by Jay Kang The attention lifespan in the year 2000 was about 12 seconds. In 15 years we reduced it by 3.75 seconds! This is not abou...
by Jay Kang
The attention lifespan in the year 2000 was about 12 seconds. In 15 years we reduced it by 3.75 seconds! This is not about adults today not being capable of paying attention, but there are complicated varieties that comes to play. Especially, how technology grew so fast these couple of years, it is now difficult to provide a spotlight and grab attention towards your audience. I love digital marketing data and love to analyze things. Let’s see if we can come up with a solution.
Social Media like Instagram attempts to grab attention with visual attraction as well as short audio/video clips. Email Marketing attempts to grab attention providing content and possibly images. I want you to picture hundreds of people lining up in front of you, trying to grab your attention. Which of those hundreds would you choose?
It is believed that we should ask this question every time we send an email. I personally receive about 30 emails a day. I receive emails from Amazon, Fry’s, some tech newsletters, economics and other interests. Instagram has started using email marketing to bring you back to their app and re-engage their users. These companies and newsletters are selling me a product or content. How my day starts, I would select and read only few of them. Sometimes, I do not want to be offered anything, and sometimes I ask myself if there are anything interesting for me to purchase or read about. Whatever the day may be, I have chosen to opt in to these emails and they are attempting to get my attention.
So, back to my main question,
“Which of those hundreds would you choose?”
I have provided few tips that you can use to capture your audience.
It takes 8.25 for people to lose interest. It all starts with your subject line. How attractive is your subject line? If you received your own email, would you really actually want to read it? With every email, you want to ask as if you are a subscriber yourself.
Instagram in September 2015 announced that it hit 400 million users beating Twitter 316 million users.
With this growth, we can learn a thing or two on why it’s so popular and how people are actually paying attention.
8.25 Seconds and Subject Lines to Attract Them
Instagram is compiled of pictures and video clips that entertains us, moves us, inspire us, and and many businesses are using it as advertising their products. Understanding that your Subject Line is going to do something for your subscribers is a great way to engage with your audience. I wouldn’t want to receive an email about a Groupon Getaway to Alaska when the month I am receiving this email is in December.
RELEVANCY IS A METHOD OF ATTRACTION.
Trends are also a great way to provide relevant and relative information that your subscribers might want to read about. Using both Autoresponders and Campaigns are important and fundamental to your engagement. You want to use Campaigns when you find relevant information, up-to-date information to catch your subscribers into clicking your email. Autoresponders are your automated pitches to automate your business.
8.25 Seconds to catch your subscribers with your subject line. That gives you another 8.25 seconds for your first few sentences to get your subscribers to continue reading your email.
Get to the Point and Take Action
Get to the point. Do salesperson ask you permission to sell you something? Do we actually want to take our time, easing our way in to provide important information? Again the digital marketing data reads, 8.25 seconds and the interest might be gone. You want to engage and take action. Get to the point and hold firm. I have been in sales for 8 years and while information is good, how it benefits me is key to making me want to decide. However, if I am deciding and I am not presented with “take action” calls, I will continue to decide and within 8.25 seconds I might forget it and move onto something else.
INSTAGRAM PROVIDES “LIKES” AND “COMMENTS” TO ENGAGE WITH SOMEONE ELSE’S INSTAGRAM.
Clickable and Action oriented content will provide triggers. If your email contents are not asking for something, don’t expect something back. You want to provide your subscribers a choice to click on something or do nothing.
Images can be a good or bad thing for your email. It is either a distraction or attraction. Instagram will provide you an opportunity to like it or move on. While Email Marketing does not provide this option, not having your emails read or clicked is the same thing as them moving on. Your images needs to do two things: Get to the point and are you making a point. When selecting and adding images, is those relevant for your emails are you simply decorating your emails? You might think it looks appealing but what is the benefit for your subscribers to see those images? Think again about your subscribers and how they might feel.
