Your Subscriber Always Wants to Know “What’s In It for Them”

Have you ever listened to someone talk about themselves for hours and wondered what they want from you?   Most likely you have to tune them out just to appear interested if you are polite or look for the easiest escape route.   There may be compelling things that they have to offer you but you’ve already tuned them out at this point.   Writing copy that sells focuses on benefits as opposed to features.     Focusing on a key feature and how it benefits your subscriber will keep them engaged in your mailing. Once you have them interested in how you are going to make their life better then it becomes your job to give them an opportunity to act on their need.    That opportunity to act is your call to action.    If you are simply describing a bunch of features without relating why someone would want those features then you leave people wondering why they should care.

Someone that talks for hours about themselves appears arrogant and self serving.   On the other hand if that person is giving you legal advice based on their experience about legal problems that you are having then you have a reason to listen.   If they mention that they have been a lawyer for 20 years then they will continue to hold your attention.    After your conversation is finished they hand you a business card with a number that you can call.    That business card is that lawyer’s call to action.   If the lawyer simply left the room after he is done giving you advice you will be grateful for having listened but you’ll use another lawyer’s services.   If that is the case then there is no call to action.   If the lawyer hands you the card without saying what he wants you to do with it then you’re likely going to be confused.  Is the lawyer giving you his card because he wants you to be his friend?  Or is the lawyer giving you his card because he wants your business?

If in your email you do not make it clear what you are trying to get your subscriber to do after you have gotten their attention then you are walking away from the conversation you are having with your subscriber without letting them know what you want from them.

Be Careful Not to Bury Your Call to Action

Stay concise and to the point.    You have a limited amount of space with which to keep your subscriber’s attention.    If you have a lot to say in your newsletter it’s better to display a link to a web site that contains the full content of your message.  For example, you can leave a snippet of text with a link to read more.   A simple layout makes it easy for subscribers to act upon your call to action.   The subject line and headlines used in the layout of your email will provide your subscriber with more clues about the purpose of email.   Many people simply skim through emails without actually reading.   You can make your message clearer by using short blocks of texts, bullet points, a subject lines that relates to the purpose of your email, and headlines that form complete sentences.    It’s better to keep your email simple and to the point.   Content that is heavy and long in copy often backfires because the purpose of the email gets buried.  Minimize any distractions or non essential content from your email.

Spread Your Call to Action Around

Your call to action needs to be clear and direct.  Your mailing should be structured in a way that is likely to generate a direct response from your reader.  The most obvious place to place your call to action is at the end of the email after the conversation you are having with your subscriber.   Is that the only way of being clear and direct with your subscriber?   No.  You might have a call to action at the top, the middle, and the end. When they read newsletters most subscribers are accustomed to being able to click on almost anything.  It could be the header of your email, the images they see inside the mailing, headlines, or text within the body of the email.

You should never hesitate to move your call to action up in the mailing or use multiple calls to action throughout your email.  When using text for your call to action a simple way of catching your subscriber’s attention is to use a larger font or placing your text in bold print.   Do not limit yourself to text alone.  Call to Action can include images, brand names, and logos.  If you do use images then add supporting text under the image and in the “alt” tag so that your reader will know what to do if images are disabled.   A lot of email clients have images disabled by default so using “alt” tag will give the subscriber a place to go even if they do not download images on their email client.

I had the pleasure of speaking to a great group of music industry executives and promoters yesterday at Canadian Music Week in Toronto.  The panel I moderated was called “Data is King” and we were to speak about using data to enhance the understanding, targeting, and results of digital media.  The panelists included smart folks from Radian6, Nielsen, SkyTide and BigChampagne.  Before we went up on stage we were huddling and realized that there was a real possibility that many in the audience had a total annual marketing budget that would be smaller than the smallest one of our products.  So, I made this the first thing I asked when we got on stage and indeed, just five people in the audience had a marketing budget of more than $20,000.

Audible.  Green 33, speak about free. Hike.  First question for the panelists: What is the one free tool you would recommend that marketers on a very tight and limited budget be using today (and don’t say, “yeah, what he said.”)  I got four very good answers.

1.      The first and most obvious is Google analytics.  Knowing where your visitors are coming from, search terms that drive them there, and the geography within which you’re most popular are all “must know” data and can be the start of a good foundation in a low budget marketing plan.

2.      Next was TweetDeck, and what a great answer.  Bands have certainly embraced the power of social media and use facebook and twitter regularly, but monitoring what is being said about your band, business, or even your competitors can be done through TweetDeck’s search functions.  You get what you pay for in that TweetDeck lacks the ease of use and data arrangement paid tools will offer, but what a great start.

