Photo: cottonbro studio
The infinite space on the Internet encourages overlong writing.
And people have never had shorter attention spans.
Write tight.
Keep it short.
Be understood.
Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business
By Jim Connolly |
Photo: cottonbro studio
The infinite space on the Internet encourages overlong writing.
And people have never had shorter attention spans.
Write tight.
Keep it short.
Be understood.
By Jim Connolly |
Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán on Pexels.com
One area I often get asked about, is how to improve email marketing open rates. So, I thought I’d share 10 of the most common reasons why emails remain unopened.
In no particular order.
Gmail automatically dumps valid emails into the recipient’s promotions folder. This means they get no notification when your emails arrive. As such, open rates plummet. I know from personal experience that my Gmail newsletter subscribers miss over 90% of my emails, unless they’ve added my email address to their contacts list. This happens, even though they used Gmail to double opt-in to receive my stuff.
Obviously, people only discover how valuable or interesting your email is, after they’ve read it. To read it they need to open it and to open it, the email subject line needs to motivate them. It needs to compel them to want to find out. Getting this right is trickier than it sounds. That’s because many of the words used to inspire people to open an email, are also triggers for junk mail filters.
This can have a massive impact. Despite what some people say, there’s no universally ideal day or perfect time to optimize email open rates. For example, different timing is required for when you target consumers, compared to when you target businesses. Different times also work better for different industries. For example, hotels work completely different hours than accountants. They also have totally different peak times, when they’re unavailable to check email and are least likely to see your message. One time doesn’t work for all. Test and measure until you find your email open rate sweet-spot.
If you’re using a list you bought, rather than one you grew yourself, you’re emailing strangers. And to make things worse, the strangers on these ‘sold lists’ get bombarded with tons of marketing emails, from all the others who bought their email address. This means they’re far more likely to have very, very aggressive email filters.
Some people work so hard to build their list, that they very seldom remove inactive contacts from it. As a result their lists contain lots of addresses that no longer exist or are no longer monitored. Non-existent email addresses will register as ‘bounces’, and are easily cleaned with email marketing software. Unmonitored addresses, for example, when someone’s left a company, but their email hasn’t been deleted from the system, can still receive emails, so they don’t bounce. Most email marketing software will let you automatically delete contacts after ‘X’ number go unopened. Use it.
Your next email campaign’s open rate will be impacted by how successful your last email campaign was. The people who failed to engage with your previous campaign, will be less motivated to open the next one. Remember: You never have ‘a list’. You need to earn and re-earn their permission. So stay useful.
This is a universally terrible idea. Always use a trusted, commercial email marketing provider. These providers can deliver over 99% of your emails every time. By sending your marketing emails via your computer’s regular email program, even to a relatively small list, your IP address can get blacklisted for sending too many identical emails. Once blacklisted, your emails won’t even reach the recipient’s junk folder. Tip: You can check if your IP address is blocked, using Spamhaus.
One of the ways your email junk filter protects you from spam, is by checking the content of incoming emails. If an email contains certain words, this increases the likelihood of that email being junked. These words range from swear words, to words and phrases often used by spammers. Tip: Think hard about the wording you use in your calls-to-action.
This is closely connected to the previous point. One of the tricks spammers use to bypass junk filters, is to hide their spammy words in images, rather than write the words in regular text. Another common factor in spam is the use of lots of links; certainly more than a regular email might have. So, go easy on the number of images and links.
Something internet marketing gurus often fail to mention, is that people seldom use their primary email addresses for give-aways. If your list was built on the back of offering lead magnets, be aware that a subset of the contacts on your list may not be regularly monitored.
Email is a spectacularly powerful marketing tool. And sometimes just a few improvements can lead to dramatically better results. So, take a look at the above points. See if you can identify anything you’re missing, which will improve your email marketing open rates.
By Jim Connolly |
A reader shared an interesting observation with me. She told me she had “found out the hard way that email marketing doesn’t work“.
She asked me for my thoughts on why email is so ineffective. I said I’d share them here, as I’m sure some of you will find it useful.
Email marketing works. In fact, email marketing works extremely well. Better than ever.
