Congrats! You’ve built your website. You got the cool email thing to work and you’re giving away kick-ass content in your free report. Your list is growing and things seem to be going well. You even got that whole autoresponder thing to start working for you.
But, wait a minute… Only like 10% of people are actually opening your emails. And then only half of those folks are clicking the link to your awesome video? What do you do?
First of all, welcome to email marketing. If you’ve gotten this far, then you’ve gotten further than at least 50% of the people marketing their expert business online. So kudos to you. But there are two critical needle movers that will make a significant improvement in your email marketing:
1. Use the first email in your autoresponse sequence to build relationship, not blast them with content. It’s often said that the most important part of an email is not the subject line but the “from.” If your favorite grandma sent you an email, you’d open it irregardless of the subject line, right? It’s because of the relationship you have with her. So instead of bombarding your new subscriber with training content in that first week, focus on building that relationship with them
- Share your story of how much you struggled starting out in your field of expertise. No one was b0rn an expert.
- Explain why the work you’re doing and info you’re teaching them is so close to your heart. Explaining the “big why” early on in the relationship/communications is immensely powerful because those “why” beliefs resonate with the central (emotional) part of the brain.
- Let them get to know who you are (family, friends, your hobbies, etc). I often talk about my latest snowboarding, surfing, and kiteboarding adventures.
2. Make your subject lines friendly and casual, not “how to” and informative. This is huge, and it didn’t make any sense to me until I tried it. When I started in the industry of personal transformation and success training with my site GoalAchieverOnline.com, I thought that early on I had to show them how smart I was, so all I sent the new subscribers was ‘how to’ content. And I wasn’t getting opens. I’d make subject lines like “how to prioritize your daily activities in just 10 minutes” (ZZZzzz…) and no one would open them because it was overly professional. Email is still a pretty intimate space for people. So honor that intimacy by having subject lines that respect the personal relationship you’re developing with them.
- Use subject lines that are friendly and casual.
- Do NOT capitalize the words. Example: Friends Don’t Type Like This. they type like this
Related articles
- 5 Key Ways to Maximize Email Marketing Effectiveness [Data] (hubspot.com)
- 5 Ways To Ruin Your Business Rep With Email Marketing (smallbizbee.com)
