4 Email Ideas to Improve Your Sales

Too many emails are short on pertinence and benefit copy. This reduces sales for many emailers. But other problems persist. These four recommended modifications to your email activities will improve your results as you implement them.

Limited space constrained the list to four areas. So please add your comments once you have read this post to add your own.

1. Don't send sales messages, sell benefits. Otherwise your email becomes spam to the recipient. It also diminishes your brand.

If you're looking at a new product or service, what appeals to you more? "Our software leads the industry, so you should consider our product." Or "Our software does not require a manual to use, cuts 50% off of the time you normally spend on administrative duties and provides templates for nearly every letter, email or contract you will need in your business."

Or better yet, create three emails featuring each one of the above benefits using testimonials and other evidence that support your message.

Keep the message focused on solving a prospect's or customer's problem. Some call this consultative selling.

2. Control your email volume. Use a CRM system to make sure you balance the frequency and content of all of your emails sent to each prospect and customer.

Build your reputation with your recipient by helping them with useful information even if feels like you are taking time away from selling. In fact, by helping your contacts you are demonstrating that you care about them and understand that you make money only when you solve their problem.

Make sure you have a compelling reason to contact the prospect. That is, do not send an email when the only apparent winner is the company rather than the recipient.

Here are a few turn offs.

- Duplicate emails.

- Emails that come out of the blue from individuals or companies the recipient never heard of.

- Emails offering products and services that the recipient has no proven interest in

- Emails from companies where the recipient made an inquiry or a purchase 2 plus years ago.

- Emails that proclaim something is free when it isn't. In my book, even leaving that impression is a lie and brands the organization as hucksterish.

- Emails that makes the same offer repeatedly believing that email volume will somehow win the day. In the process, you just burned your bridge with the abused email recipient.

We used to say that in telesales, smaller is better. This means that more carefully culled prospect lists that are pre-qualified are more cost effective than bombarding the entire market with ineffective calls to poor prospects. In the same way -- for email less is better. Make every email you send count.

Email messaging is inexpensive, but the toll on your long term effectiveness can cost you a bundle in lost sales if you abuse your email privileges. Don't use a scorched earth policy on your prospects. You will loose in the long run.

3. Know your value proposition. In other words, answer the recipient's obvious question about why he has a problem and how your product or service will solve it. Not only that, demonstrate how you can solve his problem better than your competitors.

Of all the weakness in email (and all advertising for that matter), the lack of clarity on the company's value proposition kills sales. A powerful value proposition represents your elevator speech. It's focused, clear and addresses your most powerful selling weapon.

Here are a few examples listed in Tim Berry's post entitled: "An effective marketing strategy requires focus."

- Michelin Tires: Offers safety-conscious parents greater security in tires, at a price premium.

- McDonald’s Restaurants: Offers convenience-oriented eaters fast meals at competitive prices.

- QuickBooks: Offers user friendly, dynamic accounting software at an affordable price point for small businesses.

4. Include a call to action. Most emailers are getting good at this. But please give your prospects a reason to call, click on your landing page or respond to your email. Direct marketers call this "the offer."

Other than the demand for your product value proposition and the quality of your list, the most important predictor to response is the offer.

As examples, here are a few weak offers.

- To find out more, click here

- Call us for more information

- Please complete your profile

- See us at a store near you

Strong offers.

- Click here for a free demo and a 90 day free trial if you respond by February the 21st.

- Register for the DMA Fall conference by August 1 and get a $500 discount

- Get landscaping design for $300 (a $1,200 value) if you set it up prior to the planting season by March the 15th

There are numerous other issues we could talk about to strengthen your email program. But if I leave you with nothing else, please treat your email program as a gift from your prospect that you should never take for granted. Carefully evaluate each email to make sure your prospects and customers are interested in the subject and will respect you more each time they receive one of your helpful and pertinent emails. If you do, then you will see your open rates improve and your bottom line grow.

Sloppy Marketing Weakens Email Effectiveness

In just a few short years, email revolutionized marketing. Yet email abuse, spam and sloppy email marketing practices have reduced its effectiveness.

As a result, I routinely pass over email as a viable acquisition channel.

Only double opt-in email sent to customers offers sufficient revenue to warrant attention. There are exceptions, as always. But unsolicited mass delivered emails to prospects often work to the detriment of the advertiser's reputation and bottom line.

As Reggie Brady writes (a recognized authority on the email channel) in her recent Target marketing article entitled "E-commerce Link : Don’t Tarnish Your Reputation!".

"Email deliverability is still a major challenge for marketers… The newest wrinkle is that user behavior can affect deliverability—particularly for consumer mailers.

