Massage Therapy for Your Message
Marshall McLuhan famously wrote ‘the medium is the message,’ but he also enjoyed saying ‘the medium is the massage.’ How your message massages your audience, and the medium of expression you use, might be more important than your content.
Most of Red Cup’s clients have email lists. Some are modest, some are hugely influential. They all have something in common: A high rate of ‘open.’ That means that people are anticipating our email newsletters and actually open and read them. Here are some best-practices tips to massage your message.
4 tips to Massage Your Email Message
- Use a simple subject line that is not overly promotional or spammy. ‘Special Offer’ is ok but ‘Special Offer!!!!!!!!!!!’ is not. ‘Secrets revealed about [your business]‘ will work just once per year. Informative titles like ‘Our October Newsletter’ work just fine.
- Keep it short. Ideally, your newsletter should fit on a page with little or no scrolling.
- Provide value. If you write ‘this is about me, and a little more about me, and wait, there’s more, about me’ you won’t hold your audience for long. Let your readers know about informative blogs you’ve written, special events, changes in the field you’re both interested in, or provide a list of apps you’re using or books you’re reading.
- Be specific. If you are sending out to 1,000 people and only 25 people open, you have the wrong people on your list. Here are some strategies to remedy that.
I’ve had great success sorting my lists into people who open and people who don’t. I send the non-openers a note that politely asks ‘are you in or are you out?’ It has a high response rate, and those who engage stay engaged. Those who don’t open I can remove from the list and I save clients’ money.
Mailing list providers, like MailChimp, Vertical Response or Constant Contact charge by the number of people on your list or the number of sends. Sending to non-openers wastes perfectly good money that could be used instead for chocolate.
But you can take things further and get even better results. If you query your recipients on a few of their preferences when they sign up, you can send them email newsletters specifically aimed at their interests. Send only to the red wine drinkers, the people in a certain zip code, the people who say they’re ready to buy in the next six months, or those who prefer great white sharks over blue whales.
By the way, that last example is a real use-case, one we recently did for BigAnimals Expeditions.
MailChimp and other providers allow you to see who clicks on specific links in your newsletter. We compiled a list of those who clicked (i.e., showed interest) on an expedition to dive with sharks and sent just those folks a followup email newsletter specifically aimed at them. Since they’d already showed interest in that expedition by clicking on it, the rate of open was very high and the expedition leader, a client of Red Cup, was able to fully subscribe the trip. It wasn’t a fluke (if you’ll pardon the fish pun), because we did it again. selling all the places in a subsequent expedition. The key was noting who clicked and then segmenting the list into interests. This way an email list with 5,000 people on it can become personalized.
MailChimp, Vertical Response, Constant Contact, iContact, AWeber, emma, Mad Mimi, and Get Response all provide email services, and you can find good comparison tools for them all here and here. We use MailChimp the most, followed by Vertical Response.
Who is Marshall McLuhan?
Photo Credit: o5com via Creative Commons License.
We create and deploy strategies to build awareness and grow the influence of cause-driven people and businesses.