There are a hundred and one things to think of when planning out your email marketing strategies. Building a solid list, emailing it out efficiently, landing in the inbox, and eventually getting opened. Once that is done you also need to think of how to get the people who have opened your email to click through.
So sort all that and you’re done, right? Wrong. Unless by clicking through they committed themselves to your services or products for life, you need your recipients to open the email you send them next week/month, and the one after that.
You want them to be excited about your communications so much that they want to forward them to their best friend. You need them to be waiting eagerly for the next email you’ll send out. You need them to mark you as “important” in their priority inbox if they’re using Gmail.
I hear you ask: How can I do that? Simple really. Stop thinking about you and start thinking about them. I’m not coming up with anything ground-breaking here. In How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie repeatedly stressed that to influence people you needed to see things from their perspective and to speak to them in terms they will be interested in.
Take a look at the ever-so-corny US TV commercials. What do they all start with? The picture of despair of someone doing something the “wrong” way before they discover the “magic solution”. They present a housewife in despair, something that most of us might laugh at, deem as sexist or antiquated, but, you know what? It works.
It works for one simple reason, the adverts make housewives feel like housewives, they play upon the boredom and lack of glamour. It works because it gives them a way out, a light at the end of the tunnel. The “housewife” in the “before” portion of the advert is a wreck. The “housewife” in the second advert looks gorgeous, she is fully made up and is using the new super-duper-vacuum-cleaner before rushing out to meet her friends.
Now I’m not advocating that we should all play on our readers’ insecurities to succeed, however if you take the time to speak to some of your current clients to see what their problems are, you might be able to use your next marketing email to also offer a solution, even if it is not directly related to your product.
By shifting your focus onto them, your readers are much more likely to engage. No matter whether you are selling teaspoons or islands in the Philippines, think of what your audience wants, give it to them and make them love you. Then you can sell them anything.
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