Just recently I’ve had a few people who asked me about marketing email campaigns – and, indeed, hard copy letters too. I thought sharing this with blog readers might be useful as well.
Firstly, you need to establish the purpose of the mailing – which may appear to be obvious – but when thought through may not be the ‘buy our product now’ message that many people hope for. More realistic may be ‘visit our website’ (to a special page, of course), or ‘ring/email us for more information’. If you simply want people not to forget you, a mailout is probably not the right media, a newsletter may be a better bet.
Brainstorm the benefits of your product or service and use one of these framed as a question or in an aspirational phrase – e.g. Are you always late leaving the office? or Finish work early – every day! (time management course).
The first paragraph builds on this – either leaning on the pain or developing the aspiration.
Second paragraph picks up on other benefits (or the problems associated with the issue that they resolve).
A bullet list is a great way to present what the reader will get (if they buy your product/service) – remember not the feature or the advantage (nice to have), but the emotional triggers.
Finally, the call to action – call us for more info, see how much more you can have on our web page – or, better still, follow up with a phone call (always much more effective).
Sounds simple – it can be, but you’ll need to be clever and creative with your benefit management to really make it work well.
June 23, 2008 at 12:57 pm |
Good Post, but I would add that if you are using both email and print that your call-to-action stats allow you to tell the effectiveness of both.
If you are using call-ins as your call-to-action use two different 800 numbers that point to the main number. one for print and one for email. This way you can see which of the two were more effective by reviewing your phone records..
With web sites, make two different landing pages so you want watch your web logs and make the same determination.