We are focused on growing mailing lists as a clear goal during the #Covid19 #lockdown.
Here’s the detail of our campaign so you can copy it for your brand.
Today I received a GDPR email message from a LinkedIn connection – we are 1st degree connected. But because he’s in Europe, all his written electronic mass communications are now governed by GDPR – the European Union legislation General Data Protection Regulation.
The full email is reproduced below. Here is my analysis of why it’s such a nicely composed text. If you are in B2B marketing, I recommend taking a close look and deciding if this sort of annual review of your mailing list is appropriate.
Because we pay (mostly) for our email mass communications in a monthly fee calculated on the size of our mailing list, it’s worthwhile doing a “cull” to remove people who are either not reading your messages (since Gmail introduced the tabbed viewing this has increased for my list) or those who are no longer relevant to you or vice versa. It keeps your messaging tight and focused.
So here’s his article in which he explains what IDK means and here’s the list management options for future communications showing my selections.
I think this is clear and totally appropriate. Get in touch if you’d like me to review your mailing list strategies.
Email list marketing permission options
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I am a fan of email auto responders that send a pre-determined email reply out from your address. They can be very helpful for new business development as an information tool for prospective customers.
As ever, there are good and bad examples of automatic emails. Here are four examples we have received recently that can show you the best and worst examples. Most are from marketing and sales agencies / organisations and so the bad examples make me cry with shame….. there’s so much to improve.
Let’s get to work.
We got this after trying to email J Walter Thompson in Houston, TX. Their website didn’t list the office contacts so we used a directory called MacRae’s Blue Book. This is what came back from our email:
Directory Listings fail message
A request for contact that failed.
Email effectiveness 4/10
Membership organisation NYAMA (New York American Marketing Association) whose membership-based services are surely the profit engine for the organisation. But hey, send them a membership enquiry on their auto form and one week later [hardly an automatic response] this comes in:
Thank you for submitting this form
Email effectiveness 2/10
When you send an enquiry in to a company’s ‘general’ email whether by form on the website or direct, what happens to that email?
Everyone knows that spammers and malcontents will be using it too – so what reassurance can you give people that their message has got through?
Great information auto-response
And finally, a look at a nice, short friendly reponse from a media agency.
Perfect auto response email
Copy this one.
Autoresponders are a good tool to kick off your online marketing.
Simple. How many emails do you write daily? How many blog posts? You only have to write an autoresponder once. It will then go to as many new recipients as activate the trigger. Forever. It will always go out in the same time format that you set up at the start. It’s easy. You don’t have to think about it. And all the while it keeps up a relationship with your readers. Voilà.
More With The Creative Agency Secrets GUIDE TO AUTORESPONDERS
Connecting two compatible businesses with each other can be one of strongest networking tools for you and other businesses. By connecting the groups, not only are you solidifying your own network, but also helping the two businesses who may be able to benefit each other.
But often times this can be difficult over email.
In my networking group, we’re working hard to make it really EASY for members to introduce each other to new prospects and new clients.
I was asked by the group to help coach them in the best way to write an introduction that others could use. So let’s say you wanted to introduce my firm to another business. Here’s how you would do it.
The best introductions are when you’ve spoken personally to both parties. NOTE not emailed, spoken….
With many services out there for marketers, producing content and getting it to your audience has never been easier. However, not all services are trustworthy. We recently came to learn about TopBuzz, a platform that has divided opinions.
A couple of weeks ago, we received an email out of the blue from TopBuzz, a content distribution platform, claiming to be ‘impressed’ by a video we did for a client. The email content was quite generic and seemed to be automated. TopBuzz said they were able to enlarge our video audience via their platform and we would be compensated for all the views we got.
A couple days ago, we received another email. This time, it was from a person claiming to be from this company, boasting about the number of active users and the number of views that all the videos get that are shared on their platform. She was very forward in her approach and encouraged us to become a ‘premium creator’.
Now, we did a little bit of research on these guys and it was scary to see what would have happened if we signed up with them.
We were never interested in using this platform in the first place as the video we created for our client was content produced for a niche segment, it was an hour long and was a face to face interview. Targeting a mass audience and making revenue off views was not on the agenda, therefore, using this platform would have been unnecessary.
If you are producing viral videos, pursuing avenues through social media seems to be a safer option. For example, with Facebook, there are various pages that are dedicated to redistributing content according to different tastes.
Nevertheless, it’s important to be aware of dodgy services like this so be sure to do your research before jumping in!
Sources:
https://medium.com/@attibear/should-you-gin-up-for-topbuzz-ca19d5c1edac
https://digitalfox.media/tech-rhino/topbuzz-5-big-problems-service/
Raz is CMO of Orange Sky CMOs in Sydney, Australia. We caught up recently and got his insights into the latest in email newsletters for business marketing.
Raz Chorev
You’ve been doing email newsletters for years. How frequently do you change something major e.g. layout, frequency, type of article?
Every couple of years: content, structure and design.
When you assess the analytics on a newsletter, what are the top 3 metrics you use?
Open rate, engagement rate, and unsubscribes. This keeps me focused on people opening the email, reading / engaging with it, and not getting pissed off or bored with it.
Do you have a view on whether B2B brands should re-use blog content in newsletters?
