Successful Email Marketers – Make A Connection

With the technology available to email marketers today, it’s easy to make automated emails from an auto responder appear as if you’ve just sat down at your PC, wrote and personally sent them.

Although common place in the business and internet marketing world many people don’t know about auto responders. A great way to make your email message more personal is to write it as if you are addressing (or writing to) one person, – maybe even a friend.
 
If you’re just starting email marketing, don’t think that you have to create a pitch with every message you send,  at this point it’s not all about selling it’s about making a connection, building a relationship. 

A good way of doing this  is, write the message to someone you know, love or trust, and use their name. It will feel and appear more personal to you and the words and tone you use will come across as being far more friendly than if you were writing to a stranger.   Then once you’ve completed the message (email) and it’s something you’d be happy to send to your friend, replace their name with the potential subscribers’ name.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to do this for every subscriber, the auto responder code will take care of it automatically, the code is something like {firstname_fix}.

As well as personalizing emails you send, it’s a good idea to use personalization in your newsletters, e-zines in fact any promotion material that you use for your business, where you contact a person directly. The format of the email would be something like ;–

“Hi Jane, I’ve got a great new strategy to help you gain more subscribers for your online business.

The auto responder this message would look something like; –

“Hi {firstname_fix}. I’ve got a great new strategy to help you gain more subscribers your online business.

As previously mentioned the auto responder will automate the personalization for you, it takes the subscribers’ name from the opt in form they filled in when they requested your information.

A word of caution though, don’t over use their name, when writing the emails, write as if you’re having a conversation with a friend telling them how they would …. add a link, use anchor text, build their list – what ever info you want to tell them.  Many marketers use the name too much and it doesn’t feel natural, an easy way to perfect this, is to read it out aloud, does it make sense?  Does it sound realistic? Does it flow naturally?

Just because you can add their name automatically it doesn’t mean you have to. It’s true that people do like to hear their name, but use it too much and you’ll come across as being insincere, a fake, this will make the subscriber wary and less likely to trust you, the end result will be they’ll probably never buy anything from you.

But don’t worry too much, or let it put you off from becoming a successful email marketer. The auto responder will take care of all the automation, it’s rare these days that you have to manually input subscriber details onto your AR.  However, but if you do, a golden rule is, always spell their name just as they have on the form they filled in, don’t feel the need to correct anything you think they have misspelt, the same name can vary from person to person.

For example. Names such as Jane and Jayne, Danny and Dani. When writing emails, the spell checker can be notorious for flagging (red line) various words, but don’t feel need to change all words, if it’s a obvious mistake then fine, change it, but if it’s redlining a name, think twice before making that correction. A name spelt incorrectly can upset a lot of people, my old Dad used to get quite upset when people got his name wrong, taking a few extra seconds to check, can make all the difference.

Another tip I found useful,  try and stay away from the subject of marital status, by that I mean try not to use, Ms, Miss or Mrs. Remember with an email message you don’t need to be that formal so you don’t need to try and guess, if you do you’ll no doubt get it wrong more times than you get it right. Never assume someone is married, remember what they say – “Assume, just makes an ass, out of you and me”

I should have probably started with this but, how you greet your subscribers is important too. Although it’s generic “Hi Friend or Dear Internet Marketer“ isn’t that personal, so it cuts down the risk of  offending people.  Most people in general day to day life will be more used to this type of greeting and will be less likely to take offence at your salutation (that sounds posh).

Nowadays it seems to becoming a trend with some marketers to only ask for the prospects email address and will then use a generic term to address them (as mentioned above). Although it’s not offensive, I personally prefer to still use First name and Email Address on my opt-in forms. This way I feel I can make a connection with them once they’re on my list, as all the email messages they get from me will open with – “Hi Jane” or “Hi Sam”. (if their name is Jane or Sam – ) Which helps to build that relationship.

Using their first name, also allows you to make a personal pitch to them when trying to make or clinch a sale. What would you prefer ;- 

“Dear Friend, Everyone needs this software package to increase subscribers”

or

“ Hi Dave, I want to see you have the kind of success I’ve had with this software, are you ready to make your list explode?  If you are then click here. . . . But wait Dave, I’ve got another fabulous free bonus that that makes using this software even easier!”

Using their name makes the close personal, it conveys the message that you are genuinely interested in their success (which you should be), so keep it real, keep it personal and keep in regular contact with your list, doing so will help ensure that the first sale your subscriber makes, won’t be their last.