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5 Email Marketing Techniques That Can Sell Anything (Even Your Boring Product!)

Do your clients think their products and services might be boring? The purpose it serves certainly isn’t boring to their customers. Products don’t have to be flashy to be important, and it’s value that sells. But if your clients think they’re boring, their email marketing will surely reflect that. It will come across like a limp handshake. Yuck.

So let’s start with a new attitude. Lots of attitude you can apply in these five ways to make your clients' email marketing campaigns a bigger success:

1. Apply content marketing best practices to your email:

  • Focus on your prospect, not your product. What’s the value of your email content from their perspective? How will your information or offer help them solve a problem?
  • Every email needs a clear call to action – one that sells the next step to keep your prospect moving forward through the sales process. Put your CTA at the beginning and also the end of your message, so it’s doubly easy to find.
  • Personalize. Use their first name, and other ways to customize content, if possible. For instance, if your offer or story follows up on something this person has already inquired about or purchased, you’ll gain a warm spot in their heart. You know who they are. You care about what’s important to them.

2. Create clear, tempting subject lines.

Your audience won’t take the critical first step – opening your email -- unless your subject line tells them what to expect and sounds irresistible enough to check out.

Need some guidance on improving your email marketing? We'd love to help!

3. “Infotain” them.

Deliver your information in an entertaining way, recommends Copyblogger’s Ben Settle. Show your personality, be engaging. Think of email copy as a conversation, not “text.” After all, you’re not cold-calling, you’re nurturing leads. Email marketing is a means of guiding prospects farther into your sales funnel.

Offer an incentive for opting in, and make it easy, with a button on every web page, sign-up cards at your reception or check-out counter, etc. Offer incentives for sharing your email, too, just as you would with social media friends and fans.

4. Tell stories.

This is a superb way to impart information about your company and products or services in a way that’s entirely compelling. Stories can be interesting. Funny. Inspiring. And they pack all the punch of third-party testimonials, because you’re relating someone else’s experience about how you or your products helped them, amused them, etc. Your story could even be an anecdotal warning to help readers avoid a potential misstep.

5. Keep it short.

Think like a journalist, and make your most important point first. That key point is the “why” -- what’s in it for them if they take the next step. The trend is toward single-subject emails that are quick and easy to understand. Besides, much of your audience is using a smartphone to read your email, another reason to keep it short and visually simple. It shouldn’t take more than 30 seconds to read your message. You can provide links to longer documents, your blog or a landing page as your call to action.

Need more ideas? Check out this article on ways to counteract boring content.

Email marketing isn’t any different than the rest of your clients' electronic marketing efforts. The goal is to build a relationship with prospects so they develop confidence in your clients as a credible, trustworthy resource. Helpfulness isn’t boring, it’s appreciated. And, ultimately, it’s the knowledge that your clients' products can help them solve their problems or improve their life in some way that turns prospects into paying customers.

Topics: email marketing - content marketing - content marketing strategy - content marketing campaign

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