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 Boost
Email Marketing Open Rates by Sounding Like Grandma
By Alan Sharpe
The secret to persuading your customers to open and
read your direct email marketing messages is to make
them sound like a note from grandma.
Your customers receive three kinds of email:
1. Email from family and friends—personal.
2. Email from colleagues and suppliers—work.
3. Email from advertisers—legitimate and spam.
The least important of these emails, in the mind of
your customers, are the promotional messages from
you and me. Most customers say granny comes first,
the boss second, and purported wives of deposed
Nigerian leaders last.
That’s because your customers and prospects read
newspapers and magazines, and watch television, for
the news and entertainment, not the advertisements.
Your sales pitch is an intrusion. Same goes for the
phone. They use it to talk with people they care
about, which does not include telemarketers. Same
goes for email. Your customers and prospects read it
primarily to learn stuff and to do stuff, not to buy
stuff.
Which is why I recently unsubscribed from a popular
email newsletter. All it seemed to do was pitch
products. Just about every issue tried to sell me
something instead of teach me something. The author
is a well-known and well-liked consultant and
author. I like him. I signed up to learn from him.
But just about all that he did was pitch me his
products week after week. So I said sayonara.
1. Start with your subject line. “Grandpa is in
hospital” will arrest the attention or your reader
sooner than a subject line that says “Our furniture
sale has many bargains for you.” So think of how you
would grab the attention of a loved one in a letter
or phone call, then write your email subject line
using that same visceral power (while telling the
truth, of course).
2. Next comes your salutation. Don’t use “Dear
Customer” or any of its lame cousins. Address your
reader by name. Say “Dear Alan,” or “Dear Mr.
Sharpe.” You address family members, colleagues and
vendors by name because you have a relationship with
them. Extend the same familiarity to your customers
and opt-in email prospects and they will immediately
feel more inclined to read your offer.
3. Then, write only about things that are of the
greatest concern to your readers. Appeal to their
self-interest. You mail birthday cards to your
friends and family. You phone mum and dad on their
wedding anniversary. Do the same in your promotional
emails, sort of, by putting your readers first,
making them the star of every email, and making them
feel important to you and appreciated.
They’ll love you for it.
Alan Sharpe is
a direct mail copywriter and lead generation
specialist who helps business owners and marketing
managers attract new clients using direct mail
marketing. Sign up for free weekly tips like this at
(www.sharpecopy.com).
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