free Marketing Tools – Big ROI appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Sometimes this blog brings some hands-on marketing technique information to readers such as better SEO practices, how to use Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. But it focuses mostly on building skills that help business owners, marketing directors and salespeople do their jobs better. Let’s look at just a few key skills that will help you in your business, whatever category you’re in; professional services, manufacturing, construction, business services, retail, legal, real estate… you name it.

3 skills every business person needs to succeed:

1.  Networking & Building Relationships:  If you can’t listen well and carry on a mutually pleasing conversation with someone you may as well go back to your cubicle and fight carpal tunnel syndrome. That may be fine if you program or crunch numbers better than anyone else but chances are you’ll always work for someone else or need someone else to help you grow your business. There is no substitute for people doing business face to face. Clients and customers gravitate to people they enjoy being around and prefer to do business with people they like.

2.  Consistency:  Stay focused on what you do best. The jack of all trades is master of none and today’s customers want the best that’s out there. If you try to be all things to all people, you will be known for nothing. None of us can be best-in-class in more than one or two specialties. Resist the temptation to position your brand as an expert generalist. There’s really no such thing and customers know it. Business owners often fear they will miss out on opportunities unless they cast the broadest net. It may work in politics but not business. When you carefully develop your business strategy and clearly communicate your brand positioning by being known well for one thing, customers from all over the place will be attracted to that message because they want that one thing from the best in the business.

3.  Customize experiences:  Do your homework! “When you walk in empty headed, you’ll walk out empty handed.” There’s another brilliant quip from Jeffrey Gitomer. It means preparing for every unique customer interaction. If you have an appointment with a prospect or new customer, go in knowing about them and what makes them tick. How can your product or service experienced be customized to fit them like a comfortable glove? This takes research. It takes extra time and work on your part. Do the extra work and you’ll stand up head and shoulders above your competition. Your genuine confident smile will set your clients at ease and let them know they made the right choice when they called you.

We subtitled this “3 skills…” but here’s your bonus: Believe and have faith in the power that is greater than you – from whence all success is derived. Whatever your understanding of this power, know this. It exists and it isn’t you. I choose to call Him God. All of your skills and talents are given life to serve others and you are the instrument through which they are carried out in service. The most precious habit you can nurture is prayer and meditation to start your day – every day.

The post Soft Skills that Deliver Hard Assets appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

This post is updated from one year ago and it is more relevant today than ever.

I will need several business services and products to continue growing my business and many of them I don’t need now, or can’t afford yet. That’s why I want you to keep in touch so I won’t forget you.

One of the most common mantras you will hear in business is “Timing is everything.”  I agree. Trying to persuade a prospective customer that he needs your product before he needs your product will annoy him. Just as bothersome is attempting to “educate” your prospect about his “pain” when he doesn’t feel any. If, however, there is a pain point in his business and your product or service will solve it, then by all means take some time to discuss your solution. If you get a “think it over” response, you probably won’t make a sale… until maybe year or two from now. I’m sure you plan on still being around then.

A careful sense of timing – to each individual customer – is critical when planning a direct marketing message or making a sales call.

You may say, “yeah, but how can you possibly live inside every potential customer’s world and know when the time is right?” In traditional business development, a good CRM (customer relationship management) program like Salesforce or ACT works well. So, that’s one way to use good timing but there’s a better way:  It’s all the time!

Junk goes in the trash but the good stuff is opened.

First, identify your target audience by vertical industry lists or by networking and prospecting so you know they have a need for your service or product. Develop your database of names, addresses, phone numbers and EMAIL ADDRESSES. Furthermore, connect with as many as possible on LinkedIn and Facebook. Follow them on Twitter. Then get to work being a sought-after specialist to each one of your prospects.

Why are Google and Apple the most successful companies in the world right now? Because they are genius at what they do and how they communicate it. They remainrelevant and communicate value all the time. There are much smaller examples including local restaurants, law firms, IT companies, you name it.

You need to get busy demonstrating your genius to all of the prospects in your database.  Be a collector and generator of valuable content – expertise and ideas that make people say “Hmm… or WOW!  Yes, it’s hard but you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it too, maybe better!

This isn’t about about you but rather the people in your target audience. My closest concrete example of how this works is what you’re reading right now. Every week different people tell me the same thing: “I get so much junk email and delete it but I always save and read your newsletter.” The Chuck Sink Link generates more quality leads – soon to be clients – than any other sales or marketing activity I’ve ever practiced in 25 years. To all of you: Many thanks!

The examples of how this works are sprinkled throughout your life.

Think about the emails you opt-in to and the supplier companies you follow. What about the exceptional sales reps that stand out from the crowd and whom you like hearing from?

There are plenty of great marketers who know how to put value in front of their audience on a regular, appropriately frequent basis so they are top-of-mind at all times for their products & services. So, when the time is right for their prospect to buy, guess who gets the call?

The post I’m interested, but not right now. appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.