Posted by Brian Berg Google+
Like any direct mail marketing effort, email makes an impression. For most successful digital marketing campaigns, it’s not the sheer number of impressions you make but it’s the message relevancy. Just as important is it to targeting the right audience is communicating the right message.
Your message should tell a story, not a repeat the image or sound bite over and over. This relationship building between how many times you can broadcast your message before it is ignored is sometimes referred to as the signal-to-noise ratio.
The most effective repetition tells the prospects something of meaningful value, i.e., why they might consider your product or service, how your business differentiates itself from your competitor, and considerations one should make when shopping from businesses like yours.
Telling your story
The balance between brand and response has been argued; should you spend 60% of your budget on brand and 40% on response? How important is brand building to the smaller business with a limited budget for testing various advertisement mediums and offers? Regardless of what this ratio might be, a multiple email deployment can accomplish both brand building and response. It’s done by telling a story about your product or service with multiple varied email create of relevant, timely and offers of value. Let’s take a closer look at how a multiple deployment email broadcast and tell your story.
Deployment One – “Attention Getter”
First consider that whatever you tell your prospects, you will ultimately want to do it within the 4 messages. The first email is the “Attention Getter”. It sets the stage of the story and frames the duration of the campaign. • Test multiple subject lines • Make your logo, offer, and benefit statement within the view pane • Make sure your message is relevant with your audience
Deployment Two – Legitimize your presence
Your second email should be a congruent continuation of your message and offer. This one is geared toward reassuring that the first email is legitimate.
Deployment Three – Emphasize the Call-to-Action
Your third email again continues with congruency, however, reminds them not as much about the offer as about the deadline of the campaign offering. This third deployment should create a sense of urgency.
Deployment Four – Extended Offering
Your fourth email should speak to those who have already shown interest but not yet responded. These are the click-throughs who have also shown interest in your offer but have not yet signed on, given you more attention, or purchased. The message to be said here is one that says, “Ok, so we have what you want, we offer what you’re interested in, and the deadline has come and gone. Since the response was so overwhelming, we’ve decided to extend the promotion until this week so act now.”
With email, you have the opportunity to say something. You don’t have much time to say it so what you say should be a carefully thought out part of a bigger story. It may offer something that is of value to your customer, even though your customer isn’t in the moment to respond. Should they not respond, hopefully your message served as a reminder that you are in business.
What they see and remember from your email message is simple images, your logo, and maybe the offer. What they may or may not take away is that you may or may not be professional. You may or may not offer something they would ever be interested in. You may or may not communicate the same ole thing you did last month. Should you not bring anything of immediate value to your recipient, its better wait and send something of value.
Making a “bad” impression is worse than no message at all. So think about the story you might want to tell. Consider again the very small amount of time you have for the email recipient to “take in” your message. And ask yourself, “how do I tell a story in nice bite sized chucks”? Consider your sales pitch when designing your email deployment. What do you say first? How do you frame what you truly want to communicate? And how do you close?
For more help with your next email deployment, consider calling BB Direct. That’s what we’re here for...