Email marketing, like any other business process, requires that you make a plan, gather the resources and implement. Then you go back and evaluate, make changes and re-evaluate.
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Part of your plan must be how often you send emails and with what type of content. To begin implementing your plan you’ll formulate an opt-in strategy and produce the initial content.
As you execute, remember one of marketing’s cardinal rules: “Don’t Be Boring”.
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If you haven’t opted-in to my list to get the “Email Marketing Wizardry Guide”, now would be a good time to do that (New Flash to your right). The guide gives you “5 Fun Ways To Engage People Via Email”.
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Or you can follow Seth Godin’s list of how to get people to read your blog (edited by me for email):
• Be topical… write emails that need to be read right now.
• Learn enough to become the expert in your field.
• Break news.
• Be timeless… write emails that will be readable in a year.
• Be among the first with a great email on your topic,
then encourage others to comment on the same topic.
• Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you.
• Announce news.
• Write short, pithy emails (sometimes).
• Encourage your readers to pass it on (forward to a friend links)
• Don’t write about your cat, your boyfriend or your kids – unless that’s what your business is about.
• Write long, definitive emails (sometimes).
• Write about your kids, your pets and your spouse – as they relate to business.
• Be sycophantic. Share resources.
• Include polls, images meters and other eye candy.
• Coin a term or two.
• Do email interviews with the well-known in your market.
• Answer your email.
• Use photos. Salacious ones are best.
• Encourage your readers to subscribe.
• Start at the beginning and take your readers through a months-long education.
• Include comments so your blog becomes a virtual water cooler that feeds itself.
• Assume that every day is the beginning, because you always have new readers.
• Highlight your best emails on other blogs.
• Point to useful but little-known resources.
• Write about stuff that appeals to the majority of current readers–like gadgets and news.
• Have relevant ads (on the blog) that are even better than your content.
• Run no ads (in your emails).
• Keep tweaking your template to make it include every conceivable bell or whistle.
• Digest the good ideas of other people, all day, every day.
• Invent a whole new kind of interaction.
• Mail on weekdays, because there are more readers.
• Write about a never-ending parade of different topics so you don’t bore your readers.
• Post on weekends, because there are fewer new emails.
• Don’t interrupt your writing with a lot of links.
• Dress your emails and blog (fonts and design) as well as you would dress yourself for a meeting.
• Edit yourself. Ruthlessly.
• Don’t promote yourself and your business or your books or your projects at the expense of the reader’s attention.
• Be patient.
• Give credit to those that inspired, it makes your writing more useful.
• Write about only one thing, in ever-deepening detail, so you become definitive.
• Write in English.
• Write about obscure stuff that appeals to an obsessed minority.
• Don’t be boring.
• Write stuff that people want to read and share.
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Remember too, that while the backbone of your program can be set up on an autoresponder like: [ad#Aweber Logo 88x31] timely, relevant broadcast emails will need to be part of your plan. Make someone on your team responsible for monitoring news and producing email content that’s applicable to your market.
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Next – upping the value of FREE email, for you and your readers
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