TAG: The Value of Email

With social media offering more accessibility and engagement than any medium ever has, many are adamant that the classic email is a dying marketing platform. Yet, the attachment to our inboxes is as powerful as ever, if not moreso; people continue to spend countless hours each day reading and responding to emails. This being the case, the platform is seriously overlooked as the invaluable marketing tool it is. While it may lack the broadcasting capabilities of sites like Twitter and Facebook, this perceived weakness can actually be seized upon to your advantage.

Consider this: you always open messages sent by your friends and family, because you know they are personal, written and addressed only to you. Email marketing offers the same level of deliverability if executed correctly. Where something like a Facebook advertisement will always be obviously publicly addressed and impersonal, a well-crafted email can give the recipient a true sense of personal connection. After all, email is designed for one-on-one communication. While the members of your emailing list are aware that they’re not your only contact, they have no real sense of the size of your audience nor do they particularly care to. There might be hundreds or thousands of names on your list; as far as the individual is concerned, they may as well be the only one—and it is exactly this that gives email its marketing power. Even if an email is sent to all those people, it can be composed to read as a personal message from a friend.

The key to this, of course, is learning to compose these kinds of conversational emails. The most commonly made mistake that causes businesses to see diminished success from email marketing is only writing mail that sounds as if it’s speaking to a group as opposed to the individual. These messages might sound as if they’re intended to be announced aloud or posted on a bulletin board rather than read in private, lacking the personal touch that engages recipients and damaging deliverability. Their indirect approach also means that they don’t invite or encourage any amount of active engagement from the recipient, meaning that even if the email is opened and read, it won’t be as effective at swaying prospects as it could be. While this category of email absolutely has its place, it can’t be relied on exclusively if the platform is to be used to its full potential.

One great way to supplement newsletter-type emails is to embrace shorter, more simplistic follow-up messages that simply ask the recipient a question related to the content of the newsletter. Something as simple as, “[Recipient], are you still interested in […]?” can be infinitely more compelling than that original newsletter, as it not only directly addresses the recipient but asks for a response as well. Further, conversational emails such as these make you appear more approachable, opening the door for future contact. Using strategies such as this, you can massively increase engagement and build a rapport with the members of your list that will ensure your business will be their first thought when confronted with a problem you can solve— something that would be nigh impossible using any other tool.