by Caitlin Haines Email is a part of everyday life – fact . Whether it’s from our favorite brand up-selling their new product or Au...
by Caitlin Haines
Email is a part of everyday life – fact.
Whether it’s from our favorite brand up-selling their new
product or Aunt Sally in Australia, we receive a ton of emails that blow
up our inboxes every hour. For a lot of us, the first thing we do in
the morning is check our emails – that’s just how ingrained it is in our
lives.
And, given the avalanche of emails we receive each year – 121 message per day, on average – it’s no wonder we’ve become desensitized to how it affects our professional brand.
With consumers being bombarded by messages left, right, and center, how can you, as a brand, make sure your emails stand out and give the right impression?
Why Sending the Right Impression is Important
First impressions count for a lot. They can be incredibly difficult to reverse and they set the tone for the entire relationship that follows.
When you meet someone in real life, that very first
encounter you have with them will always play a part in your future
relationships. No matter how fleeting it was or whether it changes over
time.
It’s the same for business and email.
But it’s not just the first impression you need to hone and master, it’s the impression you give every time a subscriber receives one of your emails. Think about:
- How you want your subscribers to feel when they see a message from you in your inbox. You want them to be excited, not sigh in exasperation, right?
- What image do you want subscribers to have of your brand? Are you a fun, colorful brand that adds a dose of playfulness to their day, or a serious business they can learn from every time they open your emails?
Encouraging your subscribers to think and feel about your emails in a certain way will determine how they act and interact with you.
A subscriber that sighs and rolls their eyes when another
email from you pings in isn’t going to be clamoring to buy from you. A
subscriber that can’t wait to click on your subject line on the other
hand, is more likely to become a loyal customer that will buy from you
again and again.
Sending the right impression with your emails is important for two main reasons.
1. Your Brand is at Stake
If your business is a fun gadget business that sells
quirky goods but you send emails that are dull and boring, people are
going to be confused about who you are. More importantly, they’re not
going to know what you want from them.
Customers prefer to be reached via email, which means there’s huge potential to cement your brand. Source.
2. Your Tribe is at Stake
Consumers are getting savvier by the day.
Even though we’re in a digital age where technology is more advanced
than ever, people still crave human connections; they still want to feel
like they belong.
Email allows you to reach out to your consumers in their
safe space and open up a conversation with them. Over time, this will
create a loyal tribe of people who actually value what you’re sending.
If your emails are all over the place and aren’t sending
out the right impression, you’re going to struggle to keep your tribe
together.
Send the Right Impression With Your Emails
Now you know why sending the right impression is important, let’s dig into how you can do it.
Get to the Point
Repeat after me: short and sweet, short and sweet.
Given that the average adult attention span is a measly eight seconds,
it’s important to make every moment count. Consumers today are busy,
and they don’t have time to scroll through paragraphs and paragraphs
from you. Instead, get to the point quickly, so they know exactly what
they can expect from you and what you expect from them.
This establishes a solid relationship early on, where everyone knows where they stand.
Don’t Bury the Key Message
It’s easy to try and dodge “asking” your subscribers to do something. It can feel sleazy and underhand.
But remember: your subscribers signed up to receive emails from you for a reason. Either
they like what you’re selling or they like what you’re saying. In the
long run, your list will thank you for being open and honest about your
motives and your business.
Burying the key message leads to confusion, and is far
more likely to lead subscribers to thinking you’re employing underhand
tactics than if you simply spell out your intentions.
Consider the Relationship You Want With Subscribers
In order to give the right impression, you have to know what the impression you want to give is.
Like I mentioned earlier, knowing who you are and what you want to say will drive your emails.
If you want to be seen as an authority in your niche,
don’t send haphazard emails with spelling mistakes and factual errors.
Just like if you want to be seen as a fun-loving brand, you don’t send
serious emails that are bogged down in boring details.
Remember It’s Give and Take
We’ve spoken before about The Cookie System,
which is where email marketers need to give free content away in order
to “take” from their subscribers or, more specifically, ask them to buy.
If you’re constantly asking your list to buy from you or
promote you, you’re going to give the wrong impression. Your subscribers
are going to think you’re only emailing them to get something from
them, and that’s not true at all.
Of course, you’re going to have to ask people to buy from
you at some point, but if you’ve given enough free content, it’s seen as
an equal exchange rather than a one-sided, take, take, take
relationship.
Consistency is Key
Consistency is an important part of any marketing strategy, as well as in the branding process.
60% of consumers expect brands to be consistent. Source.
When it comes to email consistency can be broken down into two parts:
- Sending a consistent message, so your subscribers know what to expect from you
- Sending a consistent stream of emails
This second part of consistency is an interesting one. A
lot of marketers struggle to find the sweet spot when it comes to how
many emails they should send, but the only answer here is: it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re consistent.
For example, if you can only manage to send one email a month, make sure you send an email every single month. If you speak to your list twice a week, make sure you consistently keep that up.
Subscribers come to expect certain things from brands,
like when they’re going to receive emails, and as soon as you start
flaking on that schedule, they’re going to lost trust and interest in
you.
Add a Human Touch
Even though email is a digital form of communication, you don’t want to come off as robotic.
As I said earlier, humans still crave human connection.
Whatever the impression you want to give your subscribers, you ideally
want to make it feel like they’re in a personal dialogue with you.
Just like we went over in one of our previous blogs, don’t dive straight into asking them to buy. Instead, build up with small-talk like you would in person.
Another way you can inject a human touch is by personalizing your campaigns.
Personalization is huge in email at the moment, and for good reason.
People like to feel special, and like they’re the only
person at the end of your emails (even if you have thousands of other
subscribers). Personalization can come in the form of calling
subscribers out by name, creating campaign paths for different types of
subscribers, or sending relevant emails based on what actions
subscribers have taken in the past.
To show you just how powerful the human element is, a 2017 report showed that birthday email marketing campaigns dramatically out-perform promotional mailings on opens, clicks, transactions, and revenue.
Build Relationships Not Barriers
Creating the right impression isn’t just mastering that first impression, it’s about how you want your subscribers to think and feel when an email from you lands in their inbox.
The impression you give will determine what actions they
take. So, whether they’ll buy from you, promote you to their friends or,
on the flip side, unsubscribe. All of this can be manufactured to
present your brand in the way you want it to look, whether that’s
by using a human element, keeping things short and sweet, and
remembering to give as well as take.
Today, building an email list is about building lots of meaningful relationships. The right impression is the impression you want to give, but it’s also about generating rapport and opening up a dialogue.
Consumers today are craving deeper connections with brands, and email is a powerful way to do this.
Are you ready to give the right impression with your emails? Sign up with Sendlane today and get started.
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