Entries Tagged 'email copywriting' ↓

Aidan Hijleh is a freelance copywriter and serves as the Non-Profit Partnership Liaison for Benchmark Email. Aidan advocates free email marketing services to assist with the flourishing of grassroots organizations.

The author’s views are entirely his own and may not reflect the views of FreelanceCopywritersBlog.com. If you are interested in producing a Guest Post for this blog, please get in touch with your ideas.

A number of industries have moved their business operations to the internet, but some are migrating slower than others. One vertical that is still tethered to offline world is the contracting  industry. In fact, research shows that only a mere 33% of professionals in this industry even have their own website. Although some are surviving just fine with their offline efforts, many others are missing out on opportunities that could potentially take them to the next level. In this article, we will explain why free email marketing is such a great place to start for a contractor looking to emerge online and improve business performance.

Requires No Investment

For many contractors, the one factor standing in the way of creating a presence online is the cost associated with internet marketing ventures. Whether it is social media promotions or paid search advertising campaigns, creating a presence in the internet space can be a costly endeavor. Even email services generally require a budget, despite being cheaper than other methods. The thing with free email marketing is that it requires no budget at all, which makes it a fine choice for cash strapped professionals in all fields. If you are a contractor, a free service will give you the freedom to invest the budget in other crucial areas of the business.

Tools to Accelerate Business Growth

The tools that typically accompany free email marketing solutions can be of great help to a contractor trying to improve business performance. In fact, it is very possible to get your hands on the same features other businesses pay for on a monthly basis. Some of the features you find in a free package may include sign-up boxes to place on your website and build your mailing list, HTML editors and templates for formatting and designing your campaigns, and comprehensive reports for tracking your results. These features and others are ideal for the contractor looking for an effective way to stay in touch with their clients and grow in the process.

A Marketing Solution You Can Count On

Some professionals avoid email marketing like the plague, instantly associating it with the dreaded practice known as spam. They believe that utilizing this technique will alienate clients and ruin their reputation. It is this line of thinking that causes many of them to remain stuck in the loop of mediocrity. Although spam complaints can and do occur, free email marketing can provide you with a highly reliable infrastructure from which to conduct your business. The platform is there to back you up. All that is asked of you is following the best to practices in order to keep the complaints to the bare minimum.

When it comes to free and paid offerings, the free option is usually of substantially lesser quality. As you can see, that is not always the case where email marketing is concerned. In fact, it could be the perfect solution for the savvy contractor looking to gain a competitive edge.

http://www.benchmarkemail.com/FreeEdition

Creating eye-catching, interesting and relevant copy is not easy.

Whether you write your own in-house, or you hire in a professional copywriter, your copy has to address your reader directly and really sell the benefits of your product or service.

Let’s assume for a moment that you’ve got some stonking copy written. Your website looks amazing and has all the latest social gadgets and gizmos. Your brochures look slick and really grab attention. Even your emails are pretty snazzy.

But you’ve got a problem.

Despite all that, your conversions are really low. Your phone isn’t ringing and rather than your inbox being full of leads, it’s full of junk mail from companies trying to sell you Viagra.

What’s gone wrong?

Your CTA is AWOL

The most probable cause is your Call to Action (CTA), or rather lack of one.

There is an argument that states that your customers are intelligent and will therefore know what you want them to do.

Granted, they are most probably intelligent, but that doesn’t mean they will make contact with you. If you want that to happen, you have to tell them that’s what you want them to do.

A clear, commanding and effective Call to Action is the crowning glory of your copy.

1. Relevant

The first thing to remember is that your CTA must be relevant to your business.

If you want them to sign up for a newsletter, tell them and provide a link so they can do it easily. If you want them to call you, tell them and give them your phone number.

2. Commanding and clear

Don’t make them hunt round your copy for your CTA because they won’t bother. Make sure it stands out and is commanding.

Adding a line such as “It would be really nice, if it’s not too much bother, to hear from you. So if you have time, we’d be grateful if you could perhaps call us at a time that’s convenient to you” is not going to inspire them to pick up the phone.

“Call us on xxxxx”, “register now by clicking here”, “Email us today on xxxx@xxxxx for more information”.

Be commanding and tell them exactly what you want them to do.

3. Make it part of your copy

Your CTA doesn’t have to be left to the end of your web page, brochure or email. You can dot them liberally throughout the text. But make sure they fit the context.

If you randomly add one halfway through a text section it’s going to jar and leave your reader confused. Make sure the content immediately before your CTA leads up to it so it’s a natural progression.

4. Make it visible

You can make your CTA stand out by placing it in bold text and having it as a paragraph on its own. As I mentioned above, don’t feel as though you have to wait until the end before adding it.

If the content allows, add them in several locations so they are always visible to your reader. That way, as soon as they’ve decided they want to make contact, they can without having to hunt round for your details.

The best Calls to Action are:

• Clear
• Simple
• Commanding

Be bold and tell your reader what you want them to do.

Over to you

Take a look at your marketing materials.

Do they all have clear CTAs? If not amend them quickly. If you don’t have a CTA, you’re unlikely to get great conversions.

Hmmm…that sounds rather scary. Email marketing is for life – but that doesn’t mean you have to do it forever and ever even once you’ve retired to your Caribbean island paradise (I can dream).

The ‘life’ I’m referring to is the life cycle of your customer.

Yes, it’s great to have regular newsletters or email offers that go out updating your customers of new products, great advice and the occasional not-to-missed offer. But it would be even better if they received emails that reflected their relationship with you.

