Sending messages to your customers and members is a good way to increase service levels, sales and branding. You don't need to have a great reason to send a message- simply wishing them a happy holiday, thanking them for their continued support, or reminding them of an ongoing special offer are reason enough.
But with the majority of your message campaigns (as with your business initiatives) you will want to have a purpose, and that purpose is usually to either cut costs or increase revenues. Here are a number of ways you can not only increase the success rates for your messages, but increase their usefulness for your business.
Note: Many of these points are more relevant to email campaigns, but many can be applied to text messaging as well.
1) Build Your Lists
Build your list at every opportunity you have. If you have a retail location, add a point-of-sale sign up form. At conferences or events, ask everyone you speak with if you may add them to your list after you exchange business cards. Use Site Caddy to add your newsletter sign-up form to every page on your web site.
2) Use Clean Lists
Dumping messages on every address you can get your hands on is not effective marketing- it's spamming. Make sure your lists are clean and adjust your campaigns based on what you learn from your reports. Your conversion rates will climb and your messaging costs will drop.
3) Use Message Reports
Most messaging tools like Site Caddy include detailed reports on success and failures after message campaigns are sent. Take the time to review the reports and make adjustments to future campaigns based on the results. Make sure to keep your lists clean (e.g. remove hard bounces) to reduce the risk of being flagged as a spammer.
4) Get To The Point!
Many authors like to build their story slowly, starting with amusing anecdotes and gradually building to a crescendo. And while the Pulitzer Prize committee will surely appreciate your patient approach, email readers will either skip the fluff or discard your message entirely. Recipients scan emails quickly and make decisions in seconds. Get your important content to the top of the email. If they want to read on for more details, all the better.
5) Nail Your Subject Line
The subject line is a bit like the home page on a website: the temptation is to add too much information. But many email clients display only the first few characters of the subject line due to limited space. Be careful or your exceptionally well crafted and descriptive subject line will turn into a non sequitur. Again- get to the point early, and include less essential information later. And you don't need to tell them who you are in the subject line- Site Caddy will include that information in the email address. Here are a couple of examples:
- Bad: Site Caddy Will Be Hosting a Special Email Strategy Webinar on June 29th
- Good: Webinar on June 29th: Email Strategies
6) Use Calls to Action
Message reporting is not an exact science. The best way to increase reporting accuracy and judge the effectiveness of your campaigns is by recipient replies or click-throughs. You can easily encourage both in your emails. For example:
- Don't add all content to your message. Use Site Caddy to add the content to your website (e.g. new page or news item) and then include just a synopsis and a link to the relevant page on your site.
- Encourage the reader to take a specific action. Instead of just announcing a special offer, direct the reader to click on a link to find out details or participate.
- Encourage readers to forward the message to a friend.
7) Use Landing Pages
The page your website visitor lands on when they get to your website is known as the landing page, and it is often not your home page. They may be coming from a search engine, a link in your messages, or links sent from your Site Caddy site to a friend.
Make it easy on your message recipients. If you are telling them about a special offer, don't just include a link to your home page and make them find the information on the offer. Include a link to a landing page that deals specifically with the special offer. If you don't have one already, use Site Caddy to create the page- it only takes a minute.
8) Stay Focused
Once in a while it's good to send a general newsletter or digest that covers a broad array of topics relevant to your recipients. But more often than not it's good to be specific and focused. Here are a few tips:
- Keep your messages short: 2 short messages will be read before 1 long one.
- Target your messages to groups: consider breaking your campaigns up by group and adjusting the message for each type of recipient.
9) Don't Overcommit
If you are going to start a weekly email campaign, fantastic! It will be a great way to let your members and customers know what's going on and to drive sales. But will your team have time to compose and send a campaign every week? Will you have time to follow up on the responses and check your reports to make sure your recipient lists are clean? If not, consider a less regular cycle (monthly or quarterly) or simply do not announce that messages will be delivered on a schedule.
10) Be Consistent
When you do commit to a scheduled messaging campaign, try to be consistent. Send messages on the same day of the week or month so your recipients will get in a routine. You can always mix in special announcements at any time.
Tomorrow I will list another 10 tips. Do you have any great tips? Comment on this blog post.
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