Using Social Media to Re-Engage
Instagram lets you follow other users. Why shouldn’t you do the same with Email? Whether you ask them to respond to your emails or not. Other option is to have them follow you through other Social Media Platform. I am not a fan of failure. With that in mind, I was a great salesperson, later being promoted and becoming number one in sales, district and nationwide. When someone came to my door, I would do what I needed to do to close the sale. Unfortunately, I did not close 100% of the time and I had to come up with a strategy to bring my closing ratio as high as possible.
One thing I did was to make sure they come back to me if they had any questions, whether it was my product or not, I wanted to be their Go-to-Guy. Come back and I will find other ways to sell you something. They will come back for questions and I would sell them something else. My ROI was incredible as well as increasing my attachments. Finding other means necessary is one of my motto and I believe we can integrate the same method with Email Marketing.
If you provide a solution and could not close the sale. How about asking them to follow one of your social media or all of them and re-engage with them later on? Your ROI and retention rate will shoot through the roof. I am not saying to go ahead and open a new account if you do not have one. But if you do have Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc. Why not ask them to follow?
Make sure to remind yourself, they still have 8.25 seconds and you would need to provide good quality, eye catching contents.
Use digital marketing data to get to know your audience
Instagram provides an opportunity to get to know your audience. Your followers will provide more likes if they see what they like and what you do. Therefore, comments provide in depth information and you can read on what they say about your posts. Unfortunately, Email Marketing does not provide that option, or do they? Going back to engaging with your audience, the more opportunity you provide your subscribers, the more opportunity you get to see their reactions.
First of all control the controllable. Email Marketing Software and Click Reports provide you analytical tools to see your subscribers reaction. You would want to provide clicks for call to actions and your content is what’s going to drive your subscribers to click on them. Simple reports can say lot. The more you practice with your engagement the better you will get. Stick to your schedule, If you can eliminate your subscribers reason to not forget about you and expect an email delivery, you will get more open emails and clicks.
Your content needs to be consistent and continue to drive that throughout your emails, you will notice loss of clicks if you don’t. Additionally, your style and method on how you write your emails will lose traction if you change it. Consistency will eliminate any obstacles and you will see reactions from your subscribers. As a result any changes you make is a reaction time for your audience, make it easier and simple for them to understand your email. Anything you change is what’s going to limit your reports and possibility of identifying your subscribers reactions.
THERE IS A 80/20 PRINCIPLE HERE.
You do 80 percent listening and 20 percent talking. Wait and with the reports you accumulate you can react to them.
So, second is if you are engaging them through social media, you can get additional sources. You can go beyond analytics and provide your subscribers additional means of engagements. Therefore analytics you see from your reports, you can revise your methods within the social media space and see any improvements. Email Marketing is key and you always want to redirect them to that path. This is basic fundamentals of what you own. You own your list, you are only renting spaces through Social Media.
Mobile Marketing Perspective
We all spend time on our Laptops and Desktop in creating and operating our businesses. But there’s a disconnection with the key growth area which is Mobile. I am sure that the attention lifespan of 8.25 seconds is without a doubt related with people using mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and now smartwatches. Soon, people will use their refrigerators screens to read their emails and technologies like Amazon Echo might soon provide Alexa with email reading capabilities. Times are changing, but emails are vital marketing business. How people receive them is something you definitely want to consider.
Instagram started off with the Mobile space and decided to put a desktop version of their app to conquer both spaces. However, we all know that the mobile spaces is more dominant than the other. Having an option is just good marketing technique. Are your subscribers reading from their mobile devices? If you content is long, will they stop and think about reading this later on their laptops or desktop or stop reading it and forget about it?
DON’T CREATE OBSTACLES, CREATE OPPORTUNITIES.
With Smartphones being in the hands of almost if not all of the global population, you want to consider taking a moment to observe mobile friendly version to see if it shows, breathes quality content. While the words of your email might look and feel less with a desktop view. Viewing on your smartphone might feel a little different. You want to always check the quality and visualization of your content on both spaces and ask yourself if it is too much or too little, is it perfect for both occasions? You want to grab both viewers of Desktop and Mobile Devices, not just one. So, take your time in owning your content in both areas.
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