3.      Next was compete.com.  You may know we’re a big advocate of Compete as well through our partnership with them, but their free product is also a great way to peer into basic web site analytics of other web sites.

4.      Finally, Quantcast is a must-use.  It’s worth “Quantifying” your own site but the ability to see where else your audience visits frequently and information about your competitors’ sites will give you a leg up on less savvy marketers right away.

Sure, Omniture, Radian6, and CompetePRO are all much more robust but when you have $20k annually (or less) to market your brand, band, or product, every dollar has to go to media.  If you’re in this position, take comfort knowing there are plenty of free tools available to get you started on a great path.

P.S. A tremendous point was made by Eric from BigChampagne that didn’t fit into the body of this post but is worth mentioning.  Most data is now available free somehow or another.  When you hire a BigChampagne, Nielsen, or any other company, make sure you’re not spending money on the data itself but on the analysis and insight they can provide you.  Most of these companies have experts that can take data which would have otherwise taken your, or someone at your company, days or weeks to pour through and make sense of it immediately.  Now that’s worth the price.

jQuery is a JavaScript library that makes working with JavaScript a lot easier. Basically, it helps you code more efficiently and more cleanly than you could using regular JavaScript code. It cuts out a lot of the mundane work that used to be required to add different types of animations and interactions to a page. In short, it helps you find whatever you want on a page, and make it do whatever you want.

If you’re not a web developer, the main thing you want to know about jQuery is that it can help make your website interface much more user-friendly. For example, you can use jQuery to …

• create calendars that let customers click on a date to make a reservation for an event
• create seating charts that let customers select a seat on a plane, or in a theater
• create forms and make sure that customers fill out forms properly
• let customers “rate” shopping items by clicking on a certain number of stars
• let customers magnify part of an image – such as the image of a product they’re thinking about buying

Having your developer use jQuery is also important because, frankly, it saves so much time. That means we can build more functionality and more interactivity into your site more quickly. That keeps development costs down and helps your project get done in a timely fashion.

I like to think of jQuery as a library of shortcuts for web developers … effects that we can pick up and plug in to your site without reinventing the wheel. Again, this saves you time and cost.

Nearly every site we build at Atomic uses jQuery in some form or fashion. A great example is our site for MacTown. We used jQuery to create a horizontal slider on the homepage to highlight different product categories. We also used it to create a shopping cart with drag-and-drop functionality, which simplifies the purchasing process. And who doesn’t want to make it easier for customers to buy stuff?

Interested in talking about how animation and interactivity can make your site more user friendly?

Yahoo! Mail no longer participates in Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail program. For CertifiedEmail senders, this means CertifiedEmail messages no longer receive enhanced privileges such as guaranteed inbox placement, images displayed by default, or the CertifiedEmail icon.

On March 24th, we will decommission the MX record for ‘gms.mail.yahoo.com’, the dedicated domain to which senders have been routing CertifiedEmail for Yahoo! Mail recipients. To ensure no disruption of email delivery to Yahoo!, we recommend clients consult with Goodmail and make any necessary changes to their email systems in advance of this date.

Senders may contact our postmaster team via this form should any deliverability issues arise around the transition deadline. Our goal is to facilitate a smooth transition and to help ensure the best email experience for our users as always.

We recently saw a post on this topic, and it made us stop and think. If you can get Twitter and Facebook updates from your favorite companies, do you really need to get email from them too?

We put our thinking caps on, and we thunk awhile, and we decided . . . yes, yes, you do need email marketing!

Here’s why.

• Email marketing reaches customers who haven’t jumped into social media. Plenty of boomers get email from their kids and shop online. But not all of them have started using Facebook, let alone Twitter. Email remains a useful way to stay in touch with them and let them know about sales and promotions.
• It’s a way to establish expertise. Many companies send out email newsletters just like this one on a regular basis. These newsletters aren’t pushing direct sales. Instead, they share information about topics that are important to your customers. This knowledge-sharing can help establish you as an expert in your field – whether you’re a catering firm writing about how to host a great event, or a golf pro offering weekly tips on improving your stroke.
• It’s a way to get the word out about sales and specials. It’s no big news that putting products on sale is one of the most effect calls to action available. That’s why mega-retailers like J. Crew and Land’s End have aggressive email marketing campaigns. Each company promotes a wide variety of sales throughout the year – sometimes it’s free shipping, sometimes it’s end-of-season discounts, sometimes percent discounts. But the sales are regular, and the emails announcing them can come weekly or even daily.

The rules of conduct governing email marketing are rigorous, and there’s no better way to ruin your reputation and get onto server blacklists than to violate them. But if you follow the rules, email can be a great part of your interactive marketing campaign.