Successful Blog

How to Get Customers to Open Your Email

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By Mark Saghy

Email is, has, and continues to be, one of the best ways to retain customers. It reminds them you’re still around. It reminds them they need to purchase something from you that they may otherwise forget about. It is often the single greatest way to highlight a new product, promote a new brand, or inform about an upcoming sale or event.

How to get your email opened

A person’s inbox is, for many, a sacred space; for most of us, we check it daily, hourly, or even more frequently than that. The advent of smartphones makes it impossibly easy to stay connected to our flow of email coming through.

Despite the benefits, sending your customers an email can be a very sharp double-edged sword. With the increased ease of email use and access can often come a heightened sense of intolerance about the amount of business or advertising that flows through it.

Even with your most dedicated and loyal customers, there is a fine line between informing them and annoying them. One extra email, one unhelpful or confusing title, one tiny mistake noticed at an otherwise bad time, and bam–that customer has deleted the email without even opening it, or worse–they have permanently unsubscribed from your mailing list.

Here are some ways to keep that to a minimum, while encouraging customers to open as much of your email as possible.

Remember the Value of Quality over Quantity

Clearly, one of the best ways to lose customers is to inundate them with email. Again, a customer’s inbox is their personal space; they don’t want it being tied up with marketing campaign after marketing campaign. Unless the customer has specifically requested to receive a particular quantity of email from your company, it’s pretty safe to assume that you should pick and choose your battles very carefully when sending out a message. Consider the following:

  • Think about why you are emailing-is it a friendly “hello”, or do you have very important news you feel your customers would like to know?
  • When was the last time you sent an email out, and why? Is your message informing them of something new or exciting, or has business slowed down a bit, prompting you to send out a communication?
  • The last time you sent an email, did you check the number of mailing subscribers afterwards, to see if you lost any? If you did, how many did you lose, and what percentage of the total was that?

Each of these questions should be analyzed, a clear answer formulated, and those answers compared with one another. This should typically be done before every email you send out. Remember, you want to focus on the quality of emails being sent, while also keeping a close eye on the quantity emailed over a period of time. Even the best-crafted emails will start being ignored if you send too many of them.

Personalize

No matter how far we have advanced technologically, some of the basic tenets of sales and customer service still apply to the business world today. Even though email cannot create the same kind of in-person relationship that a brick-and-mortar store can have, you can still try to recreate a perceived sense of a personal relationship with your customer. Done right, this can still be one of your most important retention tools.

One great way to help personalize emails is simply to use names. “Dear Customer” is one way to ensure the customer knows you don’t care enough to address them by name-even if their name is sitting right there in your mailing list database. Why not use “Dear Shirley” instead? It’s a simple fix and, presuming there is indeed a database of names, it can be computer automated.

Furthermore, consider having a name in the “from” portion of the email, too. Rather than yourcompany@yourcompany.com, consider using “Paul D. in Sales” or “Maggie, yourcompany.com’s VP”. In addition to encouraging the customer to open the email, doing this makes it sound more personal, more relatable, and less like a standard form letter-even if you send this same exact email to hundreds of your customers.

Keep It Simple, Keep It Clear

People are busier than ever before, and as such, people are more connected to their inboxes than ever before. Mostly gone are the days of walking out of the office and leaving that world behind until the next morning; for many of us, we are expected or required to maintain email communication with our jobs, no matter where we are-including a the dinner table, while traveling, or while watching our kid’s baseball game. Therefore, it is arguably more important than ever to keep the emails you send your customers as simple, clear, and effective as humanly possible.

You will need to use a little bit of psychology here: instead of thinking about the message from your company’s perspective, consider it from the customer’s point of view. Answer the one very important question your customer is often thinking when staring at your email: “why should I open this?” Whatever you want the answer to be, make that the primary focus of the message.

