SolveYourProblem
Article Series: Opt In Email
How To Keep Your Opt-In Email Leads Interested
How do you keep your leads once you have
established an opt in email list and have sent out your first
newsletter? Your best course of action is a plan of regular
contact to everyone on your opt in list. How do you do this
and still keep it interesting?
Personalized
email is a great tool to keep and hold the
interest of your contacts. Following these hints will not
only build rapport, but will make each of them feel special
to you and your company, which indeed they are.
Be
polite. Response is higher if emails are personalized.
A simple “Hello Jane” goes a long way toward instilling a
sense of familiarity. Most people certainly prefer receiving
mail with his or her name on it and they usually just trash
un-addressed mail or mail addressed to “Occupant”. Your opt
in program or service will make it easy to send personal
responses to your leads and, if you are a small business
with less than 100 names you can probably do it yourself.
If
your lead has already purchased something from your company, a reference back to that product is a good way to keep in
contact. Is the buyer satisfied with the product? Send a
questionnaire regarding customer satisfaction about the item.
This is a personal email that will give the buyer a feeling
that the company is looking after his interests and that
is exactly what you are doing. This is also an early warning
system if there does happen to be a problem with an item
of merchandise.
Is
your company local, or does it have branches scattered
across the country? Regardless, you can use a reference that
is local to the lead if you add that information to his file.
For instance, if you’re old enough, you’ll remember that
Rice-a-roni is a treat from San Francisco, but the “Friendliest
Staff In the World” could be in your outlet in Omaha or Chicago
or any other city that is local to your lead. Of course,
you will have to be sure that you know what city your contact
is in and that you send the appropriate email.
Appeal
to members of groups or organizations by offering
limited time discounts to affiliated members. “As a driver
for the Greater Tulsa Bus Service you can receive a Special
20% Discount on uniforms”. Once again, you must know that
your recipient is within the parameters of the offer.
An
image of the product model that the client purchased
can be very effective in keeping the opt-in interested in
your emails. A photo of a blue Lotus winning a race could
be sent in an email to the purchaser of a brand new blue
Lotus along with a note about what a winning car he now owns.
One thing you must always keep in mind is that using this
type of email requires that data be kept absolutely up to
date. What can give a client a warm fuzzy feeling if based
on correct identification information, can wreck a relationship
if the data is wrong.
One easy way to get leads to look forward to your next email
is to always send information that is pertinent to
them. This is sometimes easier to say than to do and requires some
research on your part. A good start to developing your email
is to write down 25 topics that relate to your product and
that would be of interest to your members of your opt in
list.
Next, do an Internet search for information related to those
topics. Choose the 12 best results and design a newsletter
around each one. Include a link back to the information source
and you have an interesting email that will appeal to your
leads and uses a source outside your company. Leads who have
indicated an interest in receiving information about your
product will be interested in related information and will
appreciate the effort you took to send it.
At your company year-end send out a thank you to your clients
for their continued support. Each of these should contain
information that would be important to your client, and all
should have some reason that they should be opened and read
at the time they are sent. This could be anything from a
birthday sale or discount to an invitation to a year-end
celebration.
