This blog hasn’t been updated in the best part of a month, but I do have an excuse of sorts.
A new business campaign just before Christmas was somewhat successful and I have been working on the follow ups pretty much since then.
The campaign was startlingly simple in its approach, and I would like to share some of the reasons for its success right here.
1. Is your mailing list up to date – and relevant for your message?
It goes without saying that your list needs to be well sifted, cleaned and generally polished up so that the recipients are the right ones to see that message. Blanket bombing may look impressive but the deletes and unsubscribes will paint a different picture.
2. Make your message hit the spot
Sure, another obvious point, but worth repeating.
Read your message as if it was you opening it for the first time in your in-box. And for heavens sake do a spell check. And then another one. If you are selling yourselves, say, on attention to detail you can get scuppered by a silly spelling error. Miss the ‘l’ out of ‘public’ and you get a real word from the dictionary, but with a very different meaning.
3. Hone the message
Cut out the waffle, make it compelling, and make it personal.
Make it personal? Yes, you may not know the person that you are writing to, but you can make the tone hit the spot. Friendly, professional, but also aware of the sort of things your target market are getting every day and what makes them hit the delete button. Dare I say it, make them smile. A pertinent observation on the bugbears that they face every day – and a solution you can provide to ease that pain – will get you remembered.
A particular point that we made was this:
The Gravitas approach is refreshingly simple – experienced creatives, account people and digital experts from large agencies but without the large price tag.
We probably spend more time than we should making sure everything works properly. And being a tad old school, we can all spell.
That “being able to spell” struck a massive chord. Some recipients simply replied to say that although they didn’t have a need for our services they were that impressed with the style of the message they were keeping our details. Naturally, they have been kept sweet with a follow up and will be on the mailing list for the next blast!
4. Follow up fast
When those replies start coming in – even if they are “sorry, no thanks” – sort them into the urgent ones and the not so urgent but, hell, they took the bother to reply, so we should acknowledge that and at least thank them for their interest, and perhaps we can keep in touch? That makes them consider you again and surprise, surprise, you suddenly have more meetings as a result.
These are just some of the checklist items but you’ll want to see what we can do for you, won’t you?
If you’d like to know more about how to get a successful email campaign out, get in touch!