  • Want to pitch a new product? Make the title pop, give as little background information as is needed in the intro, then pitch that product immediately.
  • Upcoming sale? Make sure the customer knows it within the first few seconds of reading.
  • Just checking in to say hi and keep in touch? Do it quickly; skip the fluff.

Keep your email as short as you can, and get your point across in as few words as possible. After you have composed your email, a great way to edit it for clarity is to go back and remove anything that isn’t absolutely relevant or necessary. When possible, bring in a second set of eyes to help with editing and whittling down the language.

Want to share some of your best email tips? Do you have a favorite subject line?

Author’s Bio: Mark Saghy is a marketing executive at ExhibitDeal.com. He is constantly learning and finds joy in sharing his knowledge with the blogging world. You can find him on Google +.

Image credit: http://us.stocklib.com

Avoid These Four Email Marketing Mistakes

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By Kelly Gregorio

With the right email-marketing program in place, you can connect with your customers while saving your business money, time and effort. With the option of real-time messages, email marketing is a great option all around for small business owners.

However, like most things in life, email marketing is only worth the effort if you’re going to do it right the first time. Avoid these tragic mistakes and get everyone excited when they see your business’s name in their inbox.

1. You’re Wasting Their Time

If you’re going to send a promotional email, make sure it offers added value to your readers. Whether you are notifying them of a sale or a special event, your audience deserves to have all of the necessary details clearly provided. Shy away from unnecessary updates that could just as easily be communicated though your Twitter and Facebook feeds.

In addition to providing your audience with informational value, strive to get them an entertaining educational lesson too. After all, you are an expert in your field, so be willing to showcase your talents with tangible takeaways and engaging how-tos. Brand your content-heavy emails with situations (holidays, universal events) related to your readers’ outside worlds.

2. You’re Not Consistent

If one month you’re sending off a few emails a week, and then the next month you barely get one out, you’ve got a problem. Audiences are willing to give you access to their inbox but please, above all else, be consistent. Find a flow that works for both you and your readers and stick with it.

The bonus lies in the branding method (for example you could send out a “Top of the Month” email), which readers will come to expect. This consistency will showcase your trustworthiness as a host and it will likely increase loyalty among your audience.

Additionally, be sure to be consistent with the rest of your look as an overall brand. Be sure to match templates, fonts and colors with the rest of your company’s look. While your audiences are taking on the reader role, they also make connections visually, so allow them to match what they see with their understanding of your brand.

3. You Forget to Scrutinize Before You Send

Regardless of how great your email seems to be, if you are quick to hit send you could be wasting all of that initial effort. No matter your command of the English language, every writer needs an editor. Make a promise to yourself never to break the golden rule of any written content: have another set of eyes review your work.

Along these lines, be sure to test your email before you send it off to your entire audience. Have willing participants (friends or co-workers) open their inboxes up as test zones. Spam filters and plain text options all need to be addressed before your formal send off.

4. You’re Not Share Happy

The email campaign that is strictly formulated for computers is a dead one. Almost everyone is checking their email on their phones these days, which is why your campaign needs to have a converted mobile version. Don’t sell yourself short by limiting your reader’s access to only certain technologies.

For those that are sending out consistently killer emails and still are not getting the response they’ve expected, relax, a simple tweak could nix this issue. By adding Twitter or Facebook links to your emails you are heavily increasing your chances of spreading your word. And if you’ve done everything this article has listed so far (i.e. provided interesting and thorough information in a consistent and polished manner), chances are it will get passed on.

Your turn–what other pitfalls of email marketing have you learned to avoid?

Author’s Bio: Kelly Gregorio writes about topics that affect entrepreneurs and small businesses while working at Advantage Capital Funds, a merchant cash advance provider. You can read her daily business blog here.

5 Ways to Use Vine To Grow Your Business

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By Marcela De Vivo

When it comes to social media, Vine is a relatively new tool, and many business owners aren’t even using it yet. If you’re already familiar with Vine, you’ve got a leg up on the competition.

However, just because you know about Vine doesn’t mean you know how to use it the right way.

