Effective email marketing with Bob Ogdon
- Luke Telford
- 25 November 2009
Photo credit: k_vohsen, sxc.hu
Making email marketing effective is both difficult and so, so simple.
It's about walking a fine line between writing too much and too little, between demanding your readers CLICK HERE and suggesting that they might look at something over here, maybe...
For the last word on how to get the finer details right, Nett sat down with expert Bob Ogdon, 31-year ‘multimedia' veteran and email marketing expert.
It all starts with the subject line. This is the most crucial aspect. If they don't like what they see in the subject line, they won't open the email. According to Bob Ogdon, that decision only takes the reader 1/3 of a second.
So, how do you make that subject line appealing?
It goes back to the very core of e-marketing.
‘E-marketing is all about benefit,' says Ogdon.
‘You need to turn around and create a relationship. You're investing your energy to help them do better. As soon as you build that trust, then you can mention your product in that context.'
So, it's vital to create a relationship with your customer based upon your business benefitting them somehow. Preferably, the way you benefit them should be free.
‘You're building this relationship, and building this trust and then, basically, your brand is becoming trusted. Email is all about building that relationship. It's a sequence of smaller things over time, instead of trying to tell them everything at once.'
This is more important than filling subject lines with discounts and offers; a mistake that too many companies make.
'Email is all about building that relationship. It's a sequence of smaller things over time, instead of trying to tell them everything at once.'
‘They get on and they advertise something, or they give a discount. People aren't interested in investing in a discount... Really the most important thing is to benefit them somehow.'
Once you've gotten past that harrowing 1/3 of a second, and your potential customer has opened the email, you need to provide them with a piece of writing that's both informative and concise. Keep as much information as you can ‘above the fold'. Any other information should be delegated to a landing page.
‘Everything you can see in [the preview frame of] Outlook is above the fold. Getting people to go below the fold is a big deal. People really need to be incentivised to do it. So really what you want to do is create enough information above the fold so they'll click through it.'
Conciseness isn't enough for an engaging opening paragraph, claims Ogdon.
‘It's gotta be personal, [it's got to offer to], help me, it's gotta be really clear what it does,'
So, ideally, an opening paragraph is easy, inviting and personally appealing to read. But it has to be to-the-point. Anyone reading that first paragraph needs to be able to figure out what the email is about in 3 seconds.
‘You can get it, if you want to spend the energy, but it doesn't require you to use the energy if you want to figure that out'
Also, don't put too much information in the first paragraph. This will just deter readers.
‘... [keep] the real meat [of the article] a click a way. That's the thing that so many people don't do. They put all the meat right here [above the fold].'
Don't forget to include a call to action. Emphatically stating offers or waffling about mobile technology will get you nowhere if you don't include a sentence that compels the reader to click and find out more.
‘Plus you always want to get your call to action to occur in [the first paragraph]. Another mistake small businesses do is they blast out all this stuff and there's no call to action. There's no action to take,' asserts Ogdon.
‘That call to action, think of what that does. It defines to you who's interested in that subject. The fact that someone would click, means they're committed to that.'
Once you've gotten people clicking beyond the fold, you've won, right? Wrong.
This is only the first step in a long line of email related goals. That first click provides you with invaluable information about that person.
‘They're clicking on certain things, and I know that person is really interested in a product that would solve that problem for them.'
Once you have that information, tailor future emails to curious recipients according to their interests.
‘That's the difference between e-marketing and any other ad-world that's ever happened before. You've never been able to have this one to one correlation of who's doing what with what'
Observing who clicks on what is also useful for understanding what you should be writing about, and which topics you can rule out.
If this sounds like a lot of work, then there are some excellent tools to help you manage the workload. One thing you can be sure of, though: a correctly implemented email campaign will work wonders for your sales. #
