33 In focus
In email marketing the question of when to send the email notices is often present. If the recipients will benefit from your messages, that is mostly irrelevant. Replace selling with giving Even though you will achieve fast results with messages containing classic sales strategies, this tactic is pretty short-sighted. An interesting characteristic of email marketing is a quick fall of active recipients if sales continue to be your only focus. What else can you offer your recipients so they will stay with you even after the purchasing process? Different discounts will not be appealing to them shortly after that. You probably don’t want to start your relationship with the client from scratch and compete with the competition every time they require your product or service. You can prevent mass unsubscribing by regularly
asking yourselves which useful or at least interesting information you have provided to the recipients who just decided to take their business to the competition. At least part of the message should consist of "non-sales" content. Added value is key. It will often help if you prepare the contents from the viewpoint of an expert and not a sales person. You have a lot of knowledge and experiences. If you share bits of your know-how with your recipients you will attract them every time. This will also build your expert authority as well as trust.
The biggest effects of email marketing will arise when you no longer focus on sales and focus on the recipients.
Of course, don’t forget to spice your altruism with an occasional “offer they cannot miss”. Personalize, test, automatise... Use the available tools offered by advanced email marketing systems. There is no reason not to improve your results constantly. Even though we no longer deal with each individual recipient, the technology enables us to send everyone a message tailored to their specific interests. By doing that you allow the recipient to develop a need to buy and when the time comes to decide on it, you will make sure this decision is right twice. For them and for you.
Preffered Method of Commercial Communication by Age
4%
2%
4% 4%
Phone
Text Message
5% 5%
2% 2% 0% 0%
74% 4%
78% 75%
72%
Social Network
65%
1% 0%
12%
5%
11%
Direct mail
4% 3%
2%
15%
Other
19% 27%
2% 2% 3%
18-29 30-39 40-49 50-64 65+