Here are 3 email marketing tips, from a company with almost one and a half million paying customers and a valuation of a billion dollars.
Why the Evernote newsletter gets it right
One of the best examples of super successful email marketing is the Evernote newsletter. For those who don’t already know, Evernote is a free smartphone app that allows you to capture ideas using; audio, photos, drawings and text. These can then be seamlessly synced to your computers, so you have access to all your notes, all the time, on all your connected devices.
The Evernote newsletter is almost as clever as their app. It does 3 simple things really well; things that most small business owners get wrong. Here they are in no particular order.
1. Their newsletter actually contains news
The Evernote newsletter provides users with news about the product and the company, meaning we are always up to speed on the latest developments.
Here’s why this matters: By ‘letting us in’ on what the team are up to and allowing us to see how the company is developing, we feel like part of their community. We feel a deeper connection with them. We get a picture of the people and brand behind the product. Very few small business newsletters do this and as a result, they miss out on developing a stronger connection with their readers.
2. Their newsletter makes Evernote more valuable
The primary focus of their newsletter, is to provide useful tips on how to get the best results from their app.
Here’s why: The team at Evernote understand that the best way to retain users, is to provide us with the information we need, in order to get the very best from the app. This also dovetails beautifully with the Evernote business model, which is to offer 60MB of uploads a month for free, with a small monthly charge (in the UK it’s £4 per month) for users who need to upload more data. Obviously, the more we use the app, the more likely we are to need more storage than we get with the free version.
By educating Evernote users on how useful the app is, users are also much more likely to rave about it to their friends. This helps Evernote to reach more and more potential customers. There are currently almost 40 million Evernote users. This has seen them attract 1.4 Million paying users and build an estimated company value of 1 Billion dollars.
3. Their newsletter doesn’t push
If you look closely at the Evernote newsletter, you will notice that there are no links anywhere, which ask you to buy the product! None. Instead, they just offer you case studies, ideas and tips, on how to make their free version of Evernote so useful, that becoming a paid user is a natural progression. There is a link from the Evernote desktop app and from their website, which you can use to upgrade to the premium version. And that’s exactly what 1.4 Million people, and counting, have done with no pushing or pestering required!
The Evernote approach to email marketing
The idea is beautifully executed, yet the framework behind it is extremely simple. It’s about focusing like a laser on delivering value, rather than pushing a sales pitch. It’s about using education to make the value of the app so obvious and relevant, that purchasing it becomes a logical conclusion for those readers with a need for it.
It’s a classy, human, value driven approach to email marketing and it’s extremely effective. Worth learning from? ABSOLUTELY!
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