Archive for month: October, 2014

Writing long emails

There are people who do not favour writing long messages, yet there are others who buck the trend to compress and shorten messages. Because they have a beautiful writing style they “get away” with long messages.

I often read these.

David Baker runs ReCourses – a service advising owners how to run their marketing agency as a better business.
Read this example.
Hi Rebecca,
I came across this interesting statement recently:

“Incorporating interactive can move your firm upstream strategically, especially if you understand that interactive work is really database marketing reborn. Providing [prospects] with interactive opportunities is tantamount to allowing them to emerge incognito from the protected castle to sample the promises before they lower the drawbridge again. In this [case] the consumer has initiated and then defined the sales context. And as a potential buyer he is far more likely to buy because he has reestablished control, first by learning more in an environment where he controls the shape and pacing of the information, and then by giving [you the] permission to sell to him.”

The concepts are important, of course, but what’s most interesting is that it was written in April, 2000, nearly fourteen years ago. I wrote it in an article for Persuading, trying to help agencies like yours understand how digital work should fit within the marketing mix.

There was some real enthusiasm in writing that, largely from the promise that the internet would provide a new era in marketing. It didn’t fulfill that promise, really, as privacy concerns, inept agencies, and lousy UI dominated the lack of innovation.
Enter marketing automation technology (MAT), though, and the internet is finally delivering on its promises. This is especially true in the marketing of professional services, where decisions are more considered and where authenticity and truth can be established via thought leadership content.
While the wait has been lengthy, the pace of recent developments has far exceeded what we have come to expect. MAT is a milestone that will honestly change every single thing about selling your services:
You can establish a funnel to define the most likely path to hiring you.
You can develop the tools to bump leads to the next stage in the funnel.
Prospects will be fully aware of your abilities, your remuneration, and what you won’t do. In the process of discovering that, prospects will self-select themselves out of the running so that you avoid the biggest danger in business development: dating prospects that are not marriagable.
Best of all, it changes the equation from pushing to pulling.
The amazing thing is that—no matter how good you are at selling—if you are in front of a prospect that has already taken the safety chain off the door and invited you in, you can sell. Yes, you can sell. What you hate about selling is trying to convince a prospect that they need you. No more. MAT has changed that for you.
There is so much to learn about this and I hope you will join us in Chicago on March 6 for a packed day of learning MAT, both for yourself as an agency and in your work as an agency for clients.
David C. Baker
ReCourses®, Inc.

Why is this long email effective?

Deconstructing this email the method David uses is this:

• Open with a statement (the quote)
• then challenge my understanding by explaining it’s over 14 years old!
• explain its relevance today
• Bullet point list of benefits [not features] of the technology
• Give reassurance of the ‘amazing’ outcomes available to users
• End with an invitation to buy from him

So that’s a series of subjects that you can use for your next email (whether to a cold introduction or a luke-warm prospect).