Is Email Marketing Making Us Lazy?  I believe email marketing is making many of my clients lazy and I try to help them avoid that by helping them review how they treat their contacts in act.

Email marketing is rather easy. Write an email, pick the contacts you want to send it to and hit send. Done. Nothing more to do. Let’s just wait for the sales orders to come rolling in. Life is good.

But how do your clients feel about getting your email? Look at it from their point of view and you realize they get tons of email and you crafted one specific email hoping that what you wrote and shared will be beneficial to them. It most likely wasn’t. At this point you probably think I’m totally against email marketing and nothing could be further from the truth. I just think we need to give it a little more attention and thought. I think there are times when a tool such as the built-in act email marketing is perfect. But there are other times when I think you need to concentrate on the specific client or prospect and focus on their needs.

Imagine for a moment that you are in the ice cream business.

You could send out a marketing email to all your customers and prospects advertising your vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream. But only about 25% of the people you send it to will open your email, if that. That leaves 75% of the people untouched. It is my opinion that the most important part of any email is the subject line. Even if they do not open the email they most likely made a decision to read or not read the email based on the subject line. What is harder to determine is how many people actually read the subject line. The subject line should be well thought out and scrutinized in order to ensure that your email is delivered and avoids spam detection.

If your client only likes chocolate ice cream, send them the chocolate ice cream email. Show them you care by sending them emails specific to their needs and wants.

Almost every email I send starts with Tony Holowitz in the subject line. Even if people don’t read the email they saw my name. Before you send an email, you should ask yourself what your goal of that email is and what you’re willing to do to accomplish that goal. Is it increased sales? Customer service and follow-up? What is your goal?

I rarely if ever send email marketing to my clients. If you received this tip via an email it is because you subscribed to my newsletter via MailChimp. I focus my attention on one-on-one communications via email using some tools that make it easier to communicate with them. First, I will pull up all of my customers in act approximately every 90 days. Next, I will go through them one by one and using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, I will dictate an email specific to their needs or situation. Many times, I asked them nothing more than can I help you with anything?

I recognize the fact that many of you probably don’t use Dragon NaturallySpeaking and I have an alternative suggestion. I use an iPhone and on that iPhone, I use Handheld Contact for act. I will pull up a contact on my iPhone and dictate an email and send it to them. There is a field in act called the last email field and it records the date of the last email you sent to a specific contact. When I send an email from my iPhone that is recorded. Having that field updated is essential because it allows me to draw my attention to people that have not received an email within a specific number of days.

Reviewing my contact in act would allow me to recognize the fact that Fred ordered 10 pints of strawberry ice cream and that’s what I asked him about in my email. Not vanilla and chocolate.  Get personal with your contacts.

I use Microsoft Outlook on my office computer. There is a tool that I use called Template Phrases that allows me to save email templates in Microsoft Outlook. As I look at my contacts one by one I can quickly dictate via Dragon NaturallySpeaking an email. Quite often, I will start to see a common theme in what I’m asking and it makes sense to create a template. For example, if I were in the ice cream business I might recognize that am asking a lot of people what their favorite ice cream is: vanilla, chocolate or strawberry. Instead of having to dictate or retype that every single time, I can save it as a template.

I also use a tool called Bananatag which tells me if someone has opened the email that I sent them. It will also tell me if they’ve clicked on a specific link in the email. If they click on the link for the chocolate ice cream special price, I will know that occurred. Now I can react or decide to do nothing.

I have always thought that email marketing is great for prospects, but my clients deserve better. They deserve my individual attention and thoughts at least once every 90 days. I do not want them to get an email that I have created for the masses. If I know they like strawberry ice cream, I want to talk to them about strawberry ice cream. Hopefully, that email will communicate that I’m thinking about them and their needs.

I Believe Your Prospects and Clients Are Worth Some Individual Attention

Even if they don’t read the email, they saw my name in the subject line and it reminds them that I am here to serve them when they need me. It keeps my name in front of them and that was my goal all along. For the record, my favorite ice cream is chocolate.

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Tony Holowitz: 781-728-9777  | Call me to learn more about the tools I’ve mentioned in this article:

Dragon NaturallySpeaking ($99)

Handheld Contact ($79 yearly subscription)

Template Phrases ($29)

Bananatag ($10 per month)

Act Email Marketing (500 free monthly email contacts and you can purchase more as needed)

MailChimp (Free)