People read email, and the clearer and better your email is, the more people will read it.
How often should I email?
Minimum? Once a week.
Once a week?
Won’t I annoy people?
If you email self-promotional bollox? Yes you will.
If your email is something that is not relevant, weird, poorly written, hard to read, a rant or doesn’t help people, and is confusing.
Yes, definitely.
What should you do then?
Engaging people
Write something that is for YOUR readers; send something useful.
In my past, I’d email 100’s of people an invite to an event the next day with a 50% discount.
This screams of despair and horror. People plan their lives, and while they might drop everything to go and see the Rolling Stones play on the boat for 50%, they won’t come to a business networking event in a shit pub in London for £5 off.
How you email matters.
Over the last 15 years, I’ve tested many ways of emailing.
Right now, I am totally in love with simple plain text made out to look like a blog post.
I think of how people read it on the phone; this is where most people read their emails.
Mobile Email Marketing Statistics
- Mobile opens accounted for 46 per cent of all email opens. (Litmus.com, 2018)
- 35% of business professionals check email on a mobile device. (Convince & Convert, 2018)
- Apple iPhone is the most popular mobile client for reading emails with 29 percent of all opens occurring on this platform. Gmail is a close runner-up at 27 percent (Campaign Monitor, 2018)
The act of pushing the page up and down and being able to skim read, then go back and read in detail.
I also listen to stuff rather than read, so I consider it easy to highlight the text or send it to a text to speech reader.
I use Voice Dream – this post here has all the audio options.
If you are reading this post on a mobile device, it will have a headphone image in the bottom right-hand corner, and you can listen to the job.
I used to use Publicate to make a curated email – it is fast and clean, but I went to writing.
You can easily drag and drop articles from pocket and Feedly, this stands alone app saves you a lot of time.
Everything that goes in comes out responsive and clean, and you don’t have to mess about with text size, fonts and all of that.
Think the cleaner, the better, lots of white space and people can only deal with a few things.
I write long thousand-word emails these days, and I know fewer people will read them, and I am ok with that.
The goal for my current emails is to connect and educate a few people deeply if I were selling an event ticket, I’d be way shorter.
How your emails happen.
It would help if you reduced friction.
Open, text, read.
This is why I’ve moved away from the image-led emails I used to send.
I want people to read the words and click through, not sit and wait for image to load or have a picture missing.
Even this micro delay will cause people to give up and move on.
One of the worst things you can do is send an attachment. Opening an attachment needs more time; some people may need a software to do this.
Furthermore, if there is no connection, the attachment won’t load.
Opening an email is instant and waiting for an attachment is one second too long.
There are many free and paid email options these days, and they are simple to use and safe.
Why should you use an email newsletter sender?
I wanted to say because it is 2020, not 1994 – but that is not helpful.
1. The deliverability of your emails goes up significantly when you use the proper tool.
This is a trust from the reader, and all the techie stuff is taken care of in the web, filters, spam things.
2. GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation Compliance. When you are using the right tools, you run less risk of accidentally breaking the law.
GDPR is a very good thing, and it is hard to understand but, if you are respectful of how you send emails, you will be fine.
Our Coworking Tools service will help you out with GDPR compliance.
3. It is way faster to use an email tool. Write your stuff, add it in and hit send.
4. You can track who opens and what works, so you can serve people better.
I noticed a lot of people click links on productivity in my emails over the years, so I talk a lot about that.
How often?
At least once a week, whatever you are doing.
An email newsletter is a great way to keep in touch and get to know your audience up to your game.
I’ve been sending one for over a decade, and when I send it, life is excellent, and when I don’t, well it’s ok.
I don’t ‘sell’ in my email, but I’ve had a lot of people hire me as a result of the email.
They know what I am up to, what I am talking about and what I’ve read.
Every day?
You could try this, Jonothan Stark and Donald Miller send a short daily email – every day.
I asked Jonothan about this, and he replied it is part of my day, and I am always looking for stories, so I am alert. I’m respectful of what goes out and knows my audience.
I tell people what will happen, so there are no surprises,
Email newsletters are the best.
It is the number one best form of communication and marketing, and the best bit?
So few people even bother to do it you can cream it!
I signed up for a load of email newsletters from coworking spaces a few years ago.
In a year, the ONLY ONE emailed every week, and they are a coworking space with a live band venue, somewhere in Chester.
Everyone else emailed when they got a new intern and needed to get them to do something.
OR
Emailed to say they had desks to rent, or an event next week.
So, in other words, they showed up when they needed something.
Every F'<king Week
There are lots of you reading this who publish something EVERY FUCKING WEEK, so I know who you are and what you do.
You run podcasts, blogs, videos, photos, newsletters and events you don’t stop, and I know who you are.
I also know every time you hit publish, you learn and grow and get better.
BC – Before COVID
So back in February, I was sitting in a room in Nashville with Don, Kula, and JJ learning about StoryBrand.
It was the training to be a StoryBrand coach, and we were talking about email marketing.
When I asked Don for more detail, he said StoryBrand emails over 100K people every day!
YES, EVERY DAY – and only a few unsubscribe.
Then when they email to say ‘we’re doing a workshop on – want to come?’ they sell out fast.
They built trust over 100’s of short helpful emails.
During COVID
So when COVID hit the live StoryBrand Workshops were no more; in fact, I went to the last live one.
THEY WERE DEAD!
GAME OVER?
NO WAY!
Every workshop went online.
And because StoryBrand HAVE AN EMAIL LIST, they emailed people and said…
‘We’re doing an online workshop, wanna come?’
You usually have all the travel, hotel and Nashville stuff.
And we have to hire a venue, but we’ll make it cheaper because it’s online.
Usually, 300 people go to a live workshop.
800+ paid for the online workshop at about $1k a seat.
That is a lot of stories.
How to grow with an email list
During COVID, StoryBrand has GROWN and is hiring more people, they are having their best year yet.
Why?
Because they started an email list five years ago and kept going.
The more the merrier – So does in Email!
My mate Julius runs Event Manager Blog. It is vast.
Julius is one of the few real-life people I know who started a blog and grew it into a grown-up business.
I met him in 2009, and I can’t remember when he did not have an email list!
When COVID hit Julis was right out the gate with a webinar about Mental Health.
He followed up with regular webinars attended by thousands of people.
I send email newsletters to people every day of the week in projects, I always say ‘hit reply’, and people do.
The Connection works
For example, every week in our podcast, we ask people to sign up for the email newsletter and hit reply.
Now have people joining London Coworking Assembly who we have NEVER met before.
Because they heard the podcast, got on the email and got connected.
So what is the ROI?
ROI from email marketing now stands at just over £42 for every pound spent.
You are making a rise of almost £10 since the previous study in 2015.
B2B organisations collectively report just under £36 ROI, but a lower proportion.
Read the full report here
What do you think about all of this? Do you agree with me or you think I am being mental about this? Hit reply and let me know.