Vine can be an incredible tool for helping you grow your business, but you have to know how to make and share videos that are effective.

Follow these five simple tips for using Vine to grow your business. You’ll probably be surprised how quick and effective they really are.

Vine videos boost business

1. Use Tags In Your Videos

When you make videos to share on Vine, it’s important that you use tags just like you would when making and sharing images for Twitter and Instagram. Before you pick which tags to use, search for relevant tags to apply so that users can find your videos.

Adding tags to your videos doesn’t take long at all, and it can really increase the amount of views that you get, which can in turn increase the amount of visitors you get to your website.

2. Be Social

One important but often overlooked aspect of Vine is the social media aspect. Making videos you can share is great, but you also need to make friends, find and comment on videos and generally get a dialogue going with consumers and other businesses. Once you start engaging people on Vine, they’ll start following you back, which will help to create exposure for your content and business.

3. Work to Humanize Your Brand

For very large brands, using Vine is a quick and easy to way to create behind-the-scenes videos that can make your company seem less like a faceless entity and more like the passion project of a few successful individuals. Make videos that tell a story about where you work, who you work with and why your company is special.

Videos that humanize a brand are generally very successful, and they can work wonders for the public image of your company.

4. Integrate Customers

If your business routinely interacts with its customers, putting some of them on film and then sharing those videos is a great way to build your brand. Of course, you’ll need to ask your customers ahead of time, but many will be happy to participate.

You can also announce a video contest for your customers, allowing them to share videos about using one of your products or your service. If you do this, make sure you include a prize for the best video to really entice people.

5. Have Fun With It

Not all of the videos that you create for Vine need to be totally focused on your business.

Creating humorous videos that you can share with humor sites is a great way to get huge numbers of visitors, which will certainly help attract new customers to your site. Your video might even go viral, which is always a good thing.

Vine is a unique tool that you need to start using in your business. It may not seem like six seconds is enough time to really say anything about your company, but you’ll be surprised how much Vine can really do for you if you embrace it.

Have you tried making a Vine yet?

Author’s Bio: Marcela De Vivo is a freelance writer from Los Angeles. Her background is in online marketing and in specializes in a variety of topics, from social networking, search marketing, web hosting and content development.

How to Develop Your Writing Through Inspirational Self-Critics

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By Leslie Anglesey

All writers have some type of inner editor. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have the discipline necessary to stay on track and on topic to either work for clients or focus on their own projects. At first glance, having this built-in critic might seem like a recipe for squashing creativity, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be something that will stop a writer in his or her virtual tracks.
Develop your inner critic
At times, self-criticism has been blamed for the famous “writer’s block” but it may not be fair to blame getting stuck on the inner editor.

Many factors can contribute to a creative person having trouble getting into the groove of a project or having trouble getting started.

The issue may be:

  • fatigue
  • boredom
  • stress in another area of the writer’s life
  • creative process the writer needs to go through to get a flash of inspiration hasn’t resulted in an “a-ha” moment yet

While the internal editor can’t be shut off entirely, there are ways to work with it to develop your writing. Keep in mind that it exists for a purpose, and you want to make sure that it doesn’t become so powerful that you are reticent to let anyone see your work.

Use a Diamond Shaped Model When Listening to Your Inner Editor

When you are thinking about how and when you should listen to your inner editor, consider using a diamond-shaped model to keep you on track with your writing projects. It should help you determine how to proceed.

When you are contemplating a project or thinking of making a pitch to an editor, keep your inner editor firmly in the background. This is the narrow part of the diamond shape. Don’t let it get in the way by telling you that you are wasting your time or that you aren’t good enough, so why are you bothering to apply or contact that editor. As a writer, you will get rejected, but you have no chance of getting anywhere if you never make a move toward your goals.

As you land a project and move into the broader part of the diamond shape, you want to start listening to your inner critic more. If you are ever tempted to stop digging in your research or not to go the extra mile because, “It’s probably good enough,” allow this part of your mind to poke or guilt you into giving your work that little bit of extra effort to make it the very best you can produce.

