Global Marketing Plus

A strong call to action can make the difference between someone glancing at your message or actually doing something with it. In this busy world, sometimes it helps to be direct.

In direct marketing or email correspondence, most of the time you want someone to take a specific action when they receive your message. You might want to set up an in-person meeting, or have them click through to a website to read more. Or respond back and say, “Yes, let’s go ahead with the project.”

The most effective email messages always have a strong call to action, telling the recipient what you want them to do.

I’m sure you’ve received long, rambling emails from people. And by the time you get to the end, you don’t really know what you’re supposed to do (if anything). Is this a message that is just nice to read and have for future reference? Or do they want me to actually do something?

Email is a low context medium. It doesn’t transmit behavioral clues like voice inflection that might otherwise indicate what you want a person to do. So it’s important to be direct and ask what you want the other person to do. It sounds basic, but it’s a key to effective email.

If you’re like me, you’re often jumping in an out of meetings or appointments. In between, you have a couple of minutes to return a couple of phone calls, so how do you choose which people you’ll call back first? 

Often the decision is made for me… so make sure your messaging is as effective as possible.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve not returned a call promptly because I didn’t have someone’s contact information readily available.

I’m sure you’ve had the same experience. Someone emails you to please call them or you just want to call them. But they didn’t give you a phone number, and there isn’t one listed in their signature line. You then have to dig through past emails, look in your address book, Google them, and still you aren’t able to find their direct line.

In this age of iPhones, Blackberries and cellphones, it’s rare that I have a phone number memorized. 

I don’t even have my adult children’s phone number memorized because all I have to do is enter their speed number code and my cell phone dials their number for me.  If I get caught without my cell phone or the battery dies, there is no way I can call them!

I know this is a simple and basic thing. But so many people don’t follow it. If you want someone to respond to you, you’ve got to make it as easy as possible for them.  The same thing goes for leaving a voice mail.

So many people rush through their phone number, making it virtually impossible to write down the number without having to go back and listen to their message a couple of extra times. Ideally, you should always give your phone number, say it slowly, and repeat it twice so that someone can write it down and then make sure it’s correct.

Effective emails always include a signature line with contact information. You should include your contact information in every new message or every message you reply to.  This is just good common marketing sense!

I have a friend that has a knack for being able to memorize things like long lists of phone numbers and license plates.

But for the rest of us who have off-loaded our ability to remember phone numbers to our electronic brains, this strategy will help you make sure your calls are returned.

Personalization works. According to many recent research studies, email messages that are personalized have stronger message open and clickthrough rates.

Everyone likes being called by their name. In this impersonal world of email messages, people like to know that you know who they are, and that you care about them as a person.

Nothing is worse than a highly demanding email that is sent without being addressed to someone by name and is out of context. A message that starts: “Can you make these changes ASAP?” puts you on the defensive right way. You might think: Why should I care if they are in a hurry?

It’s so much nicer to have a message that begins with: “Ron – I hope you’re doing well. I just found out that we’re going to be mentioned on the front page of The Wall Street Journal tomorrow. Can you make these changes ASAP?”

Wow. I’m much more willing to help someone who personalizes the message to me, and gives me a non-threatening reason why this needs to really be done by tomorrow.  

Did you know that effective email campaigns deliver sales at an average cost per order of less than $7, compared to $71.89 for banner ads, $26.75 for paid search and $17.47 for affiliate programs? (According to Shop.org’s “State of Retailing Online 2007″ – September 2007).

Tip #6 is about the often neglected subject line.

According to Jupiter Research, 35% of email users open messages because of what’s contained in the subject line.

After the From line, the subject line is the second most important part of an effective email. If you forget to include a subject line, your message is much more likely to go into a junk mail folder, or just not be opened. Email marketing professionals live and die by subject lines. A good subject line will sum up what the message is all about, but still entice someone to open the message, read it, and take action.

Personalizing a subject line with your company’s name or the recipient’s name or other information can also lead to higher message open rates Including the company name in the subject line can increase open rates by up to 32 percent to 60 percent over a subject line without branding. (Jupiter Research)

I hope my 12 Step Program is helping you communicate with email more effectively

Has your web designer moved, but forgotten to leave a forwarding address? I can help.

Thanks, Ron

The single most important part of an email message is the From line. If the person you’re sending to doesn’t recognize your name, your message will be at best skipped over. At worst, it will be simply deleted without opening.

Most email programs show a friendly display name instead of the plain email address.

The From line of your email (friendly display name) should have your full name and organization in it.

