You may have noticed more emails in your inbox lately. But unlike pre-COVID days when you spent half your day fighting traffic, and you actually had a social life, if you’re like most people, you may have also noticed that you’re opening more emails lately. Yesterday, while procrastinating about something that had been on my to-do list for several days and mindlessly scanning through my inbox, I found an incredibly exciting message telling me that I shouldn’t feed my dog chicken. I was curious so I read it, and I don’t even have a dog anymore. But I’m planning on getting another dog, so you never know when these little tidbits of information may come in handy. Or not, but the point is that I was procrastinating, so I read an email that I would never have opened last February when I had a dog.
You get the point, email is making a comeback, although some would argue that it never actually went anywhere. But today, I thought I would answer a question I received from Ivan about how to create emails that people will actually open, read, and hopefully do something about.
I know I often have flashbacks about my corporate days, but I really can’t do a topic of sending emails justice without thinking back to some of the ways email was abused back in the day, and judging from friends who are still on that treadmill, still is.
The first abuse I remember is people who use email as though it were text messages. These are the folks who assume that you’re sitting there at your desk all day watching your inbox in the hope that you’ll receive an email from them and pouncing on it the second it arrives so you can respond. Honestly, it hasn’t been like that for most humans since AOL’s “you’ve got mail!” faded into our history. And thank goodness! Can you imagine how annoying that would be today with the rate we all receive emails? But the point is, emails are not texts. If you want a same hour response, send a text. If you want a same or next day response, send an email.
Which brings us to what is an acceptable response time for emails these days. Here’s my rule of thumb. If it’s a client or someone I’d like to become a client, and they email me, if I see it come in, I shoot them a quick reply right away, which could be as simple as “got it” or “let me look into it, and I’ll get back to you.” There’s nothing worse than sending an email and not knowing if it went to spam, bounced, or has fallen between the cracks. Worse case, if I’m spending every waking moment on Zoom, which is pretty much my life these days, I may send it over to someone on my team to respond. I also have my assistant watching my inbox and categorizing my emails into the categories “urgent,” “respond,” “to read,” and “read but follow up.” All the other messages get moved into a “someday if I ever have time” bucket. This little diversion with dogs and chicken means that if I hadn’t been procrastinating and scrolling through one of the email folders that I had no business in, I would never have learned this important information! But I digress. The bottom line is that you should try to respond to all client emails within 24 hours, and ideally, quicker.
The second abuse I remember is copying the boss. This one annoyed me because it is a passive-aggressive way of saying, “I’m sending this to you, but I don’t trust that you’ll give it the priority I think I deserve, so I’m copying your boss so you can get yelled at if you’re not responsive to me.” Perhaps that’s not what you meant, but that’s the message it sends. There is a certain psychology to sending a one on one email, especially since if you need something, there is no ambiguity regarding who should take action. That said, when it comes to entrepreneurs, I have learned a valuable lesson over the years, and that is, business partners don’t talk as much as you think they do. If you deliver a message to one partner, there’s a pretty good chance they were too busy to speak with the other partners about it, which can lead to problems, so it’s best to copy all of them on everything and let them sort it out.
My third email pet peeve is adding a new topic to an email thread about something else. While this may be convenient for you not to have to recreate the list of recipients, if I’m receiving your email, it’s highly likely that your new subject will get lost. I may quickly scan it and miss the latest information, or worse, not open it because I know the subject in question is something my team is already handling. Always think about your subject line and edit it if necessary. Try to write a meaningful action in the subject such as “FOR YOUR APPROVAL” followed by the topic, or “QUICK QUESTION ABOUT…” followed by the topic. These emails seem to the reader to be something they can quickly action and get off their plates.
My fourth email pet peeve is spelling and grammar mistakes. Granted, being in marketing I’m a bit of a word nerd, and if it’s just a casual email between coworkers or friends, it doesn’t matter as much, but when someone sends something to a client, or me as the client and it contains spelling or grammatical errors, I cringe. When I write something to a client, I try to read it over 2 or 3 times to make sure my message is clear, and there are no typos. I’m not perfect, but I believe this extra attention to detail reflects on my professionalism.
Now that your point is clear, your subject line expresses your intent, your message is typo-free, and you have wisely decided to focus on the right recipients, what are some of the best practices to consider if you’re sending a sales email? First, just like networking, you should never send a cold sales email. That’s called spam, and the FTC will not be your friend if you do it. Emails must be obtained with permission only, which means that the recipient knowingly gave you their email address and accepts that they will receive emails from you. Failure to treat emails responsibly can result in all sorts of internet penalties, including having your domain blacklisted by email providers, which can prevent your emails to clients from being delivered and harm the SEO ranking of your website. Yes, there are all sorts of “creative” ways to get around this if you’re really determined, but like playing in traffic and hoping you won’t get hit, there are definitely risks.
I know I use the dating analogy a lot when I describe marketing, but it also applies when sending emails. You can’t start firing off marriage proposals without spending time sharing stories over dinner, and the same goes for your emails. When you’re building email campaigns, there are several themes, but I like to start with the top five.
- First is the new client campaign. This campaign is a series of emails to welcome a new client to your business, let them know what to expect, who their key contacts are, and ask for standard information you need from all of your clients. You can create these so that after a certain amount of time, they will automatically receive a request to review you on Google, which is an excellent way to increase your reviews, and Google loves those reviews!
- If you have an eCommerce store, you can set up automated abandoned cart and post-purchase emails.
- A monthly newsletter is a good idea for just about any business. A newsletter is a monthly reminder to your contacts that you’re still in business, which is particularly important these days. It’s also a great way to make sure they understand everything you do to send you referrals.
- An extension of the monthly newsletter is the educational drip campaign. This campaign is a series of emails you’ll typically target to an audience with whom you have had an initial sales conversation or email exchange, but they’re not quite ready to buy. These can be weekly emails that educate about your area of expertise. They don’t try to sell, other than include a closing paragraph about what you do. They may link over to a blog on your website or add an exciting story or “did you know” quote. The purpose is to nurture your lead until they are ready to buy. Emails in this type of campaign should try to engage your reader by using beautiful designs to grab their attention. Emails should leave them curious, use humor as appropriate for your brand, or provoke emotion or give something away, even if it is just content.
- If someone continually opens your emails and clicks on your links, they are demonstrating interest, so you may want to move them over to a sales campaign. This type of campaign is a series of emails more focused on reinforcing the benefits of buying from you. Be careful of this one, though, because if you overdo it, they’ll unsubscribe, so a good practice is in addition to the call-to-action button, give them a “no thanks” button that drops them out of this campaign and keeps them on your newsletter list.
When I first started working with clients on CRM back in the 90s, it took multi-million dollar software tools to execute these types of campaigns. Today, a small business can start with software licenses as low as $20/month for a small list and access all of this functionality, which is pretty incredible.
Overall, when it comes to your message, be as authentic and honest as possible. Track your stats, but don’t get overly hung up on them either. Emailing people on your list is a privilege. With that in mind, let me wrap up with a quote from Chris Marriott. “A bad email reputation is like a hangover: hard to get rid of and it makes everything else hurt.”