Matching your email marketing to relationship status

To make your emails resonate with your customers it is essential you send timely targeted emails. By that I mean your emails should be tailored to the stage in your relationship you are at with your customers.

Some examples would be:

1. Welcome

Once someone has signed up for your newsletter or made their first purchase from you, send them a Welcome email.

It doesn’t have to be a long communication just something that welcomes them, tells them the type of emails they’ll receive from you and perhaps an introductory offer – perhaps offering 10% off for one day only.

2. Conversion

You are bound to have customers who receive your emails but don’t take any action. Perhaps they’ve only ever made one purchase from you and you need to tempt them back to buy again. They may never have bought from you.

If that’s the case this email needs to encourage them to open their wallets and buy. A great way to break down the barriers that’s preventing them from buying is by making them an offer they can’t refuse. Perhaps a buy one get one free, or 20% off your next order if made within a week.

By making your offer time limited you’ll encourage them to take action quickly.

3. Come back

On your mailing list you will have a lot of people who have gone cold on you.

They probably signed up a long time ago but have never made contact or bought anything.

Many companies spend a lot of time and effort attracting new customers but don’t lose sight of your existing customers.

The best way to tempt them back is a win back offer – tell them they are important to you and you want them back. Make them an offer they can’t refuse, something so tempting they’ll just have to buy.

As you can see, tailoring your email marketing campaigns to your customers is a great way of developing relationships and showing your customers they are important to you.

Standard emails are all well and good but by tailoring your communications to each individual type of customer you will strengthen your relationship with them.

Remember to look at your marketing list not as one entity but as several different types of people. Work out where each person is within their marketing relationship with you and send them emails accordingly.

That may sound like a lot of work but many email marketing systems these days offer you the flexibility of running these types of campaigns.

Give it a try.

Perhaps you’re already splitting your marketing like this. If so, leave a comment below and share your experiences. Do you find it works?

If your marketing strategy involves email marketing, you would most certainly have experienced some degree of churn.

In a nut shell, churn relates to the number of subscribers lost over a period of time. These would be people who have unsubscribed from your list, emails that have bounced back or spam complaints.

It’s a fact of life and every business will have a churn rate, so you’re not alone.

Although you are unlikely to be able to prevent churn completely, there are steps you can take to reduce it.

1. Honesty is the best policy

Email marketing is all about building relationships. And the strongest relationships are built out of honesty and trust.

So, when you encourage someone to sign up make sure you tell them precisely what they’ll get (nature and frequency of the emails) and stick to it.

If your business offers more than one type of email (especially if you provide products/services to multiple market sectors) a great idea is to set up a preference centre so your subscribers can specify what information they want to receive from you.

Oh, and make sure you tell them about your privacy policy and how you will never pass on their email address to a third party.

2. Easy

Make the whole process easy for them. A simple opt-in and opt-out process is ideal. Although you don’t want to lose them from your list, it’s better to make it easy for them and retain them as a potential future customer than make them jump through hoops and annoy them.

3. Learn

You must remember that you and your employees are only human therefore mistakes will happen. When something goes wrong, or a subscriber simply gets bored of your communications send out a polite, brief email asking them for their opinion on your email marketing. If they respond it could shed some light on why they decided to unsubscribe (e.g. too many, too few, no longer relevant etc.) from your list.

4. Re-engage

This one is for all those inactive subscribers. They are the ones who perhaps immediately delete your email when it arrives or never click on any of the links etc.

Try to temp them back by creating a superb, not to be missed offer.

As you can see, if you engage in email marketing you will experience churn but there are a number of ways you can reduce its effect on your list.

What have your experiences been?

Do you have a high churn rate?

How do you re-engage people?

Please share your experiences by leaving a comment below.

We all like to think we’re perfect – but at the end of the day we’re only human which means things go wrong now and then.

Everyone at one time or another has made a mistake.

After spending hours on your latest marketing email, you hit send only to notice at the last minute a blaring typo, you’ve sent it to the wrong list, or you got the offer details wrong.

I can see you’re nodding. But don’t feel bad because you’re not alone – everyone’s been there at some point but its how you deal with it that matters.

How to deal with mistakes

When things go wrong people tend to fall into one of three camps. They either:

• Hide and hope no one notices
• Realise their mistake, correct it and hastily send out the email again to the same list without an apology or explanation
• Hold their hands up to their mistake, apologise and make it up to their customers

Which are you?

By being the honest guy in the third scenario, you’ll gain more respect and happy customers. You’ll probably still get a rap over the knuckles by the boss but at least you owned up and put things right.

Often it’s how companies deal with their mistakes that wins or loses them customers. A company that refuses to acknowledge their short comings will lose customers in spades. But one that admits it’s not always perfect and does get things wrong and is willing to go that extra mile to put it right will retain customers.

How to avoid mistakes

In an ideal world mistakes wouldn’t happen.

Whilst being human tends to mean things will go wrong now and then there are a few simple techniques you can follow to try and keep these cock-ups to a minimum.

1. Validation list

Before you send your email to your customer list, set up a validation list comprising of colleagues or friends (if you’re a one-man/woman band) who will proofread and test out your links for you. This should help flag up any errors before its broadcast.

2. Preview

If you have the ability to preview how your email will look in different browser windows, it will help you ensure your email looks good and that the layout isn’t compromised.

3. Slow down

Don’t leave it to the last minute.

Plan your email marketing carefully to make sure you have plenty of time to compose it and check it before sending it. Writing in haste is asking for trouble.

Email marketing is a very powerful tool when used properly. Whether you create your own content or use a professional copywriter to create it for you, always make sure you check and double check the text, offers and links before sending.