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Email is vital to your marketing strategy and it's often the best personal touch you'll ever get with your clients. It's how you stay top of mind, close lengthy sale cycles and propel repeat business. Here are three counterintuitive email marketing pointers to help you stay on top of your sport. 1 Quit believing a person's name is personalization. As Tommy Lee Jones (aka Agent Kay) once put it so gracefully, "A person is smart. People are dumb ..." Keep this difference in mind the next time you blast your mass produced email. When a person gets your email, they'll naturally recognize you didn't craft it just for them. So, why fake it? Enhances performance, you say? In contrast to popular belief, "personalization" via the inclusion of a recipient's name can in reality have a significantly adverse effect on your email marketing program. A 2012 study carried out by Temple University's Fox School of Business reasoned that personalized email advertisements are far more likely to turn off consumers instead of captivate them. The study drew from 10 million marketing emails sent off to 600,000 individuals and final results proved that 95 % of recipients reacted adversely when an email ad welcomed them by name. Read the article yourself here. If you would like to truly individualize your emails, look at a segmentation strategy. Delivering the most relevant marketing content to your subscribers will have the best influence when it comes to defeating your email marketing challenges. 2 Don't model on the Rule of Seven. If you've been in the marketing field for a while, chances are you've discovered the Rule of Seven-- or the idea that a lead generally needs to view your marketing message seven times just before he/she will convert to a sale. Do yourself a favor and forget this rule! It's a well spread misconception coming from early internet marketer Corey Rudl. Rudl saw that this was the case with his own business and made the sweeping generalization that it could be applied to all businesses. It was more a type of self-promotion than anything else. To Rudl's credit, the easy to remember, easy to follow, "rule" caught on quick and continues to be a staple in lots of marketing strategies. It's senseless to believe a rule like this, which was created prior to 2005, could apply to all businesses. You understand your business. Do your own testing. Identify what your number is. 3 Use double opt-in. A mere few years ago, we were all seeking to get anybody and their mother to subscribe to our email marketing lists. Now, with the universality of email communication and online buying acceptance the shift has gone from quantity to quality. It's now about seizing the crowd that wants to read your message. Those will be individuals that respond, engage and subsequently buy. To build up your email list, think about using a double opt-in process where subscribers must take an additional step to actually subscribe. This tactic could seem counterintuitive, but by making your audience work a bit to become part of your community, you'll lose the deadweight and can watch your response numbers start to sore. Last Word The techniques above will not work unless your email marketing programs achieve what they should-- that is, they deliver actual value to your prospects and customers. Honestly (no, really), each time you're about to blast an email, initially ask yourself, "Would I deem this content useful?" If the answer is yes and you've used the guidelines above, you'll be well on your way to relishing in the glow of an efficient email marketing program. Remember to wear sunblock. And finally, if you are interested in strategic marketing, please check out Strategic Marketing Guy at http://www.strategicmarketingguy.com.
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