How are you using email in your business? Whether you think it’s a necessary evil or whether you think it’s great, let’s be honest, the only people I’ve ever heard think emails are great are very successful marketers. They’re using it very successfully.
But email is always there and it needs to be used so, how are you using it?
Email needs to be consistent. You need a voice. You need a tone. Think of all the ways you can use it. You’ve got your marketing, sales messages. You’ve got your accounts. You’ve got customer inquiries.
Yes, every single day in all departments. But, something I see a lot in incoming email from companies is a lack of consistency and that consistency is the brand.
No one seems to think of what goes at the end and what it looks like to the customer, the person receiving the other end. And that, I think, is a bit short sighted.
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People also forget that emails are generally read if they’re important. So, for example, if you’re selling a product in ecommerce store like ours, there’s an automatic process built in to ecommerce stores that sends an invoice of the completion or your orders process.
People are going to open that because they just bought the thing and they need the invoice or receipt. So, why leave it as the standard? Why don’t people add the same signature and message at the bottom into that as they do into the emails they send every day?
I recommend you have a look at the service from Wisestamp.com. I think they have a free version but it’s pretty low price. We actually use it at Fire Protection Online and my other businesses.
Wisestamp gives you create a standard signature but it’s a professional looking one. It’s properly coded and works with Gmail and with Outlook and most others.
As a company, say, you’ve got 20 employees or so, how can you control that they all got the right signature? So, you need a controlled system that has a similar message, similar style of message. Then you can put sales messages or you can enter your Twitter handle or have an offer at the bottom.
So, be consistent in your message. And please, please, stop adding those long disclaimers after your emails. Why have you got those? Does a legal department run your company? Are you lawyers?
Other companies don’t seem to need them and when you see those threaded emails, where it’s one after another, and all of those disclaimers are bunched together, it makes you look bad. I don’t recommend it.
So, consider your signature. Consider where all your emails are sent from and who’s sending them. Make sure you get the same sales messages in there. Change them every now and again and use a “ps”. Everyone reads the ps.
Get your social media handles in there because people do want to know who you are and where you are.
Drive Time Podcast
Now, being a lovely Thursday, we want a nice podcast to drive home to at the end of the day. Today, I’m going to recommend the Ray Edwards Show.
Obviously, we’re in the marketing game and Ray Edwards is a copywriter or a direct response marketer. Meaning, he gets paid if people respond to what he puts out there.
And yes, that is going to get you results if your own money depends on it. Ray Edwards has been around for a long time. He’s very nice.
Also, remarkably, his podcast seems to have been on iTunes forever, from something like in 2007. I have no idea when iTunes started but that sounds pretty early to me. So, he’s got a lot of experiences. He presents well, has different lengths of podcast and puts episodes out roughly once a week, sometimes more.
Ray is not really “salesy”, is really, really helpful, using his experience on how to build a business as he’s marketing-based. You’re going to learn a lot.
Another one you’re going to learn a lot from is Rainmaker. Rainmaker sponsors the Marketing For Owners podcast.
Rainmaker includes their Authority program which on its own, I believe, cost 400 or 500 dollars for the annual fee and it has access to all of Copyblogger’s top information on everything you need to know about marketing your business online. It’s worth considering as it’s all included in the price.
Get on iTunes. Go listen to Ray Edwards. And then, start getting people to send emails to you. Look at their signatures. See you soon.
