by Wikus Engelbrecht - GraphicMail Marketing Team
1. October 2010 00:07
Email marketers have been harping on about relevancy for quite some time.
In a nutshell? It’s getting the right message to the right recipients.
And right now it’s probably the most important aspect of your email marketing emails.
Think about it: your subscribers open their inboxes to find a heap of new mail…personal mail, marketing messages, invitations, news and maybe even a little spam. It takes time to sort through mail and weed out the good from the bad. And if they’re using Gmail or Hotmail, they’re email is being sorted automatically, which means that unless they’ve engaged with your emails in the past (by opening, reading and clicking on links) your email probably won’t be showing up at the top of the inbox along with all the other important, unread emails.
So what will guarantee that your messages aren’t forgotten, deleted or labeled as “other” or junk?
It’s simple, really. Offer your subscribers the information that they want, i.e. the information that they signed up to receive.
Recipients have opted into your messages for a reason. Perhaps they’ve indicated an interest in your promotions, new products or upcoming events—regardless, give the people the information that they want. For example, I signed up to receive newsletters from Amazon about new non-fiction book releases only. Hopefully, Amazon won’t be sending me information about Kindle updates because it’s not what I’m interested in. Rest assured that if Amazon did send me info about Kindles, they would lose some credibility. If they caught me on a bad day, I might even unsubscribe myself from their mailing list.
Basically, all of your messages should contain quality information that is worth a reader’s time and effort.
Email marketing affords you the opportunity to listen to what your subscribers are saying, even if they aren’t actually saying anything. Our reports and analytics tools let you know which emails are reaching who and what those subscribers are doing with said emails. See who is opening emails, if they’re clicking on links and, if so, which links they’re clicking on, then use that information send the most appropriate (read: relevant) messages to the right people. Communication is a two-way street, and with email marketing you won’t be preaching to subscribers about your business, rather they’ll be requesting information from you that they find interesting. Keep an eye on what your subscribers are doing, or else you email marketing campaign will quickly turn to spam.
If you’re an occasional blog reader or a practicing GraphicMailer, you’ve probably heard me sing the praises of our TriggerMail and subscriber segmentation features. These features are designed to help you keep providing your subscribers with relevant emails with minimal effort.
Keep your newsletters relevant and your subscribers will keep coming back for more – you might even convince them to forward your email to their friends.
