Melon Corporate Blog
Do you love your lawyer?
by Kevin Garber, General Manager
In her article ”Subscribers Speak: Email Connections are Still Welcome, but Increasingly Fragile“
Stephanie Miller from Return Path makes a good point about lawyers: that we all tend to love our own lawyer, but don’t think much of lawyers in general.
She goes on to state that recent research indicates that email marketing is evolving into a similar “love hate” scenario -
“When email connects, it really connects. Yet, still so much email marketing is tired, old batch-and-blast.”
You can get a copy of the research here - it is in the form of a whitepaper that you can access after free registration.
Although most of us receive large amount of email newsletters we can easily identify those emails that we "love" and those that we "hate" (but don't unsubscribe from just in case we may miss something).
Opportunities abound to publish an email that your recipients love - and it is easier to achieve than you think.
All that is required is intent and the right approach.
The following 4 basic but important guidelines will ensure that your emails won't become marketing background noise.
1. What's in it for me factor:
"Me me me me me . no really ME!" seen on t-shirt in Martin Place Sydney December 2007.
People really only care about... well, yes . "ME".
How do you know what relates to your recipients? Ask your sales staff, account managers, customer service staff . "What would our customers be really interested in? What would our prospects be really interested in?"
Put your own organisation's immediate agenda aside and get in the head of your recipients.
The results will astound you.
When we started working with Metropole Properties 3 years ago on their newsletter they had 4,000 opt-in recipients. They now have well over 35,000 opt-in recipients.
How did they achieve this? A topic for another article (next month) but in summary by providing a newsletter to their recipients with 80% objective real content with only 20% of the newsletter company marketing.
2. Professionalism
Smart design that works in all email programs, professional send (no bcc or cc), no huge attachments, appropriate frequency, working opt out mechanism, appropriate from field, punchy subject line, sensible timing of distribution, recipient review and control of their information.
3. See point 1!
4. See point 2!
(Yes, it is entirely necessary to repeat these points).
Comments - oldest entries appear first, most recent entries at the end.
Yes, “batch and blast” has become too easy but people aren’t stupid, they can see when effort has been put in. I unsubscribe from all clunky newsletters, if they don’t honour my unsubscribes I report them for breach of spam, tough I know but really no excuse.
By Elsa Cohen on 29 02 2008
As a small business owner I only send out newsletter if I have something of valueto say and I know I can get it to them in a professional format.
My newsletters always take longer than I thought they would take but it always generates business somewhere - I started with 20 recipiets and now have 370, not huge, but huge for a little ‘ol business in Penrith.
Tiff
By Tiffany Plumer on 29 02 2008
Kevin
Your use / perpetuating of the lawyer stereotype is disappointing.
Sort of like saying all email marketing people are spammers, surely you could have come up with a better analogy?
Dean
By Dean Sharfman on 06 03 2008
Dean
I agree with you that it is a stereotype and we were just attempting to have a little fun with the stereotype.
I meant no offence and I take your point regarding spammers.
When I first started this business and my younger brother was about 14 he used to say quite seriously that my older brother does “spam and stuff” which needless to say used to get my blood boiling.
Thank you for the comments.
By Kevin Garber on 19 03 2008
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