Likewise, don’t let any piece of writing leave your desk until you have taken the time to proofread and edit it carefully. This piece of advice also falls under the category of listening to your inner editor in the middle of a project, whether you are working on something for school or on a professional basis. Good enough simply isn’t good enough. Your inner editor should be on high alert at this stage of the game.

Confidence above All

As you proofread and edit your second draft, you should be able to feel a bit more confident about your work. Using the example of the diamond shape, the editor should once more start to go back toward the background, and you should be able to focus on your voice in your writing when you read the final version of your work. By the time you get to the version you are ready to turn in to your instructor or the client, the internal editor should be firmly in the background, leaving only your voice in place when you read through your work.

Will your work ever be exactly perfect as a writer? There will always be something that you “could” be doing to alter, fix, or tweak a piece of work to make it better, more interesting, or more “something.” There will have to be a point at which you may need to simply tell your inner editor that you have done your best and that it will have to be good enough. That’s all anyone can do, and you will try again with your next piece of writing, which is how writers grow and develop their craft.

What are your tricks for dealing with the inner critic?

Author’s Bio: Leslie Anglesey, PhD, is an affiliate professor who loves to dedicate all her free time to writing. She is an editor at http://www.essaytigers.com and is always helping others to bring passion to their writing.

Image: Flickr CC

How to Become a Psychic Blogger

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By Nathalie Lussier

How To Write The Blog Post Your Reader Really Needs From You Now

Are you a psychic bloggerIdeas. We all have them. Ideas for blog posts, new projects, and things we need to remember to buy at the grocery store.

Sometimes you get a flash of inspiration for a blog post, and if you have the time to sit down and write it, that blog post can turn out to be the exact thing your reader needed at that moment. Other times, you find yourself re-reading your piece and asking yourself what you were thinking when you penned that jumble of words.

It happens to all of us. In today’s post I’m going to talk about the tricks I’ve learned in my 10 years of blogging, that have allowed me to read the minds of my readers. I regularly get emails and comments from my audience telling me that my post came at just the right time for them, or that I must be psychic because that’s exactly what they were wondering about.

Do your blog posts currently hit the “psychic spot” for your reader? If not, keep reading to find out how you can hone your idea generating and selecting process, to deliver the best content on a consistent basis.

TRICK #1: Know Who You’re Talking To

When brainstorming for a blog or video post, can you think of a specific person, reader or client of yours who would benefit from what you’re writing about? Who is this reader? Whether you are writing for industry leaders or newbies, knowing exactly who you’re talking to and how they’re going to take action based on the information, stories, or advice you share with them is key.

For example, when I first started my blogging career as the Raw Foods Witch, I used to write to my peers. I just didn’t know any better, I thought that the world was full of raw foodists.

Silly? Absolutely.

It was only when I shifted my attention towards the everyday person who wanted to eat healthy but didn’t really know how, that I was able to capture my readers’ attention.

Today, at Nathalie Lussier Media, I talk a lot about technology, and I need to remember what my audiences’ burning questions are so I can share the most relevant new tech tools.

I would never do a video about a complex programming solution, because I know that my audience is not filled with not software engineers like myself and this information just won’t resonate with them. Instead, I talk about ‘done for you plug-ins’ and solutions that solve their problems easily with no coding required. By focusing on what my readers need to know, I can connect directly to them.

TRICK #2: Ask For Feedback

I often hear these statements. ‘I know there are people out there, but no one is reading my blog’ or ‘I’m not really sure who reads my blog.’ Does this sound familiar?

If you don’t have a large readership on your blog, simply asking your current readers to leave a comment should get the ball rolling. Alternatively, you can send out a survey and ask people what they need help with and what they wish they knew how to do better.

Beyond just asking, you also need to connect with people more than you might currently be doing.

