How to Write an Email That Gets Response

I want to share an article with you from my friend, Joel Mark Witt. Joel has some great insights into social marketing.  Enjoy this guest post.

By Joel Mark Witt

With all the talk about social media these days it is no surprise to me that business owners and marketers forget about one of the most powerful forms of internet marketing… 

Email.

 We see people spending time searching on Twitter, updating their Facebook fan pages and discussing business topics inside LinkedIn groups. While these social media marketing activities do in fact benefit your organization and professional life, don’t neglect the obvious marketing powerhouse in online media.

 Why email marketing gets great response

 Emails are personal. People are used to getting messages in their inbox from their mom, friends or spouse. It really is the modern equivalent of getting a personal letter.

 Ask any business person, old or young, and 90 percent of them use email at work. Email is familiar. Facebook is not. Don’t expect to reach many 55-year-old executives using Twitter. They simply aren’t using the service.

 And email shares a common benefit with its social media cousins…it is scalable. Write an email once and send it to thousands with the click of a button. That is marketing power.

 Effective email marketing

 Email marketing is very similar to traditional direct mail marketing in that you are looking to connect with people personally and ask them to take a specific action. But with email the cost is so low, you have the ability to spend time developing and nurturing a solid RELATIONSHIP with your readers.

Don’t get me wrong. Any effective email marketing strategy involves a strong call to action. But it will also work in personal elements and a writing style that can cut to the heart of a prospect’s problem or desire.

How to write an email that gets response

First, begin with the end in mind. Know what action you want your readers to take. Do you want them to buy something? Do you want them to take a survey? Are you helping them take a small action in their life or business that will continue a relationship with you?

Figure out your “call to action” and build your email marketing around that. For example, our company is interested in getting people to take action by using social media in their day-to-day business. In many of our emails I invite people to participate in a 20 minute free consulting call to answer any questions they have about Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. This action benefits our readers and also gives us insight and feedback into their real-life business problems.

Second, build in metrics from the beginning. Track the nitty-gritty details of how many readers opened your email, who is forwarding emails to friends and how many click-throughs you are getting. These numbers can help you refine your email marketing in the future. Sound overwhelming? It doesn’t need to be. Most email service providers have these tools built into their systems.             

Third, test everything. Email marketing is a process. Don’t assume you will get 50 percent open rates and massive clicks on the first few tries. It takes time to know what your readers will respond to.

A few items on the top of your list to test are:

• Frequency (daily, weekly or monthly)
• Headlines
• Call to action (what do your readers respond to?)
• Content

Finally, write with passion. Picture yourself writing to one person and pour out your heart and mind in a compelling and personal way. Don’t censor your personality. If you are a “faceless” business – change that and become the person your readers think of when they hear your business name. Become a mini-celebrity of sorts and nurture your personal touch. It will pay dividends in the long run.

Action Steps

Here is your assignment for today. So in keeping with our goal of being personable, think carefully about your ideal customer. List out their wants, needs and desires. In your mind, pick one customer and give them a name. Sit down and craft a personal email to that one person to help them solve one of their specific problems. Pick the need that is the biggest most obvious pain for them. Spend time showing them a simple, straightforward solution in a personal way… just for them. In your close, invite them to learn more from you by taking a particular action.

At the end of this exercise, you will have a powerful email to put into your marketing system. From here you can create a whole series of emails in a sequence to send to your email list.

Now go take action.

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Joel Mark Witt is the Publisher of Folk Media and author of 21 Days To Twitter Leadership and How To Use Social Media To Find A Better Job. He is a producer, author, and speaker who consults with businesses and nonprofits on how to use social media in marketing and communications. Get more from Joel on Twitter.

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How You Can Use Coke’s Idea With Your Social Marketing?

Coca Cola is running a promotion on their fan page that asks you to send a virtual Coke to one of your Facebook Friends. You enter your friend’s name and when you click “Send a Gift”, they receive a message on Facebook telling them you gave them a virtual Coke and that they can give one to a friend as well.  The second part of the promotion is that Coca Cola will donate $1 to The Boys and Girl’s Club of America for each virtual Coke you send.  Your friend receives the virtual coke and instruction on how to send one to their friends as well.

This combination of donating to a good cause while passing around a message from Coca Cola is the company’s way of starting a viral campaign. If many people pass around virutal Cokes, their message will spread fast and far. Participants feel good about clicking a button and having Coca Cola donate to a good cause.

How can you take this idea and adapt it to your business fan page?   Let’s say you are a shoe store.  How about  this?  Create a message offering a coupon for a discount on a pair of shoes.  If a fan redeems the coupon, your business will donate $1 to a good cause  Ask your fans to share this coupon with friends so they may get in on the deal as well. This way your fans can receive a discount at your store and also be part of donating to a good cause.  And you will drive traffic to your store

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3 Twitter Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make

Twitter is a very easy network to use.  But even thought it’s easy to use, there are a couple mistakes others have made.  Here are three you can avoid:

1. Not Filling Out Your Profile

This may seem obvious, but many mall business Twitter users fail to take advantage of the space Twitter gives you for your name, photo, location, bio, and URL.  By filling it out, you allow people to see who you are. This builds trust.

2. Forgetting You Represent Your Business

Twitter is about sharing  and not always talking shop. Given how informal the conversation can be, however, it’s easy to get overly relaxed in your Tweets.  Don’t forget that every tweet from your company account will be analyzed by your audience. Avoid being flippant about matters that are important to your customers.

3. Talking Too Often About Business

To make sure you’re not tweeting too often about business, I recommend a that a third of your tweets be directly about business, a third be giving useful information such as sharing articles you’ve recently read, and a third be about you personally.  Sharing a little about yourself makes you more interesting and allows our audence to get to know you.

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January 2010 Traffic Report

I continue to bring you statistics on my blog as I actively drive traffic to the blog and grow my readership.  This month-to-month comparison is an excellent way to see progress I’m making building my own community

Website visitors  this month         1110

Facebook Friends                            80

Twitter Followers                             722

LinkedIn Connections                    131

Email List Members                         138

My biggest growth is in my email list. I grew by about 40 people this month.  That’s not bad. Next month I hope to be working on another traffic source that I’d like to generate traffic from.  I’ll talk about that more as I see results.

I stopped growing my Twitter community for this month because I was working on the traffic coming from LinkedIn. that traffic continues to gain me over 1000 visitors a month. I hope to get back to growing my Twitter community in the coming weeks as I have time.

I’m also doing some work with Google Analytics to see what other numbers I should be tracking as I work on driving traffic to my blog. I’ll let you know what I find.

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Share Information Through Social Media. Profits Will Follow.

When I was a child, my favorite place was the library. While there, I could look for and learn anything I could imagine. If I wanted to learn how to make a cake from scratch, the information was there. If I wanted to read about Native American beadwork, I could find it. The difficulty was the endless time in between those library visits.

Without access to the library, I could only sit and wonder what the answers wer to my questions. The internet has completely changed this. Now if I want to know the words to a famous speech by Sojourner Truth, I can have it almost instantaneously. If I want to know how to pronounce the Spanish word for “Wednesday”, I can find the audio file.

And now we can add our own expertise to the internet through blogs. Good useful content is what your customers crave. If you can give it to them,  you will have their attention. The information you give away, will lead to profits when these readers decide it’s time to buy.  They will look to you because your information has been good and helpful. They trust you.  Information has been freed. Give some away so that it can help others.  Your generosity will be rewarded.

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