For example, when I send out an email, my from line reads: Ron Coleman– Global Marketing Plus. When someone receives an email from me, it’s pretty clear which person named Ron the message came from. And if they don’t know me, but know my company instead, they won’t completely ignore my message.

But at least a couple of times per week I get an email that was meant for someone else named Ron, but works at a different company.

The culprit is that many people have only their first names listed in the friendly From display line. Most of the time the messages aren’t too racy, but with email programs that automatically fill in an email address when you start to type a first name, it’s easy to email the wrong person something that could be seriously career limiting.

This week’s effective email strategy will certainly increases the amount of email that you send out. But it can also be extremely effective.

With the huge volume of spam, it’s tough to know if your message got through. Right now, four out of every five emails sent over the Internet today is spam. With so much junk, it’s easy for your message to get lost, trapped in a junk mail filter, or simply piled up in someone’s ever-expanding inbox.So you start to worry when you haven’t heard back from someone that you emailed a couple of days ago. Hmmmm, you say. Did that person get my message? Should I send it again? If I do, will that bug them? Am I being too pushy?

So when you’re on the other side of the email message, it’s really important to reply early and reply often.

What you’re doing is letting them know you (a) received the message and (b) that you care. Even if you’re not able to take action on their message right away, replying back with a quick message indicates that you’re not ignoring them.

Replying early to a message could be as basic as something like this:

Bob-
Thanks for sending this over. I’ll work on this later today. Thanks,

Ron

We’ve found that replying early and often dissipates a lot of anxiety and tension, and allows the person who sent you a message to know that they don’t have to worry about it.

Let me know if you need help with an upcoming web project or email campaign.

Ron

Since my last post, I’ve heard from many people about their take on effective email messages. Feel free to send me your thoughts.

Never before have people been more interested in getting more information, but it must be relevant. According to the Wall Street Journal, 81% of U.S. executives subscribe to industry email newsletters for product information and business intelligence. And 35% of email users open messages because of what’s contained in the subject line (Jupiter Research).

This week’s strategy — keep it relevant — is critical to long-term messaging success.

If your messages are relevant, your recipients will pay attention to what you are trying to say.

If your messaging is not relevant, however, you’re quickly going to find that your messages are filed in the “I’ll get to these later” pile.

If you send email that isn’t relevant — they will quickly stop paying attention to your messages.

Let me repeat that, and make it stand out …

If you send email that isn’t relevant — they will quickly stop paying attention to your messages.

It’s easy to get into a mentality where you want to send everything to everyone. And with email newsletters or mass broadcasts, it’s not that expensive to do. However, once someone feels your messages aren’t that important, they will simply stop reading themNext Post, I will talk about replying early and replying often.

A day in my life:

• The phone rings off the hook.

• While I am on the phone, my cell phone rings.

• I have other people that instant message me.

• Unexpected visitors come to my office to “chat”.

• My cell phone rings some more!

• I receive dozens of emails … many of which are spam!

Sometimes it drives me insane!

I have read that our collective attention spans are very short. Plus we simply have too many distractions to wade through a really long email.

You might think they need all of the information, but when people are faced with dense blocks of text, many people’s eyes glaze over. And then they ignore the entire message.

For that reason, the most effective email messages are short. Two or three short sentences in length. Perhaps a couple of bullet points. And perhaps the short message is followed by supporting material, an attachment or a link to more information on a website.

Enough said. I’ll try to keep this section short.

Have you found that shorter emails are more successful? Let me know.

For years I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing email messages for our clients, and measuring and tracking their effectiveness. During all these years, I have performed tons of research and surveys.

The most important thing I learned is that most people do not send effective email messages!

Whether you send large email newsletters or just use email to communicate with friends, colleagues and customers, following twelve strategies will make your email more effective. These strategies have been developed over years of experience and quantitative analysis of tens of millions of messages we’ve sent out for our clients.

So, during the next few weeks I will share these twelve strategies one at a time in this blog.

Here is number 1:

1. One Main Message Per Email

The most effective email messages and the one that get the most positive respnses have one main idea or concept. Over the years I have found that the strongest messages are ones that don’t distract people with too much information.

I’m sure you’ve received a message from someone that has eleven different ideas and thoughts that ramble from paragraph to paragraph.

If you’re like me, most people will just leave this complicated message for later, and focus on another email or task that’s much easier to accomplish.

Before you start writing a message, write down what you’re trying to communicate. Or at least think about your message before you start writing.

The most effective messages are ones that are crisp, clear and concise.

I’ll be listing these strategies, one tip at a time, over the next several weeks. Let me know if you find them helpful.

And let me know if we can help you with your next email campaign or web project.