Like a lot of people in the IT industry I get a lot of email. I’m subscribed to a lot of mailing lists covering a very wide range of topics, while I also receive quite a high volume of newsletters.
The fact that I receive all this email means that simply cannot read it all. If I did I wouldn’t get anything done.
So how can you successfully market to someone like me via email?
Will sending me a fantastic offer work?
It might do, but how are you going to get me to read it?
Pigsback know how. They give you plenty of incentives to read their emails and visit their site.
But what about other online merchants?
If I get one promotional email a day, then I probably get twenty. So how can you get me to open the email?
You’ve got to think “outside the box”. Do something quirky. Attract my attention. Entice me into opening the email.
Possibly the best way of doing that is via the subject line. If it works for spammers it can also work for legitimate marketing mail too.
For example, this evening I have received approximately 100 emails to my primary email address since 6pm. The only ones that are going to stand out from the “pack” are those which offer me some reason to open them.
So which ones spring out?
Sendit.com’s, as usual, sticks out. The subject line is catchy and quite witty (though some people may find it offensive!):
4play with Jessica Alba
I’m a “redblooded male” so that will catch my eye. Even if I wasn’t I’d probably want to know what they were offering. Of course I have no way of knowing (at the moment) whether they send different emails to their female clientele…
What else attracts the eye?
CD WOW’s newsletter is a bit pedestrian:
Peter Kay Live New Release!
Not very original or exciting.. I’ve also got used to the majority of their special offers being aimed at their UK clients only .. so I don’t open them as quickly.
If you have details of your clients/subscribers it makes sense to send them content that is relevant to them. CD WOW, although a fantastic “etailer”, seems to have missed that point entirely.
Lastminute.com choose the mildly outlandish subject line route:
holding out for a hero
What’s that about? *Click* Now I’ve simply got to open it to find out.
The nice difference between their emails and the ones from CDWOW is that lastminute know I’m in Ireland. They don’t send me offers “open to UK residents only”, instead they send me Irish themed content.
Whether I buy or not is not important, as in this occasion I at least have the chance to avail of the offer.
But who is the king of email marketing?
Who takes it new heights?
In my humble opinion it would have to be Amazon. Admittedly I haven’t got any email from them today, but rummaging through one of my mail folders I found a beautiful example.
Several months ago I bought a copy of Guerilla Marketing (great read by the way), so when a new marketing book came out Amazon sent me a polite email to let me know:
Dear Amazon.com Customer,
We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased Guerrilla Marketing : Secrets for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business (Guerrilla Marketing) by Jay Conrad Levinson also purchased books by Seth Godin. For this reason, you might like to know that Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars : The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World will be released on May 23, 2005. You can pre-order your copy at a savings of 32% by following the link below.
Brilliant!
Not only are they tracking my purchases, but they’re using that information to actively sell me related titles. And the best part of it is – I’ve asked for these emails. Nobody is forcing me to receive them.
Let’s look at this scenario a bit more closely.
I buy a book of a particular genre. I like it. I need something to read, but I really don’t know what to get, or maybe I simply want to keep up with what’s going on.
Enter Amazon’s customer profiling.
They go to great lengths to take away the “hassle factor”. Of course they’re doing it to make money. Would you blame them?
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it can earn the email marketing guru some nice sales.
Daring to be different can pay dividends, but just be careful!
Damn, now i need to come up with a catch subject line for the next newsletter!
I’ll have to follow my own advice with ours 🙂
I to have experienced the amazon e-mail marketing scheme, on most occasions they do send me suggestions of books I would like. But the last time was a bit of a kick in the teeth. I had purchased a PHP and mySQL web development book a month before the e-mail and a month later they offered me the new edition, cheaper then what I had paid for the older edition.
It’s my own fault I didn’t check with the publisher to see if a new edition was coming out but I don’t need amazon telling me how dumb I am too :p
Ed – ah well 🙂
Did you buy the new edition?
Which proves that it works 🙂
Or that you can tell Ed to do anything and he will 🙂
nope, I didn’t but I have bought other books they suggested. 🙂
I’m a recruiter and I offen use email as a marketing tool. It would be interesting to know what catch phrases would get potential candidates to open up my job opportunities. I’ve tried these: Are you looking for work? (which sometimes works)
Sun-Sr. Software Engineer-in San Jose, CA (stating the actual job opportunity in brief works too!
What are your thoughts?
erinhireu – how often do you send out emails?
Who are you emailing? What kind of people?