Two Questions –
1.) Do you write for or publish an email newsletter?
2.) Do you subscribe to email newsletters?
Improving engagement for your email newsletter, growing your email list, improving email open rates, and decreasing un-subscribes from your email list is pretty simple.
The simple truth.
Treat your subscribers how you like to be treated … sound familiar with the golden rule “treat others how you want to be treated”
I think the winning formula to show your subscribers that you value them is to treat them with respect, integrity, honesty, and add value to their lives with the content in your email newsletter.
As a marketer myself, I subscribe to hundreds of other peoples’ email lists and newsletters.
Just this last week I was interviewed on a podcast by host Jeremy Slade (an awesome guy I might add). Jeremy asked me what email lists and newsletters do I subscribe to. I told him a better question may be, what lists don’t I subscribe to?
You might say I’m on a quest, a mission.
To find marketers that actually add value to my life, my company.
Now for the ugly truth, 99.5% of the email lists that I have subscribed to are crap.
They are self-centered egotistical, arrogant, self-focused with no integrity, and have one purpose … sell me their stuff, or disguise their sales copy as “helping me” by introducing me to their friend [fill in the name here] which is just an affiliate offer to sell me someone else's crap so they can earn a commission. These are thinly veiled promotions.
Think I’m being cynical or judgemental?
Just look at your inbox. How many lists are you on that are promoting the same “friends” webinar with an affiliate link.
Now I’m not completely ignorant. You and I do need to make sales to and make a profit.
But, consider sending one email that actually helps me. That doesn’t require me to sign up for a webinar, download a white paper. Just once.
This type of marketing is not building relationships or trust. While blasting their list every day may generate some sales, I’d suspect low open rate, low user engagement, and a small percentage of conversions.
Relationships come from serving people, your audience, avatar, subscriber or whatever other names you want to use.
- The open rates for my email newsletter are consistently over 50% and have been as high as 74%.
- This is well above the average across the board and better than the open rate for my industry.
- For my industry – Marketing and Advertising, the average email open rate is 16.48%
So please enjoy the content I post on this blog, engage, respond, and comment.
- Listen and learn from the two podcast episode I produce and share here every Tuesday and Thursday.
- And consider, trusting me to respect and serve you every Monday with my weekly email about marketing.
I have considered repurposing and sharing the exact content from my email newsletter here. But honestly, I do share some behind the scenes information, some personal photos, and want to keep that intimate conversation reserved exclusively for my subscribers.
While I make every effort to write and publish blog posts sharing valuable relevant content to assist you with your marketing need, honestly, when someone subscribes to my email list, I just feel they have made a commitment.
Therefore, my most intimate content, tips, and information are reserved for subscribers.
- These subscribers have chosen to opt-in, join my email list, trust me with their email address.
- They have taken a chance on me that I won’t blast them every day with irrelevant sales offers.
My email subscribers can and do respond to my weekly emails. The most engagement on my email newsletter this year came from a recent email discussing Geofencing.
I don’t believe in using a do-not-reply email.
The goal here is to keep it simple and make it easy to have a two-way conversation with my tribe. If you hit reply to my email newsletter, your response will be in my personal inbox.
I’d encourage and welcome your feedback, your comment, and opinions below.
Please share the name(s) of your most favorite email newsletter that you are subscribed to.
Join me on this journey, help me to do a better job serving my subscribers by subscribing to my Monday Real Marketing email newsletter.
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Written by Doug Morneau.
Doug is an international best selling author of “THREE BIG LIES – The Real Truth About Renting Email Lists to Generate Targeted Leads and Sales”, a podcaster, and speaker.