Just ask any business owner who’s using it correctly. Whether it’s used for newsletters or promotions, the return on investment is off the charts.
Email marketing also works more predictably than just about any other form of marketing. And the tiny financial investment required for email marketing makes it the most cost effective form of marketing out there.
What doesn’t work is ineffective email marketing. Just ask anyone who’s doing it incorrectly.
Here’s the thing: ineffective email marketing can’t work.
Here are just a few, very common examples of how small business owners get email marketing wrong.
You get the idea.
In short, before you reject any form of marketing as ineffective, make sure you’re using it correctly.
So, instead of telling yourself that email marketing doesn’t work, ask yourself why YOUR email marketing doesn’t work. Otherwise, you’ll needlessly miss out on one of the most powerful forms of marketing on the planet!
Image: Shutterstock.
By Jim Connolly |
People’s attention spans have never been shorter. This includes your prospective clients or customers, which is why your writing needs to get to the point. Fast. This is something known as, writing short.
As you’ll know if you’ve followed my work for a while, I’m an advocate of learning how to write short. (Roy Peter Clark introduced the phrase to me). It’s not for everything you write. Just for those times when space is limited or you want to get an extremely focused message across.
Here are some specific examples, where writing short is essential.
That kind of thing.
So, what’s the problem?
By default, most business owners write long and see no reason to write short. And it’s perfectly understandable why this happens.
Think about it.
The internet provides you with endless writing space. You can add an unlimited number of pages to a website, with an unlimited number of words on each page. Your newsletter or marketing emails can be as long as you wish. In other words, you have far more space than you need.
So on the face of it, you have very little motivation to use fewer words than you currently do.
Except you really have.
That’s why I strongly recommend you learn to write with as few words as necessary. It’s a great way to improve your email open rates, get better advertising results, improve your click through rates, get prospects to take action and lots, lots more.
To get you started, here’s some tips on how to write short, from the best writers in the world.
By Jim Connolly |
I received a marketing email earlier, which contained a serious error. This error will have dramatically reduced its conversion rate. Here’s what happened, so you can avoid it from happening to you.
The email copy started with the following 4 words: “Sorry to disturb you”.
There’s a lot of information packed into those 4 words. Enough for the vast majority of those who received it, to form an opinion on the sender.
Like others who received that email, I stopped reading after the opening sentence. After all, a stranger had interrupted us, without our consent, to tell us that what we were about to read is just spam. It’s an instant delete.
That email may have contained a useful message. It might have offered an outstanding deal. It could have provided details of a wonderful opportunity. But their email marketing let them down. So no one will know. The copy they used, the list they used and the tone of their opening line destroyed their email campaign.
Oblivious to this, the sender will be wondering why they received no positive response. Especially if they genuinely had something valuable to share. They’ll perhaps be pondering whether they need to lower their prices, or if email marketing is a waste of time, or if their great offer isn’t actually great.
If we consider this to be merely an example of ineffective email marketing, we totally miss the point!
It’s way, way bigger than that.
This example provides us with a powerful insight into how easy it is, for a business owner to offer an amazing product or service, only for ineffective marketing to let them down. It’s the difference between being inundated with sales and enquiries or being greeted with silence.
Thankfully, it also gives you an insight into how quickly you can massively increase your sales, when you decide to improve just one area of your marketing.
Now multiply that potential by every other marketing activity you’re doing, and 2024 can easily be your most successful year ever. This is true, no matter how challenging things have been for you.
By Jim Connolly |
Do you ever wonder what’s stopping you from getting enough high quality sales leads or enquiries?
This is a problem, which new clients often have when we first start working together. So today I thought I’d share a very brief overview of how I turn things around for them.
Super-effective marketing is based on a 3 step process. It motivates people to take action, now. Let’s break that down.
Your prospective clients (or customers) are busy. On top of this, they’re bombarded with notifications all day long, from people and apps demanding their attention. Faced with this reality, your marketing needs to rise above all that noise. It needs to motivate prospects to pay attention, and then inspire them to engage with your message.
None of this can be achieved, with the common marketing tactics you hear about on marketing forums, watch on YouTube, or read about on marketing websites.
Why?
