Everyone tells you the money is in the list, so more people try to get people to subscribe to the list. So more people are on more lists. So everyone gets more mail.
How do you get your mail noticed?
I've noticed some people say that building a list isn't the way to be doing it, because they believe with all this email overload it's a waste as they won't be reading your emails anyways.
While I agree that it takes creativity to get people to read your emails, I disagree that building a list is a waste. Really what you want to be doing is building a list of people, not email addresses.
Yes, you have their email address, but you should be building relationships with those people not just sending out emails to them. That's why you should have the return address be your inbox.
So many people put a bouncing address as the return email, which not only decreases your deliverability, but it makes customers angry when they can't easily contact you.
If you have real relationships with the people on your list, then it doesn't matter how many emails they get - they'll read yours. They'll see it's from you, and read it. You can play all these games with subject lines, but that FROM line is huge. If it's from someone you care about, you read it. If it's not, that's when interesting subject lines really matter.
This is one reason why you should find a balance in the number of emails you send. It's why I setup my auto responder to send the auto emails on Sundays. I don't post to my blog on Sundays, so I know you won't get too many emails from me. When you mail out too much, then people start to ignore your emails!
So there you have it, a few tips to improve your responses with your list:
- Send from a REAL email address, and reply when people email it! (I do, though I will admit I'm hugely slow)
- Build relationships with the people that are on your list (twitter, conferences, forums, emails)
- Don't send out too many, so you don't get ignored!
{ 9 comments }
Hi Tim
Another good tip, I only have 1 email address I use, Even the support email from my traffic exchange is all the same so I never miss a thing. and btw I always read your e mails, Because your info is helpful and has activity points LOL.
keep up the good work my friend.
I totally agree with you on these tips Tim. I typically just scan the “From” fields each time I open my Inbox, and I only read the mails that are necessary or are from a source that I trust.
I have only been “list building” for a couple months now, and I use my TE for that purpose. Other than a weekly update on the TE news, I have only sent one additional mailing to those folks. It was about some great tips I learned at a Webinar the other night on how to increase conversions with squeeze pages, and I thought my subscribers would find it very helpful. No sales pitches, just some useful information. I want to build a trusting relationship with my membership just as you continuously do with yours.
I`m still working trying to build a list and my web host is slowing me down because of technical problems .
I have only sent one e-,mail so far and i like your suggestions of e-mailing tips and helpful info. -
i try to give everyone that comes to my sites useful information for the same reason (Trust)
When my e-mail campaign starts i will sure to be using your tips they sound like a great ideas.
Hi Tim,
I agree building a email list is one thing but building a list of people or relationships is another thing. Not everyone will buy from your list, but your have those few select people that trust you and buy from you repeatedly and that is the reason why everyone needs a list.
Great post Tim. Nameless, faceless emails are as good as SPAM in reality. In general, people are not reading them and arre turning off.
Developing a relationship that enables you to better respond to needs is critical for long term success.
Excellent post as usual Tim, thank you. Ian
I agree with all that has been said. Periodically I unsubscribe from lists where I’m not reading the emails and it is quite interesting to discover that all the emails I receive from person X, for example, pushing the latest product or whatever have nothing to do with the reason why I signed up to the list in the first place.
In fact,these days I rarely sign up to a list because I know I’m going to get good info from those lists I am on now such as yours, Paul Kinders, Jon Olson etc.
Keith
There is a compromise here – isn’t there always? Get yourself an email address that you are ONLY going to use for listbuilding/autoresponders and the like. Organise it so any emails that are replies sent to you personally go to a folder, get starred, or filtered in some way so you can look at them in isolation. Do at least that check once a day.
When you start to build a real relationship with someone ‘transfer’ them to your primary email.
If you join Peoplestring, one of the perks is a new email address, but it doesn’t have a lot of the filtering abilities and I find it rather clunky. However, if I wanted to, I am sure I could find a way of diverting it to a gmail address or similar.
So, you are in GDI – didn’t you KNOW you had email there? Use one of those and POP or divert it into a gmail account.
It used to be the case you had to be invited to gmail and you only got to have one email address there, that isn’t a problem any more. What you do is this. Write yourself an email INTO your existing gmail account from somewhere else. When you reply to – yourself, there will be an option to ‘invite so and so to gmail’, take that option and you’ll have a route to set up another gmail. Easy.
And btw Tim, I notice you aren’t using Entrecard on this blog – you surprise me! http://entrecard.com/rr/29829
Hi Tim,
Just wanted to say that I really read most of your emails as the topics usually interest me and the content almost always gives me food for thought which leads to activity. Anyway thanks for the tips on building relationships as this is one of the more difficult areas I feel. It is very hard to be tactile on the net but there are ways as you have pointed out.
Thanks.
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