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By Jules Leni, Interactive Newsletters.
Are you suffering from inbox clutter? That’s a term a friend of mine used to describe the avalanche of e-mails she receives every day. Her complaint is becoming increasingly common. It is not unusual for managers to tell me that they receive hundreds of e-mails every day. Most of it is what they consider junk, including needless carbon copies of e-mail memos as well as unsolicited commercial e-mails (or “spam”).
So, if you are using e-mails as a way of staying in touch with customers, prospects, and referral sources, you would do well to heed the advice of Seth Goldin, head of direct marketing at Yahoo and author of the book “Permission Marketing.” E-mail, he wrote, should be “anticipated, personal, and relevant.” That’s something that neither unsolicited email nor “bulk” email blasts can deliver.
If the e-mails are personal and relevant, they will be anticipated.
There are two ways of making e-mails personal. The most obvious technique is to address the recipient by name in the subject line. As trivial as this may seem, addressing people by name catches their attention in a crowded inbox as it does in a crowded room.
Effective sales people take the trouble to treat their customers and prospects as individuals. This means gathering relevant information that can be utilized in your e-mail communication.
Personalizing e-mail means targeting both the message itself and the content on an individual basis, based on stated preferences, observed behavior and/or demographic or business profiles.
For example, a client of mine who is a very successful realtor, classifies the people in her contact database as (1) planning to buy their first home, (2) short-term home owners (e.g., their careers involve periodic relocations, a growing family, etc.), and (3) long-term owners (i.e., no foreseeable plans to sell their house).
Using a technique called “dynamic content,” she includes information in her monthly e-newsletter that is specifically relevant to each segment of her audience. Making the content personally relevant to the readers sets this realtor apart. Relevance, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
A national laboratory instruments distributor uses an automated process called “adaptive sequenced messaging” to follow up all equipment sales with a series of personalized e-mails offering product registration, customer satisfaction survey, engineering application bulletins, add-on sales offers, and new product announcements. Not only are these e-mails personally addressed, but they are customized to reflect the equipment purchased by the customer, as well as the names and photos of the regional sales manager, the application engineer assigned to the account and a customer service representative. E-mail that is personal and relevant is not only anticipated, it is appreciated.
One final point: I receive a number of weekly newsletters and promotional e-mails. I don’t read them every time, but I have become accustomed to them to the point of anticipating them. Don’t be shy about sending e-mails on a regular schedule. You will not antagonize people with frequent mailings, as long as they are personal and relevant.
For everyone who complains about the deluge of e-mails, there are hundreds, even thousands, who look to e-mails as a source of useful information. Make sure that you engage your audience with regular personal and relevant communications, and they will be anticipated….and read.
Jules Leni is president of Interactive Newsletters Plus, a consulting firm
that helps small and mid-size businesses build sales with permission-based
e-marketing campaigns. He also publishes a free monthly e-zine, Sales &
Marketing Ideas Worth Sharing. He can be reached by phone at 770.704.1912
or by e-mail at jules@BuildSalesQuickly.com.
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