Let ‘Em Go, Let ‘Em Go…

I had written back in May that I wanted to take my opening rate from 60% up to 70%

The last 5 emails have averaged 65.08%.

Here’s what I did:

• Thought more about the email during the week and when I had an Idea, email it to myself with the subject title “It’s Friday”.  (Evernote would be more efficient)
• Dedicated a 3 hour block from 6:00 Am to 9:00 Am every Thursday morning to write and publish and didn’t allow anything to disturb or compromise that time.
• Culled my list by 10%

Pop Psych 101 - hacking yourself

The opening rate of my newsletter has a huge impact on how I feel - the higher the rate the more energy I have, the more optimistic I am and everything becomes a little more possible. 

That first email after the cull had an opening rate of 72% - Score!  I was indeed faking it before I made it.  Within four weeks new subscribers had replaced the ones I’d gotten rid off and the opening rate had settled in at 65%.

Don’t be frozen

While size of list is a core KPI and something we always look to grow, don’t be afraid to treat it like a garden plant.  Cutting back and removing the deadweight is not only liberating but it raises the quality of the list and ultimately improves your writing.

As a Mailchimp user I filtered for 1 star list members and quickly scanned through to see their opening habits.  If they hadn’t opened a newsletter within 3 months I deleted them.

Having Idina Menzel singing in the background makes the process weirdly more enjoyable!

Caveat

Your business is different from mine.  Variables such as frequency, audience and content type will all affect how you prune your list but, if you’ve got people who haven’t opened in a year:

Let ‘em go, let ‘em go
Don’t hold it back anymore
Let ‘em go, let ‘em go,
Cull your list & slam the door

You don’t care
What those people say
Why waste your time
If they don’t bother to read you anyway!

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Written while listening to: The Bench - 163 - Periscope development by music2work2

Image credit: Let it go | Into the Magic *Explore* by chris alcoran on Flickr

Fear - The Best Reason To Email Your Customers Regularly

I’ve been banging on about email newsletters a lot this year - here, here and here.

I’ve been saying that it’s something you should have in order to deepen relationships with customers and drive sales.

Which is all nice and Kumbaya and lovely - but there’s a better reason to have a regular customer email.

Your customers are being stolen all the time!

Whether on billboards, TV ads, sidebars or word of mouth from your mother-in-law’s cousin’s son, your competition’s message is everywhere.  How good they are, how they make a difference, how they’re great value for money and ultimately, how they’re better than you.

If you aren’t paying attention and communicating with your customers, some sweet talker is likely to whisk them away.

Your email is your advertising

Most of the newsletters on this list are educational in format - and that’s great and essential, but do your customers know all the things you do and why you’re the business they should choose?

I’m not suggesting you change everything and go all “salesy” on your list - but maybe there’s a way to tweak your email design to ensure that those who are opening it get reminded of how good you are.

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Written while listening to: The Bench - 163 - Periscope development by music2work2

Image credit: Fear of the Dark by Stuart Anthony on Flickr

Lawyers, Insurance Agents, SEO and Golf!

Driving’s for show - Putting’s for dough

Ask a golfer what it feels like to hit a great drive and they’ll grin at you - there’s just something insanely pleasurable about thwacking a ball hundreds of yards into the distance.  And, if it goes in the wrong direction, well - you have a few more shots to make it right.

Putting on the other hand is a serious business.  Matches are won and lost on the green and there are no second chances.

Blogs are for SEO

Blog posts are how you generate links to your website, they are the content people find when searching for solutions and by their very nature, need to reflect your core business. 

Like driving, blog posts can be great fun!  The better you get the greater the distance they travel - multiple shares across social media and links from influencers can feel just as good as a 325 yard drive straight down the middle!

Newsletters are for dough

Newsletters however are serious business.  They’re how you convert potential customers to actual customers and by their very nature, need to be consistently interesting.

For many businesses (like mine) the content in a newsletter and blog post can be the same - if there’s always something new to tell your clients the newsletter can be educational and reflect what’s going on in your world. 

Where it gets challenging is when people don’t want to learn about your business - think the law or Insurance - this is when the newsletter becomes a lot tougher to write.

Repeat: Newsletters are for dough

If you’re operating with an opening rate around 30% it’s an indication that you need to change your strategy.  If you’re re-purposing your blog posts as newsletters then maybe you need to allocate more resource to what is potentially your biggest revenue generator.

The challenge I’m giving myself this year is to drive my opening rate from 60% to 70%.  I don’t yet know how I’m going to achieve that but I am going to allocate more time to the newsletter than I ever have.  Maybe you should do the same.

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Written while listening to: New Fazioli tracks by music2work2

Image Credit: Getting ready to kill it by Jennifer Pauley on Flickr

Lessons From My Dad

That’s me and my Dad.

He died a few weeks ago and I’ve been in Scotland with family.  

Although he was a retired surgeon, he was fascinated by business and how technology was changing everything. He read the newsletter every week and I would often get the odd inquiring reply or word of encouragement.

To publish or not to publish

I haven’t published for three weeks because frankly, I didn’t feel like writing. I’m sure there’s some social media guru out there who would tell me that this was a mistake, that the only way to retain readership and clients is to publish regularly, to keep them conditioned, Pavlovian style.

Of course, the answer to publishing when you don’t feel like writing is to either recycle something old or to end up half-assing it and producing something that is less than great.

There is something deeply wrong to me about that.

Be Honorable

One word stood out when people talked about my dad - Honor.  

One of the lessons I take from him is that if we’re going to be honorable in our lives and honorable in our businesses, then let’s be honorable in our marketing.  Let’s not pretend to be something we’re not or present ourselves as bigger than we actually are.  Let’s not dress up our language in hyperbole and superlatives in the hope we’ll trick someone into buying from us.

The maturation of social media means that the truth about your business practices will come out - eventually.  If there’s a discrepancy between what you offer and what you deliver it’s going to hurt you in the long run.

Be Professional

This is not to say you have to be too honest!!!  Remember that all of this digital marketing is about growing your business, selling product and winning clients - when people come into contact with your marketing content it should be a positive experience for them.

What I am saying is - if you don’t feel like publishing today because you don’t have it in you to produce something great, then that’s OK, your readership will appreciate your respect for their time.

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Written while listening to: These things Shall Be by music2work2