Content can be repurposed, based on the audience. not the sender. You can use blog posts, videos, images, tweets, quotes – anything to engage your audience and add value to them as they read.
What’s one tip for the future in newsletters?
Talk to your audience, like as a person, like in a conversation. See what I’ve just done here? Don’t talk AT them. Try talking WITH them – and they’ll respond.
What’s your favourite AdTech for newsletters?
I’m not fussed either way. they are all pretty similar. it’s your content which is the most important, not one fancy feature over another.
Connect with Raz via LinkedIn or Orange Sky outsourced CMOs.
Kiwibank email text confuses
And I made a fool of myself on LinkedIn by explaining how I totally mis-understood Mark Wilkshire’s message.
Here is how I would re-write the email in order to prevent others doing what I did. [Aside: surely I’m not the most stupid customer Kiwibank has…please, humour me!]
Dear Rebecca
You have a Notice Saver bank account with Kiwibank. The interest payments for this account come from our PIE Unit Trust. The money you save in your account is invested in the fund and profits are paid back to you in the form of interest.
As an investor in this fund, we are obliged to share its recent financial performance with you. You can view an electronic copy of the financial statements for the year ended 30th June 2017 on our website via this link.
[insert rest of the statutory text here].
Lots of love, Mark Wilkshire, Kiwibank
I think this text improves the context for receiving the message. It explains an investment I didn’t know I had and how the investment performance is relevant to my personal situation (bank interest).
Personally, I wouldn’t try to push out messages about other investments in this message. Make it simply about this one thing, and how to contact us.
And, I would anticipate possible confusion among customers by enabling self-help tools on the website to be advance programmed to have answers to questions relating to this investment.
My “Kiwibot” experience below reveals more about the lack of customer orientation and more about the regulatory communication box-ticking which probably sits behind this email misunderstanding.
Kiwibank Bot does not answer questions
Why the HELL NOT?
Once you send an email, it’s impossible to recall it back. Once you send an email with a mistake, you can kiss your reputation goodbye.
In the case of MTV bringing their popular television show, MTV Unplugged, to New Zealand, their advertising strategy left a lot to be desired.
Earlier this year, in June, when MTV announced that they were doing an Unplugged series in New Zealand, Millennials across the nation rejoiced.
For those that don’t know, MTV Unplugged is a television show which features artists performing stripped back versions of their hit songs. The show has been featuring artists since 1989, so you can imagine the excitement when MTV NZ announced this news on Facebook.
The artist they’d chosen to feature in the first ever episode of MTV Unplugged NZ was Maala, a singer-songwriter of electric-pop music. Tickets were free but limited. To enter, you had to submit your details and await an email.
In the excitement of winning tickets, it’s understandable that we could forgive the use of Times New Roman and just the overall lacklustre layout in this email sent en masse to all winners.
On closer inspection, there are a few more things wrong with this.
Email received 07th July, which is a Friday. Instructions are to RSVP by Monday 10th July to confirm tickets.
What is wrong with this? Firstly, for those that entered with their work emails, or don’t check emails on the weekend, it’s likely that this email would go unread by many until recipients were back into the work groove on Monday.
Secondly, three days can be considered a bit short notice to make plans.
Thirdly, Wednesday 12th August, 2017, doesn’t exist! It did in the year 2015, but unfortunately, time travel isn’t an option just yet.
Well, that’s embarrassing! We can either assume that this little big mistake missed the multiple rounds of test emails, or that the marketing team skipped testing completely. At least they finally realised that serif fonts weren’t the best way to convey their messages.
A few things to take note:
Do you think they got the hint that a single weekend wasn’t enough to wait for RSVPs? Or perhaps people found they couldn’t make it on Wednesday, 12th August, 2015?
Either way, they extended the RSVP date until the morning before the event. They also jumped back on board the serif train and still haven’t learnt that the way to communicate with digital natives is either through gifs, cat videos, or really, anything with a picture and a splash of colour.
So, MTV Unplugged hit New Zealand’s shores with quite a splash, and probably not in the best way. They also sent me an email confirming my tickets three times. Did this mean I had two tickets or six? Very confusing.
All in all, it’s a great example of how badly a brand’s reputation can be hurt by a few simple rookie mistakes. The whole event felt rushed, and while it progressed somewhat smoothly on the day, we can all learn that emails are still very important!
I just started a curated newsletter about personal finance for millennials. Each issue includes 10 curated articles from various sources about investing, budgeting, paying off loans, and etc. I do not have any subscribers yet.
Well done – getting started.
Let’s help you work out the key answers you need: Start with answering these questions.
So you’ve guessed, you need to get people to visit a place on the web which you own (website / social profiles) and then invite them to join your newsletter. Consider what ‘offer’ you can make which is attractive to them in addition to getting the articles. Sumo.com has a good WordPress plugin for subscriptions. Also check out Push Notifications as many sites prefer this as subscribers won’t share their email address. I wrote this article about Notifications
Once you have started the newsletter and finding subscribers, you need to work on continuously improving your offer and the means for people to join it. Growth hacking is the process of improvement and measurement.
Now grow your profile
Get known by answering questions in public which relate to your issue (Financial services) and your audience (millennials). By showing off your knowledge and linking back to your website or social profile, you can encourage people to remember your brand and respond – starting discussions, which further allow you to show off your expertise.
Good luck and keep up the good work.