Because those common, tired tactics are already overused. They’re part of that noise. People tune them out. They fail to make an impression. So they’re ignored.
To compel a prospect to take action, your marketing needs to make a direct request. Note I used the singular ‘request’ there. Not request(s). The more options you offer, the less likely anyone is to do anything.
So make a single, focused, direct request.
It’s not enough to ask the prospect to take action. You need to ask them to take the required action now, while you have their attention and their motivation is high.
Why the rush?
Simple. Even if they love your message. Even if they’re genuinely interested. Their attention will soon jump onto the next thing. They’ll tell themselves “I’ll do it later”. And you will lose them.
If your marketing isn’t generating daily sales leads or client enquiries, it’s failing you in at least 1 of those 3 areas. There’s no need for this to happen to you. These are quick and easy wins, if you choose to fix the problem correctly.
Photo by Avel Chuklanov
By Jim Connolly |
I receive a lot of questions from business owners, who want advice on how to grow their lists. And I usually start by explaining the absolute cornerstone of list-building, which is very seldom mentioned.
It’s simply this.
The idea of growing your list is based on a fallacy. You can’t possibly grow your list or build your list.
That’s because your list is never yours.
You simply borrow it.
We don’t own the attention of subscribers; readers, viewers, listeners, or followers, etc. We have to earn their attention… and then keep re-earning it. Never, ever take it for granted. Consistently strive to provide useful information.
When we stop thinking of subscribers as our subscribers, we operate from a them-first mindset. This motivates us to produce our best work. As a result, we find that we retain far more subscribers for far longer. We also find they proactively recommend us to their friends and contacts.
The pay-off is huge.
The pay-off from this approach is huge. With greater retention, plus a faster growth-rate, your lists will grow like a snowball. It’s the list building equivalent of compound interest.
Photo by Melanie Deziel
By Jim Connolly |
When it comes to creating a powerful marketing message and attracting customers, the word ‘new‘ is overrated. New is a very loaded word and can destroy your marketing results.
There are 3 broad reasons for this.
Given the challenges of using the word new, I recommend you replace it with something more compelling. More motivating. More attractive. To get you started, here are 12 alternatives.
What next?
Take a look through your marketing and search for opportunities to replace new with a better alternative. This is usually in situations where new is used as the only adjective.
Also, you can apply this to your presentations, negotiations or meetings. For example, if you’re trying to sell a new product, service or idea to someone, they’re more likely to pay attention when you tell them about your ‘more profitable way’ of doing something, than your ‘new way’ of doing something.
Finally, in situations where you need to use the word new, such as a press release or product launch, combine it with another word. For example, new and improved.
Photo by Werner Du plessis
By Jim Connolly |
Photo by Kim Gorga on Unsplash
One thing in business is certain. There’s no shortage of buzzwords and phrases. Here are just some that I’ve seen in use recently.
Buzzwords are used by people, in an effort to appear informed or fashionable. Interestingly, using buzzwords has the total opposite effect.
Here’s how they work against us and our marketing.
In short, buzzwords not only add nothing positive to our marketing, they actively weaken it. And because they’re totally unnecessary, we can remove them with no negative impact.
Remember: One of the keys to effective marketing is to always aim for clarity.
By Jim Connolly |
Photo by Mediamodifier on Unsplash
Today you will be served hundreds, maybe thousands of advertisements. You’ll also be sent dozens of spam emails and texts. And one thing they all have in common is that you will ignore them.
But a targeted letter, sent to you, in a plain envelope, which addresses you by name, WILL get opened.
It will have your attention. And this is great news for you and your business.
If you send a marketing letter like the example above, you will enjoy the same impact. Your message will be seen. And you’ll have the attention of your prospective client or customer.
As long as your message is well written and provides them with something of genuine value, you could win big.
What next?
To start with, target 5 or 10 prospects with that same approach every week. Soon, you’ll have lots of actual, prospective clients to follow-up. Lots of irons in the fire. A steady, regular flow of leads.
Just because email marketing is so cheap that everyone is using it, doesn’t mean you should ignore investing in small-scale direct mail marketing. In fact, that deluge of email is precisely what makes your marketing letter stand out and get opened.