Tag: response rate

What Every Small Business Owner Ought To Know About E-Mail Marketing

Nelson Tan Leave a comment

Promoting products and services via e-mail used to be easy about a decade or so ago, because e-mail was still pretty new and people were excited to get mail.

Now all that’s changed.

You need to be on top of the best e-mail strategies in order to get readers to open, read and click on your links.

Here are 3 tips to boost your response rate:

1. Give People a Reason to Open Your E-mails

Here’s a funny thing…

People sign up for newsletters and then they never read them. Sure, they have good intentions, but when the newsletter hits their inboxes they see nothing compelling enough to make them click on the e-mail and start reading it.

The solution?

You need to write juicy subject lines that virtually compel people to open your e-mails.

For example, here’s a boring subject line: “Weight loss tips”

Here’s a better one: “The #1 secret for getting rid of belly fat—you won’t believe this!”

Which one would you click on? If you’re like most people, you’ll click on the second one because it arouses your curiosity and promises a benefit.

2. Gain Your Readers’ Trust

So, you created a sweet subject line that got people to open your e-mail. Now you need to create good content so that they read your entire e-mail.

As a bonus, if they like what they see in one e-mail, then they’re more likely to open and read your future e-mails.

So how do you gain readers’ trust?

Like this:

* Be honest with your product recommendations. If you wouldn’t recommend it to your mother or your best friend, don’t recommend it to your list.

* Give your readers what they want and expect. If they signed up for golf tips, give them the very best tips you can. If they signed up for your list expecting to get discounts on products, then be sure you offer those discounts frequently.

3. Get People Used to Promotional Recommendations

Sometimes people think they have to ‘nurture’ their list by giving only 100% free content for the first few weeks.

NOT true!

You want to give your subscribers the very best recommendations for products and services, which will of course include paid offers. That’s why you should promote paid offers from e-mail #1, which also lets your readers know what to expect from day #1.

Okay, so those are 3 proven tips for boosting your response rate but these are really just the tip of the iceberg. If you want to know what one of the net’s top marketers knows about getting readers to open, read and buy from your e-mails, then click here.

3 ways to create a sense of urgency

Nelson Tan Leave a comment

When you encourage prospects to act now instead of later, response rate increases.

1. One way to do this is to put a deadline on your offer.

Since 3rd-class mail takes an average of 2½ weeks to be delivered nationwide, make the deadline at least 8 to 12 weeks from the mail drop date. Alternatively, for any mailing that goes out September or later, a good deadline date is December 21.

Copywriter David Yale recommends emphasizing that the deadline date is final by adding the phrase “it’s too late” as follows: “This offer expires December 21, 2010. After that, it’s too late.”

For e-mail marketing, you can say the offer is good only if the recipient replies “today” or “this week”.

2. If you are not comfortable putting a deadline date on your mail piece, specify a time frame within which the reader must reply, e.g., “reply within the next 10 days”.

3. Or at least make it clear that this is a time-limited offer. Copywriter Milt Pierce suggests this wording: “But I urge you to hurry. This offer is for a limited time only. And once it expires, it may never be repeated again.”