TRICK #3: Connect With Your Current Readers

Before you build your castle in the sky, I highly recommend that you get in touch with your audience, the real people who are actually reading the words that you write and find out what they need from you the most.

Send the people who comment on your blog a quick e-mail asking them what you can do for them and what kind of content would really change their lives.

TRICK #4: Answer The Burning Qs

The benefit of blogging and creating great content is that you only have to do it once, and it lives on the Internet forever. If you find yourself getting the same question from your readers all the time, share the answer in a blog post.

Not only will this save you the time of answering this question over and over, you will actually attract more people who need that particular problem solved just like your original audience.

So here’s your filter question for the next time you sit down to write a blog post or create a video: Do I know a specific person in my audience who will benefit from me answering this question?

Follow these 4 tricks and get ready to have people showing up and telling you how amazing you are, because you’ve actually tapped into what they need from you the most.

Are you ready to join in the exclusive club of psychic bloggers who comes up with the best content all the time? Leave a comment below with any tips or tricks you’ve found for getting great blog post ideas.

Author’s Bio: Nathalie Lussier is a digital strategist for the ambitious business owner. She’s the creator of the Website Checkup Tool, a free tool that gives you specific steps to improve your site’s traffic and conversions, no matter stage of business you’re at right now.

Image via CC by Thomas Hawk

Don’t Let Your Business Blog Content Become a Biology Project

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Just about all of us at one time or another has had to deal with rotten food.

In many cases, we leave something out too long or leave it in the fridge for an extended period of time; hence it soon takes on the junior high science project that many of us thought was cool back in the seventh grade.

In our adult years, however, such projects are not only viewed as unfavorable, but they can be costly when running a business.

Working in marketing full-time and doing freelance writing on the side, I literally come in contact with dozens and dozens of business blogs on a daily basis. The number one threat to their existence in my opinion is stale content.

When some business heads feel like the content is just there to fill space and show both current and potential customers that the site is active, I just want to come up to them and shake them for about five seconds. My main question as I am shaking them is what are you thinking? In many cases, they probably are not doing much of that in the first place.

What is the Purpose behind Business Blogs in the First Place?

Company blogs come in all shapes and sizes, be they for someone just beginning to run a business or someone who’s been around the block a time or two. In many instances, the blog is used as a tool to attract current and potential customers to the site, and then provide them with worthwhile information that they can take away.

On the surface, that sounds like a great premise for having a blog in the first place. Where that becomes an issue is when the lead content is left to sit on the site for days and days and days and….

Soon, visitors coming to the site begin to see the same old and tired copy anchoring the site. Before long, what was once good content starts turning into that bagel or loaf of bread that was left sitting out on the counter for weeks and weeks. You get the picture, it isn’t pretty.

As someone that has written and overseen a number of business blogs over the years, I cannot stress enough the importance of maintaining fresh content on the site.

Among the obvious reasons to do so:

  • Search engines will be more favorable to your site if the content is regularly updated;
  • Fresh content puts your company blog out there as an authority on a subject or subjects, singling you out from competitors;
  • A continuously updated blog site makes it much easier to approach potential advertisers that will want to get their name linked to your site;
  • With updated blog content, you can have real-time interaction with readers, leading to more opportunities to convert potential customers into customers.

One small business blog I recently came across, one which I will not name, was last updated in the fall of 2011. Last time I checked the calendar, we were coming up on the middle of March.

My first thought was maybe this company had gone under and the site was still showing up on Google searchers. As it turns out, the company sure is still business and looking for new clients as we speak. If I were consulting them, I would not advise them to start their sales pitch by referencing the site’s blog.

I make it a habit to clean out my refrigerator once a week so that nothing can become a biology project behind that closed door.

Perhaps more business owners should take on a similar project to make sure their company blogs are not festering something nasty.

Remember, the time for conducting science projects was back in school, not when you are running a business.

Photo credit: marqui.com

Dave Thomas, who covers among other topics workers compensation and credit card processing, writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.