Many ISPs now calculate a mailer's reputation based on how many email messages are opened and/or clicked. If too many recipients do not open or click, your email may be routed to a bulk folder even if you are white-listed. Conversely, even if you've had higher spam complaints, your email may be delivered to the primary inbox if your opens or clicks are strong".

The government, ISPs and spam filter developers are all working to reverse the tide. But spam and spammer ingenuity continue to grow. In this environment, emailers struggle to keep their noses above the water line.

Other than spammers, the worst offenders are the companies that send their emails indiscriminately or too frequently. Their sloppiness reduces the email channel's potential for all of us.

The best email strategy is the same strategy for all marketing efforts. Marketers should carefully consider the impact of their marketing decisions on the customer first. If they do so, customers will reward them with repeat sales and loyalty.

Is It Data Overload or Lack of Vision?

Marketing technology explodes. Virtually every customer interaction is captured in the Cloud. Customers expect companies to make relevant messages based on their buying habits with their favored brands. Yet many companies fail to grant customers what they want most -- recognition that they are a valuable customer to the company.

In a recent post at Customer Intelligence Blog, Tony Coretto writes the headline: "IBM Study Reveals CMOs Unprepared for "Data Explosion".

As businesses become more sophisticated in capturing data on every facet of the customer interaction, they’ve accumulated an enormous treasure-trove of information. However, as this study reveals, in most cases they don’t know what to do with it!

Heck. I'd be happy if retailers and other large businesses even bothered to maintain a customer database and used the tracking capabilities offered by their present POS vendors.

Why do so many companies lag behind the technology, tracking and data gathering process? And even if they do stay on top of the technology, they have failed to develop the talent and resources needed to turn analysis into action!

In my view, the future belongs to marketers who master the dashboard and know what to look for when analyzing the available data. These same marketers also know how to work closely with the CIO and CEO to break down the silos that make data gathering and its translation into action possible.

We must become ruthless in our zeal to help our clients and the companies we work for break away from making decisions based on what was done in the past. Great marketing decisions are founded on customer buying behavior.

But I think the real reason more companies have not grasped the power of customer intelligence to treat customers like, well... customers resides squarely in the hands of the CEO. Without a great CEO, a potentially great marketer stands little chance of making great contributions to the company.

The business vision should not revolve around operations, money management, acquisition, or European expansion. As important as all of these things are, they pale in comparison to the importance of creating many happy customers.

As the late Peter Drucker said:

...the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two--and only two--basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.

Clients Shoot Themselves in the Foot

Have you ever interviewed a prospective client only to find that they think they know what their problem is but they really don't?

Agreeing to the principle that understanding the problem is the first step to solving it does not work -- unless we realize that it applies to every problem.

Here's a good example of what I mean.

A leading competitor and founder of the idea that a lot of people want cash now for their settlements was no longer number one in the market. J.G. Wentworth was taking over the market from my prospective client. They brought me in saying that their direct mail was no longer generating sufficient leads to keep up with their younger competitor companies and wondered how I might help.

We went through my questions and theirs trying to nail down what needed to be done to compete with their direct mail program.

They showed me their direct mail packages, list selection criteria, results over the last few years and readily answered my questions. They also listed their foremost competitors.

I went back to the office and contemplated what we should do to reverse the tide.

Their in house direct mail was weak and the results reflected it. They believed this was their biggest problem and that correcting it would get them back on course.

Unfortunately, the client failed to look at the big picture of what was happening. Their competitors were taking their business away with multi channel strategies such as DRTV, direct mail, digital and every known medium was explored and used heavily.

So I returned proposing a full solution including testing other channels -- especially DRTV -- as well as bringing additional talent to bear on their direct mail program.

They decided instead to hire a freelance copywriter to work with their in-house copywriter to improve the creative product. Never mind that the freelancer was not even a direct response specialist.

But I mentioned that this did not scratch the surface of what needed to be done to increase their growth and slow down their competitors as needed to recapture their lost market share.

This prospective client responded by saying that no, they knew what the problem was and countermanded my recommendation for testing DRTV. They had tried it several years ago and they could not make the numbers work.

This event happened three years ago and J.G. Wentworth's DRTV program has grown unabated.

I never was able to help my prospective client compete with J.G. Wentworth. Why? They had the money, the infrastructure and everything else except an open mind.

They failed to look at the big picture and made the false assumption that J.G. Wentworth did not know what they were doing.

The take away here is to never make the assumption that you have the problem nailed down without an objective and knowledgeable outside voice chiming in. Spend money and thought on what the problem is and season it with a heavy dose of objectivity and humility.