Email marketing is a tough game. This is the reality of it. You are basically “cold-calling” people via the most easily ignored platform. Sometimes it feels like they invented a “spam” folder just for you. But it does not have to be that way. You can BE good at email marketing and you can FEEL good about email marketing. Email marketing gets a bad rap, but there is a right way to do it and a genuine benefit to the sender and recipient. So let us at Robot Ninjas help you not waste your time or feel like an off-brand Viagra promoter spamming the world with your ED solution. First…
Narrow down your audience.
Yes, email marketing is basically the Internet form of cold-calling people, but even cold-callers know something about you. If you’re using a mass-mailing service to contact people without knowing something very specific about the group you’re contacting then you’ve already lost. Whatever it is you’re selling you have to start with the confidence that you at least think, based on some metric, that the people you’re reaching out to could use what you’re selling. To gain this confidence you need to do some research. You need to make a list based on interests. I don’t care if it’s a Facebook group, a list of competitor Twitter followers, or a Rolodex of email addresses you stole from your former boss, get a legit list of potential leads. If you don’t start there then you are in fact a spammer and may the digital marketing gods have mercy on your soul.
Let them know why your product will help them.
You have your audience that you think MAY be interested in what you’re offering. Now, before you start writing take a moment to answer this question: “How will this person benefit from buying what I’m selling?” If you can’t figure out the answer to that how do you expect anyone else to? Figure it out, then start writing. It’s not that complicated. It only becomes complicated when you’re trying to sell something nobody wants. And you’re not doing that because you did step one. You found your audience. You are not selling off-brand Viagra to children. You are not a robot. (I get that it’s funny you are reading that sentence on a site called Robot Ninjas. But hey, this is our ninja half speaking.)
Talk about them. Focus on their needs, not what you want them to know.
This is good advice for any piece of content you write. Think about what your audience wants and needs, not what your company wants them to know. Start with their needs and you’ll have the best chance to actually reach them.
Expect rejection.
It’s the name of the game. Most people, even if you can genuinely help them, will reject you and may even be mad at you. There’s nothing you can do about this. Email a bunch of potential leads and hopefully you can turn a couple into legit clients or customers. Email marketing is a numbers game and a game of patience and perseverance. And finally…
Be nice.
https://youtu.be/l0aPIXy6PHM
Always listen to Swayze. I mean this in any context, but this time I mean it specifically to be nice. How would you want to be treated by an email marketer? That’s how you should act. And how do you want to be treated?
“Hey, I know you don’t know me but I have this thing you might like. If not, sorry I bothered you. Have a great day!”
That’s the most you can hope for, right?
Be like that. That approach, plus the research time it takes to find your audience is the basis of successful email marketing. No one expects you to know everything about the people you email, but thankfully the invasive Internet age we live in has given you many way to statistically infer that the people you reach out to may be interested in what you’re selling. People are going to ignore you. People are going to tell you to have sex with yourself. It’s part of the game. But if you can live with your sales approach, if you believe you could have helped the people you reached out to, then you can sleep at night because you did your job.
